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The turning point: Why we must transform education now

Global warming. Accelerated digital revolution. Growing inequalities. Democratic backsliding. Loss of biodiversity. Devastating pandemics. And the list goes on. These are just some of the most pressing challenges that we are facing today in our interconnected world.

The diagnosis is clear: Our current global education system is failing to address these alarming challenges and provide quality learning for everyone throughout life. We know that education today is not fulfilling its promise to help us shape peaceful, just, and sustainable societies. These findings were detailed in UNESCO’s Futures of Education Report in November 2021 which called for a new social contract for education.

That is why it has never been more crucial to reimagine the way we learn, what we learn and how we learn. The turning point is now. It’s time to transform education. How do we make that happen?

Here’s what you need to know. 

Why do we need to transform education?

The current state of the world calls for a major transformation in education to repair past injustices and enhance our capacity to act together for a more sustainable and just future. We must ensure the right to lifelong learning by providing all learners - of all ages in all contexts - the knowledge and skills they need to realize their full potential and live with dignity. Education can no longer be limited to a single period of one’s lifetime. Everyone, starting with the most marginalized and disadvantaged in our societies, must be entitled to learning opportunities throughout life both for employment and personal agency. A new social contract for education must unite us around collective endeavours and provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape a better world anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.  

What are the key areas that need to be transformed?

• Inclusive, equitable, safe and healthy schools

Education is in crisis. High rates of poverty, exclusion and gender inequality continue to hold millions back from learning. Moreover, COVID-19 further exposed the inequities in education access and quality, and violence, armed conflict, disasters and reversal of women’s rights have increased insecurity. Inclusive, transformative education must ensure that all learners have unhindered access to and participation in education, that they are safe and healthy, free from violence and discrimination, and are supported with comprehensive care services within school settings. Transforming education requires a significant increase in investment in quality education, a strong foundation in comprehensive early childhood development and education, and must be underpinned by strong political commitment, sound planning, and a robust evidence base.

• Learning and skills for life, work and sustainable development

There is a crisis in foundational learning, of literacy and numeracy skills among young learners. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text. Children with disabilities are 42% less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills compared to their peers. More than 771 million people still lack basic literacy skills, two-thirds of whom are women. Transforming education means empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to be resilient, adaptable and prepared for the uncertain future while contributing to human and planetary well-being and sustainable development. To do so, there must be emphasis on foundational learning for basic literacy and numeracy; education for sustainable development, which encompasses environmental and climate change education; and skills for employment and entrepreneurship.

• Teachers, teaching and the teaching profession

Teachers are essential for achieving learning outcomes, and for achieving SDG 4 and the transformation of education. But teachers and education personnel are confronted by four major challenges: Teacher shortages; lack of professional development opportunities; low status and working conditions; and lack of capacity to develop teacher leadership, autonomy and innovation. Accelerating progress toward SDG 4 and transforming education require that there is an adequate number of teachers to meet learners’ needs, and all education personnel are trained, motivated, and supported. This can only be possible when education is adequately funded, and policies recognize and support the teaching profession, to improve their status and working conditions.

• Digital learning and transformation

The COVID-19 crisis drove unprecedented innovations in remote learning through harnessing digital technologies. At the same time, the digital divide excluded many from learning, with nearly one-third of school-age children (463 million) without access to distance learning. These inequities in access meant some groups, such as young women and girls, were left out of learning opportunities. Digital transformation requires harnessing technology as part of larger systemic efforts to transform education, making it more inclusive, equitable, effective, relevant, and sustainable. Investments and action in digital learning should be guided by the three core principles: Center the most marginalized; Free, high-quality digital education content; and Pedagogical innovation and change.

• Financing of education

While global education spending has grown overall, it has been thwarted by high population growth, the surmounting costs of managing education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversion of aid to other emergencies, leaving a massive global education financial gap amounting to US$ 148 billion annually. In this context, the first step toward transformation is to urge funders to redirect resources back to education to close the funding gap. Following that, countries must have significantly increased and sustainable financing for achieving SDG 4 and that these resources must be equitably and effectively allocated and monitored. Addressing the gaps in education financing requires policy actions in three key areas: Mobilizing more resources, especially domestic; increasing efficiency and equity of allocations and expenditures; and improving education financing data. Finally, determining which areas needs to be financed, and how, will be informed by recommendations from each of the other four action tracks .

What is the Transforming Education Summit?

UNESCO is hosting the Transforming Education Pre-Summit on 28-30 June 2022, a meeting of  over 140 Ministers of Education, as well as  policy and business leaders and youth activists, who are coming together to build a roadmap to transform education globally. This meeting is a precursor to the Transforming Education Summit to be held on 19 September 2022 at the UN General Assembly in New York. This high-level summit is convened by the UN Secretary General to radically change our approach to education systems. Focusing on 5 key areas of transformation, the meeting seeks to mobilize political ambition, action, solutions and solidarity to transform education: to take stock of efforts to recover pandemic-related learning losses; to reimagine education systems for the world of today and tomorrow; and to revitalize national and global efforts to achieve SDG-4.

• More on the Transforming Education Summit
• More on the Pre-Summit

Related items

• Future of education
• SDG: SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

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Best Education Articles of 2020: Our 20 Most Popular Stories About Students, Remote Schooling & COVID Learning Loss This Year

This is the latest roundup in our “Best Of” series, spotlighting top highlights from this year’s coverage as well as the most popular articles we’ve published each month. See more of the standouts from across 2020 right here .

A ny student will forever remember 2020 as the year that the classrooms and campuses closed down. As coronavirus cases surged in the spring — and then again in the autumn — educators, families and district leaders did their best to pivot to a socially-distanced Plan B, building a new system of remote instruction overnight in hopes of maintaining learning and community.

Any education journalist will remember 2020 as the year that all the planned student profiles, school spotlights and policy investigations got thrown out the window as we scrambled to capture and process the disorienting new normal of virtual classrooms. Here at The 74, our top stories from the past nine months were dominated by our reporting in this area, by features that framed the challenges and opportunities of distance learning, that surfaced solutions and innovations that were working for some districts, and that pointed to the bigger questions of how disrupted back-to-back school years may lead to long-term consequences for this generation of students.

As we approach the new year, we’re continuing to report on America’s evolving, patchwork education system via our coronavirus education reporting project at The74Million.org/PANDEMIC . With school campuses open in some states and not others, with some families preferring in-person classes or remote learning alternatives, and with some individual classrooms being forced to close in rolling 14-day increments with new coronavirus breakouts, it’s clear that our education system will begin 2021 in a similar state of turmoil. (Get our latest reporting on schools and the pandemic delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter )

But with the first vaccines being administered this month, we’re seeing our first glimpse of a light at the end of this chaotic tunnel — hope that the virus will quickly dissipate, that schools will fully reopen, and that we’ll then find a way to help all of America’s 74 million children catch up. Here are our 20 most read and shared articles of the year:

New Research Predicts Steep COVID Learning Losses Will Widen Already Dramatic Achievement Gaps Within Classrooms / By Beth Hawkins

Learning Loss: In the days immediately following the pandemic-related closure of schools throughout the country this past spring, researchers at the nonprofit assessment organization NWEA predicted that whatever school looks like in the fall, students will start the year with significant gaps. In June, they also began warning that the already wide array of student achievement present in individual classrooms in a normal year is likely to swell dramatically . In 2016, researchers at NWEA and four universities determined that on average, the range of academic abilities within a single classroom spans five to seven grades, with one-fourth on grade level in math and just 14 percent in reading. “All of this is in a typical year,” one of the researchers, Texas A&M University Professor Karen Rambo-Hernandez, told Beth Hawkins. “Next year is not going to look like a typical year.” Read the full story .

The issues of ‘COVID Slide’, learning loss and classroom inequity appeared regularly on the site through 2020. A few other notable examples from the year:

— Even Further Ahead: New data suggest pandemic may not just be leaving low-income students behind; it may be propelling wealthier ones even further ahead ( Read the full story )

— Teaching Time: How much learning time are students getting? In 7 of America’s largest school districts, less than normal — and in 3, they’re getting more ( Read the full story )

— Missing Students: Lost learning, lost students — COVID slide is not as steep as predicted, NWEA study finds, but 1 in 4 kids was missing from fall exams ( Read the full story )

— Learning Loss Research: Students could have lost as much as 232 days of learning in math during first four months of largely virtual schooling ( Read the full story )

— What History Tells Us: What lasting academic (and economic) effects could coronavirus shutdowns have on this generation of students? Some alarming data points from research on previous disasters ( Read the full analysis )

Parents (and Lawyers) Say Distance Learning Failed Too Many Special Education Students. As Fall Approaches, Families Wonder If Their Children Will Lose Another School Year / By Linda Jacobson

Special Education: A number of special education parents said their children didn’t receive services during school closures in the spring. That’s why, as Linda Jacobson reported over the summer, organizations such as the School Superintendents Association believed lawsuits and due process complaints were on the horizon, and that’s why they asked Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to waive federal special education laws as long as schools are trying to teach students remotely . But experts warned The 74 that there’s no proof districts are facing more complaints than usual and that as long as districts communicate frequently with families they’re more likely to avoid complaints — even if schools remain closed. Boston University’s Nathan Jones, an expert on special education, also stressed that going into this fall, it was important to focus on strong academic interventions to help students regain what they’ve lost. Read the full story .

— From March: ‘Absolutely, I’m worried’ — For children with special needs, unprecedented coronavirus school closures bring confusion, uncertainty ( Read the full story )

When the Point of the Pod Is Equity: How Small Grants Are Empowering Parents of Underserved Students to Form Pandemic Microschools / By Beth Hawkins

Remote Learning: A six-child school with a focus on Black girl magic. Bilingual materials for a living-room preschool in an English-only state. Lessons rich with art and self-expression for six foster kids. A curriculum built for kids affected by incarceration. The first round of microschool grants announced by the National Parents Union are nothing like the pandemic pods described in one news story after another last summer: Wealthy parents banding together to hire a teacher or take turns overseeing distance learning. The young organization’s inaugural grants were intended to support families often failed by traditional schools , so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that many of the winning proposals center on celebrating underserved students’ heritage or meeting specific, frequently overlooked needs. Beth Hawkins talks to several grantees about their kids and their plans. Read the full story .

— Case Study — Pods to Augment Remote Learning: In parks, backyards and old storefronts across Los Angeles, small groups offer children some of what they’ve lost in months of online instruction ( Read the full feature )

How Missing Zoom Classes Could Funnel Kids into the Juvenile Justice System — And Why Some Experts Say Now is the Time to Reform Truancy Rules / By Mark Keierleber

Discipline: In communities across the country, social workers are walking door to door in search of millions of students their schools have deemed “missing” — a stark reality as districts combat an absenteeism crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic. Despite longstanding “compulsory education” laws that require students to attend school or face punishment — including fines and incarceration in some states — many districts have avoided pushing students into the juvenile justice system for truancy during the pandemic. But as growing evidence suggest that such an approach is counterproductive, some experts worry about what could come next . “Pretty soon, I think that folks are going to start relying on the stick more than they have been,” said Rey Saldaña, CEO of the nonprofit Communities in Schools. “That’ll be the completely wrong conversation to have because these students don’t need truancy court, they don’t need fines.” Rather than being willfully defiant, truant students are often suffering from homelessness or violence, he said. “They need interventions, they don’t need to be seen by a judge.” Read the full report . 

— Related: Research shows changing schools can make or break a student, but the wave of post-COVID mobility may challenge the systems in ways we’ve never seen ( Read the full report ) 

— School Finance: Phantom students, very real red ink — Why efforts to keep student disenrollment from busting school budgets can backfire ( Read the full story )

— Disenrollment: As families face evictions & closed classrooms, data shows ‘dramatic’ spike in mid-year school moves ( Read the full story ) 

— Catholic Schools: A glimmer of hope in pandemic for nation’s ailing Catholic schools, but long-term worries persist ( Read the full story )

DeVos on the Docket: With 455 Lawsuits Against Her Department and Counting, Education Secretary is Left to Defend Much of Her Agenda in Court / By Linda Jacobson

Department of Education: No education secretary has ever been sued as much as Betsy DeVos. In four years, over 455 lawsuits have been filed against either DeVos or the U.S. Department of Education, according to The 74’s analysis of court filings and opinions. Many of the cases, involving multiple states and advocacy organizations, were filed in response to Trump administration moves to reverse Obama-era rules in the areas of civil rights and protections for student loan borrowers. DeVos has always been outspoken about lightening Washington’s footprint in education. But in her department’s effort to grab what one education attorney called “quick political wins,” judges — even Trump appointees — are finding flaws in its approach. One exception might be the revised Title IX policy, which has already sparked four lawsuits, but might be hard for a future administration to tear down. Linda Jacobson has the story .

A 2020 EDlection Cheat Sheet: Recapping the 48 Key Races, Winners and Campaign Issues That Could Reshape America’s Schools and Education Policy / By The 74 Staff

EDlection: A first-ever ballot proposition on sex education in Washington state that critics decried as “school porn” but voters approved. A school board election in New Orleans, in part a referendum on closing failing schools, that remained largely undecided the week after Election Day. A victory by former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, whose education background runs deep and who is one of the few Democrats to unseat a GOP incumbent for U.S. Senate. While a historic presidential race — and a test of our democracy — fixated the nation, education was on the ballot this unprecedented election cycle . Elected officials, particularly at the state level, will play a pivotal role in steering schools through the public health and economic crises of the pandemic. That’s why we’ve curated 48 federal, state and local races with key implications for students, teachers and families. Here’s the full rundown of the 2020 votes that mattered most to education, plus a full archive of our Election Week livechat, which included rolling updates on candidates, votes and the national conversation. Read the full roundup .

As COVID Creeps into Schools, Surveillance Tech Follows / By Mark Keierleber

Student Privacy: When an Ohio school district saw a “significant increase” in COVID-19 cases among students and staff, officials made the difficult call of reverting to remote learning. But when kids return to class, they’ll be wearing badges that will track their every move — part of a pilot program in contact tracing that allows the Wickliffe district to follow students for up to a month and identify who comes into contact with infected classmates. The badges and other high-tech gizmos, including UV light air purifiers and thermal-imaging cameras that purport to detect fevers, have come under fire from student privacy advocates. But company executives and school leaders made clear they’re not likely to go away anytime soon — even after the pandemic subsides . “After the initial pushback, people are going to adapt and deal with it,” Superintendent Joseph Spiccia told The 74’s Mark Keierleber. “Some people would be angry, and after that anger dissipates, I think people generally will end up complying and falling in line.” Read the full story .

— Case Study: ‘Don’t get gaggled’ — Minneapolis school district spends big on student surveillance tool, raising ire after terminating its police contract ( Read the full story )

An Education System, Divided: How Internet Inequity Persisted Through 4 Presidents and Left Schools Unprepared for the Pandemic / By Kevin Mahnken

Student Access: When the COVID-19 pandemic spread into American communities, schools adapted by switching to online classes. But millions of families with no or limited home internet can’t manage that transition, drastically diminishing educational opportunities for the students who need them most. Local leaders have embraced creative solutions, loaning out thousands of devices and dispatching Wi-Fi-equipped school buses into low-connectivity neighborhoods. But the question remains: Three decades after the internet’s emergence as a boundary-breaking technology, how are vast swaths of the United States still walled off from the social, economic and educational blessings that the internet provides ? The answer, told to The 74 by experts and policymakers who have worked around communications access since the birth of the internet, implicate both the public and private sectors in a prolonged failure to extend the benefits of modern technology to countless Americans. “I think the large-scale tolerance for inequity in this country gave rise to an inequitable telecommunications system,” said one. Read Kevin Mahnken’s report .

New Poll Reveals Parents Want One-on-One Distance Learning Support From Teachers — but Aren’t Getting Much of It / By Beth Hawkins

Parent Priorities: Polling data released this past May from the national nonprofit Learning Heroes found parents were engaged in their kids’ distance learning but wanted more contact with teachers, both for their kids and for themselves as at-home learning coaches. Nearly half of more than 3,600 parents surveyed said personal guidance would be extremely helpful, but just 15 percent have gotten it . Only 39 percent said they had a clear understanding of teachers’ expectations, and few were getting the texts and phone calls they said are the most effective means of communication. The poll illustrated new implications of a longstanding, fundamental lack of information, which previous Learning Heroes surveys have found feeds parents’ near-universal belief that their children are doing far better in school than they really are. As schools plan for eventual reopening, Learning Heroes President Bibb Hubbard told Beth Hawkins, they should carefully consider what parents say is working for them — because while families are giving schools and teachers the benefit of the doubt now, that may not last. “There’s a lot of grace right now,” Hubbard says. “But I think that’s going to change next fall.” Read the full report .

Displaced: The Faces of American Education in Crisis / By Laura Fay, Bekah McNeel, Patrick O’Donnell & Taylor Swaak

Displaced: No two experiences of this pandemic have been the same, particularly when it comes to school communities. When we launched this project in late May, it had been several months since COVID-19 shuttered districts across the country. In what would have been the final months of the 2019-20 academic year, tens of millions of students, educators and parents saw their lives upended overnight. Still half of America’s school employees aren’t teachers. When the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, millions of other workers integral to the American education system were similarly uprooted . As the country (and its school communities) continued to navigate its way through a disaster for which it was grossly unprepared, a team from The 74 set out to track how life and work has changed for the diverse universe of characters who make our classrooms work. From parents to teachers, counselors and even district warehouse managers, the pandemic has been a time of unprecedented hardships and challenges. Here: Eight faces and unforgettable stories from across the country that begin to capture the real story of the pandemic’s impact on the wider community. See all eight profiles .

New Report Estimates School Closures’ Long-Term Impact on the U.S. Economy at More Than $14 Trillion / By Linda Jacobson

Skills Gap: A paper from economists Eric Hanushek of Stanford University and Ludger Woessmann of the University of Munich presents a sobering prediction of how school closures could impact the U.S. economy for the next 80 years. The paper estimates that the shutdowns could ultimately lead to losses ranging from $14.2 trillion for a third of the school year to almost $28 trillion for two-thirds . That’s because “learning loss will lead to skill loss, and the skills people have relate to their productivity,” writes international education expert Andreas Schleicher, of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S., Schleicher said, was actually better positioned than many other nations to make the transition to remote learning. But looking ahead, he said the country could do a better job of directing education spending toward quality instruction and the students who need resources the most. Read our full report .

Exclusive: NYC Teachers Union Launches Its Own Investigation of School Building Air Quality Amid COVID Threat, UFT President Says / By Zoë Kirsch

School Safety: Looking to spur the New York City Department of Education to take preventative action on airborne COVID transmission in schools, the United Federation of Teachers announced this past summer that it was taking the longstanding issue of poor ventilation into its own hands. President Michael Mulgrew told The 74’s Zoë Kirsch in an exclusive interview this past August that the union was sending its own health and safety workers into 30 “red flag” schools with the worst ventilation systems to do their own air quality testing. The move came as the UFT escalated its criticism of the city’s school reopening plan, saying it failed to meet student and staff safety standards on several fronts. Less than half of New York City’s roughly 1,400 school buildings are equipped with heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, which maintain indoor air quality. “One of the biggest risk factors is time spent in underventilated spaces indoors. You want to control the emissions and removal,”said Joseph Allen, who runs the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health and estimates that 90 percent of U.S. schools are underventilated. A 2000 NYC report said, “The UFT receives more complaints from its members about poor indoor air quality in schools than about any other health and safety issue.” Read the full report .

Texas’s Missing Students: Weeks After Closures, Schools in San Antonio Still Couldn’t Locate Thousands of Kids. How One Band Director Finally Tracked Down His Musicians / By Bekah McNeel

Absenteeism: In its race to locate every student before school adjourned for summer, San Antonio Independent School District relied on faculty members like high school band director Alejandro Jaime Salazar to track them down. It became a daily task for Salazar, as he used every tool at his disposal and relied on relationships forged before coronavirus shut the schools . That included asking student section leaders to make contact with other kids. Once located, Salazar said, “my main priority was to keep in contact with these kids every day.” He and other educators told The 74’s Bekah McNeel that the hunt for “missing” students revealed the increasing importance of student-teacher connection, engagement and relationships. Read the full profile .

The Achievement Gap Has Driven Education Reform for Decades. Now Some Are Calling It a Racist Idea / By Kevin Mahnken

Equity: For decades, education policy has been shaped largely by an extended discussion of racial achievement gaps, and the lingua franca of that discourse is testing data. A reform coalition of educators, politicians and activists has labored to narrow the academic disparity between white students and students of color, placing the goal at the heart of media debates and state accountability plans alike. But in recent years, influential figures have begun to shift away from the achievement gap. Some say it’s more responsible to focus on resource disparities between student groups, even if standardized testing is still a necessary component in school improvement efforts; others go even further, arguing that the notion of an achievement gap is a racist throwback to the age of eugenics . As reformers choose whether to preserve or abandon the idea, some in the Democratic Party — including former educator and soon-to-be-congressman Jamaal Bowman — have grown louder in their calls to abolish high-stakes testing. Read the full report .

New Data: College Enrollment for Low-Income High School Grads Plunged by 29% During the Pandemic / By Richard Whitmire

Higher Education: Author and 74 contributor Richard Whitmire describes the cratering of college enrollment rates among 2020 high school graduates as a tragedy whose outline is just becoming visible. That picture grew clearer and more distressing in December with the release of new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center showing college enrollment declined for low-income students at nearly double the rate of higher-income students — 29.2 percent versus 16.9 percent. The decrease for all 2020 high school grads, measured for the first time since COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the nation’s schools, is also alarming: a nearly 22 percent drop this year versus a 2.8 percent drop for the class of 2019. The crucial difference, Whitmire writes, is that those from more affluent and middle-class backgrounds will likely make their way back to college once the pandemic subsides, while the trajectory for low-income students may have changed forever. Read the full report .

A Time of Reckoning for Race & Education in America: 5 Case Studies in How Students and School Leaders Are Pushing for Culturally Relevant Curriculum Amid the Pandemic / By Emmeline Zhao

Curriculum: The American education system was not designed to operate — much less thrive — without physical, in-person interaction. And when the novel coronavirus forced indefinite emergency school closures this spring, concern ballooned over how to educate America’s 74 million school-age children from afar. That, coupled with this summer’s protests demanding social justice, led The 74’s Pandemic Reporting Initiative to dispatch correspondents across the country to take a hard look at how existing curricula may not be conducive to closing the achievement gap , particularly from afar; how some schools are addressing these issues to adapt to changing times and challenging learning circumstances; and how educators are tackling these tough but critical issues. Read our full series that dives into curriculum in light of the pandemic and social justice movement, with reports out of New York, New Orleans, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. See the full series here .

Youth Suicide: The Other Public Health Crisis / By Mark Keierleber

Mental Health: Brad Hunstable believes his son died of the coronavirus — just not in the way one might expect. As COVID-19 shuttered schools nationwide and put students’ social lives on pause, Hayden committed suicide just days before his 13th birthday. His father blames that pandemic-induced social isolation — and a fit of rage — for his son’s death. Though the national youth suicide rate has been on the rise for years, students say the unprecedented disruption of the last few months has taken a toll on their emotional well-being . Researchers worry that a surge in depression and anxiety could drive a spike in youth suicide. Sandy Hook Promise, which runs an anonymous reporting tool, has seen a 12 percent increase in suicide-related reports since March. The issue became a political football ahead of this year’s election, with President Donald Trump and others citing rising rates of depression and suicide as reasons to relax COVID-19-related restrictions on in-person classes. Read the full report .

Using Tutors to Combat COVID Learning Loss: New Research Shows That Even Lightly Trained Volunteers Drive Academic Gains / By Kevin Mahnken

Personalized Learning: With a return to full-time, in-person schooling still weeks away in many areas, families are searching for any solution to deal with their children’s COVID-related learning losses. Now, a working paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that tutoring programs — whether led by certified teachers, paraprofessionals, even parents — could play a significant role in getting students back on track . It’s a strategy that has already been embraced by parents blessed with the money and bandwidth to create small-scale learning pods, but experts suggest that supplementary instruction could be scaled up dramatically through the use of lightly trained volunteers and virtual learning platforms. Still, both the cost and the organizational challenges of expanding tutoring are great. “The logistics of setting this up on the kind of scale we need to to address the problem is more complicated than we initially realized,” said co-author Philip Oreopoulos of the University of Toronto. Read the full report .

Cleveland Schools Considering Bold Plan to Confront Coronavirus Learning Loss: A ‘Mastery’ Learning Initiative That Would Scrap Grade Levels, Let Kids Learn at Own Pace / By Patrick O’Donnell

Mastery Education: At the beginning of the summer, educators were grappling with the fact that when students come back to school, they will be at vastly different academic levels. So how can schools fairly decide which grade kids should be in? They can’t, said Cleveland school district CEO Eric Gordon — and maybe they shouldn’t try. His draft plan for reopening the district’s schools would instead put students in multi-age “grade bands,” under a mastery approach that lets them work at their own speed. Students would then have time to relearn skills they have lost and catch up without feeling like failures or being held back a grade. “We’ve got opportunities here to really test, challenge and maybe abandon some of these time-bound structures of education that have never really conformed to what we know about good child development,” Gordon said. Read the full report .

When Siblings Become Teachers: It’s Not Just Parents Who Find Themselves Thrust Into the Demanding Role of At-Home Educators / By Zoë Kirsch

Homeschooling: When the pandemic shuttered New York City schools, 22-year-old Lillian Acosta of Queens found herself suddenly relating to the experiences of her co-workers with kids, as they talked about the challenges inherent in remote learning. Lillian isn’t a parent, but for the last few weeks, she’s been assuming the responsibilities of one , spending hours a day — and paying $90 a day to a tutor — to make sure her 14-year-old brother gets through school. She isn’t alone: In Brooklyn, 17-year-old Melisa Cabascango coaches her little brother, and in the Bronx, Sarshevack “Sar” Mnahsheh sets up a makeshift classroom in his family’s apartment every morning. “I try to wake up early enough to check up on the little things,” says Sar, who works the night shift at a local grocery store. “I don’t try to be overbearing because I’m not a parent, but I have to make sure they’re up to par on the things they’re doing.” Lillian, Melisa and Sar are working overtime to fill the gap between what their siblings need and what the district is providing in this moment of crisis. They’re three of thousands of young people who are shouldering that burden in cities and towns across the country — and those in low-income communities of color are getting hit the hardest. Read the full feature .

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11 Transforming Student Learning with Effective Study Techniques

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Effective study techniques can significantly enhance student learning and academic performance. In today’s fast-paced educational environment, students face numerous challenges, from managing multiple assignments and homework to balancing extracurricular activities. Developing strong study habits is essential for success in both school and college.

Understanding how to study efficiently can make a significant difference in a student’s academic journey. By implementing the right techniques, students can improve their comprehension, retention, and overall performance. This article explores various study methods and provides valuable tips for students looking to transform their learning experiences with paperwriter .

The Importance of Effective Study Techniques

Effective study techniques are crucial for students aiming to achieve their academic goals. These techniques help in better time management, reducing stress, and improving understanding of complex subjects. With the right approach, students can make their study sessions more productive and less overwhelming.

One of the biggest challenges students face is the sheer volume of information they need to learn and retain. Effective study techniques can help break down this information into manageable chunks, making it easier to digest and remember. Moreover, students who develop good study habits early on are more likely to succeed in their future academic and professional endeavors.

Creating a Conducive Study Environment

A conducive study environment is essential for effective learning. Students should choose a quiet, comfortable place with minimal distractions to focus on their studies. A well-organized study space can significantly enhance concentration and productivity.

Tips for Creating a Conducive Study Environment:

• Choose a quiet location: Find a place free from noise and interruptions.
• Ensure good lighting: Proper lighting reduces eye strain and improves focus.
• Organize your materials: Keep all necessary supplies within reach to avoid unnecessary distractions.
• Comfortable seating: Choose a chair and desk that provide good support to maintain good posture.

Time Management and Scheduling

Time management is a critical skill for students. Balancing school, college, assignments, and homework can be challenging. Effective scheduling ensures that students allocate sufficient time for each subject and activity.

Strategies for Better Time Management:

• Create a study schedule: Plan your study sessions and stick to the schedule.
• Set priorities: Focus on the most important tasks first.
• Break tasks into smaller steps: Divide large assignments into manageable parts.
• Use a planner: Keep track of deadlines, assignments, and exams.

Active Learning Techniques

Active learning involves engaging with the material actively rather than passively reading or listening. This approach enhances understanding and retention.

Effective Active Learning Techniques:

• Summarization: Summarize key points in your own words.
• Questioning: Ask questions about the material and seek answers.
• Discussion: Discuss topics with classmates to gain different perspectives.
• Application: Apply what you have learned to real-world scenarios.

The Role of Technology in Studying

Technology can be a powerful tool for enhancing learning. Various apps and online resources can help students manage their study time, organize notes, and access educational materials.

Useful Technological Tools for Students:

• Note-taking apps: Apps like Evernote and OneNote help organize and store notes efficiently.
• Study apps: Apps like Quizlet and Anki offer flashcards and quizzes for effective revision.
• Time management apps: Tools like Trello and Todoist help students plan and track their tasks.( or visit https://do-my-math.com/ )
• Online resources: Websites like Khan Academy and Coursera provide additional learning materials.

Enhancing Memory and Retention

Improving memory and retention is vital for academic success. Students can employ various techniques to boost their ability to remember and recall information.

Techniques to Enhance Memory and Retention:

• Mnemonics: Use mnemonic devices to remember complex information.
• Visualization: Create mental images to associate with the material.
• Repetition: Review material regularly to reinforce learning.
• Teaching others: Explaining concepts to others helps solidify understanding.

Staying Motivated and Managing Stress

Maintaining motivation and managing stress are essential components of effective studying. Students need to find ways to stay motivated and cope with academic pressures.

Tips for Staying Motivated and Managing Stress:

• Set realistic goals: Set achievable short-term and long-term goals.
• Take breaks: Regular breaks prevent burnout and improve focus.
• Stay positive: Maintain a positive attitude towards learning.
• Seek support: Reach out to teachers, peers, or counselors for help when needed.

Incorporating effective study techniques can transform the learning experience for students. By creating a conducive study environment, managing time efficiently, engaging in active learning, utilizing technology, enhancing memory, and staying motivated, students can achieve academic success. Remember, the key to effective studying lies in consistency and dedication. With the right approach, every student can improve their learning outcomes and reach their full potential.

Effective study habits not only help students excel in their current studies but also prepare them for future challenges. By implementing these strategies, students can turn studying into a more enjoyable and rewarding experience, ultimately leading to better academic performance and personal growth. Investing time in developing good study habits today will pay off in the long run, making the journey through school and college a successful one.

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

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

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

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

AI in the classroom

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

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

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

Immersive environments

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

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

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

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

Gamification

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

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

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

Data-gathering and analysis

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

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

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

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

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

Awesome Articles for Students: Websites and Other Resources

All of these sites are free.

In today’s digital world, we seem to be surrounded by news. Clickbait, anyone? Yet the pervasive and often intrusive nature of internet news articles belies the fact that many of these sites are behind a paywall, biased, or feature low-quality reporting.

Still, online articles are a great starting point for all kinds of learning assignments across the curriculum. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best free article websites for students. Many of these sites offer not only high-quality topical articles on every subject, but also ideas for lessons, such as questions, quizzes, and discussion prompts.

Student Article Websites

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CommonLit With thousands of high-quality, Common Core-aligned reading passages for grades 3-12, this easy-to-use literacy site is a rich source of English and Spanish texts and lessons. Search by theme, grade, Lexile score, genre, and even literary devices such as alliteration or foreshadowing. Texts are accompanied by teacher guides, paired texts activities, and assessments. Teachers can share lessons and track student progress with a free account. 

DOGOnews News articles featuring current events, science, social studies, world events, civics, environment, sports, weird/fun news, and more. Free access to all articles. Premium accounts offer extras such as simplified and audio versions, quizzes, and critical thinking challenges. 

CNN10 Replacing the popular CNN Student News, CNN 10 provides 10-minute video news stories on current events of international importance, explaining how the event fits into the broader news narrative. 

KiwiKids News Created by a New Zealand primary school educator, Kiwi Kids News features free articles about health, science, politics (including U.S. political topics), animals, and the Olympics. Kids will love the “Odd Stuff” articles, which focus on unusual news, from the world’s biggest potato to centenarian athletes. 

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PBS NewsHour Daily News Lessons Daily articles covering current events in video format. Each lesson includes a full transcript, fact list, summary, and focus questions. 

NYT Daily Lessons/Article of the Day The New York Times Daily Lessons builds a classroom lesson around a new article each day, offering thoughtful questions for writing and discussion, as well as related ideas for further study. Perfect for practicing critical thinking and literacy skills for middle and high school students, it’s a part of the larger NYT Learning Network , which provides an abundance of activities for students and resources for teachers.

The Learning Network Current event articles, student opinion essays, movie reviews, students review contests, and more. The educator resource section offers top-notch teaching and professional development resources. 

News For Kids With the motto “Real News, Told Simply,” News for Kids strives to present the latest topics in U.S. and world news, science, sports, and the arts in a way that’s accessible to most readers. Features a coronavirus update page .

ReadWorks A fully free research-based platform, Readworks provides thousands of nonfiction and fiction passages searchable by topic, activity type, grade, and Lexile level. Educator guides cover differentiation, hybrid and remote learning, and free professional development. Great resource for teachers.

Science News for Students Winner of multiple awards for journalism, Science News for Students publishes original science, technology, and health features for readers ages 9-14. Stories are accompanied by citations, recommended readings, glossaries, readability scores, and classroom extras. Be sure to check out Top 10 tips to stay safe during an epidemic . 

Teaching Kids News A terrific site that publishes readable and teachable articles on news, art, science, politics, and more for students grades 2-8. Bonus: The Fake News resource section links to online games about fake news and images. A must for any digital citizen.

Smithsonian Tween Tribune An excellent resource for articles on a wide range of topics, including animals, national/world news, sports, science, and much more. Searchable by topic, grade, and Lexile reading score. Lesson plans offer great ideas for the classroom and simple, usable frameworks for implementing these in any grade. 

Wonderopolis Have you ever wondered if llamas really spit or if animals like art? Every day, the award-winning Wonderopolis posts a new standard-based article exploring intriguing questions such as these. Students may submit their own questions and vote for their favorites. Be sure to check out “Wonders with Charlie,” featuring acclaimed writer, producer, and director Charlie Engelman.

Youngzine A unique news site for young people that focuses on climate science, solutions, and policies to address the myriad effects of global warming. Kids have an opportunity to express their views and literary creativity by submitting poetry or essays. 

Scholastic Kids Press A multinational group of young journalists ages 10-14 report the latest news and fascinating stories about the natural world. Features sections dedicated to coronavirus and civics.

National Geographic Kids A fine library of articles about animals, history, science, space, and—of course—geography. Students will enjoy the “Weird But True” short videos, featuring fun animations about oddball topics.  

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5 Ways to Teach Students the Skill of Active Studying

Explicit instruction on studying is invaluable for students, who often choose ineffective methods of reviewing material.

As students progress through their schooling, they are exposed to concepts that vary significantly in the content and skills needed for comprehension. A student first learning fractions, another in middle school English language arts, and an AP Biology student are all undergoing quite different educational experiences. While these classes will ask different things of the students, they all require the development of study skills. Unfortunately, while all teachers recognize the importance of these skills, they are rarely, if ever, explicitly taught.

This is something that I have taken more seriously in recent years, and I have explicitly worked to teach all of my students better ways to study. In order to properly teach this, I think it’s helpful to understand why certain strategies work. If you want to learn the basics of the neuroscience of learning and memory, you might take a look at an article I wrote on that for my students . In essence, there are two general types of thinking: System 1 (which uses long-term memory and is easier) and System 2 (which uses working memory and requires more effort). Strategies that center on using System 2 thinking result in stronger neuron ensemble formation, meaning better recall and learning.

Active studying is the name of practices that involve more System 2 thinking. A lot of people think of studying as simply reading over one’s notes, which is a passive form and results in minimal learning. Active studying includes retrieval, synthesis, and analysis of the material. As these methods take longer, students are often resistant to using or attempting them. However, research has shown that these techniques result in greater recall of the studied material . As such, I believe that, along with teaching strategies for active studying, you should design lessons around their incorporation.

5 Active Studying Practices

1. Teaching others: It’s as simple as it sounds. When students work to teach others, they are coming up with information from memory (rather than just reading it), and they often need to think of new ways to explain something. This not only helps students figure out what they do or don’t know but strengthens and reinforces the memories.

2. Pure retrieval practice: This is when students retrieve the information from their memory. It can be something simple like using flash cards, but my personal favorite method is when students use a whiteboard, a piece of paper, or a tablet to write out and draw everything they can about the topic. They should then check their notes to see what they missed or got wrong before trying again later.

I like to combine the above two in class by having students work in small groups. Students take turns, with one student having a small whiteboard and teaching the others a topic, while the other students use their notes to correct their classmate or ask clarifying questions about missed aspects. We call these “whiteboard days,” and students have reported finding these days to be very helpful as a review before tests, and many use these strategies at home now.

3. Study guides: Study guides are a common form of studying and a lot of times are given to students by their teachers. Students often fall into a pit of copying definitions word-for-word from their notes, which might aid in memorization of certain terms or facts but limits understanding and the ability to apply the information.

I teach my students how to make a good study guide , where they synthesize and summarize the information into their own words. I don’t require these every unit, but once students have developed the skill, they are able to apply it to any course, and some choose to make them even if not required because they find them helpful.

4. Concept maps: These are visual representations of the connections and relationships between concepts. Although not as helpful for some subjects or topics, these cause students to think more deeply about the material and strengthen their memory of the topics, as they have to think more deeply to come up with connections they may not have otherwise thought of.

While you can assign specific words and require everyone to form maps with the same list as an in-class or homework assignment, my personal favorite way to do this is to gamify it—students draw random cards with vocabulary words on them and compete to develop the most connections.

5. Practice questions: Practice questions are a tried-and-true and very helpful way to study, especially in certain classes. The most helpful practice questions are application-based and allow students to test how well they truly understand the material, as opposed to having just memorized certain facts or definitions. I like to have students study sometimes by making their own and then trading those questions and trying to answer each other’s. By developing their own application-style questions, the students are thinking about the material in a deeper manner to put it into new contexts. They can study both by developing their own questions, attempting to answer another’s, and explaining the right answer for the other students.

There are a variety of ways to work these methods into your course, with some of my ways mentioned above. Whichever you choose, make sure you also emphasize the importance of getting enough sleep and having shorter but more frequent study sessions, as these both are necessary for maximizing retainment of concepts. By teaching these techniques, and also requiring their use, you will help to reinforce and build good study habits within students that can help them in all their future academic endeavors.

Do you teach your students strategies for active studying? Let us know what they are in the comments!

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The 50 best short articles & essays to read for students, the capital t truth by david foster wallace, this is the life by annie dillard, things we think we know by chuck klosterman, why does it feel like everyone has more money than you by jen doll, phoning it in by stanley bing, the fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination by j.k. rowling, 50 more articles about life, love and relationships, crazy love by steven pinker, no labels, no drama, right by jordana narin, the limits of friendship by maria konnikova, 50 more articles about love and relationships, words and writing, writing, briefly by paul graham, write like a mofo by cheryl strayed, 20 more articles about writing, the same river twice by david quammen, you can't kill the rooster by david sedaris, scars by david owen, 100 more short memoirs, a brief history of forever by tavi gevinson, school for girls by jasmin aviva sandelson, 50 more articles about growing up, why we play by eva holland, why sports are for losers by matt taibbi, 50 more articles about sports, keep your identity small by paul graham, the muggle problem by ross douthat, 75 more articles about politics, notes of a native son by james baldwin, a letter to my nephew by james baldwin, a place where we are everything by roxane gay, 30 more articles about race, what no one else will tell you about feminism by lindy west, bad feminist by roxane gay, 10 more articles about feminism, holy water by joan didion, how to disagree by paul graham, so what if mountain dew can melt mice by chuck klosterman, 150 great articles and essays.

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Life with purpose by philip ball, what is everything made of by charles sebens, small, yes, but mighty by natalie angier, your handy postcard-sized guide to statistics by tim harford, 100 more articles about science, the internet, the attention economy by tom chatfield, user behaviour by michael schulson, escape the matrix by virginia heffernan, instagram is over by kate lindsay, 50 more articles about the internet, the environment, we should fix climate change — but we should not regret it by thomas r. wells, is humanity suicidal by edward o. wilson, 50 more articles about the environment, what is the monkeysphere by david wong, how life became an endless, terrible competition by daniel markovits, your lifestyle has already been designed by david cain, 100 more articles about psychology, mental health, adventures in depression by allie brosh, the most dangerous idea in mental health by ed cara, the acceleration of addictiveness by paul graham, 50 more articles about mental health, why you are unhappy by tim urban, buy experiences, not things by james hamblin, 20 more articles about happiness, a few words about breasts by nora ephron, hello, i am fat by lindy west, the onset by my ngoc to, 25 more articles about body image.

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Educators: Start Early to Keep Students Engaged in STEM

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A majority of students ages 12-18 are interested in careers in science, technology, engineering, or math, finds a 2023 survey sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation. But the survey also found that students, parents, and teachers say schools are not doing a good job preparing kids to pursue careers in those fields.

That is a problem, because recent technological advances—especially in the field of artificial intelligence—are poised to bring big changes to future jobs, particularly in the STEM fields. STEM occupations are projected to grow by almost 11 percent by 2031, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many schools—at the elementary, middle, and high school levels—are integrating STEM learning into regular classroom instruction in some creative and relevant ways. Many are simultaneously figuring out how to encourage more girls and students of color to pursue studies in STEM areas, showing the kids how their participation could lead to lucrative careers down the road.

For this special report on STEM, the EdWeek Research Center asked this open-ended question: “How do schools get more students interested in STEM in elementary school and then maintain that interest throughout middle school and high school?” The EdWeek Research Center received nearly 800 responses from teachers, principals, and district leaders, and Education Week identified 25 of those responses that represented the major themes.

One big theme that emerged was that schools need to start earlier—in elementary school—and give young kids opportunities to do safe, hands-on science and solve developmentally appropriate, real-world problems. In other words, encourage children to investigate how the world works and how to fix its problems. Challenges around lack of time and resources, standardized testing, and professional development were common.

Following are the 25 responses, in the alphabetical order of the states where the educators work:

1    “We have a vertical plan for K-12, starting with weekly STEM classes in elementary, visiting the STEM festival in the spring, then in middle school hands-on STEM and Project Lead the Way classes with competitions and fairs, and in high school job shadowing and STEM career pathway courses .”

—District-level administrator | Arkansas

2    “ Science is often treated as a secondary subject in elementary schools due to students having deficits in English/language arts and math. We need to prevent that from happening and use science as a gateway to improving student performance in all subjects.”

—Middle school teacher | Science | California

3    “Stop teaching math *problems* and instead teach mathematical *techniques* to answer real-world questions . Do this with a diverse collection of media; yes, word problems but also problems with a picture of a real-life usage of the math problem, videos, in-class experiments, hands-on activities, etc. Use many representations of the underlying *meaning* of the math, not just shuffling digits around a paper.”

—High school teacher | Math/computer science/data science | California

4    “In a Title I school, all the emphasis is on catching students up to read at grade level. Our schools are graded based on standardized-test scores, so our curriculum is narrow and based on testing. The only way we can move toward more STEM is to move away from the focus on standardized testing .”

—Elementary school teacher | Math/computer science/data science | Colorado

5    “We barely have time to teach science.”

—Elementary school teacher | Florida

6    “This has been very difficult to maintain at my middle school. Science is always the last thing on the list, and not much importance is placed on it until 8th grade. This is when students have to take a science test that affects the school grade.”

—Middle school teacher | Science | Florida

7    “We have many elementary, middle, and high schools that are STEM-certified. The school I work at is one of them. We get students interested because we focus on the hands-on approach as well as emphasizing the attitude of not giving up but finding a different solution and trying again and again.”

—Elementary school teacher | Georgia

8    “There should be a program to retain women in STEM classes , as interest tends to drop off after middle school.”

—High school teacher | Math/computer science/data science | Illinois

9    “Students are interested in elementary, but maintaining interest is hard with the current school setup. The entire system would need to change.”

—High school teacher | Bilingual education/English as a second language | Iowa

10    “In order to attract students into STEM, it is important for students to experience ample opportunities to engage in STEM-centered project-based learning at the elementary level and throughout middle and high school. Traditional instruction and assessment do not foster interest in STEM or other 21st-century careers.”

—High school teacher | Fine arts | Kentucky

11    “They could do it by not simply teaching STEM but by teaching why these subjects are important and exploring their methods to developing knowledge. Kind of a zoomed-out explanation of how and why they should learn these subjects .”

—High school teacher | Louisiana

12    “For some of our schools like mine, due to the loss of Title I funding, we will no longer offer a full STEM class to all or any students for 2025-26. We try to integrate STEM into the general math, science, social studies, and language arts curricula.”

—Elementary school principal | Maryland

13    “They should include more labs and experiments , but many districts, like mine, now seem to rely on videos. This doesn't do much to stoke students’ interest in STEM. Also, we have a lack of teachers in areas of technology and computer science, which are the scientific fields many students are interested in.”

—High school teacher | Bilingual education/English as a second language | Massachusetts

14    “If you are integrating hands-on, project-based learning in elementary school, the curiosity will be there. My school has a dedicated class in middle school for STEM, which I teach, and over the course of a semester, we cover multiple areas of project-based learning that integrates science, math, technology, engineering, and design. The interest in that type of class was high enough that I was asked to teach a high school class based on hands-on learning, and it has become a forensic science class that everyone wants to take!”

—Middle school teacher | Missouri

15    “Our district needs to invest in science curriculum that interests students and gets them curious. Currently, 95 percent of our students say they hate science.”

—Middle school teacher | Math/computer science/data science | New Hampshire

16    “Introduce science early and have young students focus on experimentation. Ask questions , try to come up with ways to discover the answer. Seeing science as a tool and not just another subject can be inspiring and engaging.”

—High school teacher | Science | New York

17    “Stronger elementary programs .”

—District superintendent | New York

18    “There needs to be a focus on STEM curriculum in elementary. Testing needs to change. It impedes the problem-based learning that many STEM curricula utilize.”

—Elementary school teacher | Bilingual education/English as a second language | Ohio

19    “Prioritize STEM professional development for elementary and middle school teachers. Provide paid time for STEM teachers across the K-12 spectrum to meet and discuss/plan. Adopt and provide training for research-based methods of teaching STEM subjects (modeling, argument-driven inquiry, etc.).”

—High school teacher | Science | Ohio

20    “ Many STEM classes are offered after school . This is difficult for students who do not have any other transportation besides school buses.”

—Middle school teacher | English-language arts/literacy/reading | Oklahoma

21    “We have a solid K-5 STEM program that reaches every student. At the middle school level, we have STEM classes that reach about 66 percent of the students in 6th and 7th grade and we have a coding elective at the 8th grade level. Our high school is in the process of developing a solid STEM program.”

—Elementary school teacher | Pennsylvania

22    “We are a STEM-certified school and district. Integration of STEM education is how we have successfully built and maintained interest. Students in our district can fly a plane through our aeronautics program , before they can drive a car. There are so many STEM opportunities here!”

—Elementary school principal | Tennessee

23    “We have STEM as a special rotation, so students get STEM class every five days. Last year, we also had a bimonthly STEM club, which was well attended. Finally, we have a family STEM night each school year, and that is a big hit.”

—Elementary school teacher | Utah

24    “Raise teacher pay so that people with STEM skills are more willing to teach instead of making significantly more in the private sector.”

—High school teacher | Math/computer science/data science | Virginia

25    “ Show a passion for these subjects while teaching them and help students see the importance of learning these subjects, beyond the 'you will need this later.'”

—Elementary school teacher | Math/computer science/data science | Washington

Coverage of problem solving and student motivation is supported in part by a grant from The Lemelson Foundation, at www.lemelson.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

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Violence and bullying affect one in three students, education experts warn

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Children face violence and bullying at school all over the world, with one in every three students subject to attacks at least once a month and one in 10, a victim of cyberbullying, the UN said on Thursday.

The warning from UNESCO , the UN organization for education, science and culture, based on 2019 data, coincides with the first  International Day against Violence and Bullying at School - Including Cyberbullying , on 5 November.

🛑 You’re entering a bullying free zone 🛑5 November, is the first ever Int'l Day against Violence & Bullying at School Including Cyberbullying. @UNESCO calls for #StopBullying https://t.co/t9gL84Qual pic.twitter.com/VApwgSpCq7 UN News UN_News_Centre

“Recent attacks on schools in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Pakistan, and the assassination of teacher Samuel Paty in France, sadly underscore the critical issue of protecting our schools from all forms of violence,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, in a statement.

‘Neglected, minimised or ignored’

Tackling bullying is also key to the protection of students, Ms. Azoulay continued, describing it as a “blight” that was “neglected,  minimized  or  ignored”, even though it inflicted “physical and emotional suffering on millions of children around the world”.

Given the scale of school violence and bullying highlighted in a 2019 report by UNESCO covering 144 countries, Ms. Azoulay  insisted  on the need to raise global awareness and put a stop to both problems.

“As students, parents, members of the educational community and ordinary citizens, we have all a part to play in stopping violence and bullying in schools", she maintained.

Outside chance

The consequences of bullying can have devastating consequences on academic achievement, school dropout, and physical and mental health, the UN education agency said in a  statement .

It defined bullying as aggressive behaviour that involves unwanted, negative actions repeated over time and an imbalance of power or strength between the perpetrators and the victims.

“Children who are frequently bullied are nearly three times more likely to feel like an outsider at school and more than twice as likely to miss school as those who are not frequently bullied,” UNESCO said. “They have worse educational outcomes than their peers and are also more likely to leave formal education after finishing secondary school.”

Cyberbullying on the rise

Highlighting that cyberbullying is on the rise, the UN organization attributed this to the COVID-19 pandemic, as more students than ever were “living, learning and socializing online”. This had led to an “unprecedented increase in screen time and the merging of online and offline worlds”, heightening youngsters’ vulnerability to bullying and cyberbullying.

While bullying is most often carried out by children’s peers, in some cases teachers and other school staff are believed to be responsible. Corporal punishment is still permitted in schools in 67 countries, UNESCO noted.

Physical bullying is the most frequent type of bullying in many regions - with the exception of North America and Europe, where psychological bullying is most common.

Sexual bullying - including hostile sexual jokes, comments or gestures - is the second most common form of harassment at school in many regions.

Although school violence and bullying affect male and female students, physical bullying is more common among boys.

A person’s physical appearance is the most common cause of bullying, students reported, followed by their race, nationality or skin colour.

Psychological abuse is more common among girls, UNESCO continued, after  identifying “isolating, rejecting, ignoring, insults, spreading rumours, making up lies, name-calling, ridicule, humiliation and threats” as typical treatment.

Not a rite of passage

Dismissing the widely held belief that bullying is a rite of passage for youngsters and that little can be done to eradicate it, UNESCO insisted that dozens of countries had made great progress in addressing the problem.

A political desire for change was key, it noted, along with promoting a caring school environment, training for teachers and mechanisms to report bullying and support for affected students.

• child bullying
• cyberbullying

Do Students Need Facts or Stories?

“I am not wise enough to say where the young can find what they need,” Neil Postman wrote in 1989. But he had an idea about where to start.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic ’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.

Somehow, Neil Postman saw it coming. His 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death , predicted that people would become so consumed by entertainment that they would be rendered unable to have serious discussions about serious issues. Postman was worried about television; he didn’t live to see social media kick those fears into hyperdrive. Now Amusing Ourselves to Death has become a stock reference for commentators trying to explain life amid an onslaught of memes and influencers.

Although today Postman’s name comes up mostly in relation to his critique of television, his writing on education is equally worth revisiting. In The Atlantic ’s December 1989 issue , he reviewed two books calling for a change in American pedagogy. Cultural Literacy , by E. D. Hirsch Jr., and The Closing of the American Mind , by Allan Bloom, were both unlikely best sellers, featuring dense passages on why the nation’s youth were failing and what to do about it. Hirsch, then an English professor at the University of Virginia, argued that schools focused too much on teaching how to learn rather than what to learn. By absorbing hard facts, he thought, students would better understand references in texts, which would in turn boost their reading comprehension.

Bloom, a University of Chicago professor, was alarmed by the popularity of “relativism” among college students. If all principles and societal customs were arbitrary products of history, they couldn’t be judged and must be held equal. Bloom felt that students must shed their faith in relativism so they could grasp clear, absolute truths. The critic Camille Paglia described the book as “the first shot in the culture wars.” It sold more than 1.2 million copies.

Postman dissects each of their arguments, picking out flaws and using them to his own ends. “Hirsch believes he is offering a solution to a problem when in fact he is only raising a question,” he writes. “Bloom suggests an answer to Hirsch’s question for reasons that are not entirely clear to him but are, of course, to me.” (Postman deploys sarcasm the way John Grisham deploys suspense.) Hirsch’s “solution” was a roughly 5,000-item list of names, places, and other trivia that he believed literate Americans should know. But to Postman, the issue was not that students lacked information; it was that there was too much of it. Cable television was becoming a prominent force in American life. Twenty-three percent of households subscribed to basic cable in 1980; the number would go up to almost 60 percent by 1990. CNN, the first 24-hour news network, was changing how people consumed journalism. In 1982, an average of 5.8 million households a week watched the channel. Postman writes:

From millions of sources all over the globe, through every possible channel and medium—light waves, airwaves, ticker tapes, computer banks, telephone wires, television cables, printing presses—information pours in … Clearly, we are swamped by information. Drowning in it. Overwhelmed by it … How can we help our students to organize information? How can we help them to sort the relevant from the irrelevant? How can we help them to make better use of information? How can we keep them from being driven insane by information?

Bloom, Postman thought, had the answer—sort of. “Although he does not seem to know it, Bloom is arguing that students need stories, narratives, tales, theories (call them what you will), that can serve as moral and intellectual frameworks,” Postman writes. “Without such frameworks, we have no way of knowing what things mean.”

Here is where Postman seems prescient once again—or, at least, shows us how history has boomeranged. He writes that people and nations require stories, ways of understanding themselves as they’re bombarded by data points. He sensed that Americans had lost faith in their nation’s story, and that young people no longer believed in the stories previous generations offered them. Today, information, accurate or not, is more accessible than ever. Log on to social media, and you’ll find a feed swarming with news, real and fake. Ask a large language model for clarity, and it might hallucinate . And the national story feels more fractured than it was in the 1980s. Debates rage over how the United States remembers its past and thinks of its place in the world; fights over insufficient civics instruction, book bans, and classical education fill op-ed pages.

“Americans rely on their schools,” Postman wrote in his 1995 book, The End of Education , “to express their vision of who they are, which is why they are usually arguing over what happens in school.” In his 1989 Atlantic article, he avoids outlining his vision: “I am not wise enough to say where the young can find what they need.” Instead, he reminds his readers why, confronted with an unrelenting flow of information, they need a vision—some kind of narrative, a way to reach into the rapids, sift through the dregs, and give meaning to what remains.

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Over 100 ‘Evergreen’ New York Times Articles With Questions and Activities for Students

Spinning water droplets that seemingly defy physics, chinese researchers have discovered a new way to make water droplets spin, creating a potential new kind of hydropower..

I bet you’ve never seen water do this: twist and turn like a dancer in flight. It happens when a droplet lands on a water-repellent surface with a special pattern. These acrobatic leaps were recorded by Chinese scientists investigating new ways to manipulate water. To understand what they did, let’s step back and see what Isaac Newton had to say about bouncing objects. According to Newton, when an object hits a solid surface, some of the energy of the impact is translated into a rebound. Think of a ball hitting concrete. If the ball travels straight down with no spin, it should bounce straight up again. And it’s the same with a water droplet on a water-repellent surface. Theoretically, the droplet should bounce straight up — no fancy stuff. But the researchers created a pattern of adhesive material on the surface that water sticks to. The water in contact with the sticky patches recoils more slowly than the water touching the repellent surface, and that makes the droplets spin. Change the pattern of the adhesive, and you change the shape of the dancing droplet. The researchers made swirls and half-moons and dotted circles, each of which caused the water to behave differently, sometimes even bouncing sideways. Scientists also showed how the energy of the droplets could be harvested. They set up a magnetically suspended surface. As the droplet landed on the surface and rebounded, it pushed down the plate and caused it to spin. It’s a new kind of hydropower. And at their peak, those droplets are spinning at a whopping 7,300 revolutions per minute. So apart from creating a water droplet ballet, scientists have also found a new way to harvest energy. And their work might help in designing self-cleaning airplane wings. For now, it’s enough to have the pleasure of watching the leaps and pirouettes of those dancing drops.

By The Learning Network

• June 18, 2019

This feature, now renamed “Lesson of the Day,” will resume on Sept. 3, 2019.

The above video is featured in this Article of the Day .

Every school day we choose an important or interesting news or feature story to become our Article of the Day , then write a quick series of questions and activities designed to help students both understand the piece and connect it to their own lives.

Each edition has suggestions for engaging students before they read, comprehension and critical thinking questions to support them as they go, and ideas for taking the topic further when they’re done.

As you might expect, many of our Articles of the Day respond to the big issues and news events of the day. This year, topics included the U.S. midterm elections, the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and the California wildfires, along with international events like protests and crises in France, Sudan and Venezuela.

But we also try hard to choose pieces as our Article of the Day that are “evergreen”: stories that are interesting in their own right, and that will be powerful, vivid and compelling in the future. From the 181 Articles of the Day we published during the 2018-19 school year, we selected 102 evergreen stories to include in the categorized list below, drawn from the Arts, Sports, U.S., World, Education, Science, Health and Technology sections. We hope some of these articles and their related learning activities can become part of your curriculum.

Have you taught with our Article of the Day feature? Let us know how, and please share any suggestions you might have for making it even more useful, by posting a comment.

Science and Technology

Watch Beatboxers Break It Down Inside an M.R.I. Scanner

This Water Drop, It’s the Greatest Dancer

When Plasma Becomes Another Fruit of the Vine

Adaptive Video Game Controllers Open Worlds for Gamers With Disabilities

3-D Printed Implant Gives Patches the Dachshund a New Skull

Ice Surveys and Neckties at Dinner: Here’s Life at an Arctic Outpost

Chronicles of the Rings: What Trees Tell Us

Pennsylvania Honors the Snot Otter. It’s Not Even the Strangest State Animal.

This Is the Way the Paper Crumples

Did Dietary Changes Bring Us ‘F’ Words? Study Tackles Complexities of Language’s Origins

Under the Influence of a “Super Bloom”

Mercury Is in Retrograde. Don’t Be Alarmed.

Tyrannosaurus Rex: The Once and Future King

In China, This Video Game Lets You Be a Tiger Mom or a Driven Dad

The Hummingbird as Warrior: Evolution of a Fierce and Furious Beak

These Whales Are Serenaders of the Seas. It’s Quite a Racket

Glaciers Are Retreating. Millions Rely on Their Water.

Yes, the Octopus Is Smart as Heck. But Why?

A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy

The Kilogram Is Dead. Long Live the Kilogram!

Why the Wilder Storms? It’s a “Loaded Dice” Problem

The Upshot, Five Years In

These Robots Run, Dance and Flip. But Are They a Business?

These 3 Hurricane Misconceptions Can Be Dangerous. Scientists Want to Clear Them Up.

I Had Finally Found the Right Place for My Son

Rethinking What Gifted Education Means, and Whom It Should Serve

Are Civics Lessons a Constitutional Right? These Students Are Suing for Them

How “Makers” Make the Classroom More Inclusive

Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back.

“I Feel Invisible”: Native Students Languish in Public Schools

Chinese Girl Finds a Way Out of Tedious Homework: Make a Robot Do It

The School Photo Industry Is a Master Class in Drama

You’ve Conquered the Escape Room. But Can You Escape the Lab?

Running Out of Children, a South Korea School Enrolls Illiterate Grandmothers

Lego Is Making Braille Bricks. They May Give Blind Literacy a Needed Lift.

LeBron James Opened a School That Was Considered an Experiment. It’s Showing Promise.

With Indigenous Languages in Steep Decline, Summer Camps Offer Hope

Inside the Pricey, Totally Legal World of College Consultants

Anne Frank’s Stepsister Meets Teenagers From Swastika Photo

A Pledge to Pay Morehouse College Students’ Debt Prompts Elation, Envy and a Host of Questions

Students in Rural America Ask, “What Is a University Without a History Major?”

It’s a Briefcase! It’s a Pizza Box! No, It’s a Mini Satellite

A Final Proving Ground for Guide Dogs to the Blind: Midtown Manhattan

Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Affirmative Action Trial

Homelessness in New York Public Schools Is at a Record High: 114,659 Students

The Arts and Culture

A Star Is Made: 12 Performers Show What It Takes to Light Up the Stage in New York City

Lil Nas X Added Billy Ray Cyrus to “Old Town Road.” Is It Country Enough for Billboard Now?

Meet the Creator of the Egg That Broke Instagram

“Mockingbird” Producer Reconsiders, Letting Local Plays Go Forward

He’s 16 Going On Stardom: Meet Broadway’s Next “Evan Hansen”

Stan Lee Is Dead at 95; Superhero of Marvel Comics

Original Big Bird, Caroll Spinney, Leaves “Sesame Street” After Nearly 50 Years

Banksy Painting Self-Destructs After Fetching $1.4 Million at Sotheby’s

Horseback Wrestling. Bone Tossing. Dead Goat Polo. Let the Nomad Games Begin!

"It Was Like a Zoo”: Death on an Unruly, Overcrowded Everest

While Enes Kanter is Observing Ramadan, the World Will Be Watching Him

A Bitter Finish for Slow Runners: Get on the Bus

Grab and Go: How Sticky Gloves Have Changed Football

How to Make a Bucking Bull: Good Breeding and, Just Maybe, a Cow’s Love

No One Has Ever Crossed Antarctica Unsupported. Two Men Are Trying Right Now.

Jackie Robinson Showed Me How to Fight On, Not Fight Back

U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Sues U.S. Soccer for Gender Discrimination

American Politics, History and Civics

Biased News Media or Biased Readers? An Experiment on Trust

Which Box Do You Check? Some States Are Offering a Nonbinary Option

On Instagram, 11,696 Examples of How Hate Thrives on Social Media

Young People Are Suing the Trump Administration Over Climate Change. She’s Their Lawyer.

Cats v. Rats? In New York, the Rats Win

How the Trump Era Is Molding the Next Generation of Voters

How the Supreme Court’s Decision on the Census Could Alter American Politics

Chinese Railroad Workers Were Almost Written Out of History. Now They’re Getting Their Due.

In San Francisco, Making a Living From Your Billionaire Neighbor’s Trash

What’s Wrong With This Diorama? You Can Read All About It

Overlooked No More: Dorothy Bolden, Who Started a Movement for Domestic Workers

“A Woman, Just Not That Woman”: How Sexism Plays Out on the Trail

Beyond College Campuses and Public Scandals, a Racist Tradition Lingers

Coming Soon to a Police Station Near You: The DNA “Magic Box”

Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media

9-Year-Old Boy Helps Repeal Snowball Throwing Ban in Colorado Town

Preserving Black American History Through Song in the Dominican Republic

Bush’s Letter to Clinton Cemented a Presidential Tradition, Historians Say

“Transgender” Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration

Planning to Vote in the November Election? Why Most Americans Probably Won’t

The Confidence Gap for Girls: 5 Tips for Parents of Tween and Teen Girls

How to Be More Resilient

How Big Tobacco Hooked Children on Sugary Drinks

Heroin Addiction Explained: How Opioids Hijack the Brain

Behold the Beefless ‘Impossible Whopper’

For Autistic Boys, the Subway Is Actually Soothing

Disgust vs. Delight: Why Do Certain Foods Turn You Off?

Did Juul Lure Teenagers and Get “Customers for Life”?

Global History, Politics and Culture

Becoming Greta: “Invisible Girl” to Global Climate Activist, With Bumps Along the Way

From Clay Tablets to Smartphones: 5,000 Years of Writing

To Anyone Who Thinks Journalists Can’t Change the World

How China Turned a City Into a Prison

“In Afghanistan, We Laugh Differently”

“Dog Suicide Bridge”: Why Do So Many Pets Keep Leaping Into a Scottish Gorge?

What Lunar New Year Reveals About the World’s Calendars

Where Reindeer Are a Way of Life

Return of African Artifacts Sets a Tricky Precedent for Europe’s Museums

The Courage and Folly of a War That Left Indelible Scars

In a Land of Quakes, Engineering a Future for a Church Made of Mud

Do you want even more evergreen Times articles with related learning activities? Here is our 2017-18 roundup . And here is a list of teaching ideas for how to use our Article of the Day feature in the classroom.

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Our Best Education Articles of 2019

Looking for inspiration to start the new decade off on the right foot? Our most popular education articles of 2019 explore how children develop purpose, how we can best support our students’ mental health and social-emotional development, why we benefit from listening to each other’s stories, and more.

And…if you want to put the scientific findings from these articles into practice, check out our new website for educators, Greater Good in Education (GGIE), officially launching on February 20, 2020.

In response to our readers’ call for more practical resources for the classroom, GGIE features free research-based practices, lessons, and strategies for educators to foster their students’ and their own well-being, and for school leaders to develop positive school climates—all in the service of cultivating kinder, happier, and more equitable classrooms and schools.

If you’d like to take a deeper dive into the science behind social-emotional learning, mindfulness, and ethical development, join us for our annual Summer Institute for Educators . Applications are due February 15, 2019.

To whet your appetite, here are the 10 best education articles of 2019, based on a composite ranking of pageviews and editors’ picks.

What Are the Best Ways to Prevent Bullying in Schools? , by Diana Divecha: A new study identifies the most effective approaches to bullying prevention.

How to Help Young People Transition into Adulthood , by Betty Ray: Modern “rites of passage” can help teens prepare for an uncertain future.

Five Childhood Experiences That Lead to a More Purposeful Life , by Maryam Abdullah: Research suggests that our paths to finding purpose can be shaped by early childhood experiences.

How Colleges Today Are Supporting Students’ Mental Health , by Amy L. Eva:   Colleges and universities are addressing well-being in students with new and innovative approaches.

How Understanding Your Brain Can Help You Learn , by Jill Suttie: A new book explains six keys to learning that can help anyone overcome barriers to success in school or in life.

Four Ways Schools Can Support the Whole Child , by Lisa Flook: Beyond just teaching academics, schools can foster students’ development in their relationships, identity, emotional skills, and overall well-being.

Honoring the Teacher's Heart: Well-Being Practices for School Change

Join our new online Community of Practice for educators!

How to Support Teens’ Social-Emotional Development , by Amy L. Eva: We need to appeal to teens’ need for status and respect for SEL to work in high schools.

How to Help Students with Learning Disabilities Focus on Their Strengths , by Rebecca Branstetter: We can empower students with learning disabilities with the language we use and the way we teach and guide them.

How to Become a Scientist of Your Own Emotions , by Jill Suttie: A Q&A with researcher Marc Brackett about how to cultivate emotional intelligence in ourselves and our kids.

What Happens When We Listen to Teachers’ Stories? by Amy L. Eva: Teachers of Oakland wants to change the conversation about education by humanizing teachers. 

What Teens Are Actually Thankful For (video), by Jane Park: A first-grade teacher, a best friend, a parent—high schoolers share their gratitude letters with their recipients. 


 A Lesson in Thanks and Vulnerability (podcast): A junior high school teacher spent his life defying stereotypes about how men should express their emotions. Here he takes on a new challenge: getting his students to express gratitude.

About the Author

Amy L. Eva, Ph.D. , is the associate education director at the Greater Good Science Center. As an educational psychologist and teacher educator with over 25 years in classrooms, she currently writes, presents, and leads online courses focused on student and educator well-being, mindfulness, and courage. Her new book, Surviving Teacher Burnout: A Weekly Guide To Build Resilience, Deal with Emotional Exhaustion, and Stay Inspired in the Classroom, features 52 simple, low-lift strategies for enhancing educators’ social and emotional well-being.

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Our Favorite Books for Educators in 2019

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Our Best Education Articles of 2017

Connecting college students with enriching work experiences

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, carly d. robinson , carly d. robinson senior researcher - stanford university’s graduate school of education, director of research - scale initiative, stanford accelerator for learning katharine meyer , and katharine meyer fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @katharinemeyer susanna loeb susanna loeb professor and faculty director - scale initiative, stanford university's graduate school of education, founder and executive director - national student support accelerator.

June 4, 2024

• Many college students have access to jobs offering multiple benefits—such as competitive pay, opportunities to contribute to society, and career development—but they often do not apply for these enriching positions.
• Simple outreach approaches can substantially increase college students’ applications to potentially enriching job opportunities.
• College students are particularly responsive to outreach that focuses on the wages of available jobs, even for jobs for which they say they are drawn by societal contributions or career development.

For many college students, working while enrolled is necessary to finance their education and cover their basic needs . Many students do it—about 40% of full-time and 74% of part-time college students . College work experiences can also offer non-financial benefits to students. Working while in school can help students identify career interests, build skills and knowledge, and establish networks of peers and supervisors who could help with their post-graduation career trajectories. Moreover, some jobs can build self-efficacy and the satisfaction of contributing positively to local communities.

However, finding a good job that offers multiple benefits is challenging, particularly for low-income or first-generation students who may struggle to navigate the complex college job search processes. When the financial benefits of a job are unclear, students may fall back on stereotypes like “interesting jobs pay badly” and not pursue potentially enriching opportunities. As students balance working while studying, explicitly connecting students with the highest-quality work opportunities that complement, not distract from, their education can meaningfully improve both their work experiences and the returns from earning their degree.

Tutoring can be a win-win job for college students

One high-quality job for college students is tutoring elementary and secondary school students. College students can benefit from these jobs because they can contribute to the community and they can build college students’ skills, not only for teaching but also for other jobs that require skills in motivating others or in the content area of the tutoring. Although many tutoring programs have traditionally relied on college students as volunteers, there has been a push in recent years encouraging universities to use Federal Work Study (FWS) funds and other resources to increase the number of college students supporting school-aged children and youth as tutors . Thus, tutoring can satisfy college students’ financial needs while allowing them to concurrently accumulate non-pecuniary benefits.

At the same time, tutoring benefits K-12 students. The COVID-19 pandemic had large and persistent negative effects on these students’ learning and attendance. In the wake of this educational crisis, tutoring has emerged as one of the most promising and frequently pursued strategies to help support students and schools. While schools have struggled to scale up best practices in high-impact tutoring , when implemented well, tutoring can address long-standing educational inequalities in our nation’s schools. Multiple studies of tutoring leverage college students , and find college students are equally effective at improving student outcomes.

Tutoring is a win-win job for college and K-12 students, but the question remains how best to connect college students who need these jobs with the paid tutoring positions available. In a recent working paper with colleagues, we report on a randomized controlled trial that tested whether highlighting the different benefits of a tutoring job can drive changes in tutor applications and employment. We partnered with Grand Valley State University (GVSU) to recruit paid tutors for a campus initiative started in 2020 to support Michigan K-12 students. Tutoring at GVSU was not only a paid position—it was a highly paid position on campus. Tutors could earn up to $17.70 per hour, the highest rate in the GVSU student hourly wage range and well above the state minimum wage at the time of the study ($10.10).

To test whether information about the benefits of tutoring can affect applications, we designed four emails that each highlighted a different benefit, as summarized in Table 1: the monetary benefit (tutoring is a paid position), the prosocial benefit (tutoring helps local children), the career benefit (tutoring builds career skills and looks good on a resume), and the social benefit (tutoring helps you meet other GVSU students). We tested each of the messages against a standard recruitment email that simply described the tutoring job and served as the control condition. We emailed every student enrolled at GVSU in the term of the study, inviting them to apply for a tutoring position.

Focusing on pay brings college students to tutoring

The emails went out to 15,860 students. Students who received the monetary motivational message were 72% more likely to click through to the application (2.8 percentage points more than the control group rate of 3.9%). As shown in Figure 1, they were also about three times more likely to apply for a tutoring position (2.6% applied relative to the control group application rate of about 0.8%). They were also 196% (almost 3 times) more likely to apply for a tutoring position. We estimated how many overall applications the control and treatment messages would induce if they had been sent to the whole sample: Sending the control group message to all students would have resulted in about 140 applications, whereas sending the message emphasizing that tutoring was a paid position would have resulted in about 410 applications. Although we found no other difference in the rate of applications across groups, the large effects from the virtually costless modification of emails to the monetary focus indicates that colleges should think carefully about how they craft recruitment messages.

Students drawn to tutoring with pay-focused recruitment are just as likely to be successful

  More students applied when given messages focused on the pay, but do these messages draw in the good tutors? One way to test whether their applications were as strong as other applications is to look at whether they get hired. The people doing the hiring do not know which message the college students received and are choosing the candidates they think will do the best job.

The applicants who received the pay-focused recruitment emails were at least as likely to be hired as the other candidates. In fact, students receiving these emails were 205% more likely to be hired than students receiving the standard email (a 1.1 percentage point difference). Moreover, these students were 286% more likely to be working as tutors six months later (a 0.6 percentage point increase). We found no evidence that pay-focused recruitment emails reduced the quality of college students who applied to tutor. Securing a well-paying job appears to be top of mind for college students, and emphasizing a good wage does not result in a less dedicated pool of employees.

Highlighting the paid nature of tutoring was the only email approach that had a significant effect on tutoring applications. However, when students applied to become tutors, very few said they were applying because of the pay. About 66% said they wanted to tutor to help the local community, with another 32% saying they wanted to tutor because “I will develop valuable skills” or “I am interested in becoming a teacher.”

The misalignment between their responses to recruiting emails and their self-reported motivations may be students reporting what they think the hiring committee wants to hear. Alternatively, adequate pay might be a personal requirement and they are reporting what motivates their choices among jobs that meet this requirement. In either case, their responsiveness to the emails points to the importance of rigorously testing recruitment strategies. If the college had simply surveyed students asking what would motivate them to become tutors and aligned recruitment strategies to those responses, they would have only sent out emails highlighting the prosocial or career benefits, which had no impact on tutor applications.

Connecting college students to meaningful work opportunities

  As many school districts struggle to recruit enough tutors to meet the demand , college students offer a promising and sustainable pool of highly motivated, knowledgeable workers with flexible schedules. Working in college is a valuable part of developing and honing essential career skills , and in the case of tutoring enables students to give back to their local community at a time when K-12 students need dedicated learning support. Creating more paid, enriching college jobs is the first step and must be followed up with clear communication to students about the many financial and professional benefits of these positions.

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Three Black students in OPB’s Class of 2025 take three different paths toward graduation

Oregon has not met expectations in serving black students, but students are finding their own paths to success..

OPB has been following 27 students since they were in first grade as part of the Class of 2025 project to track the state's progress toward 100% high school graduation starting in 2025.

It’s late afternoon at Earl Boyles Elementary School in Southeast Portland. The school is mostly empty, except for afterschool programs in a few classrooms, and three former students who are now teenagers.

Josh arrives first with his mom, Sharnissa Secrett. They take off on a short tour of Josh’s old elementary school — the spot where his educational career and OPB’s Class of 2025 project — started.

Later, Josh, 17, talks about spotting his first-grade teacher.

“It was good to talk to her,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her, a long time.”

Azaysha and her mom, Shontia Foster, arrive next. Sixteen-year-old Azaysha is hit with nostalgia immediately.

“As soon as I walked in, the memories hit,” she said. “It felt just like my childhood.”

But she’s also hit with something else.

“I feel old — definitely too big to be in here, like it doesn’t feel right.”

As soon as Rayshawn, 16, walks in, he turns left towards the cafeteria, almost like it’s second nature.

“I miss it,” Rayshawn said of his elementary school years. “I want to go run and play and have all the old energy that I did.”

These three students are part of the Class of 2025 , a group of 27 students OPB has been following since their families were invited to participate in this yearslong reporting project and help track the state’s progress toward its 100% graduation goal by 2025.

(Left to right) Josh, Rayshawn, and Azaysha at Earl Boyles Elementary School on May 2, 2024. The students all started school together at Earl Boyles but now attend three different high schools across Portland. They're all on track to graduate.

Elizabeth Miller / OPB

The 27 students come from different racial, cultural and family backgrounds. Josh, Azaysha and Rayshawn are all Black students in the Class of 2025.

Black students make up just 2.4% of Oregon’s 547,000 students according to the state’s October 2023 student count. Efforts like the state’s Black/African American Student Success Plan include goals to increase attendance and graduation rates. But the state has failed to meet the goals, just as it remains well short of the 100% graduation goal schools are supposed to reach by next year.

At the same time, many Black students are successful in Oregon schools. Take Azaysha, Josh, and Rayshawn, three students wrapping up their junior year in three different high schools across the city.

Azaysha is at Portland Public Schools’ historically Black high school, Jefferson, a small school where she is surrounded by other Black students and Black support staff.

“I just immediately fell in love with the whole school, the whole atmosphere,” Azaysha said. “It’s just really a place I felt like I’m at home … I feel like I can be myself at Jeff.”

Josh has stayed in the same school district his whole educational career. He’s now a year away from graduating from David Douglas High School — one of the largest and most diverse public high schools in the state, where students speak 46 different languages.

Josh, a student in OPB’s Class of 2025 project, is wrapping up junior year at David Douglas High School. He’s been in the same school district for his educational career – starting at Earl Boyles Elementary in Southeast Portland.

“It’s a lot of people I wouldn’t have expected to meet or see,” Josh says. “A whole bunch of different backgrounds and that’s pretty cool to me, how much I can learn from those people.”

After moving schools freshman year , Rayshawn has been at Rosemary Anderson, an alternative high school in Portland with about 100 students and a small staff that gets to know students personally.

“It’s like relationship before education, but education is still up there,” Rayshawn said. “But they try to connect with you instead of just ‘do this, do this’. They actually understand what you’re going through and then find a way to teach you with your struggles.”

Black students tend to get mentioned in stories about Oregon’s test score “achievement gap,” or in coverage of disproportionate discipline rates among student groups.

Those stories don’t often include the voices of students themselves, and it’s worth hearing from them.

Azaysha, Josh, and Rayshawn have had different experiences in Oregon’s public schools, but they are all on track to graduate next year.

Growing up, fitting in, and figuring out who you are

Azaysha was the first of these three students to leave the David Douglas School District partway through elementary school, when her family moved closer to the center of Portland. Only about half of the 27 students in OPB’s Class of 2025 remain in the David Douglas district, mostly a result of families moving.

The hallway at Earl Boyles Elementary School in southeast Portland, where the Class of 2025 students started kindergarten in 2013. Most of the Class of 2025 students are wrapping up their junior year.

Azaysha went to several different schools throughout elementary and middle school. She’s a bubbly teen who loves TikTok and playing softball.

Despite her love for school, she didn’t always have good experiences. She said was bullied, and it felt like her classmates didn’t accept her.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, we’re just friends, they’re just joking.’ But no, it was actually a lot of bullying that I went through,” Azaysha recalled.

Josh says he remembers working to “fit in” in middle and high school, finding himself in big, popular groups that were involved in a lot of “conflict” as he put it.

“I got lucky to actually not be getting in trouble during that time, even though I was hanging around with people who were getting in trouble.”

He said during his sophomore year of high school, he realized he didn’t want to be a part of those groups. As a junior, he feels more open to associating with different people, including some of his old friends.

“It’s kind of weird, because this year, I’m going back to those groups … I feel like I’m still quiet, like being able to be myself and be able to talk to more people.”

“Am I this person or am I not that person?”

Azaysha says she’s still figuring out what kind of person she is too. In high school, she changed schools one last time when she transferred to Jefferson during her sophomore year.

“Jeff really just brought out the real me, let me be myself rather than how I was after being bullied.”

“I feel like now I really realized I can be who I want to be, and if people don’t accept it, why would I care? Who really cares?” she said. “So, I started being myself and people just loved it, so it’s like, what was I scared about this whole time?”

What keeps students on track to graduate?

When Rayshawn first transferred to Rosemary Anderson his freshman year, he struggled academically. He missed assignments and fell behind.

But by spring of freshman year, things had turned around.

Two years later, Rayshawn is on track to graduate from Rosemary Anderson. He said small classes and individual attention at school have helped.

“The teachers and the staff members and the principals, they’re on you to do better,” he said.

Rayshawn has always been a bit of a class clown, making jokes and talking in class. His freshman year, he was suspended from David Douglas, caught with his friends in possession of an airsoft gun.

He hasn’t lost his sense of humor at Rosemary Anderson; he still cracks jokes, laughing with his classmates or with Roy “Yab” Rhone, the school’s Dean of Students. But he says staff hold students accountable, and he feels he’s grown into a role model for the younger students.

Class of 2025 student Rayshawn is wrapping up his junior year at Rosemary Anderson High School, an alternative school with campuses all over Portland. Rayshawn says one on one attention and staff support have helped him stay on track to graduate.

Kate McMahon / OPB

“There’s a lot of kids right now at my school that came from like, family stuff, and then they dropped out of high school sophomore, junior year with like 12 credits left, and then they come in and they graduate on time,” he said.

“You just have to put in the work and show that you want to accomplish that goal.”

At their respective schools, both Azaysha and Josh are varsity athletes. Josh plays basketball. He says being a student-athlete keeps him engaged in school.

“I definitely have to live to a higher standard and do more because of the sport … I have to be kind of like a role model basically,” he said.

Azaysha, a cheerleader and softball player, feels similarly about her role at Jefferson.

Statewide, graduation rates for Black students have improved over the years, reaching 73% for the Class of 2023, up from 60% for Black students in 2014. But that improved rate is still below the state average for all students.

The situation is different at Jefferson, where more than 95% of the school’s Black students graduated on time last year — a few points higher than the school’s overall graduation rate. At David Douglas, the graduation rate for the Class of 2023 was 74%, with Black students slightly lower, at 70%.

As an alternative school, Rosemary Anderson is not required to share graduation rate data with the Oregon Department of Education.

Support at school and at home

Every morning, Azaysha drives across town from her house in Southeast to Jefferson in North Portland.

To hear Azaysha talk about Jefferson is to hear a student who feels supported. At lunchtime, she says sometimes staff will play music — music students actually want to listen to.

“It’ll be like old-school music,” Azaysha said. “To hear everybody sing the same song — like, oh my gosh, “Love” by Keyshia Cole is going to get them every time.”

Azaysha is a junior at Jefferson High School in Portland. She started elementary school with the rest of the Class of 2025 at Earl Boyles, but changed schools throughout elementary, middle, and high school. She moved schools for the last time sophomore year, and says she feels “at home” at Jefferson.

She says the occasional lunchtime soundtrack is an example of the school’s connection to culture and its community.

She participates in activities with Self Enhancement Inc., a nonprofit that supports Black students and has several staff members based at Jefferson.

Through SEI, Azaysha had the chance to go on a tour of historically Black colleges and universities. Now she wants to enroll at one of those colleges to become a nurse.

While SEI and other staff at Jeff are often Black, teachers are predominantly white. That’s the case with David Douglas and Rosemary Anderson too. But the students say staff acknowledge race and show support for students of color.

Azaysha said that wasn’t the case at her old high school.

“I was always the bad guy, I was always aggressive, and I was always doing too much, but I feel like at Jeff, the teachers are a lot more understanding because they deal with so many of the same kids that they understand and they try to connect more,” she said.

In addition to staff at school, the three students all have strong families supporting them at home. Josh and Azaysha’s mothers sat together listening as the three former classmates talked about their lives at school. Secrett, Josh’s mom, said having support at home allows the students to focus on themselves and not worry about the broader world around them.

“I love to hear that they are thriving in this environment — with everything,” Secrett said. “The parents know, we see what we see and we know what we are up against systematically with racism and everything.”

Perception, opportunities, and the future

But there is a broader world. Portland is a majority-white city in a majority-white state with a racist history .

Azaysha said there’s so much good happening at her school, but sometimes the bad seems to overshadow that.

“People think it’s, oh so dangerous, when really it’s just another dangerous high school in Portland. It’s not just because it’s predominantly Black, it’s because it’s a high school in Portland,” she said.

“There’s so many students at Jefferson that apply themselves, so many students who have very large scholarships to all these colleges, and no one knows about that — everyone just knows about the bad test scores, things like that.”

Alternative schools can also get a bad rap. State leaders have raised concerns about a lack of accountability for alternative schools, yet they serve students at the greatest risk of not graduating.

If Rayshawn went back to David Douglas, he said he’s not sure he’d be doing as well as he is now.

“I think I’d get way more distracted, get in a little bit more trouble,” he said.

“In my personal opinion, I think it’s better than a regular high school,” he said of his school. He said it’s easier to focus at Rosemary Anderson, and other opportunities like internships and connections to trade schools.

“You’re there to do your work,” he said.

What these three students articulate in their statements and demonstrate in their school careers is that there’s not just one type of Black student in Portland, or in Oregon. Like any student, every student’s experience is different, from the school they go to, to their plans for the future.

A mural at Earl Boyles Elementary in southeast Portland in the main entrance of the school. OPB’s Class of 2025 project started at Earl Boyles more than 10 years ago. Today, the students in the Class of 2025 are wrapping up their junior year of high school.

“Honestly, growing up Black in Portland is different for everyone,” Azaysha said.

“I have friends from so many different backgrounds that live so many different lifestyles.”

Josh is happy with how he’s doing. Playing basketball has been influential for him. “I’m glad I led myself in this direction,” Josh said.

“I feel like sports kept me into school, kept me wanting to go to school basically. And now I’ve gotten where I want to be and we keep going to see where I end up at.”

“Growing up in Portland was interesting, it’s definitely Portland — definitely keeping it weird here,” Azaysha says with a laugh.

But growing up here doesn’t mean these students want to stay here. After spending his entire school career in Southeast Portland, Josh isn’t sure where he wants to go in the future. Azaysha and Rayshawn, both of whom have been through big school changes, are ready to leave Portland.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Shontia Foster. OPB regrets the error.

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Some colleges are scrambling to get financial aid to students enrolled in the summer term

As the process for colleges to appeal government financial aid calculations remains in limbo, some low-income students enrolled in summer classes could fall through the cracks..

Enrolling in college has been especially fraught this year, and financial aid experts are raising new concerns about the unforgiving timeline students could face if they rely on federal dollars to attend school this summer.

While most collegegoers register solely for the fall and spring terms, some, especially nontraditional and low-income students, depend on summer school to finish their degrees as quickly as possible and save money. Under changes made by the U.S. Education Department in 2017 , those students are eligible for year-round government assistance.

But this year, a congressional mandate to streamline the process of applying for college financial aid threw the whole system into disarray. Students across the country reported widespread troubles filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, while the government botched crucial data that colleges needed to make aid offers.

The FAFSA crisis, explained: How changes to college financial aid turned Decision Day into chaos

Though the situation has improved over the past month – FAFSAs are now being processed in one to three days, the Education Department says – many colleges are still far behind their typical schedules. The disorder has forced schools, in some cases, to rely on their own systems to calculate costs for certain students who want to enroll this summer and are eligible for Pell Grants, a need-based federal financial aid program.

What is a Pell Grant? Who qualifies? What to know after Biden announces student loan plan

But the timetable leaves little room for error, some experts say. 

“We are extremely worried about anyone who wants to enroll in college starting in the summer term and beyond,” said MorraLee Keller, the senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network. “The FAFSA fiasco has not left any part of higher education untouched.” 

In a statement to USA TODAY, the Education Department said the technicalities over when colleges choose to access Pell money will not change the amount of federal financial aid for which students are ultimately eligible. The agency said Friday it had processed over 10 million FAFSA forms.

Richard Cordray is out: Top Education Department official steps down amid crisis over college financial aid

How a small Kansas college is faring

For people like Brenda Hicks, making sure Pell funding comes through this summer for students without a financial cushion has been frenetic.

Southwestern College, a small private school in Winfield, Kansas, where she serves as the director of financial aid, is one of a minority of higher education institutions that bases its summer aid on students’ next-year FAFSA data. It’s always a scramble to make sure those students get the money they qualify for, she said. Summer students at Southwestern are often older and have other responsibilities – jobs and kids, for instance – which can distract them from filling out all the necessary paperwork on time. 

“I was very concerned,” Hicks told USA TODAY. 

Southwestern’s incoming Pell-eligible class is relatively small – about 100 students. Disbursing aid to them last week went mostly smoothly, Hicks said, though a few students have had trouble filling out their FAFSAs from the start. After lots of back and forth with the Education Department, one summer-enrolled student just received a federal financial aid estimate Friday. Summer classes started earlier this month.

Because of problems with his FAFSA, another student at Southwestern still doesn’t have an idea of how much federal financial aid he could get. Though her office can’t disburse aid to him yet, Hicks said she is working closely with the billing staff to make sure he isn’t penalized for unpaid tuition or fees while his situation is pending.

“All the things that are happening this year are making it harder for me to stay on top of that, and make sure summer people are getting the attention they are due,” she said. “We’re just trying to hug him through it.” 

Hicks said she worries about similar situations at larger schools, where there's a greater chance some students could fall through the cracks this summer. 

Colleges' financial aid appeals still in limbo

It’s unclear to experts precisely how many colleges are working on a tighter timetable for summer financial aid this year. Thankfully, the majority of schools award their summer aid based on the prior year’s FAFSA, according to Jill Desjean, a senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

The Education Department did not provide USA TODAY an estimate of how many students received Pell Grants starting in the summer term of a comparable year. In the 2021-22 school year, approximately 700,000 students in total received the grants on a year-round basis, according to the agency. Much of that aid likely began in the fall term.

Students with special financial circumstances could be most at risk of having to forgo school this summer, Desjean said. That’s because colleges still don’t have the ability to appeal the government’s financial aid calculations – a decision schools make in unusual circumstances, such as when a student is facing a major medical condition.

That corrected information won’t be processed in large quantities by the feds until July, the Education Department has said. Until then, some schools are making their own unofficial calculations for students enrolled for the summer term. The Education Department is allowing them to disburse preliminary aid based on those estimates.

Later this summer, schools will have to compare the amount of money they already started giving students with the government's official numbers. 

“Hopefully, they are the same,” Desjean said.

Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for   USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele .