Chalkbeat

The problem with an AI tutor: Students don’t want to use it

2026-08-25T23:25:23+00:00

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If you build it, they may not use it.

This is the emerging problem with artificial intelligence tools designed to help students learn. The latest evidence is a new study finding that middle school students rarely used an AI-powered tutor when given the option to do so.

The study examined Khanmigo, an AI chatbot associated with the popular Khan Academy program. The findings confirm the sentiment of founder Sal Khan, who previously told me that the AI tutor was a “non-event” for most students.

“If a keen, engaged student wants to use the technology as a good tutor, it’s ready to go,” said University of Toronto researcher Philip Oreopoulos. “The issue is that most students don’t use it that way.”

In the study, Oreopoulos worked with a Tennessee school district to randomly assign low-performing students from 18 middle schools to use Khan Academy during the school day. Khan Academy provides online lessons and practice that students work through at their own speed. Khanmigo is programmed to respond to questions without giving away the answers, though students had to actively seek its help.

The study compared Khan students with another group of students who instead used a combination of other digital math programs and small-group teacher-led instruction.

By year two of the study, the researchers found some promising results. Students using Khan Academy made faster math gains than the comparison group. This suggests that Khan Academy has value — a notable finding at a moment of intense backlash to ed-tech.

But the researchers say the benefits of Khan didn’t seem to come from AI. Most of the Khan Academy middle schoolers simply weren’t engaging with Khanmigo productively or at all.

Students only used Khanmigo about a third of the days they were working in Khan Academy. When interactions did occur, many students just sent off-topic messages or tried to convince Khanmigo to provide the correct answers. “Access was nearly universal but engagement was thin,” the researchers wrote. “It may be that human attention is the key ingredient for realizing the full benefits of personalized learning.”

Here are some examples of students’ interactions with Khanmigo from the new study:

Paraphrased examples of students' conversations with Khanmigo from the study "One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment."

“What this has put in huge spotlight — not that it’s a shock to educators — is how much motivation matters,” said Sal Khan in an interview.

The more AI can mirror a human tutor, the better it might become, Oreopoulos says. Right now, it’s not there. Maybe that’s a good thing: It’s not clear that we would want children to experience an AI chatbot as too human-like.

Since the study period, Khan Academy has redesigned its interface to better integrate Khanmigo and encourage more students to use it. “The AI could not just sit next to the content. It had to be woven into it. We had to make productive struggle harder to sidestep,” Khan wrote recently of the changes. The goal, he says, is not AI for its own sake, but to hopefully drive larger learning gains.

Overall, research on AI in education is nascent, but an early theme is that students often won’t use it for learning. “When given AI tutors, many students do not engage,” concluded a recent summary.

In another study released last week, Oreopoulos and colleagues sought to test a solution to this problem. In the same Tennessee school district, the researchers designed their own online math program. Some students were given access to an AI chatbot to help them work through problems. Students could only move on if they answered the questions correctly. In contrast to Khanmigo, the AI chatbot popped up without student prompting.

The students with access to AI moved less quickly through problems, but were more accurate in their answers. A week later when they were quizzed again on similar problems without access to AI, they were slightly more likely to respond correctly compared with a control group. This is preliminary evidence that in tightly controlled settings students can be coaxed into using AI well.

Of course, the challenge is that students spend most of their time outside of tightly controlled settings, and adolescents by their nature often seek the path of least resistance.

“The same technology that can be used as a good tutor, can also be used to make your life easier. But making your life easier equals less effort, less learning,” said Oreopoulos.

This story has been updated with a comment from Sal Khan.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

56% of Michigan teachers are thinking about leaving in five years, poll says

2026-08-25T22:43:58+00:00

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Most Michigan teachers feel deeply dedicated to their profession, but a quarter of them are considering leaving the profession within a year, and 56% might leave within five years.

Those are the results of a new poll released Tuesday. It was commissioned by Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative, an organization focused on addressing the state’s teacher pipeline challenges.

If the poll results bear out, they could destabilize the profession and worsen the teacher shortages that already affect many districts, particularly in hard-to-staff areas such as special education.

The results come as teachers face increasing pressure. Students are performing poorly on state and national exams as Michigan continues to slide lower in national academic rankings. Lawmakers are enacting new mandates for teacher training in methods that use the science of reading.

Respondents cited inadequate compensation, not enough training for new teachers, and barriers to classroom innovation as reasons they are considering leaving.

“If we want our state to move out of this perpetual threat of losing half of our teacher workforce over the next five years, we should listen to our teachers,” Jack Elsey, CEO and founder of the Workforce Initiative, said during a media roundtable Tuesday. “They’re telling us what they need.”

The poll was conducted from May 29 to June 30, surveyed a representative sample of 300 teachers, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points. It was conducted by Impact Research, with help from UpONE Insights, another polling company.

“The data confirms what we see in classrooms every day, as teachers are pouring their hearts into this work, but love for the job does not alleviate the challenging workload and financial pressures we face,” CJ Walker, a teacher at Concord Community Schools, said in a news release about the poll results. “If we want to reverse this retention crisis, we must value our teachers both via compensation and support.”

Michigan has an aging educator workforce, but teachers of all ages are considering exiting the profession according to Brian Stryker, managing partner at Impact Research.

“That is also true of newer teachers, teachers in the middle of their career. You also see it across elementary, middle, and high school,” Stryker said.

Compensation was one of the biggest factors. The problem is more acute among newer teachers, because the longer someone has been teaching, the more fairly compensated they feel, Stryker said. Fixing it is challenging, as decisions about pay are decided at the local level.

“We think the poll tells a powerful story that we have made progress over the last few years in improving the workforce’s experience, but they’re also telling us that we have a ways to go,” Elsey said.

Here are some additional findings:

46% of the teachers strongly agreed with the statement that “I frequently feel I am expected to be ‘all things to all people at all times’ in my current role.
54% strongly agreed with the statement that “my school is a great place to be a teacher.”
48% strongly agreed with the statement that “Michigan is a great place to be a teacher.”
32% strongly agreed with the statement that “I feel fairly compensated for my work as a teacher.”
39% strongly agreed with the statement that “I have access to rigorous, standards-aligned curriculum and instructional materials for the subject areas and grades I teach.”

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

NYC teachers were promised $8,500 bonuses for large class sizes. The details are murky.

2026-08-18T19:03:17+00:00

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When Mayor Zohran Mamdani secured a two-year delay in fully complying with the state’s class size law, the teachers union won a concession: Educators could receive pay bumps of up to $8,500 if their classes exceeded the caps.

But more than two months after the union announced the bonuses — and with the first day of class less than a month away — it remains unclear which teachers will receive them.

Teachers may be eligible for extra pay if their classrooms are exempt from the law because their building doesn’t have enough space or if their school can’t hire enough educators to staff smaller classes. But not every teacher in an exempt classroom will get a bonus, according to the union. The Education Department declined to explain how bonuses will be awarded or how much money has been budgeted for the payments.

Union officials contend the payments create a powerful “accountability incentive.” The possibility of doling out big pay bumps could push the city to shrink class sizes rather than seek exemptions from the law, which generally require union approval. Last school year, the city relied on thousands of exemptions to comply with the law, which generally caps class sizes at 20 to 25 students depending on the grade level.

But experts and advocates said the bonuses could disproportionately flow to teachers at more affluent schools, where classrooms tend to be more crowded. They worry that could exacerbate turnover at high-poverty schools by adding a financial incentive to move to a lower-poverty one.

“I wish they were using strategic compensation to do the opposite: to try to retain teachers in our lowest performing, traditionally hardest-to-staff schools,” said Evan Stone, CEO of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group that has raised equity concerns about the class size law. “The priority is about pressure to meet class size.”

Dan Goldhaber, a teacher labor market expert at the University of Washington, said pay differentials can help with retention. The city could strategically deploy them to the most effective teachers who wind up teaching larger class sizes in a bid to keep them in the system, he noted.

But the ambiguity about which teachers will ultimately get pay bumps could dampen the effect on retention, he said. There is no guarantee that teachers who receive the bonus this coming school year will get it again the following year when the value rises to $9,500. It’s unclear if the pay bumps, which count toward educators’ pensions, will continue after that.

“The effect would be a lot larger if it’s really clear what are the parameters of the program going forward,” Goldhaber said. “That is, I think, an example of a real missed opportunity.”

Education Department officials are expected to hash out which classrooms will be exempt from the law by November, which means teachers won’t know whether they will receive a bonus until the school year is underway. This coming school year, the law requires 70% of the city’s classrooms to comply with the class size caps or win an exemption, which are subject to approval from the Education Department and unions representing teachers and principals.

The city’s Independent Budget Office estimated that at least 2,463 general education teachers could be eligible for the bonuses based on last year’s exemptions. If all of those teachers receive the full $8,500, the pay bumps could cost roughly $21 million in the first year.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew recently told Chalkbeat that the union is still hashing out details about the pay bumps. He declined to address concerns about whether teachers at more affluent schools will disproportionately benefit.

“We’re working through it right now, so we will let you know as soon as we are there,” he said. Union officials have previously suggested that higher-need schools would be “addressed first.”

Some teachers have expressed mixed feelings about the pay bumps. Robert Effinger, the union chapter leader at the Bronx High School of Business, said he is already trying to manage teachers’ expectations about them.

Most of the teachers who are aware of the bonuses have assumed they will be eligible for them, he said. “I have to patiently explain to them that it’s not that simple.”

One of Effinger’s social studies classes last year had 34 students — the current limit under the teachers’ contract — which generates significantly more grading and administrative tasks. His classroom is so crammed that he doesn’t have space for students to do group work or other activities, he said.

Effinger said he would rather teach classes of no more than 25 students than win a pay bump.

“The money is not going to make up for all the amount of work,” he said.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Vaping, bathrooms, stress: What 357,000 NYC students revealed in revamped school survey

2026-08-17T22:28:45+00:00

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How often do students at your school vape? Are school bathrooms aligned with your gender identity? Is your school connecting your learning to the real world?

These are among the new questions that New York City’s annual school survey now asks students.

Middle and high school students are asked every spring, along with parents and teachers, to fill out the annual school survey. But the questions for students were too wordy and confusing, and there were too many of them, Education Department officials acknowledged.

So, education officials decided to make substantial changes, shortening the number of questions to 61 from 79 the year prior and making the language more direct. The goal, officials said, is to give educators more insight into particular problems. The changes are already bearing some fruit in terms of participation: More than 357,000 of the city’s students in grades 6-12 participated in the 2026 school survey, up 3 points from last year’s student participation rate, officials said this week.

To redesign the survey, the city sent a ballot of questions to school leaders and survey coordinators, garnering more than 300 responses. They held listening sessions with more than 50 school leaders, and convened more than 20 students — some of whom served on the Chancellor’s Student Advisory Committee and some who were part of a Brooklyn Summer Rising site.

While some of the questions tweak language from the previous year’s survey, others are new. Because of the survey’s changes, the 2026 results can’t be compared to prior years, but will serve as a new baseline moving forward.

“You may notice lower favorability scores on some items compared to prior years,” stated an explainer about the redesign. “This does not necessarily mean things got worse. It often reflects students answering more directly and precisely under the new language — not a change in classroom reality.”

Here are some highlights from the survey’s new questions.

How often do students in this school vape?

Many students, parents, and educators will tell you: Vaping is a big problem in schools. Some schools have been figuring out ways to cut down on vaping in bathrooms, but many have been struggling with how to respond.

Now the city’s survey is catching up with these concerns, adding a question about vaping. More than a third of students said vaping is common, with 19% of students saying students vape “very often,” and 16% reporting that students vape “often.” About 39% of female students reported their peers vape often or very often, compared to 32% of males.

The responses varied by grade, with fewer sixth graders (19%) reporting vaping as an issue compared to the ninth graders (45%), who reported seeing the most vaping use.

Curious and concerned parents can check out the responses for all questions at individual schools. For example, nearly three-quarters of the students at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts reported that students vape very often or often, compared with just 11% of students at University Neighborhood High School reporting that.

How often can you use a bathroom that matches your gender identity in your school?

A few years ago, the city began allowing families to list their child’s gender as “X” instead of “M” or “F” to accommodate nonbinary or gender-expansive youth.

The school survey data is catching up, now asking about whether students can use school bathrooms aligning with their gender identity. Under city guidance, students are entitled to use bathrooms that match their gender identity — a policy that has come under fire from the Trump administration.

At first glance, most students reported favorably to this question, with 86% saying they can use a bathroom matching their gender identity “always” or “most of the time. But drilling down into the data, for those students identified as neither male or female, 65% said they had access to a bathroom matching their gender identity.

How many of your teachers connect what you are learning to life outside the classroom?

Many students often complain that what they’re learning in school feels irrelevant to their lives and careers. In response, the city has ramped up its focus on career education.

Students see room for improvement. Less than half — 49%— said most or all of their teachers connect what they’re learning to life outside the classroom. The answers vary by grade, with the fewest favorable responses in ninth grade (45%). But by senior year, more students — 59% — responded favorably to this question.

How often do you use strategies you learned at school to stay focused when something frustrating happens?

Schools across the city have been trying to incorporate more mindfulness practices, with former Mayor Eric Adams bringing daily breathing exercises to students. But when it comes to learning coping mechanisms, students say schools still have work to do. Just 45% said they use strategies learned at school to stay focused in the face of frustration. Asian American girls had fewer favorable responses (37%) compared to their Black male counterparts (51%).

How often do you feel included in school activities like clubs, sports, recess, field trips, and school events?

While the 2025 survey asked students whether they felt like they belonged at their school, the redesigned survey took things a step further, asking students specifically about their experiences in school activities outside the classroom.

About 10% of students surveyed reported they “never” feel included in these activities, and another 30% reported feeling included “sometimes.” Girls reported feeling excluded more often than boys, with 43% reporting they sometimes or never felt included compared to 38% of boys. Broken down by grade, ninth graders (45%) reported feeling excluded most often , while sixth graders (35%) felt excluded least frequently.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

How a Queens school transformed a local playground — and its students’ lives

2026-08-11T14:54:17+00:00

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How do you make high school feel less like, well, school? And how do you get kids to show up, especially those at greatest risk of dropping out?

A class devoted to community service projects at Voyages Prep in Elmhurst, Queens might offer some clues.

The school, which serves older students who transferred in after falling behind at other schools, partners on the elective course created with Hire Cause, a career education company that focuses on building skills through hands-on projects aimed at improving communities. Two years ago, the students decided they’d focus on renovating Playground Ninety, a run-down basketball court in Jackson Heights where some of them played after school.

The students got to work. They collaborated with artists to design the space. They learned how to fundraise — organizing bake sales, a basketball tournament, and a carnival — and netted about $2,100.

Then they decided to shoot for something bigger, submitting a video to the “Every Court Has a Story” contest, a worldwide initiative led by Project Backboard, a nonprofit that funds renovations of public basketball courts. They won $50,000, beating out scores of submissions from around the globe and marking the first time a student-led entry won the contest.

Voyages Prep student Ashely Marquez painting the court at Playground Ninety in June.

“Too often, many students can’t see how the classroom connects to the broader community,” said David Dvorkin, CEO of Hire Cause, which worked with 28 public schools and 1,450 students across the city this past school year. “That’s part of the gap that we’re collectively working to close here.”

Playground Ninety’s renovation wrapped up last month with a repaired basketball court and a mural painted on the ground with flowers representing the diversity of Jackson Heights and wavy lines symbolizing New York City’s rivers. The kids at P.S. 90 have been especially delighted: The elementary school exclusively uses the space during the school day.

With its intensive focus on job skills, Voyages’ Hire Cause class fits into the city’s larger effort embracing career readiness. Nearly 180 high schools across the five boroughs are part of the Education Department’s FutureReadyNYC program, providing students with hands-on classes and career training. About 105 career and technical education programs offer certifications for a range of post-graduation careers. But the Voyages class differs in its emphasis on social impact and its student-led approach. Students pick a cause they care about and have to raise money to see their project through.

It gives them something bigger to be part of, educators involved in the project said. And they get to see the fruits of their effort.

It gives them a reason to show up, students said.

By the time Kamrin Jones took the class, the project had already begun. Initially, it was just an assignment to him. But when he saw the excitement of the elementary school kids, his perspective shifted: “It started off as an obligation, but then became a passion.”

It felt dramatically different from his previous school where he would travel about 1.5 hours to just “sit around,” the 19-year-old said.

“Not only do I have a reason to be here, but like it’s proof that I can do more with myself than I thought I could,” he said. “Like it’s proof that I’m more than just sitting in class and just waiting, twiddling my fingers. It’s proof that when I do actually put myself to the task, I can meet expectations.”

Jones believes his path might have been different had he not landed at Voyages and dove into the playground project. After graduating from Voyages in June, Jones is spending this summer learning about economics and marketing through investment banking firm Centerview (that he is getting paid for). He is planning to go to a trade school in the fall.

A drone photo of the new basketball court at Playground Ninety.

A lesson in joy, leadership, and local change

As a transfer school, where students come and go, graduating at different times as they accumulate enough credits, Voyages had about 60 students in all working on the project at some point, with about 35 of those students more intensely involved. Ten, including Jones, devoted after-school hours ensuring Playground Ninety got done.

Jones became the project manager, making sure everyone stayed on track. He would spend his lunchtime organizing things, sharing reminders to his peers in morning announcements he made over the loudspeaker.

“It’s easy for us students to get distracted,” Jones said. “I made sure we stayed on task.”

Some students who were struggling with attendance, “turned a corner” after getting involved in the course, said Anthony Drzal, one of the co-teachers of the course. A student who was chronically late, knew that missing the second period class would have significant consequences, not just for her.

“It wasn’t like another class where maybe she just missed the worksheet and she would deal with it later,” Drzal said. “If she had a responsibility, she had to take care of it.”

He believes that led to a different type of engagement than in more traditional classrooms.

The sense of community and connection created by the class is something the school overall works hard to achieve. It has a high-needs population — nearly 90% are from low-income households, nearly 30% have disabilities, more than 70% are overage and undercredited. It also struggles with outcomes: Just 17% graduated from high school and enrolled in a post-secondary program within six months.

People play basketball on the new court at Playground Ninety on June 12.

Even though the course is rooted in social change and social justice, that was never explicitly part of the conversation, said Traci Molloy, one of two artists who worked on the playground project alongside the course’s co-teachers.

The goal was to make something beautiful.

“In doing that, you’re transforming the park, you’re transforming a neighborhood,” she said. “The way it was framed was always: We have to have fun. We have to have joy, and then that joy becomes a change.”

The Voyages students will move on this school year to a new project of their choice, but those like Jones, who are graduating, are taking many skills they learned from the project, Molloy said.

As she told Jones: “This isn’t the last thing you’ve done. This is the first best thing you’ve done.”

Correction: Aug. 11, 2026: This article initially stated that Hire Cause is a nonprofit. It is a for-profit company that partners with many nonprofits.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

An alphabet without an F: AI slop seeps into Teachers Pay Teachers curriculum marketplace

2026-08-03T18:32:12+00:00

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The poster depicting famous inventions by Black figures throughout history should show the invention George Crum is widely credited with: the potato chip.

Instead, the picture labeled with Crum’s name shows a firefighter in an ominous gas mask next to a stop light. There are no potato chips to be found.

But there is a typo-ridden description of Crum that reads: “Created the popular crispy snack when a customer is polated thinner fried potatees.”

For $4, teachers can have the privilege of downloading that poster, a slideshow about Black inventors, and a seven-minute video from Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace for teachers to find lesson plans, classroom decor, activities, and more. The site, which rebranded as TPT in 2022, is education’s answer to Etsy.

For $1.99, they could also download an alphabet coloring worksheet missing the letter F. And for just $1.50, they could get a poster of U.S. presidents that uses an asteroid hurtling toward anti-slavery demonstrators to illustrate the idea that Martin Van Buren was resilient.

Teachers Pay Teachers is a platform used by 85% of pre-K-12 educators in the U.S., its parent company said in a 2023 press release. It has long been controversial, with some educators and curriculum developers casting doubt on the quality of resources up for sale. But it inspired trust in other teachers due to the premise baked into its name. Now that trust is eroding, and it’s because of something educators have noticed while shopping. Increasingly, some of Teachers Pay Teachers’ resources appear to be AI-generated.

Moreover, some of the AI-generated content that hasn’t been vetted very well includes obvious errors, slipshod graphics, and questionable information, according to a Chalkbeat review of material on Teachers Pay Teachers.

It’s the type of low-quality content commonly known as “AI slop.” And teachers say it’s turning up on TPT, which means some of it could end up in the classroom.

In an emailed statement, Paul Mishkin, CEO of IXL Learning, TPT’s parent company, wrote that the company uses “algorithmic tools to identify and demote stores associated with low-quality, AI-generated content.”

“These measures are already highly effective, such that AI-generated products account for a minuscule fraction of a percent of TPT’s sales,” Mishkin wrote.

TPT’s two decades in existence, some argue, is a sign that many school districts still aren’t arming educators with high-quality instructional material. The flood of what appears to be low-quality AI content may just further poison the well.

Teachers are expected to create a lot of material, sometimes on a time crunch or during the summer when they’re not paid, said Jeff Carpenter, an education professor at Elon University. That pressure to create instructional material leads them to turn to Teachers Pay Teachers or similar sites.

“They don’t have the time and energy to assess the quality,” Carpenter said. “They’re sort of drowning under the load of expectations on them, and so they think, ‘Well, this is a highly rated resource, and so I’m going to print it off and give it to my students without really looking at it.’”

AI fuels cottage industry of curriculum creators

Some of the tells of AI-generated content are relatively subtle.

When Elisa Greb, an eighth grade English teacher outside of Pittsburgh, is on the lookout for material made by AI, she watches for bulleted lists with bolded headings, for example.

Greb said she started noticing the proliferation of AI content about a year ago. Greb rarely turns to TPT for class content, but occasionally turns to it for grammar content, which can be one of the hardest topics to hook students’ interest.

“One of the greatest joys for me as a teacher is the creativity,” she said. “What really bothers me on something like TPT, where people are monetizing, is that they’re asking for your money for something that they didn’t actually create.”

Chalkbeat also spotted what look to be AI suggestions for titles that might help the resource appear prominently in search results, price suggestions, and even disclosures that content had been generated by AI.

But if AI-generated content on TPT sets off algorithmic red flags, it seems no one has told the cottage industry of content creators who advertise themselves as coaches for folks wanting to start a TPT shop.

In one YouTube video, a creator said that leveraging AI isn’t about replacing creativity, but “multiplying our efforts” to supply teacher resources online. Many of the coaches encouraging AI use also caution TPT creators to edit and watch for quality issues in AI-generated content.

Catharyn Shelton, a professor with Northern Arizona University, said teachers sharing content with other teachers is in principle a good idea — when the content is of good quality. But scaling up the model into a marketplace is often where the problems come in, incentivizing creators to build shops with thousands of pages of material and sacrifice quality in the process.

It’s easy to turn “to slop because AI is so good at making things sound really good,” she said. “Even if the actual content or ideas aren’t really there.”

‘I do use AI-assisted tools’

Chalkbeat reached out to a few TPT vendors selling what appeared to be AI-generated materials.

Jade Désautels, the creator behind The Garden of Art, the store that sold the Black inventors posters featuring George Crum, wrote that she became an educational resource creator after 15 years as a full-time teacher.

She declined an interview and did not directly acknowledge using AI, but wrote that she uses a “variety of digital tools as part of my creative process.” Désautels also wrote she reviews resources before publishing them.

In another instance, a set of posters about musical instruments in Black history included an image of a traditional African drum and the words “add a performer playing it in a lively village setting.” There is no performer or village in the image.

A user wrote in a review that the $4.28 posters were “poorly made” and “it was very obvious that AI was used.”

The creator of that resource, Achraf Zenmrouni, said over email that they had adjusted and improved the graphics after Chalkbeat inquired about the work. Zenmrouni wrote that “I use AI-assisted tools as part of my design and creative process,” but added they personally reviewed the material before it goes live.

A Chalkbeat reporter asked ChatGPT to respond to inquiries about supposed low-quality, AI-generated teacher resources as if it were a creator of those resources. In part, the AI wrote, “I do use AI-assisted tools as one part of my creative process.”

ChatGPT then added: It reviews the content before it’s published.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

How a years-long rise in teacher turnover reshaped American classrooms

2026-07-30T19:08:33+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

There was no single reason why Ryan Higgins decided to leave teaching.

It was a job he loved: invigorating, unpredictable, a chance to make the world a bit better. But several years into his career, Higgins, who taught high school social studies in the Fort Worth, Texas area, was increasingly frustrated.

For one, his salary — decent when he was fresh out of college in 2016 — felt stagnant and mediocre. He coached basketball and football, so his days often stretched from early morning to late evening. And “teacher appreciation week” began to feel borderline demeaning: You can wear jeans all week! There’s free pizza in the teachers’ lounge!

Then there was the time a parent complained after he chewed out and benched a member of the basketball team who was slacking off. The school’s assistant principal didn’t back Higgins up. Yes, maybe he had been a bit too tough, but he was also giving up his Saturdays, doing students’ laundry, and even driving the bus.

Ryan Higgins, during his teaching days, with a colleague.

“You’re running around like crazy trying to solve problems, and yet people who aren’t with you are always telling you what you need to do better,” Higgins says.

What finally pushed him out was the aftermath of the pandemic. Trying to effectively teach students over Zoom was all but impossible. Then when students returned to classrooms, they were breathtakingly behind academically and socially. Behavior was out of control. Parents, it seemed, were less trusting of teachers, too. “It felt like the walls were closing in,” he says.

Higgins left teaching in the summer of 2022. A member of the Army Reserve, he soon took an assignment overseas. Today, he’s going into his third year of law school. He sees himself as part of a “lost generation” of teachers.

The year Higgins left, more teachers departed public school classrooms in Texas than at any point since at least 2007, the earliest year with state data. This was not just a blip: From 2020 to 2025, the state lost 35,000 teachers who would have stayed in the classroom if the state had maintained its pre-pandemic turnover figures. That’s equivalent to nearly 10% of the current teacher workforce.

The pattern in Texas has repeated to varying degrees in states across the country, according to an extensive Chalkbeat analysis of data since 2019 spanning 21 states. Most of those states have experienced four to five straight years of elevated teacher turnover, compounding the losses year after year. High-poverty schools in particular were already having a hard time keeping teachers.

Even though turnover finally appears to be trending down, the consequences persist. Research has linked teacher churn to declines in test scores. At a moment when policymakers are seeking to understand America’s sluggish learning recovery, the loss of teachers and instability in schools deserves to be on the list of plausible contributors.

[See our entire analysis of teacher turnover across 21 states including detailed data from each state. You can also watch our online event about teacher turnover.]

A teacher turnover dip, then a sustained rise

There is no comprehensive national data on teacher exit rates. To fill this gap, I conducted an extensive state-by-state review, using a variety of sources.

Across most states, a pattern emerged: Compared with 2019, fewer teachers left the profession in the summer of 2020 when the economy was at a standstill due to the pandemic. But then teacher attrition began to rise sharply. Rates peaked in 2022 but typically remained elevated for the next couple years.

Only a couple of states in this analysis, Connecticut and Maryland, avoided any meaningful rise in turnover.

A spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency said the state has “experienced many of the workforce challenges seen nationwide, which is why teacher recruitment and retention remain a priority.” Texas, for instance, has expanded a merit pay program, which has helped retain effective teachers, according to a recent study.

High-poverty schools, which struggled with teacher churn before the pandemic, likely suffered the most from the turnover spike. In South Carolina, for instance, exit rates rose especially sharply at those schools. A number of states have reported increases in uncertified, emergency-certified, and inexperienced educators. Those teachers are typically concentrated in high-poverty schools.

It hasn’t just been teachers departing. In Alaska, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Texas, and Washington state principal attrition rose too. Turnover often has a cascading effect in schools. When a principal leaves, an assistant principal may take over, a teacher may become an assistant principal — and another classroom vacancy opens up.

Justin Wax became principal of a junior high school in southeast Louisiana in 2021. He was the third leader in three years. That made keeping staff harder since many were looking for stability at that moment. Most of the teachers who were at the school when he started are now gone. “You’re scraping the cream off of the top of all of the most veteran people,” Wax says. “There ends up being a vacuum.”

Turnover appears to be finally coming back down. In the 12 states with figures through last summer, rates were below post-pandemic highs, although some places have not fully returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Wax says he’s had his best year of retention recently and is well staffed going into this coming school year. He’s prioritized making his school a supportive community where teachers are given professional autonomy and backed up on student discipline issues. Today, surveys show that teacher stress has subsided from pandemic-era spikes. Most teachers are at least somewhat satisfied with their jobs.

More comprehensive recent data on turnover is not available because many states report figures with a significant lag. Other states don’t report numbers at all. And no state appears to have data yet for the share of teachers who have left this summer.

Teachers face worse behavior, stagnant pay, fewer perks

What drove the sharp increase in teacher exits?

Meghann Seril has been teaching elementary school in Los Angeles for 18 years. These days, she finds students’ behavior more challenging and their attention spans more limited. She’s seen many colleagues who struggled with classroom management leave in recent years.

“It has such a ripple effect because the administrator is focused on supporting those new teachers,” she says. “You’re working on putting out little fires all of the time.” In surveys, teachers often say that student behavior is their top source of stress, and many reported that behavioral issues spiked after school buildings reopened.

Meanwhile, many other professionals have received a valuable new perk since the pandemic: the ability to work from home. “Being a teacher is arguably the least flexible job around,” says Alex Baron, principal of a charter middle school in Washington, D.C. He suspects that’s made it difficult to recruit and retain teachers in his school.

At the same time, teacher salaries, never particularly high, have fallen in real dollars, as inflation soared and school officials used new funds to hire more staff rather than give teachers a raise. The salary gap between teachers and other college-educated professionals has grown in recent years.

Tyra Damm’s decision to leave teaching came down to money. Some of her colleagues with higher-earning spouses saw teaching as a nice-to-have second income. One called it “fun money.” Damm, who lives in the Dallas suburbs, did not have that luxury. She took up teaching in 2013, soon after her husband died of brain cancer. She figured it would provide a stable income with a parent-friendly schedule as she raised two young children.

She loved the job. Damm most recently taught middle school reading and writing to gifted and talented students and was named secondary teacher of the year in her district in 2019. But with only anemic raises and the price of everything rising, “I just couldn’t pay the bills anymore,” she says.

When the American Heart Association, which she had done freelance writing for, offered her a full-time job with remote work and higher pay, Damm felt like she had no choice but to take it. She left teaching in 2024.

“I miss it every day,” she says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

As more teen boys turn to sports betting, financial literacy teachers rush to show gambling’s real odds

2026-07-29T19:17:45+00:00

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Teenage boys are coming to school with new vocabulary words: over-under, parlay, and prediction markets.

They’re not just talking about gambling. They’re placing bets and hanging their hopes on the outcomes of football games.

Data obtained by Chalkbeat from GoGuardian, an education software company that provides institutions tools to block and restrict certain webpages, shows that the rate of sites blocked in its gambling, betting and fantasy sports category has increased nearly 30% since the company started tracking in 2022, from a low of 13.48 blocks per 1,000 students to 17.4 this year.

The company blocks roughly 140,000 attempts to access such sites on average every month — although that’s still a tiny fraction of the 86 million monthly attempts to access blocked content.

Teachers said they have seen a fixation with gambling take hold in their students, who show little awareness of gambling’s risks.

This surge in gambling has prompted some educators to bring in new concepts like sports betting to financial literacy classrooms. Massachusetts is developing a sports betting curriculum, and other states have added gambling awareness to their academic standards. But teachers also said they are still trying to get a handle on a growing problem.

“I don’t think anybody has a grasp on this problem,” said Matt Pierson, associate director with the Nebraska Council on Economic Education. “Now that we can gamify it with an app and make it so incredibly easy, the barrier to entry is gone.”

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for sports betting to become widely legal in 2018. A Siena University poll found 27% of Americans in February reported that they had an active online sportsbook account, up from 19% in 2024.

Though gambling is banned in most states for anyone under 21, teens have also found their way into sportsbooks, teachers said.

Richard Bryant, executive director of the Kentucky Financial Empowerment Commission, a nonprofit that offers financial literacy education across the state, said some students believe sports betting is equivalent to making a smart investment. In a 2025 NerdWallet survey, 31% of sports bettors said they viewed gambling as an investment.

“This is so detrimental to these kids’ financial literacy, where they’re trying to start out in the world, get a job, start earning money,” Bryant said.

Pierson said he can tell right away that teenagers, especially boys, are betting. In classroom visits where he makes financial literacy presentations, “they have the vocabulary of someone who’s very into sports betting,” he said. To students seeking instant money, sports betting can seem like a feasible option: If they monitor scores and watch enough, they can win.

And that’s where financial literacy education around gambling often starts: teaching students that life is unpredictable, Pierson said.

In one game, Pierson has students guess how many paper balls a student can throw into a trash can in 30 seconds over several rounds, to show the unpredictable nature of sports betting.

“These are human beings you’re betting on,” he said. “Have any of you had a bad day?”

Pierson and his colleagues have authored a three-lesson unit on sports betting and gambling for Federal Reserve Education, a collaborative among economics educators.

But like sex education, teachers are walking a fine line between stressing abstinence or a more moderate position — that it’s OK to gamble if you understand the risks and do so in moderation.

In Diane Thole’s financial literacy class at School of the Future in New York City, students have looked at the toll gambling stress can take on the body and mind — consequences as dramatic as heart and sleep problems. And she tries to get students thinking about wise investing, saving for retirement, and repaying student loans.

But she doesn’t say it’s not OK to gamble.

“I’m not going to be like, ‘hey, let’s all download an app and bet together,’” she said. “But you do have to think about the realism of the situation.”

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

When teachers lack confidence in math, their students fall behind, a new study shows

2026-07-28T14:22:02+00:00

Last call to sign up for our next Chalkbeat Ideas online event, which will feature new data on the number of teachers leaving the profession over the last several years. We’ll also have a rich conversation about what to make of this data. Hope to see you Thursday at noon ET.

Plenty of students have math anxiety. It turns out some educators have their own anxiety about teaching the subject, a new study finds. And that appears to affect their students — especially those already struggling in the subject.

The recently published paper draws on an unusually detailed survey of teachers in Indiana. They were asked how much they agreed with statements like “Teaching mathematics does not intimidate me at all” and “Of all the subjects, mathematics is the one I worry about teaching.”

Based on those answers, the researchers created a “math teaching anxiety” score for over 3,000 educators who taught math in grades three through eight. Those grades are when state testing occurs, allowing the researchers to link teachers to their students’ progress.

The good news: Math anxiety was not all that prevalent among elementary and middle school teachers in Indiana. Just over half were highly confident teaching the subject, and nearly 40% reported middling confidence. That left 11% of teachers with significant apprehension about teaching math.

New teachers were especially likely to lack confidence, perhaps reflecting broader struggles in the classroom, the researchers found. Early-grade educators also tended to have a bit less assurance in math. This makes sense since the study included middle school teachers, many of whom specialize in the subject.

Math-anxious teachers were not evenly spread across classrooms. Students with disabilities, low-achieving students, and students from lower-income families were more likely to have such teachers. It’s also possible that teachers became less confident in their ability because they taught more students who struggled in math.

Then the researchers asked the next obvious question: Do students learn less when they’re taught by anxious math teachers? In short, yes.

The differences in learning rates were real but modest. An average student’s scores dipped by about one percentile when taught by a less confident math teacher, the researchers found. The harm could grow if students had multiple anxious math teachers in a row, the study speculated. Girls, Asian American students, and English learners seemed to be affected a bit more severely by having an anxious math teacher.

The study paints a particularly troubling picture of math instruction for students already struggling in the subject. They were more likely to have an anxious teacher, and when they did, their learning suffered more. In other words, the students who needed the most help in math were often taught by teachers least equipped to provide it.

NaYoung Hwang, the study’s lead author and a professor at the University of New Hampshire, said there are a number of potential explanations for the results. Math-anxious teachers may have spent less time on the subject, explained math concepts less clearly, or even made their own math errors. Perhaps their own ambivalence and anxiety came through.

“When teachers are genuinely excited about the content, students tend to engage much more,” Hwang said.

The study partially validates the long-standing concern that elementary school teachers, at least some of them, are not sufficiently equipped to teach math. A National Council on Teacher Quality report concluded that most elementary teacher preparation programs don’t spend enough time on core math content.

The study also offers an insight relevant beyond math instruction.

Teachers who lacked confidence teaching math had correctly self-diagnosed their own weakness. School administrators should keep that in mind when planning professional development and support for educators. Perhaps they should start by asking teachers themselves what they need to get better.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

At NYC’s first all-virtual high school, this award-winning teacher knows it’s not ‘one-size-fits-all’

2026-07-22T21:12:30+00:00

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Chemistry and earth science teacher Jude Julien helped launch New York City’s fully virtual high school four years ago, after more than two decades teaching in brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Julien was already comfortable with online learning before schools went remote during the pandemic. Besides teaching high school, he was an adjunct professor for the City University of New York, primarily for their virtual classes. So when the city’s Education Department tapped his principal at the Bronx High School for Writing and Communication Arts in 2022 to lead one of two new virtual high schools, Julien joined the effort.

The Virtual Innovators Academy (formerly known as A School Without Walls Virtual) is the city’s only all-virtual high school, and served more than 320 students last school year. (The city also opened a hybrid high school called A School Without Walls.)

“Every student brings different strengths, experiences, and obstacles into the classroom,” Julien said. “Whether I’m teaching in a traditional classroom, a virtual school, or mentoring other educators, my goal is the same: to help students see possibilities for themselves that they may not yet see and to give them the knowledge and confidence to pursue them.”

From his own experience, as the son of Haitian immigrants growing up in Brooklyn, attending public schools, and eventually studying chemical engineering at Columbia University before getting his Ph.D at Teacher College in science education, Julien believes that “learning isn’t one-size-fits-all.” His efforts to expand equitable access to STEM to diverse learners have won him much recognition: He has a Sloan Award for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics, was a Big Apple Award semi-finalist, and this year won Math for America’s prestigious Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education, which comes with $20,000 in prize money along with $5,000 to Julien’s school.

At the Virtual Innovators Academy, he enjoys watching his students grow from hesitant participants to confident learners engaging in scientific discussions.

“Those moments remind me that powerful teaching is less about the setting and more about creating opportunities for students to think deeply, collaborate, and recognize that their voices and ideas can make a difference,” Julien said.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I decided to teach about a year after I graduated from college. I studied chemical engineering but I wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to work in that field or if I should go to graduate school so my plan was to teach for a few years until I figured it out. I entered education through Teach for America and started teaching middle school math and science in the South Bronx.

I instantly enjoyed it and my experience and decided to continue teaching. I then started to work towards my Masters in Education and the rest has been history so to speak.

Tell us more about the Virtual Innovators Academy. What are some of the ways teaching there is different from your previous experience?

It serves students from all five boroughs whose needs and circumstances make a traditional setting a poor fit. Many of our students face social and personal challenges, so our work extends beyond delivering content. Some of our students have physical disabilities which make it difficult to access a physical site. Some students have underlying health conditions so the virtual option allows for more access. Some of our students have social and emotional challenges so they struggled in the larger school setting. Some of our students were initially homeschooled, and families wanted to access a more structured environment to deliver the content. Some of our students work and are caretakers, so the virtual option provides more flexibility. Some of our students simply preferred the virtual option and are comfortable learning online.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

One of my favorite lessons to teach is our project-based learning unit on climate change. Rather than simply learning about the science behind climate change, students investigate its causes and impacts and then work collaboratively to develop realistic, evidence-based solutions to a problem they identify. At the end of the unit, they present their proposals to the class, explaining the science behind their ideas and defending their recommendations with data.

What makes this project especially rewarding is that we do it entirely in a virtual environment. Students collaborate using shared digital workspaces, conduct research online, create multimedia presentations, and present their solutions live to their classmates. It demonstrates that meaningful, hands-on learning doesn’t require students to be in the same physical classroom. In fact, the technology often allows students to be even more creative in how they communicate their ideas.

I love this lesson because it transforms students from passive recipients of information into active problem-solvers. They see that science isn’t just about memorizing facts, it’s about using evidence, critical thinking, and creativity to address real-world challenges. The virtual format also helps students build important skills they’ll need beyond high school, including digital collaboration, communication, and presenting ideas in an online setting.

You’ve worked with incarcerated youth in the past? Do you still do that?

Yes. I volunteer as a math tutor with the Petey Greene Program, which partners with educational programs in correctional facilities and community organizations to expand educational opportunities for justice-impacted individuals.

Before the pandemic, I tutored at the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center in the Bronx, working with incarcerated men to strengthen their math skills and support their educational goals. When the pandemic changed how programs operated, my tutoring transitioned to a virtual format, where I worked with formerly incarcerated and justice-involved youth in the community.

That experience reinforced my belief that education can be a powerful pathway to opportunity and transformation. Regardless of a person’s background or circumstances, every student deserves access to high-quality instruction, encouragement, and someone who believes in their potential.

You’ve also long mentored other teachers. Why is that important to you?

I’ve been fortunate to have incredible mentors throughout my career. They challenged me, encouraged me, shared their expertise, and helped me become a better educator. I’ve always felt a responsibility to pay that forward.

Mentoring is also important because it ultimately benefits students. When teachers collaborate, share ideas, and learn from one another, everyone grows. Whether I’m working with new teachers, experienced colleagues, or fellow science educators through organizations like Math for America and the New York State Master Teacher Program, I enjoy helping others refine their practice while continuing to learn from them as well. Mentoring isn’t just about giving advice, it’s about building a professional community where we all become better educators together.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I attended New York City public schools, and they opened doors that changed the course of my life. As the son of Haitian immigrants growing up in Brooklyn, education represented opportunity. I was fortunate to have teachers who believed in me, challenged me, and encouraged me to pursue goals that sometimes felt beyond my reach. Their influence ultimately led me to study chemical engineering at Columbia University before finding my true calling in education.

Those experiences shape my work every day. I never assume that a student’s current circumstances define their potential. I’ve seen firsthand how a caring teacher, high expectations, and meaningful opportunities can change a young person’s trajectory. That’s why I strive to create a classroom where students feel supported, challenged, and capable of succeeding.

And finally, how do you plan to use the prize money from the Muller Award?

I’m planning to be practical with it. I’ll save a significant portion, pay down some bills, and invest in my financial future. At the same time, I also want to enjoy it a little. I love to travel, so I’d like to use part of the award to take a memorable trip, and maybe treat myself to a few things I normally wouldn’t.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NY officials propose mandatory science of reading update for teacher prep programs

2026-07-20T19:40:28+00:00

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New York officials want teacher preparation programs to revamp their instruction to align with the science of reading, a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read.

Under the proposed regulations, many teacher preparation programs — including those focused on early childhood education, bilingual education, English language learners, literacy, and students with disabilities — would be required to align their instruction with the state’s science of reading framework.

The framework emphasizes evidence-based approaches including phonics, the relationship between sounds and letters, as well as phonological awareness, oral language, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.

The proposal, introduced at a state Board of Regents meeting last week, comes as some advocates and experts have raised alarms that roughly half of the state’s teacher preparation programs are failing to properly train educators in reading instruction, significantly higher than the national average.

Prospective educators would also be expected to devote a portion of their “field experiences” and student teaching to providing evidence-based literacy instruction and assessing students with reading challenges. The proposed regulations require more explicit training on dyslexia, one of the most common learning disabilities, and officials said the proposal is consistent with recommendations from a state dyslexia and dysgraphia task force.

“The knowledge base that supports the science of reading is not new,” Board of Regents Chancellor Lester Young said during the meeting. “It is about ensuring that we’re using what we know about how children learn, grow, evolve, and making sure — by the regulation — that it exists in every teacher preparation program.”

If adopted, the proposal would represent one of the most concrete steps so far from state officials to require higher education programs to adopt stronger approaches to training educators to teach reading.

The proposed changes come as many students are struggling with reading. More than 40% of the state’s fourth graders scored at the lowest level in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often considered the gold standard in assessment. That was roughly 10 percentage points worse than in 2013. Reading proficiency on state exams has increased over the past few years, diverging from the federal test.

The proposal is an outgrowth of a multi-state effort New York joined in 2023 to reform teacher preparation programs organized by The Hunt Institute, a nonprofit affiliated with Duke University. Officials said the regulations are designed to ensure all teacher preparation programs are consistently teaching evidenced-based literacy practices. If adopted, many teacher prep programs would be required to comply by September 2028.

Some groups that have been critical of New York’s teacher prep programs said the proposed changes are promising.

“This would be a significant step forward for the state,” said Ron Noble, the chief of teacher prep at the National Council on Teacher Quality, which released the report last month that found half of the state’s teacher prep programs did not adequately teach reading.

Noble praised the idea of beefing up requirements for literacy-focused work in student teaching and other hands-on training experiences. “That is a great idea,” he said, “ one that I haven’t seen in lots of other states.”

Still, several observers and members of the Board of Regents wondered how the Education Department would enforce the requirements, especially because teacher prep programs are reviewed on a seven-year cycle. Some Regents worried the state wouldn’t catch flawed practices for the better part of a decade.

“How will we ensure accountability and follow through?” asked Regent Hasoni Pratts, who represents Brooklyn, during last week’s presentation. “We won’t know if they’re doing what they say they’re doing until we review in 2035, when I know many of us may not be here.”

State officials said they can already require corrective action if fewer than 80% of prospective teachers pass certain certification exams. If teacher prep programs don’t align their coursework with the science of reading, state officials will first provide technical assistance. They could eventually be denied “reregistration,” a state education spokesperson noted, which would prevent the program from recruiting new students, according to state rules.

State officials hope the Board of Regents will approve the new rules in November after a public comment period.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

A trip to Scotland with 75 teenagers: This Colorado theater teacher wants to make memories

2026-07-20T19:16:41+00:00

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In August, theater teacher Shawn Hann will accompany 75 Denver high school students to a massive theater festival in Scotland called the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. When they’re not putting on the musical Legally Blonde, Jr, they’ll be soaking in performances from around the world.

“I truly believe in curating experiences and life memories,” she said. “The Fringe is exactly that.”

Hann, who teaches sixth- through 12th-graders at the prestigious Denver School of the Arts, said the trip is such a big deal that students and their families start saving up four years in advance and school fundraisers start two years ahead.

Hann was recently named the 2026 Stephen Schwartz Musical Theatre Teacher of the Year by the Educational Theatre Foundation and the ASCAP Foundation, which promotes music education. The award is named for the Broadway veteran who wrote the music and lyrics for Wicked, Godspell, and Pippin, among others.

Hann talked to Chalkbeat about what she looks for when students audition for a spot at Denver School of the Arts, why she teaches the physical acting method of Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski, and how a student’s devoted mother inspired her.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

I remember the exact moment. I was finishing my freshman year at Cottey College, a small two-year women’s school in Missouri. I was looking at the University of Northern Iowa’s course book as I was deciding to transfer. I was thinking about all the general education courses I had taken that year: Which ones were easy, what did I enjoy? Theatre, speech, psychology. I flipped through that course book and landed on the Theatre/Communication Education major. I wanted to take every single course that was listed.

Tell us about a favorite lesson to teach.

Several years ago, I got to participate in a two-week course in New York City about the physical theatre methods of Jerzy Grotowski. Most high school acting approaches are based in the Stanislavski tradition of method acting, where students analyze the intellectual side of a character. You leave your own problems and desires outside the rehearsal room and immerse yourself mentally in the character’s life.

Not many high school students get to learn about Grotowski’s methods, but I teach a unit on them to my upperclassmen. I love how it makes students who approach theatre intellectually all of a sudden flip to approaching a character physically. The question we ask is, “What is your already?” Then, through a series of physical exercises, which remind many people of yoga, students explore where in their bodies certain emotions live. They are given permission to play like children, unjudged and uninhibited, to find true emotions in their own lives and then transfer those feelings into a character’s world.

When students audition for a spot at Denver School of the Arts, what do you look for?

Potential and positivity. We have students who audition who have Broadway credits, and we have students who have only done a historical “play” in fifth grade. I want to see a spark in a student who wants to learn as much as they can. I will always prefer a student who works hard and tries versus someone who feels they already know it all. And kindness. Kindness above all else.

You’ve brought students to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe several times. Tell us about it.

The Fringe festival is such a large undertaking I only do it once every four years so that all the students in the seven-year program get a shot at going during high school.

This summer, I am taking 65 acting majors and 10 stagecraft/design majors. We’ll be part of the American High School Theatre Festival alongside 30 other U.S. schools that were selected to participate.

The Fringe is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Students get to go to as many shows as they possibly can over two weeks and see world theatre: a dance show from Poland, a physical theatre troupe from France, comedy from Italy. British humor, Scottish humor, and food. They see how the United States is viewed internationally as well. This summer we have two alumni who traveled there with me in 2008, returning with their own original shows.

Tell us about a memorable time — good or bad — when contact with a student’s family changed your perspective or approach.

In my second year of teaching, I had a student who was somewhat shy. Her mom was the No. 1 volunteer and adamant about her daughter being in plays. Not being the star, just being a part of them.

As time went on I realized why: Her child had a health condition where she was only supposed to live to 14 and had to survive by plugging into an IV every night for nutrition. The mom was trying to build extraordinary memories as fast as she could since the clock was ticking.

I changed my approach by trying to truly know my students, their circumstances, and their families so I could help curate life memories no matter what. The way my student’s mom showed up for her daughter was beyond inspiring. She became a lifelong friend until she unexpectedly passed a year ago. Her daughter is now in her mid-40’s. I credit her mother for teaching her how to survive and manage so well.

What is a common misconception about your job as an educator?

That we get the summers off. I revise my curriculum for weeks every summer. I also take my students to a national theatre conference for a week. This summer, I took two weeks in June to direct the show that we are taking to the Fringe Festival, then will spend three days getting the show ready in July before taking 75 students to Scotland for two weeks in August. That is also unpaid. In fact, it will cost me money as I will spend my own money to go to shows with students as a chaperone. It is MY choice to do these trips, but it is because I believe in how it will shape my students’ lives.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I live 40 miles from my school; that equates to about two and a half hours a day commuting. So I listen to books on tape or TV shows in the car. I just finished re-”listening” to West Wing. So great.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Why digital tests are helping keep Chromebooks in classrooms

2026-07-16T20:40:07+00:00

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Even some educators skeptical of technology say they can’t go cold turkey on Chromebooks. Why? Because standardized testing is now widely done via computer.

“Third grade is the first year of testing, and we wouldn’t want that to be the first time kids are getting exposed to devices,” Los Angeles school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin told me recently, explaining why the district isn’t banning screens after first grade.

Similarly, Baltimore cut back on tech in early grades, but will continue to provide devices to third graders because of testing, the Banner reported earlier this year. A North Carolina superintendent also said the district must maintain some tech to prepare students for assessments. “But if I had the choice, I’d say bubble sheets please,” Stan Winborne, the superintendent of Granville County Public Schools, told the Wall Street Journal.

In other words, digital testing has had the unintended consequence of promoting tech-powered instruction. This raises a pointed question that more schools and policymakers may soon have to grapple with: Should the mode of testing be driving key instructional decisions?

Scott Marion, a psychometrician at the Center for Assessment, isn’t convinced that there should be a broad tech rollback. But he says it’s concerning when assessment alone is shaping pedagogy. “I don’t like when people do things just for testing purposes,” he says.

Standardized testing has become increasingly digitized over the last couple decades for the same reason many things have: convenience. Instead of massive sheaves of paper shipped to and from schools, tests can be done on devices, which are plentiful these days. Online tests were also promoted as a way to more precisely measure student learning since questions can adapt to student skill level.

A downside, though, is that internet outages and other tech glitches can derail testing, as recently occurred in New York and has repeatedly happened in Tennessee.

Meanwhile, in the last several months, a remarkable backlash to tech in schools has swept the country. Some local school leaders and teachers have cut back on screen time. They’ve been able to move so quickly because there are few school tech mandates — except through testing. The federal government requires math and reading tests in grades three through eight; the format of those tests is set by states. Local leaders don’t control this.

Some research shows online testing can affect how well students perform. “There is a learning curve” to digital testing, says Marion, although he suspects that these days it’s not that steep.

Jared Cooney Horvath — a researcher, consultant, and ed-tech critic — argues that brief practice with online assessment is enough to prepare students. “Just because digital testing is the new norm, it does not follow that schooling needs to be redesigned around this format,” he wrote recently on his blog.

It’s an open question how much tech familiarity students need for such tests, especially in early grades. Regardless, perception appears to be holding some districts back from bigger tech reductions. “We want to limit screen time,” one Texas superintendent told a local news outlet. “We also know that we have to give students the opportunity to learn the skill of using technology, so that they can use it to demonstrate learning.”

States may also have an incentive to keep tech in their classrooms if officials think it can help boost scores on online tests. Although the federal NAEP exams don’t have formal stakes attached, state leaders are eager to use scores to claim success of their policies. In 2018, after NAEP tests went digital, Louisiana’s state chief complained that students there might have seen scores drop because they were unfamiliar with computers. (NAEP officials said then this was carefully accounted for.)

Could states go back to paper-and-pencil tests if they wanted? Sure, though it would add logistical challenges and perhaps costs. Whether it’s worth it depends on what you think of general tech use in the classroom. The evidence at this point is ambiguous and in the eye of the beholder.

But with the ed-tech backlash showing no signs of slowing down, digital testing could become the next target.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Test scores have plunged, but voters aren’t making schools a top political issue

2026-07-14T20:44:41+00:00

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While running for governor of California, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan was eager to talk about the challenges in the state’s public schools. He even compared California unfavorably to Louisiana and Mississippi, which have recently made gains on national exams. “With all of our progressivism, all of our resources, we are failing far too many of our kids,” Mahan said at one point. Few other candidates prioritized education during the campaign.

But Mahan’s pitch didn’t seem to resonate much with California voters. He received less than 4% of the vote in last month’s primary.

Many factors go into election results, but the limited traction Mahan received is a neat encapsulation of a broader phenomenon. The unprecedented recent declines in American students’ test scores have barely registered politically.

“Most voters don’t really care very much,” says Vladimir Kogan, a political scientist at Ohio State University. Perhaps that’s why most politicians aren’t prioritizing the issue, at least during political campaigns.

A recent Gallup poll found that just 2% of Americans ranked education as the country’s most pressing challenge. While most people say they’re dissatisfied with the country’s public schools, a strong majority of parents are reasonably happy with their own child’s school.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, has sought to make education a bigger political issue by arguing that his own party has not done enough to improve schools. This pitch has drawn a great deal of attention from journalists, including me, but so far has not drawn much interest from regular voters. In a potential presidential primary, Emanuel is polling between 0%-2%.

In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet campaigned to be an “education governor.” The former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Bennet presided over notable gains in student outcomes there. Tellingly, though, the campaign did not focus on education, and Bennet was upset in the primary by Attorney General Phil Weiser.

In Iowa, Democratic candidate for governor Rob Sand has successfully put education at the center of the race by offering a sharp critique of taxpayer funding for private schools. In a recent interview with me, he was less specific on how he would improve public schooling. Despite being a Democrat in a red state, Sand has led in a number of early polls.

In general, most nationally prominent Democrats don’t appear eager to talk about the state of learning in U.S. schools. Yet voters don’t seem to mind. The party has held a clear edge on education in most polling for the last few years, including several recent surveys.

On the other hand, President Donald Trump has been happy to talk about perceived failings of the country’s public schools, including falling test scores. Still, the energizing focus of Trump’s campaign and now presidency has not been to raise achievement but to limit DEI and close the Education Department. (Officials suggest this will help improve schools, but haven’t spelled out how moving the same programs to different federal agencies would do so.)

Unlike policy wonks, Americans may not be all that focused on test scores. In one poll, parents ranked test scores as the least important measure among several for judging their children’s success in school. In school board elections, researchers have found that voters don’t seem to weigh tests heavily when deciding whether to reelect incumbents.

In 2024, Massachusetts held a referendum on whether to allow students to graduate high school without passing a standardized test. Critics across the political spectrum argued this would exacerbate the achievement issues facing the state, yet voters still backed the measure overwhelmingly.

Americans’ seeming nonchalance has come despite the substantial media attention to the country’s achievement woes. Some news stories even offer a clear nudge to voters and politicians that they should care more. “What happened to learning as a national priority?” pointedly asked a New York Times essay last year.

There has also been no shortage of policy advocates, nonprofit executives, and educational researchers clamoring to make this a bigger issue.

Here at Chalkbeat we’ve published dozens of pieces on the state of learning. I’ve been writing about the potential and the reality of learning loss since March 2020. There’s a reason for this focus: Test scores aren’t perfect measures, but they tell us something meaningful about how well American students are learning basic skills.

To be clear, politicians have not been entirely indifferent to the learning challenges. Some governors and legislators have made a number of moves designed to bolster achievement. In particular, they’ve banned cellphones in school and promoted the science of reading, often on a bipartisan basis.

But it’s certainly true that the quality of American education is no longer the center of national political debates in the way it once was. The 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” turned school performance into a national issue for the next few decades. In 2000, voters ranked education as the number one issue in some polls. Nearly one third of all presidential ads that cycle were about education, according to a recent study.

By contrast, a quarter century later, “federal education politics is now increasingly detached from the widely recognized challenge that helped sustain bipartisan action: improving student outcomes,” wrote political scientists in the study. They find that both parties’ platforms have in recent years steered away from a focus on standards and accountability, which were once staples.

What’s changed? Political polarization may have given politicians less of an incentive to appeal to moderate voters, which a commitment to education reform once served to do. Media fragmentation and distrust might have limited the influence of alarming news stories describing learning declines. Grade inflation could have reduced parents’ demand for reform. Perhaps other pressing issues have simply overtaken education.

There may also be a chicken and the egg issue. If more politicians were talking about learning, maybe more voters would care. Or perhaps those who have talked about it have failed to offer solutions that most voters find compelling.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Anthropic unveils Claude for Teachers, joining OpenAI and Google in race to dominate classroom AI

2026-07-14T15:00:00+00:00

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Anthropic, one of the world’s most prominent artificial intelligence companies, is launching a version of its AI-powered assistant Claude for teachers, entering a race by technology companies to infuse AI into education.

Anthropic boasts that its product can incorporate academic standards from all 50 states, and teachers can use it to help devise lesson plans, personalize instructional materials to students, and harness data to improve instruction, according to a company news release.

Claude for Teachers joins Google, OpenAI, and Khan Academy — among others — in marketing AI products specifically to K-12 educators. The new product launched Tuesday and is available for free for verified educators in the U.S. It will also be piloted in Detroit Public Schools Community District for a study on educator well-being and practice.

Claude’s formal arrival into the classroom comes during a complicated moment at the intersection of technology and education. The American Federation of Teachers, the Trump administration, and Bill Gates have all encouraged educators to adopt AI. But a parent-led uprising against technology’s classroom presence is simultaneously gaining momentum, prompting some of the nation’s largest school districts to rethink how much time students spend in front of screens, as well as the contracts they’ve signed with huge players in ed tech.

Drew Bent, education lead for Anthropic, said that teachers using Claude’s educator product could, for example, pull in a student’s past assessment data and assignment data, along with past lesson plans, and ask Claude to build lesson plans for individual students based on that data — all while they’re sleeping.

In developing Claude for Teachers, Bent said Anthropic staff often heard that while teachers are already using AI to generate lesson plans, the plans generated were often detached from the content teachers actually needed to address. Anthropic’s tool will help teachers save time and toil less to improve student outcomes, he said.

“There’s a lot of evidence of what works well for teachers in terms of aligning with high-quality instructional materials, formative assessments, differentiated instruction,” he said. “But of course, if you have 30 students in your class, you’re not able to do all of that.”

Bent said Detroit was already using other Claude products, and in a “human-centric” way that impressed Anthropic, leading to the pilot program in the district that will start next school year. Anthropic will train teachers at a handful of schools in Claude for Teachers, and evaluate how the product may shape teaching practices in the district.

While AI companies have been eager to cement the technology’s status as a classroom staple, tech giants likely have a long way to go to quiet skeptics. Student-facing AI has raised questions about cheating and so-called cognitive offloading, a reference to the reliance on AI to complete tasks instead of using critical thinking skills.

Bent emphasized that Anthropic is focusing largely on teachers, and that most K-12 students can’t access the company’s Claude assistant, due to an age restriction for anyone under 18.

Daniel Buck, a research fellow at the right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute, argued in a March blog post that if teachers outsource work to AI, “don’t be surprised when classroom community and academic outcomes rapidly deteriorate.”

Skeptics have also raised questions about student privacy in using AI, such as the risks they run when entering personal information into large language models such as Claude.

Anthropic is working with the American Federation for Teachers on aligning the product’s privacy practices with what the labor union has said will become a “gold standard” in best practices around safety, according to the news release.

Among the privacy features in Claude for Teachers: It won’t use conversations between the AI assistant and teacher accounts to train its AI, student information will be protected in a manner built to comply with the federal law governing student privacy, and privacy terms of service are written without jargon so teachers can understand what they’re signing up to use.

“It’s important that Anthropic is committing to these principles in their new Claude for Teachers — a tool designed by and for educators to assist them instructionally and hopefully give them more time for the human relationships at the heart of learning,” wrote AFT President Randi Weingarten in the company’s press release.

Weingarten has been walking a tightrope when it comes to AI. She’s called for a complete ban on student-facing AI in elementary grades while promoting teacher training in the technology. Just a day before calling for the ban, she toured a Newark school to witness Khanmigo, an AI chatbot from Khan Academy, in action.

While AFT is working with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic on privacy standards and AI training for educators, it is notably not working with Google, which has also developed its own AI training geared to teachers.

Utah’s state education board recently made a deal with the tech giant to bring Google’s AI, Gemini, to every K-12 school in the state, promising personalized instruction tools for educators.

It’s not yet clear whether one AI product reigns supreme in schools, but more teachers overall are using AI. Around 61% of teachers surveyed by Education Week reported in 2025 that they use the technology in some capacity, compared with 32% in 2024.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers in Michigan school district can pick from 32 phrases or face legal review over classroom posters

2026-07-08T16:04:07+00:00

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Teachers in Michigan’s Romeo Community Schools have 32 motivational phrases they’ll be able to display in their classrooms next school year.

And if they want to display another motivational phrase? It could take four layers of review, including sign-off from legal counsel.

The approved messages are inoffensive: “Everyone is welcome.” “Be Yourself.” “We value all voices.” But a few phrases missing from the list, like “Hate has no home here” or “All are welcome here,” have become synonymous with LGBTQ acceptance — along with lawsuits and disputes in school board meetings across America.

Teachers and parents in Romeo Community Schools, about 40 miles north of Detroit, said the approved phrases themselves aren’t what they find offensive. But they said the list grew out of what they describe as an effort by the school board to root out signs and symbols associated with LGBTQ pride, and a policy the school board passed last year banning displays of political ideology.

That a “Hang In There, Baby” poster or a sign with an Albert Einstein quote could be subjected to legal review before making it onto a classroom wall might just be a sign of the times. The dispute in Romeo reflects a broader fight ensuing over what belongs in America’s classrooms, with school districts and states exerting more control over what’s plastered on classroom walls, what’s said in the classroom, and what books students read.

“A picture is worth 1,000 words,” said one Romeo teacher, who like other teachers spoke to Chalkbeat on the condition of anonymity due to fears about losing their jobs. She said the board is unsettled by “the depiction of your multicultural learner, your LGBTQ (students) — that they’re still not okay with, and that’s a problem.”

A growing number of state policymakers have proposed and enacted bans on LGBTQ topics in classrooms since 2021, according to a PEN America analysis. But a few lawsuits in federal court are testing those limits by challenging the removal of posters featuring rainbow colors or the phrase “Hate has no home here.” In one Ohio case, for example, a teacher sued his district after it ordered the removal of a rainbow poster from his classroom.

Romeo Schools officials have argued their policy is intended to remove symbolism and displays that aren’t aligned with district curriculum, and to create consistency between classrooms.

Legal experts told Chalkbeat that school districts are within their rights to nix classroom displays and even LGBTQ Pride flags, although Romeo’s policy could represent a relatively prescriptive approach.

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor with the South Texas College of Law, said as long as districts are applying a fair and equal standard when they create these limits, teachers don’t have much free speech to exercise within the classroom.

“I think the school has pretty broad control over what is said in the classroom,” he said.

Romeo Community Schools cracks down on classroom displays

The Romeo school district’s human resources department sent teachers a memo June 8, two days before the last day of the school year, listing 32 approved phrases for classroom signs and displays on district-provided materials.

The memo was the result of an effort to regulate “the display of ideological and political symbols,” spokeswoman MaryAnne Brush wrote in an emailed statement to Chalkbeat.

Romeo Community Schools in Michigan approved these 32 phrases for classroom displays as part of a policy forbidding any signs considered political.

It came after the school board for the district, which educates about 5,400 students, passed a policy in April 2025 banning “political and ideological symbols” in materials displayed by teachers, unless directly related to curriculum. The policy was passed almost unanimously — only one board member opposed it — with little commentary by the board, even after a public commenter asked members to clarify what would be considered forbidden under the policy.

Several Romeo teachers told Chalkbeat that after the board adopted the policy, administrators instructed teachers to remove certain displays. They said Pride flags and signs with rainbow colors were singled out for removal.

One teacher said patriotic slogans, posters featuring President Donald Trump, and “thin blue line” messages supporting law enforcement remained in the classroom.

“I really feel especially for our marginalized communities, our LGBTQ kids, who already feel a bit like they’re in the minority,” said another teacher. “They are seeing something about them that is being erased.”

In response to questions about alleged disparate treatment of classroom posters, Brush wrote that specific building administrators weren’t available to answer questions about those messages.

She added that the district stood by the policy “as a joint effort to keep non-curricular ideologies and partisan politics out of the classroom.”

Romeo Community Schools' policy on political and ideological symbols lays out a four-step review process for any slogans or symbols that are not on the pre-approved list.

Some experts said it seemed unusual for a district to limit classroom displays as narrowly as Romeo did.

Emily Gold Waldman, a Pace University law professor who has written about free speech in schools, said she hasn’t seen another example of a district limiting displays like Romeo. But in general, she said, the policy is an example of attempts by districts across the country to try to ward off discussions of controversial topics.

That might be a good idea, said Samuel Abrams, a senior fellow with the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That’s because teachers aren’t just raising LGBTQ issues in classrooms, he said, but also sharing strongly-held opinions about political topics including the Israel-Hamas war. Those views aren’t appropriate to share with students, according to Abrams.

“Teachers are not supposed to be activists in the classroom in any direction,” he said. “We’re supposed to be educators and lift up everyone across the board.”

Brad Wenz, president of the district’s labor union, told Chalkbeat that the union filed a grievance last fall over how the signs policy would be implemented. The district’s pre-approved statements and review process are the resolution to the union’s grievance, he wrote.

But there’s something lost in the impulse to scrub the American classroom of symbols representing different identities, said John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Districts feel somewhat caught and want to avoid being at the center of national media, but at the same time I think it’s very important for district leadership to give educators the space to communicate in meaningful and authentic ways with their students,” he said.

Christy Seitz believes Romeo’s policy is a mistake. A politically active parent with two children in Romeo schools, Seitz said she’s seen conservative board members attack imagery that would represent LGBTQ students, including Pride flags.

Back when she was a fourth grader in the district in 1996, Seitz recalled that there was a poster with a rainbow declaring that “Kindness matters” in her classroom, and that such sentiments have been an important part of the community’s ethos.

“That has always been a part of Romeo’s messaging,” she said, “that we are a community and everybody here belongs, and now it feels like if you don’t fall in line to this messaging … then you don’t belong here.”

Legal battles over classroom posters brewing

A few fights over classroom displays are winding through federal court.

Earlier this year, Idaho teacher Sarah Inama sued the state and her school district over a state law prohibiting “flags or banners that represent political, religious, or ideological views, including but not limited to political parties, race, gender, sexual orientation, or political ideologies” in public schools.

Inama resigned and drew national attention after refusing to take down a poster reading “Everyone is welcome here” and featuring drawings of hands of different skin tones. Her lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Idaho.

In April, Ohio high school social studies teacher George McIntyre sued his school district after the Little Miami school board voted 4-1 to force him to take down a “Hate has no home here” poster featuring the American flag, transgender flag, and Pride flag colors.

An Ohio teacher is suing the Little Miami School District in federal court after he claims the district removed a "Hate has no home here" poster from his classroom. This screen grab from federal court records shows the poster as it appeared in his classroom.

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio alleges the decision violated McIntyre’s free speech rights. McIntyre’s lawsuit also argues that by displaying the poster — alongside family photos and posters featuring Batman, Rosie the Riveter, and the film “A Christmas Story” — he sought to represent his students’ identities proudly.

Board members said they objected not to the message itself but to the rainbow and transgender flag colors.

One of the board members, Diane Horvath, argued that the diversity of public education means everyone needs to “veil certain parts” of their identities to come together in classrooms.

“If you could just have the message without bringing in certain aspects and certain values that not everyone else has, that it would be more acceptable,” Horvath said during a February meeting where the board deliberated over the poster.

In an email included in the lawsuit, a district attorney suggested McIntyre search for a “more neutral” version of the poster. McIntyre rejected that suggestion.

“My concern is that attempting to find a different, ‘neutral’ image may inadvertently lead to the erasure of LGBTQ+ representation,” he wrote in his response to the attorney.

McIntyre suggested finding ways to represent additional groups, rather than subtract.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

P.S. Weekly live: Student reporters reflect on covering NYC Schools

2026-07-01T15:00:00+00:00

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It’s a wrap on P.S. Weekly’s third season, and to cap it off, we have a special live-recorded episode from Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch.

This season, P.S. Weekly student reporters investigated some of the biggest issues shaping New York City schools, from school mergers to sports access, teacher diversity to equity in admissions, and more. In this episode, the students behind those stories take the mic to reflect on what they learned, what surprised them, and how their reporting affected their own schools and communities.

Hosted by assistant producers Zana Halili and Katelyn Melville, the conversation features P.S. Weekly reporters Jeremiah Dickerson, Rayleen Laloi, Jasper Mallorca, Zoe George, Ermione Aleah Raymond, Mateo Tang-O’Reilly, and Noa Salas Adam, with reflections from Roberto Bailey.

Together, they discuss what it means to report on schools they know personally, how young journalists can push adults to listen more closely, and why student voices belong at the center of conversations about education.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. It’s available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Reach us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. New episodes drop on Thursdays.

P.S. Weekly is made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.

Transcript

P.S. Weekly Live Episode

Maria: Hi, P.S. Weekly listeners. My name is Maria Robins-Sommerville, and this season, I had the delight of serving as the senior producer for P.S. Weekly I helped our student producers take their ideas from topic to story, to set up their interviews, and transform the issues they cared about into episodes for all of you.

Maria: The students did an amazing job this season, and I am so proud of them. So if you haven’t listened to all of our episodes yet, I highly encourage you to go back and check them out. Recently, we celebrated their work with a live recorded episode of P.S. Weekly at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch.

Maria: The event featured a student-led conversation about pressing issues in the New York City school system, and highlighted original reporting from the high school student journalists behind the P.S. Weekly podcast. It was a chance to listen to our students reflect on their own experiences and share the impact their reporting has had on their own schools and communities.

Maria: So in this episode, we’re bringing you inside P.S. Weekly Live. We hope you enjoy.

Sabrina: Good evening, everyone. Um, thank you so much for being here tonight for P.S. Weekly Live. My name is Sabrina DuQuesnay, and I am the student program manager here at The Bell. So before we get into it tonight, did anybody watch the game last night?

Sabrina: Yeah. Guys, guys,

Sabrina: My word, my blood pressure was through the roof.

Sabrina: I feel like we were down 29, right? And at that point, I’m not gonna lie, I, I was ready to throw in the towel, right? And then Brunson, Brunson came in. Brunson threw it up. And then, like, it was about to miss, but you know what? OG Anunoby swooP.S. in. Knicks won by a point.

Sabrina: The crowd went wild, and it was a great game. It was legendary. And tonight is our finals game, right? Tonight is our championship. Um, and no sports involved, but we are so excited to show you guys what we got planned. So, um, for those of you who are new to our work, The Bell is a nonprofit organization that is building the next generation of journalists and civic leaders.

Sabrina: And we do that through our audio journalism internship programs for New York City public high school students, and through the Youth Journalism Coalition, which brings together students, educators, journalists, and advocates working to expand access to journalism education across the city. And we’re so excited to be here tonight celebrating the work of our P.S. Weekly student reporters.

Sabrina: Tonight is a chance to hear directly from them about their standout reporting and the impact of their work.

Sabrina: And now, I’m gonna pass the mic to our amazing emcees for the evening, Zana and Kaitlyn. Please come up.

Zana: All right. Can y’all hear me? Yes. Amazing. Hello, everyone. My name is Zana. I am currently a senior at NYU, but I’m a proud graduate of Baruch College Campus High School

Katelyn: And I’m Katelyn. I am a rising sophomore at the City College of New York and a proud alum of the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts

Zana: And we were the assistant producers for this season of P.S. Weekly.

Katelyn: All right, guys. So we wanna get to know the audience a little bit, okay? So I’m hoping we have all five boroughs in here, but don’t worry, we’re gonna find out. So if you guys hear your borough, I want you guys to cheer, okay? Okay. All right, let’s start with Manhattan.

Katelyn: All right, all right. Okay, okay. How about the Bronx? All right,

Katelyn: Okay. Okay. All right. Staten Island?

Katelyn: Okay, okay, okay. Brooklyn?

Katelyn: And I’m biased because, you know, it’s where I’m from. We got any Queens in here? There we go. There we go. All right. All right.

Zana: Right. So glad to get to know all of you. But now it’s time for you guys to get to know us a little bit better. So Kaitlyn, how did you get involved with The Bell?

Katelyn: So it was the summer of my junior year, and I started the Summer Youth Podcast Academy.

Katelyn: And after that, it’s been a long journey, and I’m still here. So I did Miseducation, and then I did P.S. Weekly last spring. I reported on teacher turnover, chronic absenteeism, all sorts of things. What about you, Zara?

Zana: Yeah, so I got started with The Bell also in the Summer Youth Podcast Academy the summer before my senior year of high school, which was all the way back in 2022.

Zana: I know, I’m chopped, I’m unk, it’s okay. Um, my episode was about Citibikes.

Zana: Um, and then the summer after I was an assistant on the next cohort of SYPA, and obviously now I’ve been back assistant producing. Um, so we’ve been student journalists. We’ve been mentors for the student journalists. So what has been your favorite part of working with P.S. Weekly, and what’s been the most unique part about it for you?

Katelyn: I think my most favorite part about P.S. Weekly, the program as a whole, is that it gives students the opportunity to be a part of every single process in the journalism industry. You know, we’ve had students who’ve done audio engineering, um, writing, reporting, interviewing. Like, these students, who you guys are gonna hear from, they’ve done it all.

Katelyn: They’ve ... Like, I will not be surprised if we have some future podcast producers, audio engineers, journalists. Like, we got everything here. So that’s me. But what about you, Zana?

Zana: Yeah, I’ve just ... It’s so inspiring getting to work with these students, not to play as you guys too much. But, like, they really are so much more passionate and of the things going on around them than I was when I was their age.

Zana: And getting to be a part of that process and helping them report on the stories that they are passionate about, it’s just ... It’s been very fun, and it’s been very rewarding for me. Yeah.

Katelyn: All right, guys. So now we’re gonna have a little overview of the evening. So here. All right. So first off, we’re gonna have Zana hosting a conversation with half of our student reporters, and then we’re gonna pause for a little trivia.

Katelyn: Then I’ll lead a panel with the other half of our student reporters. Then we’ll have more trivia, and then we’ll open the floor to audience shout-outs, and then our own Q&A. So you guys should see index cards and pens nearby. I want you guys to use those index cards to write down shout-outs for our student reporters, and we’ll get to share them at the end of the session.

Katelyn: Um, after the program, I hope you’ll join us for the reception in the lobby with some light refreshments. It’ll be a chance to congratulate the students, connect with one another, and learn more about The Bell’s work. And if you wanna stay connected, check out the postcard. Please sign up for our newsletter, follow up, share our work, and help us continue creating opportunities for New York City students to tell stories that matter to them. All right. Over to you, Zana.

Zana: All right. Amazing. I’m gonna ask our first four student reporters to come to the stage: Jeremiah, Rayleen, Jasper, and Zoe.

Zana: All right. So before we get into the nitty-gritty of your episodes, I’d love for all of you to just first introduce yourselves. So please state your name, your school, your grade, and as a fun icebreaker, your bodega order. You can learn a lot about a person from their bodega order.

Jeremiah: Okay, so I’ll start. Hi. Hi, everyone. Um, my name is Jeremiah Dickerson. I’m a senior attending Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn, and my favorite bodega order is, like, cream cheese bacon. It’s very affordable. It hits the spot. It keeps you fulfilled. And yeah, that’s my favorite bodega order. I’m super happy to be here today.

Rayleen: Hello, my name is Rayleen Laloi. I go to the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts, and my bodega order, I’d say honey turkey on a roll, lettuce, cheese, yeah.

Jasper: I’m Jasper Mallorca. I go to the High School of Art and Design. My bodega order is probably something simple like chopped cheese, you know.

Zoe: Um, my name is Zoe George. I go to Bard High School Early College Manhattan. I’m a senior, and my bodega order is a chicken cutlet on a roll, um, lettuce, ketchup, cheese.

Zana: Now I’m hungry. Okay. Um, so before we dig a bit deeper into the reporting, I do just wanna say as a little note, please refrain from applause for the duration of the panel. We’ll have a moment at the end for you all to applaud all of them, but just to keep things moving along. If you wanna, like, give a little snap or something when you hear something that you really love, go for it.

Zana: But just generally, please keep the applause to the end. Thank you. Um, so let’s start off with Jeremiah over here. Hey. Um, your episode sheds light on Success Academy, which is the largest charter network in the city, and was a school that you had previously attended. Um, and for your episode, you talked to your friend Sasha, who was also a fellow student, fellow former student at Success.

Zana: So let’s hear a little clip from that episode.

Jeremiah (Clip): And even though Sasha and I both left Success Academy and are happier in our new school, Sasha felt conflicted like me.

Sasha: In certain aspects, I’m grateful for, like, how they’ve made me who I am as a person, but sometimes I be taking a step back and I’m like, “Oof. Babe, that, that, ooh, I’m, I’m a little damaged,” like, um, like sometimes I would talk to my parents and, like, obviously every conversation with your parents, it’s not gonna be a great one, so you know, we’re dis- we had a disagreement, and I kinda just shut down.

Sasha: Like, I stopped talking. I was just looking at them, and it was like, “You’re not gonna say anything?” ‘Cause obviously, like, you know how we’re talking right now. I’m a very verbal person. If something’s wrong with me, I’m gonna tell you. So I’m just sitting there, and I’m just, like, not saying anything, and they’re like, “Are you okay?”

Sasha: Like, “You’re not gonna say anything? You don’t agree, disagree?” I’m just like, “I don’t know. That’s...” And I was just shutting down. And looking back on it, it definitely is like I, I had to deal with that from Success. When you got in trouble at Success or you’re trying to talk to a teacher to change a grade or why you were late to class, it’s never a conversation.

Sasha: It’s a monologue. They’re talking at you. They’re not talking with you. So I feel like that aspect of it, it definitely affected me. I feel like there’s obviously certain aspects of Success Academy where their intensity of certain things, it helps, but also it definitely did take away from my childhood and actually, like, becoming my own person naturally.

Zana: Tough to hear.

Zana: Um, obviously Success Academy has a very large presence in our city. People have very strong opinions about them, whether they are pro or against. And I know as a former student, you definitely had your own, um, strong opinions on the network, so-

Jeremiah: Absolutely.

Zana: Yeah. Um, what did you learn from speaking in depth with someone who had their own success story that was maybe a little different to your own?

Jeremiah: Um, I felt like I didn’t just learn from it, I also felt like it was very inspiring to me, because for a long time as a prior Success Academy student, I felt like kind of like ashamed of my past at Success Academy because even though Success Academy is popular in the education world, it’s not really the same when you’re speaking to your peers.

Jeremiah: Like, when you speak to your peers like, “Hey, I went to Success Academy,” it’s kind of like you’re coming from a horror story, you know? So, um, I kind of learned that my experience at Success isn’t just like something that I experienced alone, that other people, regardless of what campus they’ve gone to, have experienced similar things to me.

Jeremiah: And it also like allowed me to feel more comfortable speaking to my friends about it openly, because it’s something that other people have went through besides myself.

Zana: Yeah. And so what has the response been towards your episode?

Jeremiah: The response I can say has been like very interactive, like especially with the Chalkbeat post. There’s so much debates. Like, I feel like that’s the most inspiring thing, because I feel like especially as a journalist, your job is to get the news to people, and then also for people to make decisions about the news that you’re giving them. So like just seeing people have debates about, “Hey, like I’m a Success parent. I didn’t quite have this experience, but you know, this person did, this person didn’t,” I feel like it’s just like it’s reached a broader audience that really allowed them to think more deeper about their children’s connection as long- along with their own as well. But also I’ll say as Success Academy is expanding in Florida, it’s also served as a basis for people to really like taste what Success Academy can be like for students.

Jeremiah: So it hasn’t been something groundbreaking, but it’s also helping on that front as well outside of the city.

Zana: Yeah, it’s definitely more relevant than it has been in a really long time. Yeah. Yeah. Um, amazing. So now we’re gonna move over onto Rayleen.

Zana: Now, your episode talked about school mergers and your own experience with mergers when your school, the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts, merged with the School of Human Rights.

Zana: And you talked to Osei Alfred, a student who had attended the School of, um, Human Rights before it became a part of BILA. So let’s hear a clip from that episode.

Rayleen (clip): What do you think was lost in the merging of SHR and BILA?

Osei: Honestly, that feeling of like, oh, this is my family. That feeling’s gone. I feel like a lot of teachers do try, especially now, to kind of be a lot more human or show that they are kind of a lot more human. But a lot of kids don’t really see it as that. Like, even if you were a quiet student back in SHR, you would still feel like family ‘cause, like, I knew a kid there. They said, like maybe what? Six words the entire semester, and I knew more about them than I know about half the students in BILA. Like, they said about six words, but Ms. Babb and the rest of the teachers, I can’t remember their name for the life of me for some reason, but they all made sure to interact with that student.

Osei: I know I’ve seen it. They all made sure to interact. “Good morning. How are you? How’s your mom?” You know, stuff like that. I don’t see that at BILA. I don’t see, “Hey, how’s your family?” But I always got asked, “How is your mom doing? How’s your sister doing?” at SHR.

Zana: Yeah. So our current schools chancellor, Samuels, has been a strong supporter of school mergers, and he has been for a very long time. And you actually had the opportunity to interview him earlier this semester on the topic, and he emphasized that importance of minimizing the feeling of loss when schools are merged.

Zana: And obviously, you asked Osei in this clip about what he felt like was lost from SHR, but I wanna throw that question back to you. Do you feel like BILA lost anything when SHR merged with them? And how have students adapted to this change?

Rayleen: Personally, for me, I don’t feel like I lost much in the merging of BILA. Honestly, I feel like I gained more in a way. I feel like when SHR and BILA merged, at first, honestly my whole sophomore year, I barely got to know any SHR students, so it never felt like we were really combined, or it never really felt like we merged.

Rayleen: But now that I’m in my junior year and I’ve gotten to know more of them, they’re in my classes and things like that, I feel like BILA has shifted away from some of its strictness and has tried to incorporate more of the culture and just tried to incorporate more liveliness into the school that wasn’t there before SHR.

Zana: Yeah. And so how has your school rep- responded to the episode? I heard there was some ninth and 10th graders that might have learned something by listening to your episode.

Rayleen: Yeah, so in my school they’re doing some lessons on podcasting in ninth grade. My teacher, my 10th, my ninth grade teacher, Ms. Nahar, they’re doing a podcasting unit and she played my episode for them. Yeah. Oh. And my 10th grade teacher, Ms. Hudson, she also played my episode for them, and they were confused about SHR because they weren’t there for the merging of SHR and BILA, so they were like, “What’s SHR? What happened? What is the situation that we’re talking about?” So I thought that was interesting because I never really saw it that way as like, “Oh, I’m keeping track of, like, history.”

Rayleen: But I think it’s interesting how I’m just giving them a perspective on something they didn’t even know happened.

Zana: Yeah, it’s almost like you’re keeping SHR alive somehow- Yeah ... through your episode, and that’s exactly what we’re all setting out to do, isn’t it? Um, awesome. Okay, so moving on down to Jasper.

Zana: Uh, your episode talked about the Public Schools Athletic League, which coordinates sports for public schools in the city. Your episode specifically focused on the Access program, which allows students at schools that lack sports teams to play for teams at nearby schools. Um, both you and your interviewee, Noa Moore, who is also a senior at Art and Design, have played on teams for other schools, and you talked about your experiences, so let’s hear a clip.

Jasper (clip): I have fun doing my sport, but like that-- I also wanna like have fun with the, the team. Like- Yeah ... how important do you think it is to like be able to go to practice and be like smiling to see everyone? You know what I mean? ‘Cause don’t you think that makes the sport more fun too? It definitely makes the sport more fun, and especially if you’re-- if everybody’s having fun, it unites people.

Noah: So then you start building those bonds ‘cause you’re sitting there, you’re smiling, you’re laughing with other people, you’re joking with other people, and you really start to form a bond between teammates. ‘Cause once the fun aspect is gone, you really don’t wanna be there anymore. And so then you stop trying ‘cause you’re just like, “I wanna get through practice to go home.”

Zana: So your episode focused a lot on Noah and his experience playing sports at other schools, but I wanna hear a little bit more about your experience as a student athlete, both at Art and Design and at the other school that you played for. So why is having access to sports important to you?

Jasper: I think it’s, like, important just, like, with anything. Like, the idea of having more opportunities for students because, like, when you’re a teen you just wanna try out a lot of things. So I know a lot of kids that wanted to do cross country and, like, they- they’re just getting into it now, and I’m telling them, like, “Maybe you could’ve joined the team.”

Jasper: And they’re like, “Oh, I, I never even, like, knew I could do it.” So it’s kinda just that thing, like, you could really explore new things, like, during your teenage years only if you really have access to it. So with, like, the All Access program, like, for me at least, like, I mean, I... It was kind of the same sport I’d been playing.

Jasper: But there’s a lot of people that at least I know and, like, a lot of teens are just adventurous and, like, they wanna, like, do new things. So, like, if they know about these programs, like, they would do them, and they could just get better at sports and things like that, so.

Zana: Yeah. And I know you and Noa are both very grateful for the program to have access to the sports that you didn’t previously have. But what changes would you like to see within the program or within the PSAL in general?

Jasper: I mean, definitely just, like, promotion because I feel like if they promote this All Access program more, or the Access program, you can get more people from the same school that can come, and, and it wouldn’t feel like you’re going to a new school and having to, like, meet new people and all that stuff.

Jasper: Which, I mean, for me, like, it was kind of fun at first ‘cause it’s like a new, like, a whole new world and stuff. But, like, it’s also fun to have, like, that personal connection to your school. Like, like, if I was running for Art and Design it would probably be better ‘cause, like, I have that personal connection to my school and I’m, like, trying to, like, run the best for all the people there.

Jasper: So if there’s, like, more promotion, like, you know, more people would kinda be, like, on each other’s side. And that’s not to say, like, like, no one’s on each other’s side if you’re going to a new school, but there’s a lot more of a... You see it, like, when you’re going to a new school, like, all of them are running for, like, for me, they’re all running for Lab.

Jasper: And, like, if, if it was at Art and Design, we’re running for Art and Design. But you’re in this, like, weird middle ground where it’s, like, a whole new thing, so it’s just like-

Zana: Yeah. And I think your episode is definitely acting as a sort of promotion the more l- people listen to it. So I think you’re the first step, hopefully, in getting more people into the program.

Zana: Um, now we’re gonna move on, last but not least, to Zoe, whose episode actually came out today, this morning actually. Um, your episode talks about your school’s diversity initiative, and you talked to Jasmine Coombs, who is a Bard alum, who now actually also works at the school as the Director of Equity and Inclusion Programming, whose job it is to create safe spaces for historically underrepresented students on campus.

So let’s listen in

Zoe (Clip): I think it’s pretty selfless that you let 204 be more of a student lounge.

Jasmine: Well, I know how important it is to have a space, again, as a past student, to go and, and, and have your person be there or have a person who you really connect with, your trusted adult on campus, just from experience. So I would never-- Like, I know, I, I say sometimes, like, “It’s too loud,” or like-

Jasmine: “Quiet down,” ‘cause it is my office and I have to get work done. But I, I really do believe in offering a space on, specifically at Basic Manhattan, for my students, my Smart Scholar students, to come to and to really decompress. Um, because I know how stressful it is in those classes. I know how stressful it is to, like, be cold called on a day where you’re just not feeling it, or to not come to class prepared, or to, like, have just finished a test where you thought that you were gonna do well, and then you finish and you were like, “Mm, that didn’t go too well.”

Jasmine: So I know how, how it feels to, like, need a space. I think that the safety, in my eyes, has a person connected to it, and I’m happy to hear that that’s me for you. Like, it can’t just be a space without someone kind of making it intentional, if that makes sense.

Zana: Yeah, so I absolutely love this episode. You and Jasmine just have such a great rapport. Yeah. Um, you guys talk about the importance of safe spaces. What does a safe space look like to you, and what do you think teachers and admin need to know or need to do in order to create one?

Zoe: Um, yeah, I think I got into that in the episode a little bit, um, that a safe space is a place that somebody can go, or multiple people can go that, um, are not only seen but heard.

Zoe: I think seen is the first step, but being heard is the second. And not only just being heard as well, but also being understood and knowing that people can relate to you. Um, I think that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a location, but having a space, like a physical space helps, and having a person attached to it helps a lot more to have someone guide you through that situation or the, um, system in which that you don’t feel safe and need a safe space is, is helpful.

Zoe: I do personally believe that, um, we should be working towards making all safe s- all spaces safe, um, and not needing necessarily a safe space if all of them feel like you can be heard and understood. But that is a very long process that, like, this help, episode helped me understand. So I do think that maybe schools and administrators, um, can kinda like...

Zoe: I hope that this episode resonates with them and can, um, recognize the importance of safe spaces in their schools and know that that’s the first step to making our students feel not only physically safe, but also emotionally and mentally and even intellectually safe as well.

Zana: Yeah. And I also know that you’re very passionate about the idea of third spaces, um, first of all, I would love for you to talk a little bit about what third spaces are and why you think that they’re necessary for young people.

Zoe: Um, yeah, so the saying goes your first space is your home, um, then your second space is your work or your school or whatever, like, um, institution you have to be in, and then your third space is a space that you can go to kinda be authentically you and be yourself or relax or kinda take a load off or just work through whatever you need to.

Zoe: And think the conversation that me and some of the people in this program were having was, sorry, that many times teens are banned or barred from these safe spaces. Like, we referenced, um, like things like the mall and like closing out teens or like after COVID cafes shutting down and there being like spaces for two to six-year-olds and then there being a gap.

Zoe: There’s elementary school spaces, um, but there’s a gap in like s- for students who are teens and how I think that we need to have a reemergence of that in the city. We have a lot... We have a big student population in the city. We have a big teen population in the city, and I think that there’s certain institutions being, d- doing the work to open them again.

Zoe: But again, we constantly face kind of, we are one of the biggest groups that constantly face getting barred when you talk about age, like getting banned from places ‘cause we’re seen as rowdy or rebellious, and I think that many take a certain group of teens and kind of make them the Um, figurehead for the entire population, which shouldn’t be done. Just my personal opinion.

Zana: Yeah. And I mean, it’s a great - conversation to have in a place like this, as we are currently in a library, which is in fact a third space. Um, so now I’m gonna go into just one big question for all of you. You can answer however you’d like. Um, all of your episodes focused on, on an issue within your school or within a school that you had previously attended.

Zana: What message would you like to leave for the teachers or the administrators in the audience tonight about your experiences?

Jeremiah: Um, I’ll keep it short. Like, honestly, just to say, like, administrators and teachers, you should just, like, value the opinions of students more, you know? Because I feel like even with my experience reporting with The Bell on countless other stories, there’s been times where teachers just haven’t been receptive to me, like, saying, “Here, I’m here to report,” or, “I’m here to interview you.”

Jeremiah: But just, like, regardless of, like, what age someone is that they’re interviewing you, it honestly takes a lot of courage and dedication to do so. So all I’m saying is just, like, give the child or whoever’s interviewing you that amount of respect regardless of their age

Zoe: Um, similarly that’s, similar to that I’ll say, like, check your bias at the door. Um, I think that whether that’s your age, your, your race, your gender, your ideas, I think that many kinda shut off towards that type of, um, environment or just that space. And make sure, like talking about my episode, that students feel more safe to communicate and, um, express their ideas

Jasper: Um, I think like the teacher’s goal shouldn’t be like fully to make the students like the best student. I feel like they should kinda go in like, “Oh, I want the student to know like they could really do anything.” And I mean, for me personally, like I think again, the idea like promote these sports teams, like make like the, the teens like feel like they want act- like they could actually do what they want in a way.

Jasper: Like don’t shut them out of certain things and really make sure like the teens could do what they want and have like all these different opportunities. But like even beyond that, like I mean, some episodes are about like AP calc. Like make it like beyond like the math. Like really like, I don’t know, like talk about like real life.

Jasper: Like make the teen feel like connected to the subject and interested and realize it’s like beyond school. It’s like, it’s about making connections, like trying to build out your future and like trying to really just be happy. And I think it’s beyond just academics.

Rayleen: I’d say teachers shouldn’t be afraid to push students out of their boundaries when it comes to being inclusive and diversive, diverse, you know what, yeah, in school. I feel like too many times teachers just allow students to sometimes be too, to themselves and not push them to do things and meet people and interact with people that they maybe wouldn’t before or do things that they wouldn’t before.

Rayleen: I know that, you know, last year, I don’t think I would have ever done this, and my advisor, Ms. Nahar, she just let me know about this program through, you know, texting the Google Classroom and things like that with opportunities. So I feel like teachers just shouldn’t be afraid to try and push students out of the bounds of what they think they can do or what they should do.

Zana: I hope all you teachers in the audience were taking notes. All right, so that is it for our first panel. Can we please get a round of applause?

Zana: We are going to transition into the first trivia moment, whoo., of the night. Um, so this is how it’s going to work. Um, I’m going to pose a question to the audience, and whatever student, student in the audience thinks that they know the answer can stand up. And if you are the first p- person that I see to stand up, I will call on you, and you will have the opportunity to answer the question.

Zana: Um, if you get it right, um, our lovely manager over here, Sabrina... Stand up, Sabrina, so everyone knows you. She- Come find her at the end of the night. This is an opportunity to win fun merch and other prizes for the night. So, all right, are we all ready for the first trivia question? Okay. Early in the season, our students interviewed a really important figure.

Zana: What is the first and last name of the current New York City Schools chancellor?

Katelyn: Yes, you know it.

Zana: Yes, that is correct. For those of you who may not have heard, it is Kamar Samuels. Uh, our second question, New York City’s largest charter school network, Success Academy, recently announced that it is expanding to which state?

Zana: Yes. Okay. All right, so you two please find Sabrina at the end of the event. Awesome. So now we are going to be transitioning into the second panel of the night, so come up, Katelyn.

Katelyn: All right, guys, how are we feeling? Nice to hear it. All right, so now we’re gonna hear from the other half of our student reporters. So Ermione, Mateo, and Noa, can you please come up?

Katelyn: All right, guys. So I want you guys to just go on rapid fire. I want your name, your grade, your school, and then for our little icebreaker question, can you guys tell me your favorite train line?

Ermione: Hi, my name’s Ermione Aleah Raymond. I go to Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice. And this is a hard question, you know, ‘cause numbers, letters. Um, I would say the 2 5 simply because I’ve lived in the Bronx and I now live in Brooklyn, and it’s a easy, direct route.

Mateo: My name is Mateo Tang-O’Reilly. I’m a junior at Central Park East High School. And I would say the A because, like, I take it every day, and then also the 7 ‘cause the views are nice.

Noa: I’m Noa salas Adam. I’m a junior at Stuyvesant High School, and probably the B. I take it the most often.

Katelyn: All right, perfect. Thanks, guys. Well, those are better answers than I would give, ‘cause I’d say the Long Island Railroad, but, you know, whatever. All right, but let’s get to these clips.. So, Ermione, your episode sheds light on the importance of teacher diversity in schools.

Katelyn: You interviewed a college student named Isaiah, who’s part of New York City Men Teach, an initiative that supports men of color on their journey to becoming New York City public school teachers. Let’s listen to a clip.

Ermione (clip): You’re in your first year of college. Yes. You’re in this Men Teach program. Can you walk me through a typical day-to-day in the program?

Isaiah: Yeah. So basically under Men Teach, I have schooling in the morning, of course, and then 1:00 I will go to the school that I’m assigned to for the last hour and a half of, you know, the school day. Then I will transition to the after-school program with, you know, with the school, and I’ll help teach the kids there as well.

Ermione (clip): Hmm. So in a way, you’re both getting the educational background of teaching, but you’re also getting the hands-on experience. What mission do you feel like you’re contributing to by being a part of this Men Teach program?

Isaiah: Paying it forward. You know, they can see a face that looks like them. You know, I would say just giving them like a, a good image, a good positive role model. You know, that’s important to me for them to see that, okay, this guy looks like me. He, he works in the same way that I can work. I could become him in the future. Just to pay it forward so they can see that, oh, they can become me, or they can do something similar to pay it forward.

Katelyn: All right. Perfect. Thank you. So Ermione, a theme I noticed in this clip is the importance of students feeling seen and supported. Through your reporting, did you come away with a different understanding of why having teachers who reflect the background and experiences of their students is so important?

Ermione: No, I didn’t come away with a different understanding. I felt like it reinforced, like, interviewing Isaiah reinforced the same idea in a sense, simply because his program is very similar to what I was trying to find or seek out through my podcast.

Ermione: I was looking for something to help alleviate the, the gap of teacher diversity. And I think that hearing his passion and hearing his story to teaching reinforced the idea that teacher diversity is important, and it reaffirmed my, I guess, desire to continue fighting for this passion.

Katelyn: All right. Perfect. Thank you. And just a quick little follow-up, did you have, like, a personal experience that drove you to report on this story?

Ermione: Yes. Um, so my favorite teacher, love him to death, but he would call me a grade grubber. And I thought, like, grade grubber, negative connotation, and a lot of high-achieving students get that kind of joke o- oftentimes.

Ermione: And it really center- it kind of centered my learning ‘cause senior year you care about your grades, colleges, this, that. Like, it’s a very important time, and you shouldn’t be looked down upon for caring about your grades. But I felt like oftentimes high-achieving students, instead of getting the support they need, they tend to get brushed aside, which is understandable.

Ermione: Our education system, teachers are overworked, but where do we make room for students who actually do care about their learning and wanna further it? So his kind of joke kind of spiraled into, like, the podcast, and me think about how he wa- he is a white teacher, and my school is majority white teachers, and how that differing understanding contributed to me.

Ermione: I’m a Caribbean student. Um, I’m ... I was raised by a single mom, lower income. I meet all the kind of brackets for not succeeding in higher education or education in general, so just understanding how my background and his are different, different, and how that contributes to our different understanding of what learning means to me.

Katelyn: All right. Thank you, Ermione. All right. So Mateo, you interviewed Dash, an AP Calculus teacher from Young Women’s Leadership School of Brooklyn, and a member of Math for America. Your episode talked about the usefulness of AP Calculus and its usefulness beyond standardized testing. Let’s hear a clip.

Mateo (clip): So for students who have no plans to become engineers or any profession that uses advanced math, what do you think the benefits of a calculus class are?

Dash: It’s true that once you get beyond, like, eighth grade Algebra 1 level math, you’re not learning a lot that’s gonna come up in your everyday life, but that’s okay.

Dash: That’s the case for your other classes, too, right? You’re not necessarily doing literary analysis or explaining mitosis or the Seven Years War or whatever. A lot of what we learn in school is not directly applicable to our lives, but it’s still valuable. It’s still part of our shared knowledge. It’s a way of discovering what you want to pursue, right?

Dash: You’re not gonna know what you wanna do as a career until you’ve seen it at least a little bit, and that’s part of why we want to introduce students to all these things. So I think there’s value there. And as I was saying, I think with a lot of this more advanced math, even if you’re not using it in your life, somebody is.

Dash: Like, there are jobs out there that are relying on these things that do affect you in different ways. Whether it’s, yeah, the space program or disease control or finance or whatever else, there are ways that these things get used, and if it does affect you, then I do think it’s worth understanding

Katelyn: Thank you. All right. So I will say I’m a little bit biased being a student who kind of pivoted into, like, STEM because of really great, um, really great teaching from, you know, my teachers and everything like that. So I wanted to explore what Dash was talking about, how most subjects’ curriculums are not also directly real-world applicable. Did speaking to him change your perspective on the way that other subjects are taught as well?

Mateo: Honestly, I would say no. It kind of confirmed what I was already thinking, just because, like, obviously a literary analysis or, like, cellular respiration is not as applicable to our lives than, like, learning how to do your taxes.

Mateo: But I feel like it’s easy, I guess, for me at least, to see, like, how that unfolds in the real world. Like, you can see that it affects our day-to-day. I think for calculus, it was a bit harder, and what he said kind of made me realize how important it is that we know, like, where calculus is applied. Like, in the episode, he talked about, like, calculating income inequalities across countries.

Mateo: Like, I had no idea that was happening with calculus, and it just feels comforting to know that, like, something like calculus doesn’t really seem like you can apply it to your life, does have a use outside of, like, boosting your GPA or, like, appealing to colleges, you know? So I feel like it’s, like, a sense of comfort for me, and I hope other students in the audience or who listen to the episode also share that sense of comfort.

Katelyn: All right, thank you. And a little follow-up because I know your episode received a lot of positive response. I know I showed it to a lot of people. So can you talk about the response that you received from your episode?

Mateo: I feel like it was both expected and unexpected, like the response I got. It was expected because the goal of the episode was to kind of like appeal to other calculus students who may feel like what they’re learning is not really applicable to their lives if they’re not going down like a STEM route, and that was kind of the response I got from students.

Mateo: I think the unexpected part was like how many people came up to me, like students I’d never talked to, like DM’d me or talked to me like in my calc class. And then my history teacher came up to me and she was talking about how like one of her teacher friends from Long Island sent it to her on WhatsApp, and I was like, wow, like Long Island, like that’s like- you know? But yeah.

Katelyn: All right. Thank you, Matteo. All right, so now on to you, Noa. So you spoke to Lucas and Paulette, a mother-son duo who experienced the issue of inadequate school busing and how much it impacts students with disabilities firsthand. Listen to a clip

Noa (clip): Yeah, Lucas, could you tell me about that feeling of being left out when your friends are at school, but you couldn’t be there because of the unreliable busing?

Lucas: Well, let’s just say I just, I didn’t like it when I was left out, and because of that, I felt, well, lonely because I wasn’t there, and it’s, it’s definitely not fair.

Lucas: It’s literally, like, not fair to be left out. I mean, what the heck?

Paullette: It still hurts you now.

Lucas: Mm-hmm.

Paullette: And you’re, you’re 18. It was 10 years ago. So it’s like these are, these are the kind of scars that nobody sees on the outside, and, you know, sometimes I don’t even realize, like, how raw it still is for him, you know, until I hear the anger in his voice, just like I did just now, and hearing him say, “I felt lonely.”

Paullette: Like, no mom ever wants to hear that, you know, from their kid, and- Mm ... and not being able to fix it, so.

Lucas: Yeah. That’s what’s going on with my life with busing, busing problems and stuff. I just really wish I was there back then.

Paullette: Yeah. And I know, I know that also makes you more empathetic to your friends, too.

Paullette: Like, when, when you’re, you, you come home and you tell me that one of your other friends wasn’t able to get to school ‘cause the bus didn’t show up, like, I know that you know how that feels, and you worry about them, and you worry about how they’re feeling. And yeah, it hurts, no matter how old you are.

Paullette: Whether you’re in third grade, in middle school, in high school, it just sucks not being able to, to be part of, you know, everything that’s going on, especially this being your last year of school, too.

Lucas: Yeah.

Katelyn: All right, Noa. So for you, and just like a little anecdote, I got to see like Noa firsthand put this episode together, and I will say that she practiced so much intentionality in the message that she wanted to put through to our listeners. So when you were putting the episode together, what did you hope listeners would understand about disability and accessibility that they might not have understood before hearing Paula and Lucas’s story?

Noa: I think that a lot of the time issues like this where you’re talking about a big system, you know, the school bus not coming, being late, a lot of it is in, like, numbers, which that’s important, right? Even the fact that 43% of the 145,000, um, New York City public school kids who rely on the bus each day, um, have disabilities, that’s important.

Noa: That’s a big number. But I think with this episode, the power was really in hearing a specific story, and so I was so grateful to be able to talk to Paulette and Lucas together, how they kind of build off of each other, and getting both of those perspectives because it really helps you realize, like, these are, this is an issue that impacts someone, so many people every single day.

Noa: I mean, it makes me, like, sad hearing now even, again, Lucas saying that it made him feel lonely to miss the bus, you know, or the bus missed him. But, um, yeah, it just, it really humanizes something that can seem so large. And to think he, in third grade, he missed 56 days of school, I think. And so when you hear that, you’re like, it’s just inc- credible.

Noa: Um, so instead of maybe thinking about a big system and the problems, when you can hear very specifically, like, he’s 18 now, and it still really affects him. I think I just wanted listeners to be able to hear some- something like that ‘cause I didn’t really realize how big of an issue that unreliable busing was for students with disabilities until I worked on this episode.

Katelyn: Yeah. And I just want to follow up, kind of like talking about how, you know, you weren’t aware of this issue. You know, very briefly, if you can kind of like take me through how you settled on this, um, issue for your episode and that kind of light bulb moment that you had.

Noa: Yeah. It was kind of a, it was an interesting process because I met a group of parents of students with disabilities who are also advocates at an event, and then I realized, like, this is what I wanna report on.

Noa: But I wasn’t sure. I knew it can so easily just be like a topic, so I knew that I needed an angle. Um, and I was originally thinking maybe, you know, getting into, um, more advanced classes maybe with an IEP, um, which is in, which, you know, would have been a great topic as well. But then I spoke to one, I did so many pre-interviews, and, um, I learned about busing and how that was a big issue that nobody really seems to talk about.

Noa: And so I interviewed many different angles and then was connected with, um, Paulette and Lucas. And being able to talk to them as a mother and son, I think that was probably the most powerful thing, and realizing that I needed something really specific to really show how important the issue was. Perfect.

Noa: Thank you, Noa.

Katelyn: All right, guys. So as you can see, we do have an empty chair right here. So unfortunately Roberto couldn’t make it here today, but his clip comes from his interviewee, Kassidy Khuu, a junior at Hunter College High School and an organizer of Hunter College High School for Equity, a student-run group created in order to address the equity issues in admissions at Hunter.

Katelyn: Roberto’s episode takes on a unique perspective, being that he himself is a student at Hunter and also a part of Hunter High School College for Equity. Um, he has been since his elementary education, and yet still finds the equity issues glaringly obvious among the school culture. Let’s hear a clip

Roberto (clip): So if you could leave listeners with one message about equitable admissions processes, like what you want them to kind of take away from this, what would that be?

Kassidy: I think my message would be an action, and I think the action should just be talk to people in your life about this issue. Talk to how, especially if you’re invested in equity in other ways in your adult life, if you’re an adult listener, talk to people about how education is such an instrumental part of that.

Kassidy: And if you’re a high schooler, talk to the people in your school about what they think about the structure of your school and the structure of how they got to that school, what the system is in New York City as they’ve moved through it, because I feel like it can definitely open exciting conversations on how we can change the situation we have right now and how everyone is connected to this movement.

Katelyn: And just to speak a little bit about his episode and things that, you know, I’ve heard just from, you know, seeing him work and just, you know, being his friend as well, um, I think it’s very brave of him to kind of explore this issue at a school that he already goes to. You know, he had spoke to me about how administration definitely pushed back on him.

Katelyn: Even his own friends and classmates pushed back on him, you know, and he felt a lot... He felt like very, like stigmatized, you know, for speaking out about this, you know. Being a very high-- like being a student in such a prestigious and high achieving high school, you know, he was talking about how students are expected to kind of just like fall in line and go along with everything that’s happening and kind of see themselves as being the elites.

Katelyn: But he was like, “That’s not necessarily true.” You know, you can’t be a New York City high, high school. You know, when New York City is the melting pot of the United States, you can’t be an equitable and responsible high school, you know, and preach that you have the best students in the entire, in the entire city when you don’t have an equitable amount of Black and Brown students and students with disabilities and, you know, minorities.

Katelyn: So he also shared with me a quick reflection. So he says, “I think my biggest reflection is about using journalism to make an impact. A ton of people in the school community listened and talked about it. Students came up to me saying they never knew this about Hunter High School, and overall, I think it mean- meaningfully drove conversations about equity at Hunter.”

Katelyn: All right, guys. So just to wrap up, I’m going to pose a question for all of you, and I’d love to hear your responses. So across all three of your episodes, I noticed a very common thread. Students learn best when they feel supported, whether that’s through representation, meaningful learning experiences, or accessible systems.

Katelyn: Did reporting on these stories change your understanding of what schools owe students beyond academics?

Noa: I can start. I think that, you know, the care and education that kids get at school is so important, but also making sure that kids can get to school is even, you know, is really important. And something that I learned is that, um, former Comptroller B- Brad Lander released an audit last year, um, basically assessing the situation of, um, busing and the Office of Pupil Transportation, and he found that many issues aren’t resolved.

Noa: So I think that ... Well, he called for the new position of a bus czar, which is some- a position that still has not been filled. And so I think that that is something that the Department of Education owes to its students to make sure that, um, the busing system is kept accountable. Thank you.

Mateo: I can go. Um, I think for me it would be, I think the school system also owes us students... Actually, I don’t know how to phrase this. I’m so sorry. Like, the why behind the learning. Like, I think we shouldn’t just be learning, like, the facts and being able to, like, cram for these tests. Like, I think there should be a clear line of reasoning of why we are learning what we’re learning, because I think it just makes it, like, mean a lot more to us.

Mateo: Like, it- I feel like it makes the classroom feel like a completely different place, and I’ve felt the difference between, like, a class where I see where what I’m learning, like, how it applies to the real world. And, like, before, you know, I did this episode, like, on the other hand, calculus, where I felt like it didn’t apply at all.

Mateo: And I think, like, also just after the episode came out, like, I’ve felt that difference, you know? So I feel like they also owe us that

Ermione: Um, I feel like education owes us two things. One, more teachers of color, a more diverse teaching staff, but also beyond that, I know that there is a huge deficit in teachers of color in the United States. I think that we need to, as, as teachers, um, I think teachers need to respect the backgrounds of their students and where they come from.

Ermione: Oftentimes, our backgrounds are what shapes us, and our experiences are what shapes us. And if you’re not a teacher who comes from my background, the least you could do is, like, respect my culture and my background, like my why for why I’m in the classroom. We each have our own whys. But I think also, like, with my interview guest, like, his passion was so clear in, like, why he wanted to become a teacher.

Ermione: I think investing in more people who have that passion, who have that desire, because at the end of the day, you can’t just put someone in a classroom who doesn’t have the desire or doesn’t have the care. Ultimately, that results in students of color feeling less supported. So honestly, more teachers of color, but if we can’t, or if that goal is more so for the future, inc- having workshops where teachers could learn about different teachers’ backgrounds and gain that deeper personal connection to better the teaching field.

Katelyn: All right, guys. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure speaking with you guys. You guys can stand up. Can we get a round of applause?

Katelyn: All right, guys. So now we’re gonna move on to the second segment of our trivia. So just to reinforce what Zana said, we are only taking answers from students, so you guys get ready.

Katelyn: So for this question, the first three students to stand up will have a chance at answering this, okay? So, New York City public school enrollment has dropped sharply since the pandemic. Approximately how many students has the system lost?

Trivia speaker 1: I’m gonna say 45?

Katelyn: Okay, 45,000. Got it. Perfect. 45. All right. Anybody else? If you get closer, you’ll win it.

Trivia speaker 2: 30,000.

Katelyn: Okay.

Trivia speaker 3: I’ll say 55,000.

Katelyn: Okay. All right, guys. Well, the actual answer is more than 123,000 students. So, all right, and then for this question, we’re gonna be taking one. So school mergers and other big decisions that affect New York City schools must be approved by a body known as the PEP.

Katelyn: What does the PEP stand for? I know these are, these are hard ones. Well, here, let’s hear it from a teacher. Not for a prize, but if you have a say, you know?

Trivia speaker 4: Panel for Education Policy

Katelyn: Yes. Thank you. All right. So what is the largest New York City high school?

Katelyn: You are correct. It is Brooklyn Tech. Okay. And I’ll give you guys one more. Jay-Z, the Notorious B.I.G., Busta Rhymes, and DMX all attended which Brooklyn high school?

Trivia speaker 5: George Westinghouse high school

Katelyn: It is, yeah. Okay. All right, guys. So I’m gonna have Zana come up here, and then we’re gonna start doing a little Q&A and shout-outs.

Zana: So we have a bag full of questions. When you guys RSVP’d to this event, you should’ve been able to submit a question. So we have a bag full of all of those questions that you all submitted, and so we’re gonna pull some out at random and have our students up here answer. So. Okay, okay.

Katelyn: Cheers whoever said this.

Zana: Yeah. If you could change one thing about how traditional journalism has been done in the past to set it on a different course for the future, what would it be?

Jeremiah: All right. I would say just, like, watching a lot of news, especially with, like, the thing with a lot of female reporters and anchors going up against Donald Trump when they’re interviewing him. I just wish, like, journalists were more, like, able to express themselves freely when they’re disrespected. I wish they had more outlets to really, like, protect themselves.

Jeremiah: I wish they didn’t have to sit there and take disrespect from political officials, people on the street, sit there, be targeted, just like all the ICE protests and certain things like that. I’ve seen so many videos of journalists being the ones getting attacked, caught in the crossfire when they’re just there to show the world what’s happening.

Jeremiah: There’s been so many situations where journalists have been getting killed in certain countries covering wars and certain things. So I just wish journalists had more tools and more, you know, just leeway to sit there and act and fight back in a way that actually will help us and protect us in the future

Zoe: Um, I guess I would say more diversity in journalism. I think that when journalism first started, it was a very, like, male, white male-predominated field, and I think that we are getting a little bit better, and there’s obviously still work that could be improved on. But I think that if we would’ve started with it, we wouldn’t, like, face stigmas, or we’d have more stories on more diverse cultures and communities being shared, and a lot more problems would be shared as well.

Speaker 7: All right, our next question is: What do you think is an aspect of the school system or the city in general that is under-reported on or needs more coverage?

Noa: Well, this is, um, this wasn’t what I ended up doing my episode on, but there’s an initiative called Green Healthy Schools, um, whose mission, thanks Jeremiah, is to, um, basically renovate school buildings because many of them have, you know, broken ACs or even sometimes like asbestos, um, basically conditions that are not conducive to learning, and I think that’s definitely under-reported on.

Noa: Um, I didn’t end up going with it for the episode, but I think that definitely not many people know about the plans or even the issues in many of these old buildings. Um, I’m pretty sure the average school building i- in New York City is 75 years old, and they’re dealing with a lot of these issues.

Ermione: Um, with schools in specific, I would say college preparatory staff at schools. I think oftentimes we rely on guidance counselors to be the ones to guide kids in college and guide kids into career paths. But, like, I know my school in specific, we have a college and career office, and that’s very rare, and we have

Ermione: And a nonprofit funds it. But oftentimes the nonprofits, they’re seeking money from outside sources that don’t nec- that can’t always provide consistent money. So I would say, like, requiring a college and prep- preparatory office in all schools and having distinct funding, funding for that, because I was a part of different programs that guide me towards that, but what about students who don’t have that drive to seek out a specific person or a specific program?

Ermione: How can we help those students? And those students are also the ones who are most vulnerable of not going to college or not knowing the resources they have .

Jeremiah: Um, I’ll add on because something that Zoe said really stuck out to me earlier. We were talking about this before. Um, what Zoe mentioned was just the lack of third spaces in New York City in general.

Jeremiah: Like, for example, can my friends who go to my school raise their hands? Yes. Okay. Right. There you guys are. All right. Um, so, like, in Williamsburg, we go to school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and commonly we go to, like, fast food spots like McDonald’s, Taco Bell, you know, just... We all eat there. So but I’ve seen...

Jeremiah: I’ve noticed a trend since, like, there’s been fights and certain things, but every time you look at something that’s happening, it all leads down to the fact that teens have nowhere to go. So when they do have somewhere to go, they act out because it’s just like they don’t know what to do, you know? So that leads to them, I feel like, overpolicing in our communities because how is it fair that I walk into a McDonald’s or a Taco Bell and I’m being asked for my ID and verification, and then I’m telling them that I’m 18 years old, and they’re saying that, “You don’t believe me.”

Jeremiah: How are you gonna tell me how old I am, you know? So then it’s just like, it’s crazy that I have to pull out my ID and basically be, like, policed and screened just to spend my money. When you go in whiter, richer neighborhoods in Manhattan and certain things like that, and it’s the exact same group. I travel with the same people every time.

Jeremiah: We never have a problem. But then in our neighborhoods, it’s always a problem. But then you look back and it’s like, look at the neighborhoods that they’re overpolicing. It’s for a reason, right? So I just, like, feel like there’s not a lot of stories that really talk about this age verification thing because I feel like the main starter of it all was Target, where they banned, um, a lot of kids from going into Atlantic Terminal Mall.

Jeremiah: Like, I remember one time for a senior sleepover, I had ordered, like, a air mattress or something, and I went to pick it up, and they’re like, “Hold up. Are you 18?” Mind you, I was two months away from turning 18, so yeah, I had to lie. But it, it’s unfortunate ‘cause you should never have to do that. So I definitely think there should be more reporting on that.

Zana: Okay, this will be our last question for our group here. By stepping into your own power as a journalist, what is one surprisingly positive thing that you learned about yourself? Give one example of when you thought you might fail but didn’t, for example.

Mateo: I think for me, this actually happened last year when I did P.S. Weekly for the first time. I think last year, like, I wasn’t, like, as confident as I am now, and, like, when the episode came out, I honestly wasn’t really expecting, like, anybody to care about it, like, even people at school. But I got, like, a lot of, like, positive feedback on my episode, and a lot of people were like, “Oh, I listened to it and I felt represented,” and like, “You’re doing really great work.”

Mateo: And, like, it just felt really moving, and I think this year I kind of, like, leaned into that a little bit more, and I think that surprised me, and it helped me become, like, more confident. Like, there are people out there who, like, will care what you’re doing and, like, see the impact you’re making.

Ermione: So my, my journey to getting an interview guest was kind of filled with turbulence, and I kinda was dismotivated in a sense. I knew I cared a lot about my topic ‘cause I have been dealing with the same teacher and the same issues for years, but I kinda... Halfway through, I kinda lost sight of what I wanted to talk about and whether or not it was important.

Ermione: So it kinda showed me that, like, I have perseverance in other fields and other ways in a sense, ‘cause usually I think of, like, academics having perseverance and resilience to academics and life. But it’s in journalism. I don’t intend to major in journalism, but I did it as a way to push me outside my box, and I definitely saw a different side of myself and the desire to get an interview guest and push myself.

Ermione: So just seeing that side of me, even though I’m not quite passionate about journalism, but I am passionate about the topic itself, and letting that take over and seeing that side of myself was something that was very different.

Rayleen: Um, I’d like to agree with Ermione. I just feel like in doing P.S. Weekly and SYPA, I’ve learned that, like, I can kind of turn off my introvertedness and, like, nervousness when it comes to talking to people and just expressing myself. Because when I’m passionate about something, I can speak up about it. When I like something, I will speak up about it.

Rayleen: So I feel like being here has just helped me really learn how to do that for myself.

Jasper: Um, I’d say just like embrace being a journalist, ‘cause I don’t know, like at first I was kind of afraid to show that I was a journalist and whatever, like in school and stuff. But like, I was helping Mateo with his episode and I was doing like those Vox interviews in like AP Calc, and then like everyone was actually like interested and I was like, damn.

Jasper: I’m like, we’re going in the hallway. I’m like, talk. Yeah, and like, you know, people actually like being behind the mic and I realized that. And also like, I don’t know, eventually like I got more comfortable. Like I started posting more about The Bell, like actually collaborating with them. And then, I don’t know, those reels, like the share counts are kind of scary, but you know.

Jasper: Like it was just like, it’s just really fun and it’s like I’m actually pretty proud of it now. I used to be emba- a little embarrassed, but now it’s like something I could see myself doing in the future, and I realize people like it.

Jeremiah: um, I’ll just say quickly, I di- like, I discovered that I have a great passion for storytelling and interviewing. Um, because before P.S. Weekly, I actually did The Bell’s flagship podcast, Miseducation, on its eighth season, where I talked about, like, credit recovery systems in high schools, which we’ll learn about another time.

Jeremiah: Go check it out. Um, but honestly, when I first, like, started, when it came to, like, interviews and stuff, I was very nervous. I just felt like I wasn’t educated enough about the subject that I was talking about. I felt like that I was gonna mess up, or even sometimes still, I still get nervous. But now I feel like I’ve developed the confidence to actually know that I’m capable of interviewing someone, like Sasha, I see you back there.

Jeremiah: Um, interviewing someone successfully and actually getting their story across. Um, as well as just, like, storytelling, because I feel like my main passion behind journalism is I don’t see it as a hobby, I see it as an essential service. I see it as something where you’re not only telling a story, you’re bringing, you’re bringing underrepresented issue to the forefront, and I kinda see P.S. Weekly and Miseducation, whichever one it is, as a platform that brings those stories to the forefront.

Jeremiah: So I’m just, I’m so grateful to have been a part of it. Yeah

Katelyn: All right, guys. Can we give it up for our student journalists?

Katelyn: Okay. So we have this kind of tradition that we do at the end of every single session and we call it “Shout Outs”, where at the end of the day we give shout-outs. We have the students, staff, everybody just gives shout-outs to someone, somebody that they feel like shined, you know, that day. You know, maybe if their episode came out, just to, you know, put them under the spotlight because, I mean, they do such amazing work.

Katelyn: So we’re gonna bring it out to the audience, and I wanna hear some shout-outs for our student reporters. So I think here’s what we’ll do. Um-

Taylor: Raise your hand.

Katelyn: Yeah. And then Taylor will come over to you with the mic and give it to you

Audience member shoutout 1: . Um, I have two people I wanna shout out. I firstly wanna start off with Zoe. I am so proud of you, and I’m glad I got to know you at the Apollo Theater and to see you grow and be amazing. And we need more Black women esp- um, in journalism, especially during this time.

Audience member shoutout 1: And to start at such a young age, I’m truly amazed, and I cannot wait to see what else you do as well. And then as for Jeremiah, like I’m gonna try not to cry, but I think I first met you, like, in 2023, um, through CUNY. And so to see you grow, um, from I think when you were a 10th grader all the way up to senior year, now you’re going to Pace University, it, it makes me so happy to see you follow your dreams and achieve your dreams and be in these spaces.

Audience member shoutout 1: Because sometimes, um, society systemi- um, systemically try to keep us out of those spaces, and you continue to push through. And you do not let your hardships define you, and I’m very proud of you for that. And I also cannot wait to see what else you do, especially at Pace. And I, I always make sure to show up for you because I want you to know that I also aspire to have such amazing confidence in what you do and changing the world as well, so thank you.

Audience member shoutout 2: Oh, am I supposed to carry on? Hi. Um, I just, I’m gonna try to be brief. I just wanna say, um, I’m so impressed at how you’ve done more with your high school life than I think I did with the first half of mine, at least. And, and I also just feel like what impresses me so much about how you tackle the things you see in your life is when you see something that’s wrong, an injustice, something that’s not right in the world, you don’t just sit with it.

Audience member shoutout 2: You don’t just let it happen to you or let it happen to those around you. You actually decide to tackle it, and it’s such an inspiring thing to see, especially in somebody so young. Can’t wait to see where you go next. It’s gonna be amazing. Thank you so much.

Audience member shoutout 3: Hi, um, my name is Masnur. Ooh, sorry, I’m not in school. My name is Jui. Um, and, uh, my shout-out is for Rayleen. Uh, your episode was just so insightful. I was so excited to share it with everyone, and I just loved that you have been pushing yourself so much this year, um, actually ever since I met you.

Audience member shoutout 3: And I really appreciate how you were able to preserve a piece of history that, like, it, that school no longer exists, and you really helped, um, preserve Jose’s voice and other students’ voices. So I’m so proud of you.

Audience member shoutout 4: Okay. Hi, my name’s been thrown around a little bit tonight, but my name is Sasha. Um, I’m obviously giving a big shout-out to my friend Jeremiah. I am extremely proud of him and proud of our podcast. Um, I... When he first asked me, I was a little bit like, “Ooh, you’re asking me about what?” So I was a little nervous, and especially going into it when, you know, we first started asking each other questions.

Audience member shoutout 4: I was very nervous at first. But being able to actually, like, talk to him and get different inputs from him, and also, like, share my own stories and about the stories about people around me, it was very inspiring. And seeing what he’s able to do and the impact that he’s able to have on his, not only us, like, as his friends, but, like, again, the people that are here tonight, his friends that are also up there, which I’m also very proud of y’all, too, though.

Audience member shoutout 4: Y’all are all amazing. But it’s so inspiring, like, you know, watching who you’re gonna become, and I’m so proud of you, and I’m very glad to be your friend. Um, I also do wanna give a shout-out to Noa, because you were also on my podcast that I didn’t know about, and then I listened to your podcast, and your podcast was actually, like, amazing.

Audience member shoutout 4: Um, I think that your story was something that I never would’ve, like, looked into before, you know, hearing your podcast. So getting to hear about it and actually hearing, you know, from a mother and a son, I thought that that was very impactful and very important.

Audience member shoutout 5: Oh. Um, I’m Kelsi . I wanna shout out all of the lovely podcasters that are on stage. You guys did absolutely amazing. And shout out to The Bell for giving you guys this medium for you guys to ask the questions that you want to ask, to have a stage to showcase the issues that you’ve seen in your schools, and actually, like, be able to, like, as, um, I think it was Mateo, like, you said, like, your podcast got so much traction because people care.

Audience member shoutout 5: And had it not been for your care, had it not been for, like, The Bell to give you guys this medium, there... Like, more people wouldn’t know that you guys actually care. So again, shout out to you guys. You guys did absolutely amazing work. You are all so incredibly intelligent and passionate, and you all will forever have a supporter in me and from The Bell.

Audience member shoutout 6: Hi, everyone. My name is Catherine. Um, uh, I think you all were just so lovely today in hearing from all of you, and I’m not gonna shout out anyone specific. But, um, I think what’s just coming up for me, not that I’m that much older than you all, I’m 25, um, is you feel like a manifestation of just, like, how much progress we’ve made.

Audience member shoutout 6: Because to think about there was a time where truly, like, young people, kids were meant to be seen and not heard, and now you have entire platforms where you are making yourselves known and your opinions known, um, and that the youth are fully fledged people, even we were all kids once. Um, and it is so beautiful to hear and to hear the call for not only seeing children, but then hearing us and then understanding us.

Audience member shoutout 6: Um, because just to think, like, even my own parents, like, you know, they were-- you went, you went to school. You did what you were told by your parents. You didn’t ask any questions. You didn’t make any concerns. And to see you all come into your own, it just really makes me feel so inspired to see that in the midst of all of the other terrible things that we could complain about in the world, like, we have young people like you who are really showing up, um, and are so eloquent and are so impassioned by these things that we are all impacted by at the end of the day.

Audience member shoutout 6: So thank you all so much.

Audience member shoutout 7: Hi, I’m Gwen. Um, I work in the central office at New York City Public Schools, and I’m really just incredibly impressed by all of you, and I want you to know that your voices really do matter and that I have been in team meetings where we listen to these episodes, and we use them to anchor discussions.

Audience member shoutout 7: So definitely keep doing what you’re doing, and your voices do matter. Um, and tell your peers that their voices matter as well

Audience member shoutout 8: Um, hi, my name’s Clark. Um, I wanted to give a shout-out to Zoe specifically, and also to The Bell. Um, Zoe, I know that we always joke that the Black girls at Bard always do the same exact programs for journalism, but it really is so important to have those experiences and to have those programs, and to have that community.

Audience member shoutout 8: Um, I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to the episode yet, but trust on the bus home, you got me. Um, and just n- even from hearing the clip, just hearing about the experiences that we’ve all had, um, not only as students at Bard, but as students at high school, just really, like, I don’t... It, like, it was really impactful to me, and I really appreciate, um, like, everyone here for being here.

Audience member shoutout 8: Um, Kelsey, you didn’t tell me you were gonna be here. Um, but yeah, I just, I’m so appreciative of you, um, and everyone here. Yeah

Audience member shoutout 9: Well, hello. My name is Venice, and actually, um, recently I was accepted into SYPA program. So being here, very happy experience, but moreover, I just wanted to highlight how well-articulated you guys all are, and how inspiring just being here has been. It’s really made me think about how I want to go into my own podcast journey. And yeah, I just really wanted to highlight, you guys did such a great job, and I feel very inspired and impressed.

Audience member shoutout 10: Um, hi, my name is Anya, and I wanna give a shout-out to Noa, of course. I’m really, really proud of you, and I just know you take on so much, and you do it all with, like, so much grace and so much intentionality, and I’m really, really proud of you and everything that you’ve done. Um, and I also wanna give a shout-out to Mateo because, um, I just signed up to take Calc BC next year, and I’m, I’m really scared, but you made me w- more excited about it

Audience member shoutout 11: Hi, my name is Safiya. I wanna give a shout-out to Jeremiah. I love him s- I love you by the way, Jeremiah. Ever since, like, ninth grade, I’d say, I’ve been able to see him flourish, and just seeing him, like, ex- like, do so well during the Success Academy podcast, which I showed my parents, and they freaking loved it.

Audience member shoutout 11: And hearing more people, like, speak more about it, it made me, like, wonder, like, how does he have the confidence to go up there? But then I realized you’re a very bubbly, very bright individual, and I’m glad to have you as a friend, so I love you.

Audience member shoutout 12: Hey, y’all. Um, uh, sorry. Despite my height, I’m, like, the same age as him, but, like, um, not to glaze, but I’m gonna glaze you. I’m so proud of you, Jeremiah. I’m, like, so proud, and all of y’all as a collective, like, you guys are so brave speaking about things that are, you know, not really spoken about. Um, speaking of, like, everything that everybody’s, you know, fearful of speaking about really is, like, brave.

Audience member shoutout 12: Um, and I feel like keep doing what you’re doing because, you know, this is really rare in this generation in particular because, you know... Anyway, besides that, uh, I’m just proud of y’all. I’m just want, I just wanna say that I’m proud of y’all.

Taylor: All right, we got time for maybe two more. So we got one here, one here, and Sabrina, why don’t you find one more on your side?

Audience member shoutout 13: Uh, yeah, my name is Spencer Malorca. I’m the younger brother of Jasper up there. Uh, I just want you to know I’m really proud of you, and I’m glad you’re doing this ‘cause you have a really strong voice that you don’t use a lot.

Audience member shoutout 13: I see you at home, you know, you’re making music, you know, you’re doing a lot at home, but you’re not using that voice, and I know that you have a really strong voice, and doing this, uh, journalism thing is, like, really important for you. You know, I don’t gotta say too much ‘cause you know how I feel about you, but yeah.

Audience member shoutout 14: Hi, um, I’m Annika. I’m also here to shout out Noa, because I think that we all see you put 110% of your effort and energy into every single thing you do. Oh, sorry. Um, you go, you go. You go. Sorry. I come back.

Audience member shoutout 15: I just, I think you’re one of the most motivated and, like, put together people any of us know at all, and it’s such a pleasure to know you. That’s why we’re all here. Oh, my God. We’re all really excited to see you succeed, and excited to see you go into this next chapter of your life as well, I guess.

Audience member shoutout 15: And it’s also been so wonderful to hear everybody else’s opinions about everything. Everybody here seems so excited to learn new things, and talk about new things, and spread information about things that I never would’ve heard about. And this has been such a pleasant experience to listen to all of you guys and all of the hard work you guys have done

Audience member shoutout 16: I’m Emma. I’m also, I also wanna shout out Noa, and I think ev- like, two days a week after school, she’s like, “I’m going to The Bell,” and I’m like, “Okay, have fun.” Um, and I, I feel so lucky to be here and get to celebrate all this hard work and care and dedication that she’s put into this to make such a touching… I think we were all so moved when we heard that, um, interview clip. So, you guys.

Audience member group: Three, two, one. We’re so proud of you, Noa!

Audience member shoutout 17: Hi, everybody. I’m Alexander. I’m over here. I just wanted to shout out the lovely MCs. You did such an amazing job. So professional. So, like, amazing. I, like, wish I had, like, the courage and the eloquence that, like, I... Like, at your age, you, you all did, like, an amazing job. I also just wanted to shout out the audience.

Audience member shoutout 17: It’s really hot in here, and you still showed up for everybody, and you’re supporting amazing student journalism. So I just wanted to say, like, thank you for participating in this community, and, like, a shout-out to everybody that’s on the stage. Everyone should be incredibly proud of your- yourselves. And just, like, power to you guys.

Katelyn: Okay. All right, guys. Well, thank you so, so much for that. It, it means the world to all of us that you guys would come out here and shout out these amazing student journalists.

Maria: PS Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from the Pinkerton Foundation. A special thank you to Robin Lester Kenton, Kelly Thornwell, Jennifer Thompson, Greg Richards, Karen Keys, and the entire team at the Brooklyn Public Library for hosting us in their beautiful Central Branch space.

Maria: The senior producer for this show is me, Maria Robins-Somerville, and our technical director is Jake Lummus. Our executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw. Additional production and reporting support was provided by Mira Gordon, Sabrina DuQuesnay, Zana Halili, Katelyn Melville, and our partners at Chalkbeat.

Maria: Music is from Blue Dot Sessions, and the jingle you heard at the beginning of this episode was created by the one and only Erica Huang. Thanks for tuning in and see you next season.

We make transcripts available for our episodes as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

This Brooklyn teacher connects chemistry to the real world — and just won $25,000 for it

2026-06-29T21:18:08+00:00

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Rayhan Ahmed, a Brooklyn high school chemistry and environmental science teacher, knows that the human brain is wired to care about people and their stories, not formulas and equations.

That’s why at Gotham Professional Arts Academy High School, where he’s spent the past eight out of his 22 years teaching, he created a curriculum for his ninth and 10th graders that is attached to human experiences and rooted in fieldwork and field trips focused on critical social and environmental issues. It explores topics such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (known as PFAS) contamination, and nuclear energy.

“Absolutely, my students run experiments on corrosive inhibitors, analyze data, and write scientific papers,” Ahmed said. “But that learning became deeper when we went to Flint to hear people describe waking up early to stand in line for bottled water. It wasn’t abstract any more because there were faces and stories attached to the chemistry.”

(Since his school is part of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, where students complete performance-based assessments instead of taking Regents exams, Ahmed has been able to create his own project-based learning curriculum.)

Ahmed was one of six grand prize winners for this year’s prestigious FLAG Award for Teaching Excellence, which comes with a $25,000 cash prize for the winning teacher and a $10,000 grant for their school. He plans to use the money to take the 14 kids in his advisory “crew” that he’s been with for four years hiking in the mountains. (He’ll also use it for a family road trip, visiting as many major league baseball ballparks as possible this summer.)

But even this award-winning teacher is worried about the encroachment of artificial intelligence and how it’s affecting the prompt he uses as the heart of his classroom: “What do you do with an idea?”

“What I’m seeing now is that students are using AI to bypass the intellectual and emotional struggle of learning that is required to address this question,” he said. “This is really forcing me to ask what learning is for. What is the kind of learning that I’m trying to protect and what kinds of people am I hoping my students become?”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

For years, I told myself a pretty simple story about how I became a teacher. It was just a temporary job that I’d do for a couple of years, get some experience, and head off to graduate school and move on with my life. It turns out that wasn’t the story.

My first teaching job was in the Eight-Plus Program in the South Bronx, where I taught math and science to 15- to 17-year-old kids who were too old to be in eighth grade but had not met the promotional criteria for high school. The recruiter placed me at the site because “they needed the bodies.” He said “most teachers didn’t make it until Thanksgiving.” (Side note: He was wrong because two teachers left after Christmas!)

In my time there, I saw grit, humor, resilience, and intelligence. These students carried more on their shoulders than I did as a recent college grad!

I ultimately did leave for graduate school. I mostly did research in a lab, and I deeply missed being around teenagers every day. A couple of years in, I was at a conference about protein folding and my phone rang. My former student was stuck on quadratic equations. I stepped outside, found a quiet spot in the woods, and we worked through the problem together. This call reminded me where I belonged. So I came back into the classroom.

Tell us about the curriculum you’ve developed, and why you decided to create it.

What excites me most is creating opportunities for my students to do work that matters to them, their communities, and to the world around them and to see what happens when we trust young people with real work.

One year I had a group of students concerned about the environmental and health impacts of fracking. They analyzed scientific evidence, designed experiments, interviewed experts, wrote policy recommendations, and eventually traveled to Washington, D.C., to present their findings to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s office.

Not long afterward, New York enacted a historic ban on fracking!

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

My favorite “lesson” is really when my students realize their work matters beyond the classroom. In my ninth-grade environmental science class, I teach an expedition on PFAS, which are what are commonly called “forever chemicals.” Here, students start out thinking that they are doing just a regular chemistry class, with labs where all the answers are known. But pretty quickly, they’ve come up with questions about their water, communities, and the consequences of PFAS in their lives that I can’t answer. No one can just yet.

We were at Hudson Yards doing a PFAS community assessment survey and happened to run into Stienjte Vanveldhoven, minister of climate policy and green growth of the Netherlands, who told my students about her international work with PFAS and how she called on the European Union to restrict all PFAS, except for uses of the chemicals deemed essential.

Now, they’ve got more questions. Before they know it, we’re headed to Dartmouth to talk to Professor Celia Chen, an expert in PFAS. And I’m on a call with Reyhan Mehran, a regional resource coordinator at NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, about using Jamaica Bay as a potential research site and offering practical support to make it happen. (Toshiba awarded us a $10,000 grant to study this!) And now they are thinking they are capable of contributing to problems adults haven’t solved yet!

You brought the first AP course to your school. Why was that so important?

One of the Peloton instructors I like to ride with always says, “The most powerful thing anyone can say to us is what we say to ourselves.” At Gotham, I’ve worked with the guidance team to expand those stories.

Over the last eight years, we’ve taken kids on overnight college visits. Over a student’s four years at Gotham, they’ve visited more than 25 campuses, from local schools to places like Dartmouth, Cornell, and Williams. Our seniors take a hybrid college course with Williams. We’ve organized our annual College March, where our entire school community celebrates graduating seniors and their postsecondary plans. This year, two of my advisees are attending Smith and Hobart and William Smith on full scholarships. Another student is on track to join UA Local 1 ( the plumbers union). The label “Advanced Placement” is another way of sending the message to students to see themselves differently. For many of our students, especially first-generation college-bound students, that message is really powerful.

Is your educational experience connected to why you mentor early career educators through the NYC Men Teach program (which aims to get more men of color into teaching)?

My parents are immigrants to this country. I grew up in Astoria, Queens, and went to New York City public schools, including going to high school at Brooklyn Tech. Tech is a huge school with large classes and it’s easy to get lost, but for students, like me, who thrived there, it opens tremendous opportunities and a pathway to the middle class. It’s important to me that schools are places of opportunity for our students, including opportunities to learn and grow, to interact with ideas and people that are new and different. Part of that is having a diverse teaching workforce that is reflective of the student population. That belief is connected to why I mentored early-career educators through NYC Men Teach.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Non-college career pathways have a math problem

2026-06-23T09:56:46+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

For much of the last few decades, some young people have heard a simple mantra: bachelor’s or bust. That is, the best and perhaps only path to economic prosperity is through a four-year college education. Now a wide swath of politicians, educators, and philanthropists are rethinking this. Some even suggest that there are numerous lucrative jobs that don’t require a degree.

A New York Times video explained that “Job demand in fields like construction, along with the allure of potential six-figure salaries, have some high schools investing in hands-on classes that are redefining what success looks like for the Class of 2026.”

At the recent Education Writers Association conference, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore suggested high schools are too focused on getting students into college. If a student chooses a different route “and they find something that’s going to make them have economic mobility for them and their family, then right on,” he said.

Amidst this enthusiasm I wanted to take a look at the data to answer a simple but contested question: How likely is it that students can skip a four-year degree and make a good living or achieve “economic mobility?”

The short answer is it’s certainly possible, but the odds are stacked against workers without degrees. “We all want the $70,000 job that a student can access right outside of high school,” says Dom McKoy, executive director of the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project. But those opportunities are rare. “We have to be really clear-eyed about what is a true pathway at scale for young people.”

Some non-college occupations offer solidly middle-class salaries — but the largest ones typically don’t

To analyze this issue, I used federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data on pay by occupation, organized by the share of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

On average, jobs where degrees are required or encouraged pay more. Notably, though, a handful of jobs in the blue-collar trades also make slightly above the national median. Those include plumbers, machinists, HVAC installers, and carpenters, among others. Although these jobs typically require some form of postsecondary training, and in some cases students take on debt, they don’t demand four-year degrees.

Still, the most common non-college jobs make far below the median. For instance, there are over 4 million people who work as home health and personal care aides in America, the largest single occupation. That’s more than the number of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC specialists, welders, car mechanics, roofers, and power-line installers combined. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts more growth in jobs for home health aides than any other occupation. The median salary is about $35,000 a year.

Other large non-college vocations — each encompassing millions of people — include retail sales workers, cashiers, order stockers, waiters and waitresses, fast-food workers, and janitors. All of these pay substantially below the median. One exception is truck driving, a position that pays relatively well and employs millions of people. But many fear the job is at particularly high risk of automation.

All this maps onto other data showing that college-educated workers have a large wage advantage, on average, compared to those without a degree.

Better-paid, non-college occupations employ few women

Most of these relatively well-paid blue-collar jobs are dominated by men. In some cases, fewer than 10% of the positions are filled by women. Many of the large, lower-paid occupations, including home health aides, have a high share of women.

Some of the lower-paid careers where college degrees are required — including teaching and social work — are also largely staffed by women. Their salaries still outstrip the vast majority of non-college options, though. This suggests that forgoing college is particularly risky for girls and women.

Despite the headlines, six-figure salaries are rare in non-college jobs

The vast majority of non-college roles, including blue collar trades, earn below-average wages. This is different from median wages, which captures the typical worker’s experience. The average salary is usually higher than the median because it includes more of the upside for top earners within a profession.

This data indicates that non-college occupations have relatively low pay ceilings. The slew of headlines and viral social media videos about six-figure jobs in the trades appear to be outliers. In many cases, only the top 10%, or fewer, of those workers make such salaries.

Many occupations have a combination of workers with and without four-year degrees.

So far, I’ve been focusing on the distinction between college and non-college pathways, but as the data makes clear, this is not a simple binary.

In many cases, degree-holders likely have an edge within an occupation. But in other cases, the degree may have little, if any, value. A significant minority of lower-paid jobs are held by college graduates; even more are held by those who attended college but didn’t earn a degree. For instance, nearly half of home health aides spent at least some time in college.

Will AI change all of this?

This data cannot answer whether a particular student should attend college. That depends on what profession they want to pursue, their chances of graduating, the debt they may have to take on, and the quality of college they would attend. It also depends on an unknown future. The economy is always changing and may shift rapidly in the coming decades.

A recent Wall Street Journal survey found some economists predicting that AI will reduce demand for white-collar work. But others predicted no change or even said that there would be more demand for knowledge work.

The bottom line: Considering how the economy is currently structured, it’s risky to bet against the value of a bachelor’s degree.

Methodological note: The data we used here extrapolates hourly pay rates into estimated annual salaries for full-time workers. These figures, including the national median and average, do not count overtime pay, certain bonuses, and some other forms of compensation. We categorized the largest 250 occupations — encompassing the vast majority of workers — by the share of workers who have attained at least a bachelor’s degree. Other forms of postsecondary education are not included in this analysis. Keep in mind that there is substantial variation among workers in the same occupation, including by region, educational level, experience, union status, and more.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

A network of public microschools wants to expand across Indiana. Is it collaborating or competing?

2026-06-22T11:00:00+00:00

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Jen Shipley would have never considered public school for her rising third grader, whom she had homeschooled since kindergarten.

In public schools, she said she saw cuts to recess and enrichment, an overreliance on screens, and not enough time to give each student individual attention, she said.

But a 2025 meeting with Indiana Microschool Collaborative CEO George Philhower and Nature’s Gift microschool leader Erin Wolski changed her mind. They painted a picture of a public school located in the woods in Hancock County that would emphasize parental involvement and a flexible schedule, while drawing from Montessori and classical education to allow students to move at their own pace.

Over the next school year, Shipley’s daughter excelled in math where she had been struggling at home. It was hard to leave their full-time homeschooling community, but Shipley said it was worth it.

“I love that she can learn from teachers who love teaching reading and math,” Shipley said. “Sure I could teach my child a science experiment, but not with the same passion behind it.”

Nature’s Gift’s, which just wrapped up its first year, is the Indiana Microschool Collaborative’s first microschool. But the collective plans to open five more sites with spots for hundreds more students across eastern central Indiana. Planned sites in Richmond and New Palestine already have waitlists for admission, a sign that parents’ interest in microschools continues to grow.

The collaborative’s approach is distinctive — and not just for its education model. In fact, the Indiana Microschool Collaborative, or IMC, could be a harbinger of how emerging models for schooling in the state will increasingly blur traditional lines.

It’s a network of microschools, which operate with a degree of independence, but it’s also classified as a single charter school in terms of state funding. And it doesn’t just draw on resources and services from a traditional school district — its CEO, Philhower, is also that district’s superintendent.

Eastern Hancock Schools, a rural district serving around 1,200 students across three schools, provides administrative support to Nature’s Gift through a shared services agreement. However, the charter school is an independent entity and authorized by the Indiana Charter School Board.

Philhower envisions Indiana microschools working collaboratively with their local districts to offer families an alternative to leaving the public school system altogether. For families, this opens up possibilities like learning at home some days and learning in a classroom on others, while districts still earn some revenue from providing facilities or administrative support.

“At a broader level, the goal is not to create separation between schools but to create more connected and flexible public learning opportunities for families,” Philhower said.

Not everyone is so taken with the idea. Some Indiana superintendents have spoken to the collaborative about bringing microschools to their districts, said Jeff Butts, of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents. But the collaborative’s Richmond site has been criticized by the superintendent of the local school district, who said losing students to IMC would lead to district funding cuts and staff reductions.

That kind of financial crunch would hit rural districts especially hard, said Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, president at Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

Then there are broader concerns about whether such arrangements are appropriate or fair. Fuentes-Rohwer questioned how Philhower can promote both the district and the collective and serve both well.

“Charter schools are based on the idea that the public schools are failing to provide something for kids. Your job as a superintendent is to fix that, and provide what’s needed so that every student can be the best that they can be,” Fuentes-Rowher said. “If it’s about smaller class sizes or individualized attention, why is that not provided to all kids at the district?”

Philhower said he believes in school choice, and that all students should get to attend “a school that feels like it was designed for them.”

“Nothing is stopping us from providing that. One benefit to Eastern Hancock is we get to learn from these sites,” he said. “And these sites get to learn from us.”

Funding and operating microschools throughout the state

Indiana’s microschools have operated mostly as small private schools, although in 2023, Purdue Polytechnic High School opened the Lab School, a microschool within a public charter school serving around 20 students

The microschools’ approaches share an emphasis on small environments and personalized instruction. But with small staffs, there are some tradeoffs.

At Nature’s Gift, parents pick up and drop off every day. The school can incorporate some special education goals into small group instruction, but other services for students with an Individualized Education Program might be offered virtually, school leaders said. That format might not be appropriate for every student.

Each IMC site serves between 60 and 100 students, and will have “its own educators and identity that fits the local community,” Philhower said, though there is collaboration with districts “around professional learning, systems, curriculum design, and student experiences.”

Under Indiana law, IMC could be eligible to receive local property tax revenue from multiple districts. Philhower said IMC has not discussed participating in a referendum, and would only participate if its partner districts wanted the school to do so.

For state funding purposes, IMC is one big charter school, Philhower said. That also means the new locations are not subject to an Indiana law that requires charter authorizers to hold public hearings before granting charters to new schools.

That left local education leaders in one county blindsided.

Wayne County superintendents were not included in IMC’s plans to open a microschool on the campus of Indiana University East in Richmond this fall, said Mike McCoy, superintendent of the local district, Centerville-Abington Community Schools.

Philhower said the school works with its authorizer, the Indiana Charter School Board, on hearings. The board did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, IU spokesman Mark Bode said IU East shared initial information about the new school in late March, followed by a meeting with the superintendents in April.

If he had been asked for input, McCoy said he would have suggested a model within a district that would allow students to stay with their peers while also taking classes at the university. His district already sends some students to IU East for a teaching pathway and other college courses.

Enrollment in Centerville-Abington, which has about 1,700 students, has fallen in the last several years due in part to local demographic changes, McCoy said.

Philhower said it makes sense for districts with declining enrollments to work with IMC schools instead of merely losing those students. After dipping slightly during the pandemic, enrollment in Philhower’s Eastern Hancock district has recovered to where it stood a decade ago.

But McCoy said a loss of even 10 students to a microschool could force his district to cut a teaching position.

“Schools in Wayne County, we’re working together more than we ever have,” McCoy said. “It’s unfortunate that we’re going to lose students.”

What teaching and learning at a microschool is like

On a recent Friday, Nature’s Gift students boarded an Eastern Hancock school bus for a field trip to the Conner Prairie museum.

The school paid Eastern Hancock schools for the gas and the cost of the driver’s time for the field trip, said Wolski, the school leader. Two Nature’s Gift teachers planned the outing. (Eastern Hancock does not provide daily transportation to and from the school.)

Teachers at Nature’s Gift don’t typically spend the whole day with just one group of students; Wolski is the licensed teacher for the middle school, but might also pull aside a group of five second graders for additional reading instruction, she said.

“I don’t feel like I’m on an island, and my whole career, I felt like I was on an island,” said Wolski, who previously spent 16 years teaching in both general education and special education roles.

Wolski said IMC hopes to add a special education coordinator in the future to be able to offer more services — like identification — in-house, rather than relying on Eastern Hancock.

The group instruction at the school is based on skill level, so it’s easier for students to move at their own pace, Wolski said. A first grader recently joined her math group for third to fifth grade students.

These learning groups might include approximately a dozen students at a time, though the school comes together in larger cohorts to work on Project Lead The Way curriculum.

Some students attend in-person only part-time, and complete the rest of their instruction at home. The flexibility allowed Shipley’s daughter to attend Nature’s Gift in person three days a week, leaving time to attend a wilderness school program while completing schoolwork at home.

“We are always thinking about outside the box ideas,” Wolski said. “When you work closely with parents, you have that partnership, and you can problem solve a lot easier.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Girls’ test scores have fallen faster than boys’. No one knows exactly why.

2026-06-11T14:36:06+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

New results from a long-running set of federal exams show a striking, persistent, and unexplained duality: Girls’ scores have fallen more sharply than boys’ and then have been slower to recover. In some cases, they haven’t recovered at all.

In math, among both 9- and 13-year-olds, boys’ advantage over girls is higher than at any point since 1978, which is as far back as the data goes. In reading, 9-year-old boys have reached parity with their female peers for the first time on record, largely because girls’ scores have declined.

This pattern has also emerged on a battery of other assessments. To date, researchers have not reached any consensus on what explains this. The latest results suggest this gender gap in learning is not simply a pandemic-induced blip.

To be clear, we should not see this as a battle of the sexes, but as a warning sign that something is going wrong academically for girls. In other words, America’s “learning recession” has hit girls hardest. Understanding why may be a key part of addressing this national challenge.

Soon after the pandemic upended American schooling and life, researchers began showing that learning rates fell most sharply among children whose school buildings were closed longer. Students from low-income families and those who started at lower levels academically were also particularly affected.

Few experts predicted or even noticed the gender disparities that were beginning to emerge. If anything, in recent years there has been growing attention to boys’ struggles in school. There are good reasons for this: Boys as a group are more likely to be suspended and less likely to finish high school or college.

I first noticed the gender gap in learning loss in late 2024 when it showed up on an international math and science exam. I assumed this was a fluke, but just in case I started looking into it. Sure enough, on virtually every U.S. test, girls’ scores had fallen faster than boys. This has occurred in other countries too, at least on certain exams.

The latest federal NAEP results, which track scores all the way back to the ‘70s, confirm that this gender gap in learning has persisted through at least last year.

(One caveat worth keeping in mind: We’re talking about averages across a massive population here. This doesn’t tell us much of anything about an individual girl or boy.)

Experts I’ve talked to have offered a handful of hypotheses to explain these surprising gender disparities:

Girls have previously performed better in school by some metrics, so removing typical school structures, as occurred during the pandemic, may have harmed them more.
As children spent more time at home during the pandemic, girls might have borne more responsibility including caregiving for younger children. This could have limited their attention to schoolwork.
The growth of social media and screens might have harmed girls more than boys.
Even post-pandemic, girls may have been more likely to quietly internalize their academic struggles, which could have caused teachers to overlook their needs.

None of these strikes me as terribly satisfying, though. The pandemic is in the rearview mirror, and if anything the gender gap has continued to widen. Social media is unlikely to explain trends that are affecting 9-year-olds.

Broader theories meant to elucidate disappointing test scores don’t seem especially helpful here either. Less accountability for schools, for instance, wouldn’t obviously affect girls more than boys.

Officials at the Education Department, who released the latest scores, are loath to speculate about what’s driving trends, including the emergent gender gap. “Researchers, policy leaders can do that digging under the hood,” said Matthew Soldner, head of the department’s research arm. Such digging is indeed necessary here.

For the moment, though, there’s no end in sight for the remarkable and unexplained gender divide in learning loss and recovery.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois approves numeracy plan to improve math education

2026-06-10T17:17:35+00:00

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The Illinois State Board of Education approved a numeracy plan Wednesday aimed at helping educators improve how they teach math.

The plan offers districts and teachers resources, but does not mandate a curriculum or require schools to follow certain practices.

The 192-page document is being finalized two years after the state approved a literacy plan in 2024. The latter came about after advocates unsuccessfully lobbied Illinois lawmakers to pass a bill to standardize reading instruction across the state.

Illinois students’ math scores dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued to lag behind in 2024. Last fall, officials reported 38% of students had met math proficiency benchmarks on the annual state standardized test given to all third through eighth graders in public school. But they also changed the cut scores used to define proficiency, making comparisons to previous years difficult.

“The goal is for students to build those numeracy skills,” said Ronda Dawson, executive director of Teaching & Learning at ISBE.

The first draft of the “Comprehensive Numeracy Plan” was first made public in October and revised in February before several public hearings in the spring.

Kirsten Parr, director of Standards & Instruction, presented changes that were made to the plan as a result of the public feedback during an ISBE meeting Wednesday. She said the state added more “examples and non-examples” of strong math instruction, added best practices and tips for supporting students with dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects how a person learns, understands, and retains math concepts, and included more high school level data.

“This is not just an elementary plan,” she noted. “This is really to increase the numeracy skills of students across all of our ages and stages.”

ISBE Vice Chair Donna Leek applauded the plan for also including resources to build students confidence in math.

“I always have struggled with people who say, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t do math, I’m not a math person.’ Nobody ever says I don’t read, right?” Leek noted. “So, how do we take away that stigma of mathematics being something that is attainable for everyone?”

She said the plan provides a good road map for school leaders and educators to also feel confident in their math teaching practices and urged ISBE to provide support to them as they roll out the plan.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Half of teacher preparation programs align with the science of reading, report finds

2026-06-09T04:01:28+00:00

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Slightly more than half of teacher preparation programs use scientifically grounded methods to teach aspiring educators how to teach children to read, according to a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality.

That’s both good news and bad news.

Three years ago, when NCTQ last surveyed teacher preparation programs, only a quarter of them were fully aligned with the science of reading. So the number of programs giving new teachers a strong foundation in best practices to teach reading has doubled.

But that still leaves hundreds of teacher prep programs that are not aligned with the science of reading, according to the report released Tuesday. Hundreds of other programs declined to participate in the review. Of those that did participate, about 1 in 5 programs earned an F rating, meaning they teach multiple outdated or disproven practices. Even generally strong programs often devote very little time to supporting English learners, struggling readers, and students with disabilities, the report found.

Many teacher prep programs continue to teach outdated methods even as states and school districts invest millions of dollars in retraining teachers already in the classroom.

“This is a form of educational malpractice against new teachers and the students they will serve,” NCTQ President Heather Peske said.

The findings suggest one possible reason that science of reading policies, now on the books in all but a handful of states, have not made as big an impact on reading scores as advocates had hoped.

The recently released Education Scorecard found that students are in a sort of “reading recession,” with test scores persistently down over the last decade. That analysis found that states where reading scores had improved, such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Indiana, had adopted science of reading policies. But it also found that many more states with similar policies in the books had not made equivalent progress.

Foreshadowing NCTQ’s findings, a survey released earlier this spring by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right education think tank, and the RAND Corporation, a research organization, similarly found that many teachers, especially those in high-poverty schools, continued to use outdated methods, such as asking students to guess at words using context.

Teachers who relied on their pre-service training were more likely to use such methods than those who had received on-the-job training, the Fordham report found.

Peske said states are in a strong position to exert leverage on teacher preparation programs through program accreditation and the teacher licensure process, but many states aren’t using that authority.

“If states do not include teacher preparation programs as part of a comprehensive approach to improving teacher capacity and student outcomes, they are missing the boat on a huge impact point,” she said.

States should set high standards for their teacher preparation programs and also provide support to help programs improve, Peske said.

NCTQ reviewed more than 700 teacher preparation programs by looking at course catalogs, syllabi, textbooks and other class materials, and then scored them using a standardized rubric. Critics of NCTQ have long said this method paints an incomplete picture and fails to account for the full range of work that happens within teacher prep programs.

Half of NY teacher prep programs fail in reading instruction: report

NCTQ said program administrators had an opportunity to review their rating and correct information before the report was published.

More than 460 programs declined to participate, including 72% of teacher preparation programs in Illinois, 57% of programs in New York, and 58% of programs in New Jersey — all states that have ostensibly made improving literacy a priority.

Paula White, the executive director of JerseyCAN, a statewide education advocacy group, said ensuring students can read is a matter of accountability that starts with evaluating teacher preparation programs and ensuring that teachers are ready once they enter the classroom.

“We are accountable to our students, and what that should look like is that our teacher candidates are ready for prime time on day one in the classroom, instead of ramping up with the first cohort of students that they teach,” White said.

Of the 13 teacher preparation programs in New Jersey that participated in NCTQ’s report, the picture is bleak. Only The College of New Jersey’s undergraduate program earned an A grade. Seven programs earned an F, three earned a D, and two earned a C.

NCTQ tried to use publicly available information to assess programs that didn’t participate in the review, and found they often used textbooks and other materials also found in poorly rated programs.

NCTQ highlighted the work done in Mississippi, Colorado, and Indiana to improve teacher preparation as models for other states.

Improving teacher training was a central part of the reforms that contributed to the so-called “Mississippi Miracle.” In this year’s NCTQ review, 9 out of 10 programs earned an A or B rating.

Colorado used its accreditation process to pressure programs to overhaul their approach to reading instruction starting in 2019. This year, all 17 of the state’s programs earned an A or B rating.

Indiana leaned on a $25 million initiative from the Lilly Foundation to help its teacher colleges overhaul their programs after the state passed a new literacy framework in 2023. (The Lilly Foundation is a funder of Chalkbeat. See our funders here and read our ethics policy here.) This year, 24 of 25 Indiana programs earned an A rating.

Chalkbeat reporter Jessie Gómez contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Half of NY teacher prep programs fail in reading instruction: report

2026-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

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Half of teacher preparation programs in New York are failing to properly train educators to teach students how to read, despite the state’s push to overhaul literacy instruction, according to a report released Tuesday.

Out of 38 New York teacher preparation programs evaluated by the National Council on Teacher Quality, or NCTQ, just six received A grades, meaning that they teach all five key components of scientifically-based reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Nineteen — or half of the state’s prep programs — received failing marks, including many operated by CUNY and SUNY, the city and state university systems. Nationally, just 21% of programs received an F. More than half of New York’s elementary teacher prep programs declined to provide materials for review, among the highest refusal rates of any state. Those programs were not graded.

NCTQ assigns failing grades if a program covers one or none of the five components of reading or teaches debunked practices, such as encouraging students to guess how to pronounce words they don’t know by using pictures.

“New York State has one of the highest number of programs that did not meet our standards,” said Heather Peske, the president of NCTQ. “To me, it means that the state is not leveraging their authority strongly enough by reviewing and holding accountable the programs.”

Nationally, teacher preparation programs have improved dramatically, NCTQ found. Just over half of programs they assessed are using scientifically grounded practices, double the share compared with three years ago. New York has only improved slightly in that timeframe.

Lack of progress could hinder efforts to improve reading proficiency, the report warns, as a growing share of New York students are struggling with reading. About 41% of the state’s fourth graders were reading at the lowest level in 2024, up from 30% in 2013, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is often considered the gold standard in assessment. (Reading proficiency on state exams has ticked up over the past few years, diverging from the federal test.)

New York State Education Department officials disputed the NCTQ report’s findings and emphasized several efforts to improve teacher preparation programs.

“The report fails to include a substantial number of New York State teacher preparation programs, thereby presenting a limited and misleading picture of the work underway across the state,” spokesperson Karen Male wrote in a statement.

Teacher prep programs lag in science of reading

New York leaders in recent years have embraced the science of reading, a longstanding body of evidence about how to teach students to read. But progress has been uneven.

Under legislation Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed to improve reading instruction, the state gave $10 million to the state teachers union to train 20,000 teachers in the science of reading. But the course does not fully align with the science of reading, an investigation from the Hechinger Report found.

A spokesperson for the governor said the training is being reviewed by New York State United Teachers and the State Education Department.

Meanwhile, many of New York’s public teacher prep programs fell short on NCTQ’s scorecard. Eight of SUNY’s 19 programs evaluated by NCTQ received failing grades. Among CUNY programs, 9 of 13 received an F. (Medgar Evers College was the only CUNY program to not provide all teaching materials for review and was not evaluated.)

SUNY spokesperson Holly Liapis said the university system is working to make changes. The university’s board of trustees passed a policy in January that will require every SUNY program to be “fully aligned” with the science of reading by December, she said.

“SUNY is absolutely committed to ensuring our campuses all deliver high-quality Science of Reading preparation,” Liapis said in a statement.

CUNY spokesperson Noah Gardy disputed the NCTQ’s assessment, arguing the report “is not an accurate measure of CUNY’s teacher training work.” He did not explain why.

The university system is spending $3 million in philanthropic dollars to “to align curriculum and support faculty development,” he said. Gardy also pointed to other efforts, including a microcredential in the science of reading available to educators and CUNY students.

State education leaders say improvements are underway

The NCTQ report is nonetheless optimistic that change is on the horizon, pointing to a multi-state effort that New York education leaders joined three years ago to overhaul teacher prep programs.

That effort, organized by The Hunt Institute, a nonprofit affiliated with Duke University, includes an action plan calling for a slew of reforms.

“There’s lots of other work happening on campuses through knowledge sharing, through changes of policy,” said Ruth Genn, the executive director of the Literacy Academy Collective and a leader of New York’s effort. “I do think it’ll be reflected in the next NCTQ report.”

State Education Department officials indicated they are embracing the action plan by releasing a science of reading framework for teacher prep programs, beefing up the state’s review process for those programs, and creating a new teacher certification exam focused on the science of reading.

Experts said it is often difficult to quickly reform teacher prep programs, in part because they are large bureaucracies. In addition faculty may be reluctant to change teaching practices they’ve honed for years, and have strong protections to maintain academic freedom.

“There’s going to be a lag there, and that’s the painful side of bureaucracy — and it’s exhausting and frustrating,” said Javaid Siddiqi, president and CEO of The Hunt Institute. Still, he said, “New York has made progress.”

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

For generations, more schooling meant better jobs. Could generative AI upend that bargain?

2026-06-04T20:45:44+00:00

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For more than a century, American education has been transformed by technology.

Various technological shifts have created the modern “knowledge economy,” in which workers with the most years of formal schooling tend to be the best-paid. Economists refer to this dynamic as the race between education and technology, and it’s why each generation of Americans has remained in school longer than the last. Our current education system has been built around this reality.

Enter generative AI, which is not like the technologies that automated parts of farm or factory work, and might not be like the computer or the internet. Instead, AI threatens to upend a paradigm that has existed for generations, in which the economy adapts to new technologies by demanding more education. In theory, AI could do the opposite by replacing large swaths of white-collar workers. That’s why this moment feels so perilous for students and schools.

To be clear, no one really knows how AI will change the economy. But at this moment of uncertainty it’s worth looking back at the historical interplay between technology, the economy, and schooling. Understanding how technology has already transformed education can help understand how it might do so again and why the onset of the AI era feels so different.

For the last century plus, technology in various forms has laid waste to certain farm, manufacturing, blue-collar, and other middle-income jobs. Instead, demand has grown for highly educated white-collar workers.

During this time, American schools and universities have raced to keep up with technology by expanding access. High school education opened up to most teenagers in the early 20th century. The growth of college education followed in later decades. During this time, the U.S. was far ahead of other countries in making schooling broadly accessible, which helped turn the country into an economic powerhouse.

“Because the American people were the most educated in the world, they were in the best position to invent, be entrepreneurial, and produce goods and services using advanced technologies,” wrote Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, in their classic 2008 book “The Race Between Education and Technology.”

The pressure for a more educated workforce continued apace in the following decades. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton liked to quip, “what you earn depends on what you learn.” This was a neat encapsulation of the new economic order.

In response, politicians of various stripes advanced policies aimed at preparing students for postsecondary education and knowledge-intensive work. Kindergarten classes reduced a focus on play and began emphasizing academic content. Schools were held accountable for test scores and graduation rates. High schools expanded college prep programs. Colleges began recruiting more students who wouldn’t have considered higher education previously.

Graphic shows the average years spent in school for 30-year olds, based on when they were born.

Ironically, during this time, there was little indication that technology itself was dramatically improving teaching and learning. In fact, there’s been a cycle of hype followed by disappointment when the radio, the TV, various “teaching machines,” and the computer fail to revolutionize schooling for the better.

Meanwhile, the economy’s voracious appetite for highly educated workers was not fully sated. For the last half century, Americans’ years of education have increased, but at a slower pace than in prior decades. Meanwhile, the relative wages of college-educated workers rose steadily through the early 2000s. This college wage premium — the advantage those with a degree have over other workers — has stopped growing recently but remains at historically high levels.

This has left a modern economy that is fairly polarized. There are many jobs that only require a high school education — like home health aides, retail clerks, warehouse stockers — but their wages are relatively low. Most well-paid professions typically demand a college degree or more: nurses, doctors, lawyers, college professors, business managers, accountants, and engineers.

This economic and educational revolution of the last several decades has led to vastly increased productivity and has benefited well-credentialed workers and the educational institutions that provide those skills and degrees. But it has not been kind to less-educated Americans and has likely contributed to growing income inequality.

The existential question now is whether generative artificial intelligence will change this economic paradigm. AI can already produce research, writing, and analysis previously assumed to be only doable by well-educated workers. One recent study had both educated and less-educated people complete a workplace-like problem-solving exercise. Without AI, the highly educated group did much better. With AI, that edge shrank substantially. That’s why some commentators prophesy a great “deskilling,” in which many well-paid white-collar workers get replaced by AI.

Education has value beyond its economic return. But if that return erodes, demand for the current offerings of American schooling, especially higher education, would likely decline — potentially leading to unprecedented disruption in an industry that has long assumed a growing customer base.

Yet this is hardly an inevitability. Maybe educated workers will be best able to avail themselves of AI. Or maybe the technology will wipe out some white-collar jobs, but expand and create others. Perhaps AI will mostly supplement rather than replace office work or it will prove less useful than some think.

While some claim that AI has already decimated the job prospects of young college graduates, the weight of the data does not support this narrative.

At this point, then, we simply don’t know how AI will reshape the economy and the jobs available to Americans. This leaves students and educators in the profoundly difficult position of preparing for an economic future that feels more uncertain than ever before.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis charter students are bucking district math trends. Here’s what’s guiding their growth.

2026-06-04T10:00:01+00:00

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In examining post-pandemic learning loss, officials at Leadership Preparatory Charter School came to a realization: Teachers were following scripted math curriculum a bit too closely.

“We were expecting teachers to make changes” to cater to students’ needs, said Valissia Allen, founder of the Southeast Memphis K-8 school. “But they were scared.”

So in 2022, the school partnered with national organization Teach Like A Champion to adapt scripted state-approved curriculum. Now, the school provides more flexibility in teaching and plugs material into a structured schedule, starting with a “do now” activity and rote review exercises. Allen calls it “teacher autonomy with guardrails.”

Leadership Prep is seeing booming results. Last year, nearly 44% of students scored as proficient on state standardized math tests – up over 20 percentage points from 2021, school leaders said. That’s more than double last year’s district-wide average for math proficiency.

The uptick mirrors growth in math performance in charter schools across Memphis. A Chalkbeat analysis found that charter students are bouncing back from pandemic-era math losses faster than their traditional school peers and are now outperforming them on state tests.

Nearly one-quarter of Memphis charter students scored proficient in math on last year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program – up from 2% in 2021, a year after the pandemic struck. That big leap lifted charter math proficiency above pre-pandemic levels.

Traditional school students recovered, as well, but not as quickly: Just under 22% of traditional public school students passed the math TCAP last year, up from 6.9% in 2021. That lagged behind traditional schools students’ pre-pandemic math proficiency.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools did not respond to a request for comment about Chalkbeat’s findings.

That data is backed up by a new report from Tennessee education nonprofit SCORE, where staff spent the past year visiting local charters that showed significant growth on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

“Their growth was the equivalent of if they had had 47 more days of learning in a year,” said Emma McWeeney, SCORE’s senior director of charter initiatives.

These trends carry weight on the eve of a state takeover of MSCS. Nashville Republicans cite years of academic underperformance in the district as justification for taking away local control of education decisions, including charter authorization. House Speaker Cameron Sexton appointed SCORE CEO David Mansouri to the impending state oversight board last week.

Mansouri will now have a direct hand in shaping critical levers like MSCS curriculum and staffing. Experts also say that state takeovers of school districts often lead to the expansion of charter options in the area.

SCORE’s report, which included analysis of state-run charters alongside MSCS charters, revealed consistent practices that boosted charter math performance, including daily data analysis and teacher training. But McWeeney said the key driver of success was development of a “school-wide vision” for how math lessons should be run across all grade levels.

“We walked into a kindergarten classroom, a fourth grade classroom, an eighth grade classroom, they were doing very different math skills, but there was a consistent flow and model,” she said.

Teaching with guardrails: The Leadership Prep math model

Corliss James, a former Leadership Prep teacher who is now a principal at the school, said the flexibility to alter state-approved curriculum helps teachers prepare students more directly for TCAP.

“With the scripted curriculum, some of the questions weren’t as rigorous,” she said. “And then when we would see the state test, they weren’t aligned even though they were saying they were.”

Most curricula also focused too heavily on “conceptual” math that explains why certain equations are used instead of the procedural skills necessary for a timed standardized test, Allen added.

A typical math class at Leadership Prep looks like this: Students start with a short quiz, then move into timed basic equations like multiplication. Teachers then review relevant vocabulary for the day’s lesson, and walk through errors from the previous day’s assignments.

Then, they employ classic “gradual release” techniques for new problems: teachers solve an equation, then the class solves one together, and then students complete one on their own. And each class period ends with a short quiz reviewing the new material to gauge student comprehension.

James said a good number of teachers “wanted to revolt” when Leadership Prep first introduced the new lesson model because of the increased workload in crafting daily lesson plans. Some wound up quitting. That first year, the school held three weeks of professional development in the summer, plus a usual hour-per-month session and eight hours each month for Teach Like A Champion training.

But Allen says the teachers who stayed have become partners in enhancing the school’s curriculum every day.

“They’re constantly coming to us like, ‘Hey, I saw this. Can I try this in the classroom?’” she said. “They’re champions. This work does not exist without their tireless efforts in the push to change.”

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story showed a graph that was off by one year, identifying 2024-25 math scores as 2025-26 data.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

New York teachers union calls for aggressive limits on AI and screens for youngest students

2026-06-01T21:43:05+00:00

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The tide is quickly turning against screens and artificial intelligence in schools — at least in New York state.

The state’s teachers union is the latest to join the grassroots parent efforts to limit screens and AI, passing a resolution this weekend calling for a ban on individual students’ screen use in prekindergarten through second grade, including online assessments.

It also calls for banning student-facing AI for these young learners, as well as prohibiting AI chatbots for students under 16.

Gov. Kathy Hochul also expressed concerns on Monday about screen time in schools.

The resolution from New York State United Teachers, or NYSUT, which is the umbrella union of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, comes on the heels of a push for a nationwide strategy to curb technology use in schools from its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers. AFT President Randi Weingarten last week called for similar limits in her “devices-down, eyes-up, hands-on” plan.

The resolution from the state teachers union comes as New York City is rethinking its policies on artificial intelligence in schools. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels recently called AI the “most invasive technology that we’ve seen” and signaled the Education Department may create clearer guardrails for the city’s youngest students, after significant criticism of the city’s initial draft policy.

“Educators are not anti-technology. We are pro-child,” NYSUT President Melinda Person said in a statement on Monday. “Every decision made in the name of innovation must actually serve the students in our classrooms.”

Meanwhile, Hochul said Monday that it is “definitely worth looking into” limiting screen time for younger students. She would take a similar approach to studying this as she did before implementing banning cell phones, she said at a press conference celebrating the first year of the state’s school cellphone ban.

“I spent a year going around the state, gathering information, assessing it, analyzing it, and coming up with a really solid policy,” Hochul said, “so I would engage in that before I would give an answer on how I feel about this, but I’m learning a lot as a parent and grandparent.”

Several districts or states are limiting or looking into limiting screens in schools. Los Angeles schools are moving to ban screens until second grade. Iowa recently passed a law limiting screens in schools. Tennessee and other states are considering limits.

How the national backlash to education technology will affect classrooms in the nation’s largest school district remains to be seen. An upper Manhattan superintendent instituted a “screen break” last week at a parent advocate’s request. But the state teachers union is pressing for broader change.

NYSUT’s resolution, for instance, calls for banning online assessments for young children. Since the pandemic, schools across the five boroughs have been giving students assessments in reading and math three times a year to gauge their progress. Many schools use online tools from i-Ready or MAP Growth starting in kindergarten for the math assessments. (The Acadience Reading assessment for K-2 students is not device-based.)

As New York transitions to digital standardized exams for students across the state in grades 3-8, some educators have raised concerns that test preparation will increasingly rely on devices, too. The union’s resolution calls on the state to maintain paper and pencil options.

Students are “spending excessive time preparing for computer-based testing, completing mandated screen-based programs, and engaging in passive technology use that interrupts student-teacher engagement,” the resolution states.

A spokesperson for the state’s Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The union’s resolution also calls for requiring that using AI in any grade must be “educator-led” and designed to “promote critical thinking, digital literacy, and civic readiness, rather than replace human instruction, creativity or judgment.”

Teacher unions are also trying to walk a tightrope as they navigate the latest education technology backlash. The AFT and New York City’s teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, launched a partnership last year with OpenAI and Microsoft to help train educators.

“There are conversations at every level about how to scale back screen time for students, especially our youngest,” Mary Vaccaro, the UFT’s vice president for education, said in a statement.

“At the same time, the UFT and its national union, the AFT, are trying to help educators better understand and navigate AI, whether that’s learning how to protect their students or how to harness the tool for their own work.”

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois lawmakers pass cellphone ban in classrooms. Here’s when it goes into effect.

2026-06-01T18:50:14+00:00

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Illinois is set to join a growing number of states that have barred cellphone use in the classroom.

Just as the Illinois General Assembly reached its deadline to wrap up its legislative session Sunday, the state Senate passed legislation that would largely restrict cellphones in Illinois schools. The legislation would go into effect for the 2027-28 school year, meaning school districts will have a year to plan before the restrictions are implemented.

The bill now heads to Gov. JB Pritzker, who has been a vocal advocate for limiting cellphone use in the classroom. It’s quite the turnaround in the Illinois state legislature, which failed to pass the bill in the state House of Representatives despite unanimous Senate approval during last year’s session.

Cellphones aren’t the only devices the bill bars from the classroom — tablets, laptops, gaming consoles, and smart watches are also banned. School-issued devices are exempt from the ban.

These broad restrictions aim to improve students’ academic performance by removing the distraction of what the bill calls “wireless communication devices,” proponents say. Barring them from classrooms could also “strengthen friendships and human interactions, and minimize bullying,” said Jessica Handy, executive director of Stand for Children Illinois.

The cellphone ban wasn’t the only legislation taking aim at children’s device usage that lawmakers passed this week. Another bill heading to Pritzker’s desk outlines limitations on social media platforms’ algorithms to protect children’s privacy. Both bills received bipartisan support from state lawmakers — something Pritzker said underscored the urgency of addressing the effects of cellphones on children.

“We’re giving children more classroom focus and a better education by banning kids’ use of cellphones during the school day from start to finish,” Pritzker said at a Monday news conference.

Research on the effectiveness of banning cellphones in schools is still preliminary, but results have been largely mixed. An April study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed a reduction in phone usage in schools with storage pouches for phones, but also found a minimal impact on student test scores or attendance.

Thirty-five other states have enacted legislation that bans or limits cellphone use in the classroom over the past few years, according to Ballotpedia.

Some changes from last year’s version of the bill include exceptions to ensure student safety, and limits on punitive measures against children who violate the bans. For example, after members of the legislative Black Caucus and Stand for Children expressed concern that students of color could be disproportionately disciplined, lawmakers added a section disallowing suspensions, expulsions, and fines against students who violate their district’s policy.

Several other exceptions are also folded into the legislation. Devices can be exempted from the policy if:

A healthcare professional has determined it is medically necessary.
It is used for an Individualized Education Program, which outlines accommodations for students with disabilities.
The student is a caregiver responsible for a family member.
An English language learner uses it for translation.
A school staff member has allowed the use of the device.
An emergency occurs.
A school district allows usage during high school lunch breaks and periods between classes.

Over the next year, school districts must figure out how to store students’ restricted devices, because the bill doesn’t specify how schools must do so. If a device “stored in good faith” is damaged, school staff cannot be held liable, according to the bill. Some organizations such as the Illinois Federation of Teachers previously seemed hesitant about storage guidance, specifically what it might cost schools to implement.

The State Board of Education will provide a template for school cellphone policies by September. Feedback from local teachers unions is required, and student input is encouraged to help districts develop their policies.

Once the policies go into effect, parents can find their school’s rules on their district website or student handbook.

Makiya Seminera is a reporter covering how the state and federal government affect education in Chicago and across Illinois. Contact Makiya at mseminera@chalkbeat.org.

Inside one push to diversify NYC’s teacher workforce

2026-05-29T10:00:01+00:00

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New York City’s teachers don’t reflect the students they serve, but one recent public school grad is trying to do his part to shrink that gap.

Students of color make up the vast majority of the nation’s largest school system, yet white educators are more than half of the teaching workforce. Better representation at the front of the classroom can affect student outcomes. Studies have shown students who have teachers of color tend to have better test scores, attendance, and graduation rates.

P.S. Weekly producers Ermione Aleah Raymond, from the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, and Mateo Tang O’Reilly, from Central Park East High School, compare teaching diversity within their own schools and examine how the lack of it affects their experiences as students of color.

Ermione interviews Isaiah Nicholson, a college freshman who was once in their shoes and now wants to make a dent in the data. Isaiah is a fellow in NYC Men Teach, a 10-year-old program based out of the City University of New York that aims to bring more men of color into the city’s teacher pipeline. Over the past decade, the program contributed roughly 3,200 new male teachers of color to the city’s public schools, a new report said.

P.S. Weekly is made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.

Transcript

Ermione: I know I’ve already defied a lot of stereotypes people have placed on me about me. I’m black and grew up with an immigrant single mom.I spent time in foster care. I’m a first generation college student who’s headed to a prestigious university on a full ride next year. This causes me to feel a lot of pressure. And sometimes, when trying to succeed in school I’ve felt brushed off or misunderstood. And sometimes, I wonder if it’s because my teachers don’t really look like me.

Ermione: This is P.S. Weekly, the sound of the New York City School System. I’m Ermione Aleah Raymond and I’m a senior at Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice high school.

Mateo: And I’m Mateo Tang O’Reilly.

Ermione: This week we’re talking about racial diversity, or rather, the lack of racial diversity, among NYC teachers…So Mateo have you felt represented by your teachers in school?

Mateo: Honestly, not really. Most of my teachers are white and I’m not but I feel like when I look inward to their personality or character I do feel somewhat represented, but as far as race and appearance, not really.

Ermione: I felt more represented at my middle school, but at my high school, which is, mostly Black and Brown students, the teacher population doesn’t really reflect us.

Mateo: Is this specific to your school or is it more of a citywide pattern?

Ermione: Well I did a little research and found that this is a major trend across NYC schools. White teachers make up more than half of the New York City teaching force despite the fact that only about 16% of NYC public school students are white.

Mateo: Beyond the statistics, what does this mean for students. Is it just about being and feeling seen or does it go deeper?

Ermione: This ultimately does go deeper. Studies have shown that students who have teachers of color or teachers that represent them tend to have better test scores, better attendance, better college placement, and graduation outcomes. As humans, we often gravitate towards people who look like us in spaces in which we feel uncomfortable in, and imagine education. The education system is one that is tends to be daunting for most students. Once you see teachers who look like you and people that look like you, they’re often able to grasp your culture and understand you to a deeper level, and that connection ultimately provides you with the comfortability to learn.

Mateo: And what about the teachers themselves? How does this affect them

Ermione: Oftentimes there are some black teachers in schools, but according to a study from New York University, Black teachers leave their jobs at much higher rate than teachers of other races

From 2019 to 2024, so over that five year span, New York Schools have lost 36% of their white teachers and 50% teachers of color. That’s a pretty big difference.

But teacher’s of color are more likely to stay if they have a black principal or majority black teachers at the school.

Mateo: That makes a lot of sense to me. What’s being done about this? Are the efforts being made to train more black teachers and teachers of color in general?

Ermione: There are a few different initiatives but I found out about one in particular — an organization called Men Teach NYC. Men Teach NYC is a program between the Department of Education, The Mayor’s Office and the CUNY schools. And the program just celebrated it’s 10 year anniversary!

Men teach offers career mentorship and resources to connect young men of color into the teaching field. This includes giving them metrocards, book vouchers, academic advisors and support in their teacher certification exams. Additionally, participants receive stipends for their student teaching work.

They recruit college students at the 16 CUNY campuses and even reach out to high school students interested in teaching,

And that need for more male teachers of color is so real. While 45% of students in the city are young men of color, only 7% of their teachers are.

I talked to Isaiah Nicholson.

Isaiah is 19 and a first year college student.

He’s a part of Men Teach NYC. In the morning, he attends his college classes, and then at one he heads to his school placement where he works as an assistant teacher for first graders for the rest of the school day. During the afterschool program, he helps out with fifth graders.

I spoke with him about how he is doing his part to build a teaching workforce that looks more like the students it serves and what inspired him to get involved.

Ermione: Hi. Hi. Um, as you know, my name’s Ermione. Thank you for being a part of my interview

Isaiah: Of course.

Ermione: what is your name and occupation?

Isaiah: Well, um, I am Isaiah Nicholson. I’ll call myself a future educator. Like, I’m not fully a teacher yet, but I’m working my way on to becoming a teacher.

Ermione: I am doing this story because I was interested how teacher diversity affects students and what is being done to train future teachers. I’m curious, when did you first have a black teacher, or specifically your first black male teacher?

Isaiah: But the first teacher that I saw that was a, that, that was a Black man and he was of color, was in sixth grade. So when I saw that, I was like, “Yo, I can actually become a teacher if I really wanted to.”

Ermione: Hmm. Tell me what really drew you into the program. Or who?

Isaiah: Yeah, so basically when I was like nine years old, they were trying to get me in summer camp. I was like, “I don’t wanna do no sim- sum- no summer camp.” I hated summer camp. I didn’t want to do it. You know, I always thought it would be like, uh, boring to me. I don’t know why I thought that, but I hated the idea of going to a building. You gotta call someone Mr. and Mrs. Like, the idea that just didn’t feel right with me. So I was like upset about trying to go, go to summer camp, day camp. Until my cousins two of my cousins, you know, decided to, you know, become a mentor at that place, and that kind of opened my eyes up to wanting to do it, you know? And yeah, like he definitely helped me. He inspired a lot of my passions, too. We still talk to this day, you know. And yeah, that’s pretty much

Ermione: Can you describe your path to becoming a teacher?

Isaiah: Yeah. So this all started in sophomore year. You know, I had the opportunity to join a program, and at the time I was like, “I don’t wanna join.I don’t, I don’t wanna teach anything. I don’t, I don’t know how to teach people things,” you know? I feel like that’s not really my thing. But you know, after I saw my cousin, um, he was my mentor at at a, at the school program, you know, um, during the summertime. And I saw how passionate he was for, you know, for teaching kids, working with kids in general.

And because of that I was like, “Yo, I can actually do this.” So I decided to apply for it, and yeah, I got the opportunity to join

In 2024, in the summertime, I was with Men Teach and went to, to a school, and we, you know, we were like more of a more of a co-teacher.

You know, throughout the whole year when I w- was working with the, with the program, with the, you know, secondary program. So I didn’t really get, you know, the full benefits, but I got the full teaching experience during the summer mostly.

Like, the s- the, like, the year-round thing was to build experience with children, but the summertime was for me to understand, like, how to make a lesson plan, how to teach the kids the right way, and to be able to answer their questions, you know. Pretty much that. And I had a lot of confidence when I did it too, so I was happy that I went up there.

I didn’t stutter, ‘cause I have a stuttering problem sometimes. So, I was glad that I was able to teach the kids, you know, in the best way possible. Without any problems.

Ermione: Throughout your teaching path, do you see yourself having any challenges? as a student trying to get into this career field.

Isaiah: Early on I had to understand how children operated. You know, I, I didn’t really understand too much about children besides that they can be loud, they can be distracted. So over time, I realized, hey, I can actually learn how to incorporate a new style of teaching with the old style and able to have the students, you know, say, “Okay, I can look up to this guy.

He can help me. He can, you know, guide me."

Ermione: Tell me about how that moment you mentioned earlier impacted your decision to become a teacher. The memory of first seeing a teacher of color.

Isaiah: I didn’t see myself becoming a firefighter, a police officer. I didn’t see myself doing those kind of jobs. Being a teacher, you know, was still wasn’t part, you know, of my plan either, but it’s something that I could do with ease, ‘cause I like talking to people about anything. I could talk to someone all day about s- one thing, and it can go, you know, anywhere. So that definitely helped me to, like, understand, okay, I can do ELA.I can, you know, do some social studies, help them out with that, you know. So yeah, opened my eyes up more to it..

Ermione : You’re in your first year of college. You’re in this Men Teach program. Can you walk me through a typical day-to-day in the program?

Isaiah: Yeah. So basically under Men Teach, I’d have s- schooling in the morning, of course, and then 1:00 I would go to the school that I’m assigned to For the last hour and a half of, you know, the school day. Then I would transition w- to the after-school program with, you know, with the school, and I’ll help teach the kids there as well.

Ermione : Hmm.

So in a way, you’re both getting the educational background of teaching, but you’re also getting the hands-on experience.

Ermione: What mission do you feel like you’re contributing to by being a part of this Men Teach program?

Isaiah: Paying it forward. You know, they can see a face that looks like them, you know, doing something that, oh, you, I would say just giving them, like a good image, a good positive role model. You know, that’s important to me, you know, for them to see that, okay, this guy looks like me. He, he works in the same way that I can work. I could become him in the future. Just to pay it forward so they can see that, oh, they could become me, or they can do something similar to pay it forward.

Ermione: How do you plan to take what you learn from the Men Teach program and apply it to real-life education?

Isaiah: Yeah, I’ll say just the way that I learned how to deal with children, you know, mostly how they overreact, how they do things wrong.

Like, I can... Like, I learn from that. And when I become a teacher in the future, I can, you know, take that experience and bring it forward

Ermione: Okay. Here’s a fun little question to- Okay ... break it up. Um, what grades do you wanna teach in the future and why?

Isaiah: Anything but middle school.

Ermione: Oh.

Isaiah: Well, I, I’ll say like either, like, first grade or fifth grade. You know, it, it depends on the subject mostly.

Ermione: Okay. What subject do you wanna do?

Isaiah: I would say I’ll do ELA, English, you know, that’s my specialty. I, I love writing.

You know, when I was seven, I had so many, I’ll, I’ll say fake books, you know, of, of my, um, my, my kitty cat at home. You know, I made little fake stories, you know. Like let’s say this, um, cat in, in the beanstalk, you know, just little...my imagination going far. That’s all I would say. So yeah, I’ll... And I love doing English work.

Ermione: Yeah, then I think sixth, and you not choosing sixth through eight is a good decision ‘cause it’s quite hard in those years.

Isaiah: Yeah, especially math.

Ermione: Ugh. Yeah. You don’t gotta say nothing. You don’t gotta say nothing more. I feel that.

Isaiah: Yeah. I can’t stand math.

Ermione: I can do one plus one, subtraction, addition, but you lost me when you started doing division. Yeah,

Isaiah: It’s, it’s letters, it’s letters as you get older, because letters.

Ermione: Why, why do we have to- A

Isaiah: No. A plus

Ermione: A plus B equals C, and you could C me out. Thank you. How do you expect this program to uniquely position you for success in the future?

Isaiah: I can see myself, you know, doing a good job. I have more confidence now. When I first started, I had no confidence. I didn’t think I could hold down a lesson by myself. I didn’t think I could, I could control a class by myself.

But some- b- but there have been times where I have, you know, dealt with kids. the teacher steps out for a minute, and then I have to, you know, change my role.So, you know, I definitely learned how to, you know, deal with all that. So I’ll be able to bring that forward with me.

Ermione: What do you and your fellow program participants think of the role of diversity in New York City schools?

Isaiah: It’s very important, you know. It’s very important. Because people can see that, okay, I can do this, too, and that’s what’s mostly important. it’s very important to see different faces, different people, do different things.

Ermione: What do you think needs to be done to increase this diversity in schools?

Isaiah: I would say, more interest in teaching, you know? Right now,is not, like, people’s first choice, you know, after high school. They wanna, you know, do psychology. They wanna do- You know, business management, different things, but education is not like, Okay, wanna teach kids." No. No one’s not thinking about that. They always think about the, the downsides to it. They don’t think about, “Oh, I can, I can impact this kid. He can go home and say, ‘Oh, Mr. Isaiah did this today.he helped me with my math work.’” You know? So definitely it’s very important to get people interested in the, in the field, but that’s hard to do because it’s not many benefits that they see automatically.

Ermione: Yeah, the pay, the long hours

Ermione: What do you hope to make students feel in the classroom?

Isaiah: want them to feel safe, that they can look up to me, they can see, “Okay, I can get my work done from him. I can get some help from him if I need it.” You know, they, they can always see that, okay, I’m right there. That’s what’s important to me, that they, that they know that I’m right there for them.

Ermione: What do you hope your students say about you 20 years from now?

Isaiah: I would hope they’d be like, “Oh,” like they recognize me, you know? I, I hope they recognize me, you know? And see, okay, yeah, even though when I was younger I didn’t understand, but now I understand Like you did before, you know? So I want them to, you know, get, uh, uh, I say get older and see, you know, how much I did for them. That’s all pretty much.

Ermione: As someone who’s a up-and-coming teacher, what do you think teachers need to feel supported in the workforce?

Isaiah: I would say just to know that people are supporting them.

People, that they know that someone’s there and they understand the impact. Because teachers don’t see the impact right away. Like, they teach the kid and then 20 years later someone come to see them, you know, they ha- they all grown up. They’re not kindergarten no more. They have a wife and kids.

They have a a great job. They don’t understand the impact until years later. So it’d be nice if some- for them to see the impact right away from the students. But then again, that’s, you know, a part- It’s kinda hard to, you know, kinda hard to see because students, you know, at the time they would despise the teachers, you know. Butasthey get older, they reflect. “Okay, kindergarten, thaat was a good teacher,” you know. But teachers don’t see the im- don’t see the impact right away. So I, I wa- so it would be nice for t- for stu- for students to, you know, give feedback and even, you know, the principals show them that they’re doing good’ cause some principals can be strict, and they don’t show too much emotion. Like, “Oh, you did good.” But they don’t understand how good they did. I’ll say that.

Ermione: So last question. Is there anything you wish I asked you but I didn’t?

Isaiah: I would say shout out to Chimere Stevens. You know, he’s the one who t- is the director of Men Teach. So, you know, to him, of course, you know. Thank you for, you know, taking me under your wing. You know, you helped me a lot, you know. And to the, you know, kids out there who wanna become teachers in the future, just have the passion for it. Like, don’t, you know, don’t join it if you don’t want to for the money. Just do it for the kids. You know, do it for the kids.

Ermione: Say you were taught by more teachers of color and more teachers that looked like you, how do you think this would’ve affected your education journey?

Mateo: I would say it would make me more comfortable around them because I feel like oftentimes with like my white teachers, there’s like a line that gets really, not blurry, but thick that like I know I can’t cross. It feels like it’s not my place to do certain things. So I feel like if there were more teachers that looked like me, it would be kind of like automatic in a way that like, oh, I know I can do this and say this, and automatically relate and connect to them on A, B, and C. What about you?

Ermione: Well, one, it would make my education journey more smoother. I feel like oftentimes I get in little, not fights, but I have to stand up for myself. Or say there’s a relationship between a white teacher and a white student, then they wouldn’t have to stand up for themselves as much as I do. And it feels like a constant battle or a constant fight just to be seen from my perspective, opposed to just being a student who’s trying to do the best they can.

There are a lot of other efforts that have the goal of making the teacher workforce look like the community it serves. For example, at least 24 public high schools in NYC now offer teacher training programs. Even my school has one now. But it takes time to see the impacts of this Like Isaiah pointed out, as a young teacher, you don’t see the impact right away It makes sense to me that making NYC’s teacher population more diverse starts when future teachers are still kids in the classroom themselves.

Ermione: That’s all for today on P.S. Weekly.

Mateo: P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from the Pinkerton Foundation.

Ermione: Producers for this episode were me, Ermione Aleah Raymond

Mateo: And me, Mateo Tang O’Reilly

Ermione: Our senior producer for the show is Maria Robins-Somerville and our technical director is Jake Lummus.

Mateo: Executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw. Additional production and reporting support was provided by Mira Gordon, Sabrina Duquesnay, Zana Halili and Katelyn Melville, and our friends at Chalkbeat.

Ermione: Music is from APM, and the jingle you just heard at the beginning of the episode was created by the one and only Erica Huang.

Ermione: Thanks so much for tuning in, and see you next time.

We make transcripts available for our episodes as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

In the era of AI, schools want students to think critically. Experts say they need knowledge to do so.

2026-05-28T20:40:02+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

On a recent Tuesday morning, dozens of New York City educators gathered in lower Manhattan to discuss an existential issue facing many schools: “Navigating Critical Thinking and Cognitive Offloading in the Age of AI,” as the session’s title put it.

As the training began, nearly everyone raised their hand when asked if they agreed that “critical thinking is an essential skill that we need to teach our students.” Over the course of the day, the teachers considered how to prompt an AI chatbot to get better responses and assess its accuracy. They discussed the risks that students would outsource their thinking to the technology. And they learned about classroom practices to bolster critical thinking, including peer tutoring, socratic discussions, and live journaling.

The professional development was put on by the National Academy for AI Instruction, a multimillion-dollar initiative launched by the American Federation of Teachers and backed by AI companies Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

I sat in on this training, and many teachers I spoke with said they appreciated its message and strategies. But one important idea was largely missing: that critical thinking is directly connected to the content in math, history, and science classes. This is an essential reality often absent from discussions about how schools should respond to the spread of generative AI.

Indeed, the common refrain that teachers should focus on abstract critical thinking skills, disconnected from content, risks de-emphasizing the very thing — fluency with a broad set of facts — that supports critical thinking.

“Domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill,” wrote University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in 2020 for the American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers. “Critical thinking for open-ended problems is enabled by extensive stores of knowledge.”

As technology has made knowledge more accessible — through books, Google, and now generative AI — some observers have said that schools should place less of an emphasis on basic facts that are easy to look up. “Education in the 21st century must go beyond imparting knowledge,” says the World Economic Forum. Instead, schools must impart “future-ready skills” like critical thinking and creativity.

This isn’t a new idea. Over a decade ago, a panel of academics at the National Research Council convened to consider how schools could inculcate “deeper learning” and “21st century skills,” the buzzwords of that moment. Tellingly, though, the experts reframed this assignment. “The committee views 21st century skills as dimensions of expertise that are specific to — and intertwined with — knowledge within a particular domain,” their 2012 report concluded.

To be sure, there are some skills — communication, personal organization, teamwork — that are useful in many settings and subjects. And decontextualized facts — say, memorizing the presidents without a sense of their place in history — aren’t sufficient for critical thinking.

Yet to solve math problems, students must know their times tables. To infer the causes of historical events, they need familiarity with dates and historical figures. To read and analyze complex texts, they need a wide vocabulary. To think critically, say cognitive scientists, people need to be able to seamlessly access and synthesize a large number of basic facts.

Students can look up some missing information, but when people turn to external sources too frequently, the brain struggles to keep track of all the new facts at once. Imagine reading a book and pausing every few sentences to search for an unfamiliar word or idea.

There’s not yet good reason to assume any of this will change with AI. The technology can help find new information, but knowledge is still necessary to prompt AI appropriately, to assess the accuracy of its output, and to apply it to specific tasks.

When I spoke with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, she said that knowledge certainly matters but that “what [AI] compels is that kids really have to learn how to think and how to solve problems.” She offered a similar formulation in a major speech earlier this week.

For example, elementary school students should engage in civics by researching a topic and then figuring out how to push local politicians to make change, Weingarten told me. “Maybe there are other issues or other facts within social studies curriculum that are going to have to be dropped,” she said.

Maria Elena Guzman, one of the AFT Academy instructors, said that the role of knowledge was not foregrounded in the training because teachers already know they have to teach their content-focused standards. “It’s a given. This is part of the work that they do every single day,” she said.

But if teachers are not taught explicitly about the connection between knowledge and critical thinking, some may leave with the impression that factual content matters less than it used to, especially since this remains an evergreen take of popular education commentators.

Jessie Roeder, a high school robotics and computer science teacher in New York City, appreciates the AFT’s effort to help members navigate the complexities of using AI. He’s already attended four trainings put on by the Academy. During the critical thinking session, he raised the importance of knowledge for using AI effectively.

“You have to know enough to be able to say, wait a second, this is BS,” he later told me.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

In the AI era, NYC schools need a computer science reboot, this expert says

2026-05-26T16:51:36+00:00

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A decade ago, New York City officials promised that all schools would have access to “meaningful” computer science education by this school year.

Computer Science for All, known as CS4All, also had particular equity goals of reaching girls and students of color.

The share of students enrolled in computer science classes has quadrupled from roughly 5.5%, or 54,000, in 2016, to 20%, or more than 193,000, in 2024. And CS4All made gains in growing the number of underrepresented students. Still, just 1 in 5 schools citywide are meeting CS4All’s goals for girls, Latinos, and Black students, according to a data brief released Tuesday from the Center for an Urban Future, a New York City-based think tank.

Though the initiative “still has unfinished business,” the timing is also ripe for CS4All 2.0, said Eli Dvorkin, the center’s editorial and policy director, who believes that the city’s education system needs to rethink its approach to computer science in the age of artificial intelligence.

“Just because entry-level coding work is in serious decline, it doesn’t mean that demand for computational thinking is going away,” Dvorkin said. Instead, “every teacher should be able to prepare young people to think critically and solve problems and use judgement on whether and when to use AI tools and how they work and why.”

He acknowledged the “understandable concerns” many parents have about how much screen time their children are spending in school. But he believes that “evidence-based” computer science education is an antidote to passive screen time.

“I think there’s a very real chance that Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani’s legacy will be shaped in part by how our public school system adapts to the AI era,” Dvorkin said, “and that means a strategy to a retool computational-thinking education for the world we inhabit right now.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

There’s been some progress in the number of computer science classes offered in the city, but did the program meet the goals outlined 10 years ago?

New York City has done something genuinely impressive. More than 90% of schools now offer computer science, up from a tiny handful a decade ago, but access is not the same thing as participation. Our data shows that just 20% of student students were actually enrolled in computer science classes.

The data also shows that the city is still pretty far from the original promise of computer science for all: Just about 19% of schools are meeting CS4all equity and participation goals. So that’s why now is the time for the Mamdani administration to launch a CS4all 2.0 that should focus on closing the gaps that remain in participation, equity, and teacher preparation, and move toward integrating computational thinking across the curriculum.

Now that we’re at the 10-year mark, is the program over?

At the school-level and even centrally, there’s still an effort underway to continue to build on the work of CS4all, but in terms of a unifying centralized effort to advance this work, learning from the successes in the challenges of the first decade, and charting a path forward for the next one, we’re not there yet.

And this is a risky moment for the country ‘s largest public school system to be without an organizing effort around computing education.

The school system did put out some preliminary guidance around the use of AI in schools. It’s important work. But this is, I think, the even bigger challenge: What should the New York City public school system’s computing education strategy look like in the AI-era?

The goal can’t simply be to teach some students to code in 11th through 12th grade. In fact, that kind of technical knowledge may be in rapid freefall right now with the rise of generative AI.

But AI also raises the bar for embedding computational thinking across the whole curriculum so that every young person learns how to think critically and ask hard questions and solve problems with computers. That’s the only way to ensure that our young people are able to graduate from high school capable of fully understanding these powerful systems that are shaping our lives. Computer science education can’t just mean a coding elective for some.

As you say, the city’s AI framework is one piece. But how we educate kids should be an urgent part of this conversation, too, especially as we see the world changing and the job force changing.

It feels like a lot of the conversation is focused on being for or against technology.

At a time when AI tools are flooding into students’ lives both at school and at home, the answer isn’t simply more devices or more apps. I think most parents and teachers would agree, it’s certainly not more screen time. But it is deeper computational fluency — the ability to understand, question, and shape technology rather than just consume it. That’s computing education done right.

I think there’s a misperception that advocating for evidence-based, age-appropriate, and even joyful computing education is simply synonymous with more screen time. That couldn’t be further from the truth. But we need a teaching workforce in New York City that is equipped to integrate computational thinking — the building blocks of computing education— into every young person’s classroom experience.

I think a lot of people — perhaps even teachers — would be surprised that you can teach computational thinking without screens.

There’s a growing body of evidence that shows the dangers of exposing young children to too much screen time. But that doesn’t mean deferring computing education until later. That means we have to be much more creative about how we can integrate a computing education into classroom settings without screens.

There is a program at CUNY’s colleges of education called CITE — computing integrated teacher education. And what CITE does is equip CUNY professors that are teaching our future K-12 teachers to integrate computational thinking and learning into their pedagogy. The power of this model is pretty profound because about a third of all new public school teachers in New York City every year are hired out of CUNY.

We’re now at a point where the first participants in CITE programs have actually been entering the classroom as student teachers or they’re beginning their first full-time teaching assignments.

With the screen time and AI backlash, do you think there will be an appetite to push for CS4all 2.0?

I think the backlash against screen time actually strengthens the case for CS4all 2.0. Parents are right to worry about passive, addictive, and poorly governed technology use in our classrooms. But the answer is not to leave students less prepared to understand technology, it’s to teach them how technology really works, how to question it, think critically about it, and how to use it responsibly and creatively.

So one key question is: Are New York City public school students going to be the people of the future who will shape how that technology is created and deployed?

I think the argument is strong that our future economy will only become more bifurcated between roles that require sophisticated computational thinking skills — including the critical thinking and judgment skills that should be an essential part of a CS4all 2.0 — and low wage work that does not pay enough to enable New Yorkers to afford life in the most expensive city in America.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani launches NYC elementary school math curriculum overhaul, following in Adams’ footsteps

2026-05-22T00:36:42+00:00

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New York City will soon require elementary schools in four local districts to use city-approved math curriculums, one of the first education initiatives under Mayor Zohran Mamdani outside of early childhood.

The announcement Thursday marks the first time elementary school math teachers will be required to shift their instruction as part of the city’s broader curriculum mandate. Schools in Manhattan District 5, Bronx Districts 11 and 12, and Queens District 25 will be required to make the shift by this fall.

Elementary schools across all of the city’s 32 local districts will eventually be required to use approved math curriculums, though officials did not lay out a timeline. Officials also revealed the latest wave of middle schools that will be required to use approved reading and math curriculums.

The new elementary school curriculum mandate will use versions of the same curriculums the city mandated in middle schools.

The $17.3 million effort represents an expansion of a major initiative to overhaul reading and math instruction that began under former Mayor Eric Adams and which Mamdani signaled he would continue on the campaign trail. The mayor has yet to unveil a more detailed education agenda.

School leaders have long been allowed to choose their own materials, leading to variation in instructional approaches from school to school. On some campuses, teachers write their own curriculums. City officials argue that created uneven quality in instruction and complicated efforts to train teachers at scale. Now, Education Department leaders contend they are ensuring schools are using materials that are rigorous.

Chancellor Kamar Samuels, who got his start as a middle school math teacher, has hinted for months that changes were on the horizon to the city’s curriculum overhauls, known as NYC Reads and NYC Solves.

“We absolutely need to get elementary school math teachers into the conversation,” Samuels told educators affiliated with the advocacy group Educators for Excellence, at a meeting in March where they pressed him on expanding the curriculum overhaul. “Undergirding our system is a lot of fear in math.”

The Education Department has previously pointed to standardized test scores as a reason to rethink the way schools teach reading and math. Roughly 57% of New York City public school students were considered proficient in math and 56% in reading in grades 3-8, according to last year’s state tests.

Curriculum overhauls have sparked debate

Some educators and parents have embraced the curriculum changes while others have pushed back, arguing that a one-size-fits-all approach can stifle innovative approaches to instruction that attract families to their schools.

There have also been complaints about the specific curriculums city officials have mandated and concern that there hasn’t been enough public input in selecting them. The city’s most widely used reading program, for instance, favors excerpts over whole books.

The city’s teachers union, which supported the reading curriculum mandate, has been more wary of the math changes and criticized the decision to make changes to elementary school math.

“The DOE has not solved the problems of NYC Solves,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. “Changes that educators have called for from the beginning have not been made, and the holes in the curricula have not been filled.”

All middle schools are in the process of transitioning to approved reading and math curriculums, which officials previously said would happen by fall 2027. High schools are already required to use a common Algebra 1 curriculum called Illustrative Mathematics, which has garnered mixed reactions from teachers. Beginning this fall, elementary schools in District 5 will use i-Ready Mathematics Classroom; Districts 11 and 12 will use Illustrative Mathematics; and District 25 will use Amplify Desmos Mathematics.

The decision to approve i-Ready as the primary math curriculum across many elementary and middle schools may raise eyebrows. The private equity-backed education technology platform, widely used in New York City and across the country, has faced criticism from some families and educators amid a wider backlash over tech in schools.

Asked about potential concerns with selecting i-Ready, First Deputy Chancellor Danielle Giunta said that “has not [been] flagged as an implication to the core program and implementation, but should something arise, we will respond accordingly.”

Unlike the elementary school reading changes, which were made in part because hundreds of schools used curriculums that were discredited, Giunta said the math overhaul was prompted by successful rollout of common curriculum materials in other parts of the system. “There is so much energy from our superintendents, our principals,” she said.

Officials are also considering expanding the curriculum mandate to include high school English classes, Giunta said, though there is not yet a timeline for that. For now, city officials are focusing on beefing up targeted instruction for students who are behind in reading in four of the city’s 11 high school districts.

Questions resurface about parent engagement

Some parent leaders said they were unaware elementary school math curriculum changes were in the works, despite promises from Mamdani to incorporate parent and educator feedback in education policy decisions. One member of the community education council in Manhattan’s District 5, which includes Harlem, said they had not been consulted about the elementary school math curriculum changes. (The council member spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.)

Jonathan Collins, another District 5 parent and member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, said he had also not heard community discussion about elementary school math overhaul.

“I think there are questions as to whether or not this engagement process really reached the street level,” Collins said. Still, he said is “cautiously optimistic” about the elementary school math changes.

Advocates who have pushed the city to require more schools to adopt common curriculum materials cheered the move to expand to elementary school math.

Elementary school math instruction is “fractured and fragmented across the system,” said Evan Stone, the CEO of Educators for Excellence. He added: “If we actually want to build coherence in a system, we need to be training teachers on a core set of curriculum materials.”

Thursday’s announcement also included expansions to reading and math mandates at the middle school level in a slew of districts, which have been incrementally rolling out over multiple years. Manhattan District 2 and Brooklyn District 18 will use the Wit & Wisdom reading curriculum.

Middle schools in the following districts will be required to use a city-approved math curriculum: Manhattan District 3; Bronx District 9; Brooklyn Districts 16, 21, 22, and 23; and Queens Districts 24, 27, 28, and 30. Officials did not respond to a question about which curriculums those districts will use.

Educators and families: Let us know what you think of the curriculum changes by emailing us at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Tom Kane has tracked years of U.S. test scores. Here’s what he’s learned — and still can’t explain.

2026-05-21T09:46:23+00:00

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Just about everyone in education is trying to figure out why student achievement has been declining and how to raise it back up.

If anyone would know the answer it might be Tom Kane, a Harvard University professor who has been poring over data on student learning for the last several years. Kane and several colleagues recently released an extensive database of test scores from most states in the country.

The takeaway: Schools have made some progress recovering from steep learning declines in math, but scores in both math and reading are still far below where they were over a decade ago.

“The U.S. has been in a learning recession since at least around 2013 and that’s especially true in reading,” says Kane. “The challenges we face didn’t start or end with the pandemic.” The implications are alarming. In other work, Kane has found that test scores are linked to a variety of economic outcomes.

The research out of Kane’s center has been so comprehensive that many of its interesting findings have flown under the radar. I wanted to highlight a few of them. And I also wanted to unpack theories to explain poor academic results. What’s striking is that even Kane, a leading expert, doesn’t have clear answers or solutions.

Here are some takeaways from the work of Kane and his colleagues.

There are hypotheses, but no decisive evidence, for why learning stalled before the pandemic

Kane offers two theories. “The slowdown in learning coincided with a dismantling of test-based accountability and a rise in social media use,” his study says. The evidence for both is circumstantial, Kane acknowledges. Other countries have also seen test scores deteriorate, which could be consistent with a rise in social media everywhere. Federal accountability helped drive learning gains in the past, according to some research, so easing the pressure may explain recent declines.

Yet both theories have holes. Test scores have dropped even in early grades where social media use is not prevalent (although general screen use has accelerated for young kids). And accountability policies seemed most effective in raising math scores, but the most persistent recent declines have been in reading.

“We don’t have a definitive answer,” Kane says.

The highest- and lowest-poverty school systems have recovered faster than those in the middle

Kane calls this a U-shaped recovery. You can see it in the graph below, from his recent study. The dark blue and orange lines show learning trends by district poverty rates between 2022 and 2025. In math, the highest- and lowest-need school systems have seen the most progress. In reading, scores in middle-income districts fell the most.

Kane says policymakers should keep in mind those middle-income districts, which are sometimes overlooked in policy and funding formulas.

Federal COVID relief money helped, but it might have gone further

Part of the explanation for this U-shaped recovery is the $190 billion or so in federal COVID relief funding. In the same graph, the line below the actual recovery shows Kane’s estimate of what scores would have been without the money. Scores in high-poverty districts would have been significantly worse, he finds. Those schools benefited more from the money simply because they got more of it.

Kane rejects the commonly heard argument that the federal relief money was largely wasted. But he thinks the test score effect might have been larger had districts been required to spend more on academic recovery.

One caveat: Kane acknowledges he may be underestimating the effect of each dollar of federal aid because he doesn’t have data on how much extra money schools actually spent, just how much they were supposed to receive.

Absenteeism is limiting recovery, at least a bit

Attendance issues have exploded in recent years. Schools have made some progress in getting students back to class, but absence rates remain elevated. Kane and team estimate that this is dragging down learning. The other gray lines in the graphic — above the blue and orange lines — are Kane’s predictions of what scores would be if students were attending school at the same rate as before the pandemic.

The effects are real but fairly modest, indicating absence rates are not the main drivers of sluggish recovery. In reading, for instance, most districts would still have lost ground even with pre-pandemic attendance.

State test scores paint a more optimistic picture of recovery than the main federal test

Kane and colleagues use a combination of state tests and federal NAEP exams to construct their learning estimates. To produce the main trends they rely on NAEP, except for score changes from 2024 to 2025 since NAEP scores aren’t yet available. This matters because state tests tend to produce more positive trends. For instance, NAEP has shown reading scores declining in recent years, even while many states’ results have inched up. It’s not that one set of scores is right and the other is wrong. But this discrepancy is worth keeping in mind.

It’s not clear whether science-of-reading laws are working

Kane doesn’t find a strong correlation between states’ reading gains since 2022 and the number of science-of-reading elements they’ve incorporated. Yet he notes that the states with very few of these tenets have not made progress. Kane emphasizes that this is not especially rigorous evidence, and should be taken as only “suggestive.” More research is needed on whether these laws are changing school practices and improving outcomes.

Progress has happened before and is happening in some places

Kane marvels at the substantial gains in test scores in the 1990s and early 2000s — which went largely unremarked upon at the time. If anything, the prevailing narrative was that nothing in education was working. But if we made progress before, we can do it again, he suggests. That’s also why his report highlights a number of school systems, like Detroit, that are relative bright spots.

“It’s a reminder that improvement is possible,” Kane says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

NYC PTA funding inequities: See how much your school’s PTA raises

2026-05-15T21:10:06+00:00

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New York City’s public school system has long been defined by inequities of concentrated wealth and poverty, and nowhere is that more pronounced than in parent-teacher association fundraising.

Of the money PTAs raised last year, the top 30 schools, or just 2.5%, raised nearly half of the total amount of the 1,240 schools included in the recently released Education Department data for the 2024-25 school year.

Meanwhile, roughly 390 PTAs — about a third of the schools — reported raising no money last year, suggesting their parent-teacher associations are inactive or struggling. Another 330 PTAs appear to have failed to report anything to the Education Department. Though schools are mandated to have PTAs, some may not have the capacity to sustain such groups.

PTA money can fund enrichment, not core classroom teachers, and is often used to bolster things like the arts or pay for teaching assistants. When a school can use PTA money to cover these costs, it could free their school up to pay more for core classroom teachers.

That could, in turn, make a school more desirable, said Carolyn Abott, a Baruch College assistant professor of political science who has been researching PTAs. It could create a snowball effect, she said, attracting families to a particular school zone and potentially even pushing up housing prices.

“And you are pulling those politically and community active families away from schools that are already sort of resource-deprived, which again, exacerbates the situation,” Abott said.

Noah Strote, a parent of a fourth grader at P.S. 199, an affluent school on the Upper West Side in Manhattan’s District 3, said the funding disparities can show up in different ways, from the number of air conditioners or bathroom supplies to the quantity of enrichment programs.

“They can also fund all the little things that add up, such as teacher and staff appreciation events with food and drink and gifts, that help create a culture where those people want to stay year after year,” Strote wrote in an email. “It’s obviously not the only factor contributing to outcomes for children, but it’s definitely not an insignificant one.”

P.S. 199, which is typically a high-rolling PTA, failed to report any data to the Education Department, revealing some of the shortcomings of the public data.

The data, which is self-reported, appeared to have some errors and inaccuracies. (For example, P.S. 60 in Woodhaven, Queens, was among the top 10 for reported income, reportedly bringing in more than $2 million. But looking at the school’s full balance, that appeared to be a decimal error, and the school likely only brought in about $20,000.)

Drilling down on the data

Fourteen schools brought in more than $1 million each, led by P.S. 29, an elementary school in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill; New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math, a K-12 gifted and talented school on the Lower East Side; and P.S. 8, or The Emily Warren Roebling School, an elementary school in Brooklyn Heights. Another 14 schools raised more than $500,000.

Looking at the data on the district level reveals another set of extremes. PTAs in Manhattan’s District 2, which includes such affluent areas as the Upper East Side, Greenwich Village, and TriBeCa, brought in the most money, with nearly $18 million in total income. That was 600 times greater than what PTAs raised in District 23, which spans Brooklyn’s high-poverty neighborhoods of Ocean Hill/Brownsville. PTAs in District 23, which is also one of the city’s smallest districts, brought in about $29,000.

Because school funding formulas send more money to schools with higher-need students, more affluent schools tend to spend less per pupil — an argument that some PTA fundraiser powerhouses point out. P.S. 29, for instance, spent $17,310 per pupil last year, compared to P.S. 150 in District 23, which spent $46,198 per pupil, according to public data. About 4% of the school’s funding, or $154,000, came from federal dollars given to schools with more than 60% student poverty.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said the city recognizes that PTA fundraising varied “significantly” across school communities and reiterated that the city’s funding formula aims to allocate additional resources to schools serving kids with the greatest needs.

“We remain committed to ensuring equitable access to resources through the funding streams we directly control,” she said.

With executive boards turning over each year, newly minted PTA members might not know what they’re getting into and lack training and the understanding of the PTA’s role, said Antonia Martinelli, the PTA Link coordinator at Appleseed, which helps fill the “information gap” for PTAs.

Though the rules governing PTAs make it clear they can supplement, rather than supplant, school budgets, PTAs can change their schools’ ability to hire more teachers, Martinelli echoed.

“Now they’re inadvertently impacting the academic outcomes of the students,” she said.

Martinelli also raised concerns about the end balance of the city’s PTAs, which totaled about $46.5 million.

“PTAs are supposed to target their fundraising to a specific goal,” she said. “They are not supposed to be running quasi endowments.”

Efforts to bolster PTA fundraising

PTAs raise money in various ways: direct appeals, bake sales, or carnivals, galas, and other events.

Some schools raise money by organizing after-school programs, like P.S. 20, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, which raised more than $1.16 million last year, putting the school in the top 10 citywide. About 85% of the PTA’s income came from P.S. 20’s “wildly successful” after-school program serving kids from prekindergarten through fifth grade, said PTA co-president Sarah Durand McGuigan.

At P.S. 20, it covers an art teacher, pays for a gardening and beekeeping program, and helps fund arts residencies, Durand McGuigan said. It helped the school build a library as well as facility upgrades. It pays for full- and part-time school assistants working in the cafeteria, office, and hallways. It also covers the costs of teacher professional development training.

P.S. 20, which had nearly 700 students, sits in District 13, a racially and socioeconomically diverse district that schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels previously oversaw as superintendent. And while it’s not among the most affluent like some of the other elementary schools in the top 10, with just 38% of students from low-income families, the school is still among the top 100 schools in the city with the smallest share of students in poverty. Citywide, about 75% of students come from low-income families.

The school community is aware of the different needs of families, offering scholarships to the after-school program, for instance, and the PTA jumped into action last year when public food assistance was going to be restricted, raising about $10,000 for grocery gift cards to families in need, Durand McGuigan said.

“The haves and the have nots in the New York City public school system are huge,” she said. “We have people living in $3 million brownstones, and we have people in public housing.”

The PTA at Arts & Letters 305 United, also in District 13, was among the top 30 fundraisers, bringing in more than $546,000 last year. It used the money to support tutoring, school trips, stepping-up ceremonies, enrichment teachers, and for many community-building events, said LaMeane Isaac, PTA president at the Bedford-Stuyvesant school where Samuels had led a merger between a popular affluent school and an under-enrolled one serving more low-income families.

The school’s PTA also helped provide about $2,000 in seed money for a districtwide fund bringing together families, local businesses, and community organizations to support 28 under-resourced schools across the district that lacked PTA funding.

“We are willing to help and commit towards supporting other schools who may not be as financially fortunate as we are,” Isaac said.

“If we can be helpful and supportive to other schools, everyone wins, right?”

Correction: May 17, 2026: This article initially said the percentage of top PTAs was based on all 1,540 schools, which included those that failed to report any data. The calculations were based on the 1,240 PTAs that reported data. (The lookup tool excludes schools that raised no money as well as those that did not report their data to the Education Department.)

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani expected to secure 2-year mayoral control extension and class-size delay in state budget

2026-05-15T02:14:06+00:00

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to win a two-year extension of mayoral control from state lawmakers as well as a delay in implementing the class size mandate as part of Albany’s final budget, according to multiple media reports Thursday.

Mamdani had been lobbying alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul for a four-year extension of the city’s school governance model — despite declaring his opposition to mayoral control on the campaign trail. Just before his inauguration, he walked back his views on mayoral control, though he still pledged to make the system more democratic and responsive to families and educators.

Lawmakers have often made tweaks to mayoral control when they’ve extended it over the past two decades. It’s not clear yet if or how lawmakers might change the governance structure that empowers the mayor to unilaterally appoint the schools chancellor, select a majority of the city’s school board, and generally set the policy direction of the nation’s largest school district.

Mayoral control is set to sunset on June 30.

Hochul suggested last week at a press conference that a two-year extension was on the table. State Sen. John Liu, of Queens, seemed to confirm the likely deal on mayoral control, which was first reported in Politico.

“A two year extension of mayoral control is the right thing to do, to give this new mayor a chance to deliver results for our public schools, and to pass it as part of the state budget given that there will remain less than two weeks of the legislative session once the budget is finally passed,” Liu said in a statement.

Liu, an architect of the class size law, also has said he’s open to changes to the mandate since Mamdani took office.

“The Mamdani administration also deserves an extended timeframe for reducing class sizes given that despite inheriting a difficult circumstance, the mayor steadfastly committed to achieving full compliance and has presented a clear plan towards that end,” Liu said.

While running for mayor, Mamdani vowed to support the state’s law to reduce the city’s class sizes. Though Mamdani voiced his continued commitment to shrinking classes, he supported changing the timeline from requiring all classes meet the caps of 20 to 25 students, depending on the grade, from the 2027-28 school year to the 2030-31 school year.

Though the state’s budget is delayed, with its 12th extension signed on Thursday, Mamdani previewed his executive budget earlier this week and already anticipated the state will approve a delay implementing the class size law.

Mamdani’s executive budget proposal released this week also anticipates changes to state law, that have not yet been made official, to save money that would have otherwise been spent next school year on class size reductions. His latest budget proposal included $122 million to hire 1,000 educators. That was down from the preliminary budget he unveiled in February that called for $543 million. Officials previously said they would need to hire 6,000 educators to comply with the law.

At the same time, his budget added $1.5 billion in capital funding for the School Construction Authority to help the city comply with the class size mandate.

“Make no mistake: We are fully committed to fulfilling the state mandate in a meaningful way on a realistic timeline that New Yorkers can actually trust,” Mamdani said on Tuesday.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

How parent pressure helped push Los Angeles schools to rein in classroom screen time

2026-05-12T22:02:38+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Los Angeles, home to the country’s second largest school system, has been at the center of the growth of ed-tech — and its backlash.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who is on leave following an FBI raid of his home, was an enthusiastic promoter of AI in education and i-Ready, a digital assessment and tutoring program. (Carvalho has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.)

But parents in the city have grown wary about the proliferation of tech. They organized a group called Schools Beyond Screens to push the district to scale back tech use. Their message resonated with school board members, many of whom are parents themselves.

Continue reading the full story here.

School data goes stale after Trump administration cuts Education Department research arm

2026-05-07T00:33:39+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

If there was one thing the Education Department did that seemed apolitical and effective, it was compiling basic facts about American schools.

But now the work of disseminating this information has effectively ground to a halt. Since the Trump administration decimated the research arm of the Education Department, it has not updated a large swath of data that is part of the Digest of Education Statistics. This means we no longer have easily accessible, relatively up-to-date information about the basic realities of American schools.

“The role of the national government is to collect statistics on K-12 [education],” said Amber Northern, the Fordham Institute’s vice president for research who is on contract with the Education Department to suggest ways to improve its statistical work. “Absolutely the Digest is integral to that. And we need to get it restarted.”

Ellen Keast, a department spokesperson, said in a statement that this process has begun and a new contract for the work will be awarded before the end of this fiscal year in September.

Until that happens, our shared knowledge about schools will continue to deteriorate.

Consider just a handful of examples of data tables that have not been updated since at least January 2025:

Spending and revenue per public school student
Federal funding for education
School enrollment among children ages 3-5
The share of students receiving special education services, qualifying as English learners, and participating in gifted and talented programs
The typical student-to-teacher ratio
The number of people enrolled in teacher prep programs
Teachers’ perceptions about the quality of their schools
Average teacher salary
How often school principals leave their jobs
How many students take the SAT and ACT
The number of homicides and suicides in schools
The rate of disciplinary incidents in public schools
The share of recent high school graduates immediately enrolling in college

The stale data is not surprising. DOGE canceled Education Department contracts for this work in February of last year. Most of the staff members at the research and statistics arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, were also laid off.

Keast, the department spokesperson, notes that key data collection about schools has continued. But since the raw data has often not been turned into accessible tables, it is difficult for the public to access or use it.

Tom Snyder, who oversaw the Digest and other annual reports until he retired in 2020, says this work has been widely used. Some tables might get thousands of citations in a single month. “This I would put as an inherent government responsibility to get information into the public’s hands,” Snyder said. “It needs to be accessible.”

Some of this information can still be found from other sources, like school spending figures in a different federal report or teacher salary numbers from the National Education Association. Even in these cases, the Digest serves two functions: It is a one-stop shop of reliable data, and it often features results over a long time horizon.

Still other information is no longer available to update at all. The Trump administration has canceled surveys about crime and safety in school, high school coursetaking, and the experiences of teachers and principals.

The federal government has been collecting and sharing basic facts about schools since 1870; the Digest of Education Statistics began in 1962. The Digest has marshaled a vast array of data to offer a comprehensive picture of the sprawling, decentralized American system of education.

This work forms the basis of what we know about schools in both the past and present. One widely cited department report, “120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait,” documents the growth of high school education, the opening up of schooling to Black children, and reformulation of school funding systems.

Northern recently released a report defending the necessity of the Education Department’s research and statistics work but recommending a number of changes. Her report does not mention the Digest by name. Northern told me there’s clear value in it, although she would like the data released more quickly.

Meanwhile, a recent analysis estimated that nearly $300 million allocated by Congress for the Institute of Education Sciences is at risk of going unspent. “The Department is committed to using appropriated funds to meet our statutory obligations while supporting high-quality research,” said Keast, the spokesperson.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.

2026-05-05T21:00:14+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Cecilia Lopez Alvarado was scrolling through Reddit one evening in her dorm room when she came across a thread about students at the University of California San Diego who struggled with basic math.

A report had warned of an alarming decline in students’ math skills at UCSD, a highly selective university. It drew international headlines because of what it seemed to say about the state of American education. Commentators blamed high school grade inflation, test-free college admissions, and even the students themselves.

Alvarado read these headlines with a growing sense of frustration. People didn’t understand the full story here, she thought. And she would know: Alvarado is a UCSD student who had to take remedial math at the school. She read Reddit comments about how students should have mastered these topics in high school. She wrote back in the comments that some schools — like hers, a high-poverty public high school in San Bernardino, California — don’t even offer calculus.

The consequences of Alvarado’s challenges in math have been significant. After taking the remedial course, she still fell short on a math exam, which covers high school topics like trigonometry and precalculus. Alvarado therefore couldn’t move on to calculus, which was required for her initial major, business economics. Because of this, she recently decided to pursue a degree in communications instead. She aspires to be an accountant and is minoring in accounting.

Students like Alvarado are at the center of a debate in American education. How do high schools ensure students graduate with sufficient math skills? Who should get access to the resources of an elite college education? What role do universities themselves have in helping students who are underprepared?

High school graduation photo of UCSD sophomore Cecilia Lopez Alvarado

The perspectives of these students have gotten strikingly little attention. That’s why I wanted to speak to Alvarado, a 19-year-old sophomore. Her story does not offer entirely simple answers, but it’s worth hearing. She looks back in frustration at her high school education, where she believes teachers were too lenient. But she’s also convinced she’s benefited from the education she’s received and the peers she’s met at UCSD.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your high school math experience like? How did you do in math classes?

I usually passed with A’s and B’s, but I feel like a lot of the information never really stuck with me, just because we were granted so many opportunities to redo exams and homework. It felt like as long as you retake the exam and get 100% it doesn’t matter if you really know what you’re doing or not.

Do you know why you were given so many opportunities?

I’m sure it’s because they wanted us to not have F’s and D’s on our transcripts. It was just wanting us to be able to move on to the next grade. It never really was to hold us accountable. Instead of being like, hey, you only get one retake, it was just, you can retake it as many times as you like, to get a grade that you’re comfortable with.

Did you feel like it would have been better if they held you accountable more?

I think so, because then you have to face the reality of not just your grades, but what you really know and what you’re really learning. You have to discipline yourself more to be like, hey, I need to start studying instead of doing not so well in class and then just retaking it at a later time.

What did you think about the big national backlash and all these articles about UCSD students like yourself?

I’m very involved on the UCSD social media communities like Reddit, Instagram, and when people are sharing the articles, a lot of it was very negative. A lot of people are saying these students shouldn’t be at the school, their spots should have gone to someone more qualified. It was kind of making me feel bad, like, hey, is something wrong with me because I can’t pass the exam?

I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue with the student. I feel like there’s a lot of things that go deeper than that, like the level of math they took in high school. I think there’s just so many factors that people miss.

What do you mean by the factors that so many people miss?

The culture here is that everyone kind of assumes everyone who’s enrolled comes from a very prestigious background — you know, perfect scores, they have easy access to tutoring. I don’t think a lot of people realize that some students here may have come from low-income communities, low-income schools, where they don’t have resources easily accessible.

I wouldn’t say it makes me envious, but I do wish I had that kind of abundance of resources when I was in high school. I was top of my class in high school, but that’s nothing compared to some of the other students here.

Do you think you’ve benefited from going to a school like UCSD?

I think so. It’s definitely exposed me to a lot of different cultures, a lot of different people. I think I’ve learned more soft skills here through a lot of the classes I’ve been taking. I’m more willing to try things and take courses that I would not have been interested in high school.

Do you feel like being surrounded by peers who maybe went to better high schools pushes you to do better at UCSD?

I think so. I’ve kind of noticed they have more independence. They feel more secure in their academics and what they’re doing, and I feel like I always second guess myself. Seeing how they operate, it makes me want to do better, work harder, especially after my first year. I wanted to make my own self-improvements.

One of the recommendations from the report that caused this whole blowup was that UCSD should reduce the number of students from high-poverty high schools. What do you think of that?

I do not think that should be an option. If they don’t go through the trial and error here, they’re just going to go through it somewhere else. College is a place where you learn new things. Sometimes you’ll fail and you just take the L and learn from it.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Ideas Roundup: Did education reform work? Plus research, reading, and politics

2026-04-28T21:50:33+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Earlier this month, I wrote about efforts to revive the bipartisan school reform coalition that dominated Washington circa 1996 to 2015. It was this coalition that ushered in No Child Left Behind, test-based teacher evaluations, the growth of charter schools, and the Common Core standards.

According to education historian Diane Ravitch, these efforts decisively failed. “The reformers look back to their glory days with nostalgia. Parents and students don’t,” she wrote in response to my piece. Mike Petrilli, of the Fordham Institute, offers a different gloss on the same history: “Reform did work, until we stopped doing it.”

Interpretations of the past can shape how people proceed in the future. That’s why this mini-debate matters. So, who’s right?

Click here to continue reading.

What is your child learning at school? NYC launches new tool to track literacy lessons

2026-04-27T20:34:39+00:00

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Is your child learning about animal behavior, how the 19th Amendment was ratified, or Japanese internment during World War II?

A new tool quietly launched by New York City’s Education Department gives families and the broader public a window into the topics students are learning about in English language arts classes at any given time. It also serves up free digital books connected to the specific unit students are learning about.

The platform, known as the NYC Reads Curriculum Finder, includes a trove of information about what elementary school and some middle school students are learning in English classes down to the school and grade level. It displays questions students are learning about — “what does it take to make a successful invention?” in one third grade unit — as well as the types of materials students are using, such as biographies, films, poems, and opinion pieces.

The curriculum finder is part of a broader push to ensure students are building on their literacy skills outside of school. Officials hope the database will give caregivers, educators, and after-school providers an easy way to boost students’ vocabulary and background knowledge, which research suggests is an important element of reading comprehension.

“We need to democratize this information about what curriculum a school is using and what a student is learning,” said Jennifer Ramos, an official at the Center for Public Research and Leadership at Columbia Law School, the organization that took the lead in creating the tool in partnership with the Education Department. “Everyone can look it up and say, ‘Okay, kindergartners in this district are learning about trees.’”

The tool is tied to the city’s reading curriculum mandate that requires all elementary schools, and eventually all middle schools, to use city-approved reading programs. Educators are expected to follow pacing guides, making it possible to track what topics students are learning about at precise times throughout the year. Schools were previously allowed to pick their own curriculums and hundreds of schools used a program that was discredited by reading experts.

The curriculum finder — which was developed in partnership with the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development and the nonprofit organization ExpandED Schools — is still a work in progress. Many elementary schools appear to have no curriculum information listed, the tool’s search functions do not always work seamlessly or display correct information, and it was out of commission in recent days as officials worked to make updates.

An Education Department spokesperson said the tool is in an “improvement phase” and officials are “improving completeness and accuracy of school listings.” Users can also submit reports of missing information or other feedback directly on the site.

An early target for the tool is after-school providers and community organizations, who have long struggled to sync their programming to what students are learning during the school day in part because reading curriculums were historically not consistent between schools or even from classroom to classroom.

Ashley Jones, who helps supervise free after-school programs operated by the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, said staffers have sometimes relied on informal hallway conversations with teachers or gleaning clues from students’ homework to get a sense of what’s going on in classrooms.

“Schools are busy — we’re all busy,” Jones said. It can be difficult to find time to coordinate with students’ classroom teachers and the curriculum finder tool could help bridge that gap, she added.

Despite some glitches, Jones said the organization has started to experiment with the tool and is thinking about how to encourage her staff to incorporate it as they plan for next school year. She hopes the next step is more training for after-school staff to support student literacy, even as her program’s goal is not to simply extend the school day.

Other providers have yet to hear about the tool.

Emily Kirven, who runs Read 718, a Brooklyn-based organization that provides tutoring to hundreds of struggling readers, said she is “excited to play around with it.”

To access books that are connected to what students are learning in class, families must log in with their Education Department accounts, which could create a barrier for her staff accessing the materials, Kirven said. But she noted that it would still be useful to know what topics students are learning about because the organization likely has books on hand that tie in to the relevant topic.

“It just would be helpful knowing what they’re doing in different grades of different schools so that we can continue to better align our instruction.”

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

The math equity gap: Thousands of NYC students miss out on Algebra 1 in eighth grade

2026-04-23T22:28:22+00:00

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Having access to Algebra 1 in eighth grade can often make or break a student’s path to high school calculus, which in turn, is often a gateway to selective colleges as well as science and engineering careers.

But many eighth graders can’t take Algebra 1 — regardless of how well they did on their seventh grade state math test. And when New York City parents are exploring middle school options for their fifth graders, they might not realize the consequences a school’s math offerings might have for their students’ education trajectory.

Across New York state, more than 1 in 4 schools don’t offer Algebra 1 to eighth graders, found a report released Thursday from the New York Equity Coalition, a group convened by EdTrust-New York. Schools that disproportionately enroll Black, Latino, and low-income students tend to have less access to Algebra 1 in middle school.

“When we have qualified kids that are denied that opportunity, and it impacts them in high school and beyond … it is such a critical inflection point,” said Jeff Smink, deputy director at EdTrust-New York, an advocacy group focused on improving outcomes for students of color.

Smink hopes to raise awareness about the importance of Algebra 1 for eighth graders so parents can advocate for it.

“If there’s no demand, then schools aren’t going to respond to it,” he said. “They’re going to offer the easier, simpler option, which is just tracking kids to the standard eighth grade class, which is going to avoid kids struggling, it’s going to get potentially better test scores.”

While 58% of New York’s seventh graders scored proficient (a 3 or 4) on their 2023-24 state math exams, in the following school year — 2024-25 — just 37% of eighth graders enrolled in Algebra 1, representing a gap of 20,000 proficient students, the report said. More than half were estimated to be from low-income families, and nearly half were students of color.

In New York City alone, there were 8,000 more students proficient on seventh grade state exams than enrolled in eighth grade Algebra 1, according to the researchers.

The state’s gaps were starkest for Black and Asian American students: while 38% of Black students and 75% of Asian American seventh graders were proficient, 13% of Black and 14% Asian American eighth graders the following year enrolled in Algebra 1, the study found.

Drilling down into the data, using the coalition’s lookup tool, reveals vastly uneven access across New York City’s 32 local districts.

The top three districts with more proficient seventh graders than eighth graders in Algebra 1: Queens’ District 24, Brooklyn’s District 20, and Staten Island. Each had gaps of more than 1,400 students, researchers said.

In five districts, fewer than half of their schools offered Algebra 1 for eighth graders: Manhattan Districts 4 and 6, Brooklyn’s District 13, and Bronx Districts 7 and 12.

Eight districts appeared to be outliers, with either more than or an equal share of eighth graders taking Algebra 1 last year compared to the percentage of seventh graders who scored proficient on their state math tests the year before: Manhattan’s District 3; Bronx’s District 11, Brooklyn Districts 15, 19, 23, and 32; and Queens Districts 27, 28, and 30.

Equity gaps in proficiency remain, however, and three of those districts — 19, 23, and 32 in Brooklyn, which overwhelmingly serve Black, Latino, and low-income students — had fewer than half of their students who were proficient.

The report recommends the state adopt an automatic enrollment, or opt-out policy, for all eighth graders who score proficient on seventh grade state tests. They want an $8.5 million investment to help 15 high-needs districts expand Algebra 1 access as well as fund tutoring, staffing, and public data tracking enrollment and completion by race and income.

The report comes at a time when Gov. Kathy Hochul, in January’s State of the State address, called for an overhaul of math instruction, getting “back to the basics,” proposing $4 million for more teacher training and support. New York City’s schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, a former math teacher, has also argued for a foundational approach to math emphasizing memorization of math facts along with a focus on creative problem-solving.

Samuels has hinted at some changes to come with math instruction.

Under former Mayor Eric Adams, the city required nearly all high schools to use a single math curriculum from Illustrative Math for Algebra 1 — which has garnered some pushback from educators. Education Department officials are also requiring all middle schools shift to city-approved math curriculums by fall 2027.

“We are working to strengthen early math instruction, expand equitable pathways to Algebra 1 by eighth grade, and ensure every student has access to rigorous, high-quality curriculum,” Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said in a statement.

Several states and cities have focused more attention on eighth grade access to Algebra 1, including Chicago, which has offered the class online and has covered educators’ training costs to get credentials to teach algebra.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Is AP Calculus pointless? A teacher defends his subject.

2026-04-23T10:00:00+00:00

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To many New York City students, Advanced Placement Calculus feels impractical, full of information they won’t use in their day-to-day lives — though it’s become a status symbol for some high achievers.

But reaching that status symbol has some significant consequences: AP Calculus has garnered a reputation for being a barrier to higher education. The class has become a gatekeeper, with many selective colleges requiring students to take the subject. Those who took it in high school are at an advantage, and schools with majority Black and Latino students tend to miss out. The number of such schools offering calculus has hovered under 40% over the past decade, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

P.S. Weekly producers Mateo Tang O’ Reilly, a junior at Central Park East High School, and Jasper Mallorca, a senior at High School of Art and Design, ask: Does AP calculus serve a purpose other than proving academic rigor to colleges? They explore the unseen value of calculus beyond the classroom.

Mateo sits down with Dash Anderson, a Brooklyn high school math teacher who shares his experience teaching calculus in a way that brings the subject to life with real-world examples, from video games to “Moana.”

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. It’s available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Reach us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. New episodes drop on Thursdays.

P.S. Weekly is made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.

Transcript

Vox 1: So why did you sign up to take AP Calc?

Vox 2: I chose AP Calculus because I’m interested in studying the sciences in college, and I’ve wanted to take the hardest math class.

Vox 3: I know that junior year is like the most important year for college, so I wanted to take a really hard class.

Vox 1: I’m going into meteorology and that’s a lot of math I’m gonna have to do, so I kinda just wanna get it over with.

Jasper Mallorca: I took it because I want to do engineering in college, but it’s really hard, I’m not gonna lie.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: So you guys think you’re gonna use it in the future a lot, like AP calculus?

Vox 6: I mean, I think it’s good knowledge to have. I don’t know if I’m gonna be using the math all that much in the future.

Vox 7: I anticipate a lot of it’s gonna be forgotten, but I think, mm-hmm.

Certain basic principles that I’m very grateful to have learned. I think I will retain,

Vox 8: I mean, maybe I can, like, use it to, um, estimate how I’ll get to the bus on time or whatever in college, but I don’t know.

Vox 7: After the AP test, I honestly feel like I’m not gonna use a lot of it. What I was focusing on, on what I would gain from the class is whether or not I wanted to do something within like engineering or even like as a math teacher.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Uh, final question. Would you recommend calculus to someone considering.

Vox : Yeah, definitely

Vox 7: don’t take the class. No, this is a trap. It’s a trap. It’s a trap.

Vox 3: I would definitely recommend it, especially ‘cause it’s a requirement at most colleges and I know a lot of people wanna go to college, so I would definitely recommend it.

Vox 1: So if you’re going into something that’s non-stem and you really want to, like, save your GPA wouldn’t recommend it.

Vox 6: I disagree. I do think you should take AP calc. Because there’s a lot of fundamentals in calculus that are used in a lot of different fields, regardless of whether or not you take a STEM class.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Welcome back to P.S.Weekly, the sound of the New York City school system. I’m Mateo Tang-O’Reilly Tang Riley, a junior at Central Park East High School.

Jasper Mallorca: and I’m Jasper Mallorca, a senior at Art Design High School.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: This week we’re talking about calculus in high schools. I know hearing calculus probably makes you want to click off.

I think it’s boring too, but high schools and colleges make a really big deal about it, specifically AP calculus.

Jasper Mallorca: Yeah. As someone who is in AP Calc right now, I definitely hear you.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: I did some research and found out that last year in 2025, roughly 446,000 students sat down to take an AP calc exam in a single school year, so almost half a million.

Jasper Mallorca: How about in New York City, specifically?

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: New York City Public School Data from 2024 shows that the city hit a record high of students taking at least one AP exam. We don’t have the exact numbers for AP Calc, but it’s consistently one of the most popular AP classes, so we can assume that number is on the rise as well.

Jasper Mallorca: Hmm. Really interesting.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: And that number is only going up. 2024 was officially declared an all time high for AP participation nationally, with nearly 3 million students taking 5.5 million exams. That’s a 7% jump from 2023 in a single year.

Jasper Mallorca: How’d this all start?

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Advanced placement tests were first rolled out in 1954 in the middle of the Cold War. This was when educators and policy makers began to fear that high schools were not properly preparing students for the rigor of college coursework, and it was also a deliberate policy choice to help create more engineers and physicists for the Cold War.

Our focus today is a class that used to be called AP Mathematics, and later in 1969 became what we know now as AP Calculus BC, which is the class I’m taking right now.

Jasper Mallorca: Wow. So we’re taking this class that was justified like 70 years ago by the need to have more rocket scientists, when in reality most of the students taking it now are not even necessarily going into STEM fields.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Right.

Jasper Mallorca: What made AP Calculus become viewed as highly as it is now?

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Well, we’re not really sure. Based on some research I did, I think college admissions viewed the class as applicable to many different fields and then began to associate good performance on the test with good performance in college and later in life.

And it sort of became a one size fits all sort of thing. Also, when being test optional came into the conversation, colleges began to rely more on looking at students’ coursework. And since calculus had gained the reputation for showing academic rigor, it became an end all be all kind of class. Fast forward to today, college admissions are more competitive than they have ever been, and there’s kind of an unspoken rule that calculus is just one more hurdle for high school students to get through if they plan on going to a top college.

Jasper Mallorca: I think that’s kind of why I joined AP Calculus. Yeah. I didn’t expect to be like the best student. Like I don’t have a crazy passion for math or anything, but the idea of pushing myself, not only for colleges to notice, but, like, just for myself, for me to be proud of something. And I don’t want to just take the easiest things, like I want to take the harder path, and I feel like after this year, I’m definitely gonna be proud of where I went with AP Calc, even if I don’t necessarily pass or get the highest grades.

See, I think people take AP calculus to push themselves and hopefully to get to a good college, but it might not even align with what they might want to do. Like maybe taking statistics or computer science or something, even just more practical would maybe serve me better in the long run.

I feel like there must be some sort of equity issue with this course as well.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Definitely being at a high school where you can take calculus means that if you take it at college, you’re at an advantage. However, a study from the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says that only 38% of schools with majority black and Latino students offered the class.

Jasper Mallorca: Wow. I also know there’s a larger debate happening where some schools are starting to offer things that are more quote-unquote applicable to real life, like statistics are financial literacy.

I wonder if this might lead to high schools and colleges making less of a big deal about calculus. From my experience, I don’t really see that much of a real life gain from taking AP Calc. Something like LNE=1, seems so useless in real life. I also spend hours on AP Calc every night doing homework, accepting the fact that I won’t be learning from it.

I don’t really know what I’ve gained from AP Calc besides a lot of headaches.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: I hear you on the headaches part. I think for me, Calculus is also kind of like a status thing, like at my school, like, oh, you’re an AP calc. Like that’s a big deal or whatever. Like you’re one of the smart kids.

Jasper Mallorca: Definitely a status thing.

A lot of people join for that.

Yeah, and I, I’d be curious to know whether or not calculus has any value outside of, like, social status in high school, maybe general problem solving skills?

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: I think trying to answer that question is what drew me to the topic, because calc is easily the hardest class I’ve ever taken, and it feels unfairly hard because I can’t find any real world applications.

And as of now, as someone who doesn’t really want to go into a STEM field, calc can feel sort of pointless. I think other people who also aren’t planning to do STEM in college feel the same way.

Jasper Mallorca: I guess I’m curious why so many students, including us, are learning something so niche and challenging and honestly sort of random, that most people won’t ever use after they take the AP test.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: I’m with you on that one. I brought my curiosity about what the point of learning calculus is to Dash Anderson. He’s a math teacher at the Young Women’s Leadership School of Brooklyn, which is a public school in Bushwick. He’s also part of an organization called Math for America, which builds community among math and science teachers.

He also recently presented a workshop for the organization on how to bring calculus to life. I went to Dash with an open mind to learn more about why calculus matters.

What were some of the, like, hands-on things that I guess you learned and then you ended up teaching at the workshop?

Dash Anderson : There was one about, uh, finding the volume of a piece of fruit. Um, we got, someone brought in some, like some gourds and other roundish shapes for the most part, and tried to calculate the volume using calculus and integrating.

We did an activity about something called the Genie coefficient, which I had heard about in economics. It’s a way that they measure the level of inequality in different countries of income inequality. But I did not know until I did this workshop that it’s actually done by measuring the area between two curves.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Oh, we just learned how to do that.

Dash Anderson : Yeah. So like the levels of income at different percentiles versus if it were all kind of evenly distributed and Yeah. You, you measure the area on this graph, and that’s used to determine this number that then measures inequality across different countries.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: I feel like a lot of students think that math is boring or pointless.

Mm-hmm. How do you convince them otherwise in your day to day?

Dash Anderson : One of the first days of class I start off, I show them the Little Mermaid and Moana side by side and we talk about how they’re similar. We talk about the animation and the fact that the Little Mermaid was hand animated. Somebody had to draw those frames one by one and draw the water in the waves and the droplets.

And with Moana, like with a lot of 3D animated movies and CGI now. That relies on physics simulations. The reason that the water looks so realistic there is it is built on math. People had to go in and sort of recreate physics, recreate how water behaves in the real world using calculus and then they can just animate the character and the water reacts the way that water should.

I mean, they’ve done that with snow and Frozen, they do that with hair and fur and fabric, and it’s part of why 3D animation has gotten so much better is because we now have computers that can do this math and do these calculations to recreate that kind of real world physics. I bring up that video games have been built on math, going all the way back to Pong.

The original Mario experiences gravity when he jumps. Then today, if you’re playing, you know, grant theft auto, and you crash your car and fly through the windshield and bounce down the pavement, realistically, you can thank calculus for that as well. Basically, almost any STEM field has some kind of calculus connection or application within it, if you look for it.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Okay. I really have not looked for it, but I’m gonna start looking for it. So, let’s talk about your time as an educator. Can you lead me through a typical class taught by you? Is there anything you’d say you do differently than other math teachers to make your class more engaging.

Dash Anderson : So there was a book that came out a while ago called Building Thinking Classrooms and Mathematics, and that focuses on basically making math more engaging, having students stand up and work at whiteboards instead of sitting at desks, working in random, small groups where they’re with different students every time and have to collaborate.

Giving them more what they call thinking tasks that are kind of deeper questions that are more open-ended. They might have some real world application that they work through together and aren’t just a multiple choice question from the test. I try to do that, especially at the start of a topic. That’s kind of where things tend to be more engaging, where you can make those connections and those real world analogies.

I try to, again, connect things to real life, to current events. I’ve been doing that a lot the last couple weeks now.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: What do you hope students can get out of a calculus class?

Dash Anderson : The reason I proposed creating the class 10 years ago, we had our first class graduate in 2015. The main reason I wanted to offer the class was just to give students that exposure.

So if they are gonna pursue stem, if they are gonna take calculus in college, they won’t be seeing it for the first time. If they can also pass the exam and earn the credit, that’s a bonus. But my main motivation was, yeah, preparing students for that calculus or more advanced math, they’re gonna have to see later on.

That’s one reason, but even beyond that, I do think there are reasons to learn calculus, even if you’re not gonna pursue stem as with any other subject, you may not be using calculus every day, but it is in your life. It’s all around you. It’s in the physics of the world. It’s being used by people to make decisions that will affect you, and I think that’s enough reason to argue that everyone should have the opportunity to better understand these ideas for calculus or anything else that we teach in school.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: We’ll hear more from Dash after the break.

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Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Okay, so moving away from just calculus in general, what do you think is the most important thing for students to take away from your calculus class? Like it could be practical applications or understanding how to solve real world problems based on the material.

Dash Anderson : They talk about spinning wool into yarn or I realize a more relevant example is like a can of silly string.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: The candy?

Dash Anderson : No, like a can of silly string that you spray on someone. I feel like maybe that’s been banned now.

You don’t see much of this.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Yeah, I, I haven’t heard of that.

Dash Anderson : Anyway. You used to buy this stuff, silly string, that was like goo in a can, but you spray it and it turns into this length of this like plasticy string that was terrible for the environment.

That idea, if you have this clump of stuff and you wanna know if I turn this into a length or a distance, what would that area kind of become? Or if I knew how much string came outta the can, could I figure out how big that blob was originally? So if they can understand that relationship, then I think that’s both what’s beautiful about calculus is those ideas.

But I also think then if they get to college, if they pursue a stem field. That’s what they’re gonna retain is that understanding more than their memorization of L’Hopital’s Rule or those other kind of little bits that they have to learn just for the test. But my main goal is just will they come away with that sort of deeper understanding of why these ideas work in the first place?

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Yeah, I would like to learn that along with L’Hopital’s Rule is like lowkey easy. So like, I’ll take it.

So for students who have no plans to become engineers or any profession that uses advanced math, what do you think the benefits of a calculus class are?

Dash Anderson : It’s true that once you get beyond like eighth grade algebra, one level math, you’re not learning a lot that’s gonna come up in your everyday life.

But that’s okay, that’s the case for your other classes too, right? You’re not necessarily doing literary analysis or explaining mitosis or the seven years war, whatever. A lot of what we learn in school is not directly applicable to our lives, but it’s still valuable. It’s still part of our shared knowledge.

It’s a way of discovering what you want to pursue, right? You’re not gonna know what you wanna do as a career until you’ve seen it at least a little bit, and that’s part of why we want to introduce students to all these things. So I think there’s value there, and. As I was saying, I think with a lot of this more advanced math, even if you’re not using it in your life, somebody is like there are jobs out there that are relying on these things that do affect you in different ways, or it’s, yeah, the space program or disease control, or finance or whatever else.

There are ways that these things get used, and if it does affect you, then. I do think it’s worth understanding. Do you play a lot of video games?

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: I play like Roblox, that’s it.

Dash Anderson : Okay. Roblox is the one I’ve kind of stayed away from. I don’t know exactly what the game is there. But a lot of the most popular games recently, things like Minecraft or Star Dew Valley or Bellatro, have this element that’s economic, where you are collecting some resource like gold or experience points or gems, and then you’re spending it on something.

An upgrade or a building that will allow you to then collect those gems faster.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Oh, okay.

Dash Anderson : And so that’s already economics. And then you often have to decide, am I going to buy this upgrade now or save up for this better one? And will the bigger increase be worth the time I had to wait to save for it? And when you’re making that decision, that becomes a calculus problem.

What you’re really thinking about is if this line represents the rate at which I am acquiring gold.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Ah, okay.

Dash Anderson : And I can either bend that line up a little bit now or a lot later. The question is, which of those shapes has the greater area underneath and therefore represents the most gold that I can acquire?

The fastest way to get to whatever that next goal is. So any game like that that has that sort of, yeah, resource management element you are. Doing some amount of calculus when you’re making those types of choices. If, if you want to, and even more kind of everyday example.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: That’s a really good everyday example.

All right, so if calculus gave no advantage whatsoever to students in terms of college applications or like people who want to go into STEM fields, what do you think the class would look like in schools?

Dash Anderson : This has been another discussion teachers have been having recently, could calculus ideas just be introduced earlier in math in general, if you weren’t bringing all that AP stuff along with it, and it [00:18:00] was just about thinking about the rate of change.

Can you measure the rate of change of a curve and not a straight line? And how do you do that? Can you draw a tangent line to a curve? I think a middle schooler could draw a tangent line if you explained it to them. So I think if calculus weren’t thought of as this college level course and this kind of gateway to all these other things.

I think the basic ideas could just be part of the general math curriculum and be accessible to everyone without having to necessarily take an AP class.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Why do you think it’s acceptable for people to say, I’m not a math person, but it’s not acceptable for people to say, I’m not a reading person.

Dash Anderson : I mean that, that’s also a good question.

You often hear about literacy across the curriculum and that everyone should be teaching reading, which is true. There’s reading in every subject. There’s a lot of reading and math, but we’ve also talked about numeracy across the curriculum and that your English and social studies classes can bring in math in a lot of ways and make those connections the other direction.

It is unfortunate, especially when students hear and adults say, I’m not a math person, because that puts the idea in their head that they might just not be a math person. And if math is hard, it’s just not for them. They can give up and do something else. So yeah, I think for the why, I think it’s just our culture and that we, we think about reading in math, in numeracy in different ways.

We accept the fact that people can say they’re not a math person, but why that’s the case, I think is maybe too deep other than the fact that, I mean, reading is something that you do to some extent throughout your life and every day just to survive. And with math, once you get past at least kind of the middle school level, it doesn’t have that sort of application of like, I need this just to go to the supermarket and, and buy groceries.

The math you learn in calculus and the things you learn in a lot of your classes are not going to be used by you every single day. They’re not life skills necessarily, but if they’re in your life, if they’re affecting you, if they’re being used by other people to make those decisions that have an effect on you. I think everybody should have that opportunity to learn more about those things, to understand the world better. And I would love for calculus to have more of that place, even if that means maybe getting away from.

The standardized curriculum and exam that it’s currently attached to.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Alright. Thank you for coming Dash.

Dash Anderson : Thank you for having me. I love talking about this stuff all the time, and I’m glad to be given this opportunity.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: I really didn’t know that calculus was in video games and animation like that was really cool to me.

Jasper Mallorca: Yeah, I mean. Who would’ve thought it would be like Moana? I feel like the movie just has nothing to do with math. It’s kind of mind blowing.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Yeah. I really never thought of calculus being in non STEM fields.

Like I really appreciate, like, the arts and everything, and the fact that calculus has a place there, I guess was pretty eye-opening. I think even outside of the applications of calculus that Dash was talking about, I feel like. I have to recognize that he’s like one in a million math teachers that are really incorporating this into teaching calculus, and I wouldn’t necessarily say that that’s calc teachers’ faults.

I feel like the AP curriculum is really limiting in terms of what you can teach and how you can teach it, because it’s really all about that test.

Jasper Mallorca: I think kids would like to have a teacher like Dash, you know, that could actually show them what they’re doing and like how it’s actually useful in life other than just memorizing formulas that they’re not gonna know in like two years.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: You know, I feel like teaching to a test really just sucks all of the joy out of the class because everyone knows that what you’re learning is for one purpose only, and then it’s like three hours of your life. And then when those three hours are over you don’t really have a reason to remember any of those things.

It just doesn’t really create a happy feeling.

Jasper Mallorca: I think the best thing you probably learned was how to problem solve better and just in life. But like it’s good that Dash could show them, like what they’re doing. It maybe could inspire ‘em more too. To, like, learn better.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Yeah. Like even though I don’t want to go into animation or any of the applications he was talking about that weren’t STEM fields. I think just knowing that. What I’m learning in class has a place in things that I have a stake in, it was good to know, like I appreciated that.

That’s all for today on P.S. Weekly.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat made possible by generous support from the Pinkerton Foundation.

Producers for this episode were me, Mateo Tang-O’Reilly Tang O’Reilly,

Jasper Mallorca: and me Jasper Mallorca.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Our senior producer for the show is Maria Robins-Somerville, and our technical director is Jake Lummus.

The executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw.

Jasper Mallorca: Additional production and reporting support was provided by Mira Gordon, Sabrina DuQuesnay, Zana Halili, and Katelyn Melville, and our friends at Chalkbeat.

Mateo Tang-O’Reilly: Music is from APM and the jingle you heard at the beginning of this episode was created by the one and only Erica Huang.

Jasper Mallorca: Thanks so much for listening and see you next time.

We make transcripts available for our episodes as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

2026 National Teacher of the Year wants to share the ‘playbook for the power that people can generate’

2026-04-21T22:17:45+00:00

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When Leon Smith was a kid at camp, adults would tap him to keep an eye on younger children and make a point of praising how well he handled the responsibility.

It sparked a thought — probably helped along by the fact that both his parents were educators — that teaching might be the way he could make a difference in the world and in the lives of others.

He especially wanted to be the Black male teacher he only briefly got to experience as a child. That student teacher Smith had in 10th grade “made me feel the way that I hope all students feel in classrooms, and that is to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of dignity. And it just really gave me a great passion.”

Smith, a history teacher at Haverford High School in Pennsylvania, was named the 2026 teacher of the year by the Council of Chief State School Officers on Tuesday. He’ll spend the next year as an ambassador for the teaching profession.

Smith teaches AP U.S. History and African American Studies and coaches basketball. His favorite period to teach is Reconstruction, when Black men and women just a few years out of slavery built community institutions to provide opportunity for the next generation.

“It’s just a real playbook for the power that people can generate when they are committed to a cause,” he said.

But his favorite lesson, one that calls for students to embrace the complexity and nuance of history, is about events from nearly a century later.

Chalkbeat spoke with Smith about that lesson, why teacher diversity matters, and why young people should consider teaching. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You started an Educators Rising chapter to encourage students to become teachers. We hear a lot that fewer young people want to go into the profession. What concerns do you hear from young people about teaching and what do you tell them about why this is a good job?

There are a lot of young people that do want to be teachers, and we really have to do a better job as adults of inviting them into the profession. We have to do a better job with our PR and really letting students see the greatness of the profession. So that’s one.

But students are always thinking about, hey, does this teacher understand me? Do I feel like I can talk to this teacher about anything? Are they going to give me grace if I’m going through a difficult time? I think many of our students just want the teacher to support them and to be someone that they can go to if they need a hand. And I think that type of compassion and joy and genuineness that they would receive from the educator is something that would then make them think, “I want to do that for someone else.”

Through kindness and through those types of understanding and gestures, we can really start to plant the seeds for the next generation of educators.

You were the only Black male educator at your school for many years. What were the things that helped you keep going or feel supported and gain that comfort in bringing more of yourself into the classroom?

My faith. I have a strong belief in God. I would also say my community, my mom, my wife. But what began to give me a sustaining power was some of the feedback that I received from students. I would often get cards and messages from students thanking me for just being a genuine person, for telling them about my experience. And as I started to read those notes, I began to be more confident in being who I was as a teacher and letting them know, hey, here are some of the things that I’ve gone through, good and bad.

The more that we as a society can share our experiences, talk to each other, the more we can understand each other and move forward.

Some of this work around increasing the diversity of who’s in the classroom has come under political attack. What would you want the general public to know about the importance of having diverse people at the front of the classroom, in front of students?

I think one thing that we can all agree on is that we want all of our students to be successful. Student achievement is driving all of our work in education. The research is clear, that educators of color not only benefit students of color, but they benefit all students. And that’s what we want. We want all of our students to be successful.

You teach American history. I’m wondering if you have a favorite lesson.

We did a Socratic seminar where the students listened to a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell, a Revisionist History podcast called Miss Buchanan’s Period of Adjustment. It shines a light on an often untalked-about chapter when it comes to Brown vs. Board of Education and that is the number of Black teachers and principals that were fired in the wake of desegregation, over 100,000.

We talk about our teacher pipeline, and we talk about not having enough educators of color. There was a time when we saw many educators of color, and there were events that led to that decrease. And so when my students listened to that, they came back the next day and the classroom was buzzing. They’re like, “Mr. Smith, I can’t believe this.” It’s such a joy as a teacher to have the students be connected to their learning in that way.

We’ve had some great discussions. I had a young woman actually start to write the curriculum for an Asian American studies course as a result of that particular lesson, I’ve had another student that was more connected to her heritage as a result of that lesson.

So then they get a chance to choose any topic they want in American history and look at this topic from a different perspective or try to find an untold story with regard to this topic. And they get a chance to choose any medium in which they want to present that, and that’s our capstone project.

They set up in the library and the whole school comes and talks to them about their projects. And these are ninth graders, and they are just outstanding.

Brown is one of the seminal civil rights Supreme Court decisions. What do you think students get from considering this other angle?

It’s important for us to really look at things through multiple perspectives and to really understand the impact of context and point of view and intended audience. We build critical thinking skills in my classroom, not so that we can just decipher primary and secondary sources. I really want my students to take that out into the world and help them to be critical consumers of information, to be able to really evaluate the information that they’re seeing, to think about how it’s going to apply to them.

They’re going to be parents, they’re going to be voting citizens, they’re going to be homeowners. And so they really need to be able to think critically about a whole variety of things. And I’m excited that they get a chance to start doing that in my class.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s 2026-27 school calendar is out: late September start, a Monday finish in June

2026-04-21T20:30:09+00:00

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New York City’s 2026-27 public school calendar is out, and families can expect a long summer, with the first day of school starting on Thursday, Sept. 10.

They can also expect a late start to next summer, with the last day of school falling on Monday, June 28 — a dog-leg day that’s a recipe for low attendance.

Parents and educators have been eagerly awaiting next year’s calendar, which the Education Department quietly released on Tuesday. School typically starts the Thursday after Labor Day, and because September starts on a Tuesday, this year’s first day of school is on the later side, likely causing many parents child care headaches. (Teachers report to work two days before students return.)

New York state requires 180 days of instruction, but it allows for up to four days of teacher professional development to count toward that target, and New York City is using three such days to meet the mandate. That means students will be in class for 177 days in the coming school year. That number does not include the two half days students have scheduled for parent-teacher conferences.

The current school year calendar had 176 days for students, and then on top of that, the city got a waiver from the state for a snow day in February. In general, because New York City’s school day of six hours and 20 minutes is below the national average, students in the five boroughs spend less time in class than their peers across the country.

Here are some other quirks and notable pieces of information about this year’s calendar:

Election Day, on Nov. 3, will be a remote day for students, unlike this year when students were off.
School will be off on Good Friday, which is March 26, but not on the Monday following Easter. In 2023, the Education Department added that Monday to the calendar following backlash.
To avoid some of that backlash, spring break will be from Thursday, April 22 through Friday, April 30, covering all of Passover.
Although new holidays have been added to the calendar over the past few years, several of them aren’t days off this year: Diwali, the “festival of lights” celebrated by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains around the world, falls on a weekend. Lunar New Year falls during the February mid-winter recess. Juneteenth is on a Saturday. (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, is also on a weekend.)

After this story initially published, Education Department officials explained the justification for ending on a Monday, saying that the school year always ends before the second to last weekday in June.

When there was a Monday dog-leg day before winter break a few years back, the city ended up giving that as a day off. And this year, the city wound up also granting a day off when students were scheduled to return on Friday, Jan. 2.

City officials did not commit to whether they will continue the practice of traditional snow days or will once again pivot to remote learning, leaving the possibility open to hold remote classes when buildings are closed due to inclement weather.

Robert Murtfeld, a parent leader in Manhattan’s District 1, who has been pushing for more family involvement in scheduling the calendar — which is hashed out by the Education Department and teachers union — was disappointed that the city did not immediately notify families upon publishing the calendar.

His district’s Community Education Council, representing Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village, passed a resolution earlier this school year calling on the Education Department to make calendar decisions in future years with input from the “broader school community,” including parents and students. In response, Education Department officials wrote, “We are working on creating an online tool for families and others that outlines the school calendar creation process.”

Education Department officials on Tuesday afternoon sent Chalkbeat a link to this “tool” explaining how the calendar is created, which they released on the same day as the new calendar.

Officials, however, had yet to share the tool with the parents who asked for it, Murtfeld said, adding, “No parents were consulted on the calendar.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Some students get tutoring but end up as ‘intervention lifers.’ This common sense tactic could help.

2026-04-20T11:00:00+00:00

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Knox County Schools looked like it was doing everything right.

The district was using a well-regarded, evidence-based curriculum to teach students how to read. Young students who struggled got intensive tutoring using high-quality supplemental materials. Tutoring sessions took place during the school day, ensuring high participation.

But the 60,000-student district in eastern Tennessee wasn’t seeing the results from tutoring that leaders had hoped for. Erin Phillips, the district’s executive director of learning and literacy, decided to try something new: ask tutors to use materials that matched what students were learning in the classroom.

Working with outside researchers during the 2024-25 school year, Knox County Schools randomly assigned more than 300 early elementary students who fell below the 40th percentile on a universal literacy screener into two groups. One group received tutoring using the district’s usual supplemental materials. The other got tutoring using materials that were aligned with the district’s core curriculum, Benchmark Advance.

The results, described in a paper by researchers Cara Jackson and Ayman Shakeel, were striking. Students who received tutoring that aligned with classroom instruction made more progress, the equivalent of an additional 1.3 months of learning, compared with students in the control group whose tutoring sessions used supplemental materials.

This approach and the outcome might sound like common sense. But it goes against a widespread way of thinking about intervention, that if students didn’t learn the material well in class, they might benefit from new ways of approaching it or different explanations of the same concepts.

But the study suggests the opposite was true, that teachers and tutors may have inadvertently confused students by, for example, teaching different letter sounds in different orders or referring to the “magic e” in one setting and the “silent e” in another.

The findings are important as school districts look for ways to make tutoring more effective with limited dollars. School districts were urged by experts and officials to invest in high-intensity or high-dosage tutoring, generally defined as occurring at least three times a week and for 10 weeks or longer, as an evidence-based way to address pandemic-related learning loss. But large-scale tutoring programs often failed to produce the same outcomes as carefully designed pilot programs.

The education sector jargon for what Knox County is doing is “coherence.” That’s simultaneously an increasingly popular buzzword and a vital missing element in many education reforms.

In Knox County’s case, “What we were asking our most at-risk learners to do is carry the heaviest cognitive load,” Phillips said. “We were calling the same thing by different names in every learning experience. We were overloading their ability not only to have that knowledge in their brain, but to retrieve that information, not only retrieve it, but then apply it, and then transfer it from place to place.”

Using aligned materials, in contrast, lightens their cognitive load and gives them more opportunity to practice the same skills covered in class, she said.

Knox County students using aligned materials also did better on state standardized tests, according to the study from Jackson and Shakeel, though the difference was not statistically significant.

Tennessee is in its fifth year of a major early literacy initiative that includes teacher training, state-approved curriculum lists, mandatory tutoring for certain students, and holding back students who don’t meet certain benchmarks by third grade.

Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator’s review of tutoring research notes that alignment seems like it would be good practice but doesn’t have a strong research base. Jackson, research manager at the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting, said she wanted to address that gap with a randomized controlled trial.

“We were testing something lots of people very much believed would be true, and that a lot of people have talked about for a long time,” she said.

Jackson said she hopes other researchers try to replicate her findings in other settings and with larger groups of students.

Phillips is moving to adopt more aligned curriculums across subjects and grades. She’s also continuing to closely monitor student learning, including whether fewer students score in the bottom quartile or are referred for special education evaluation.

She said the study results shed light on a long-standing problem in the district.

“We had a decade’s worth of data showing us that students were not exiting intervention,” she said. “They were becoming intervention lifers. That’s not the intention of this support. All this data was showing that this was not working.”

Different curriculum choices can create an unhelpful ‘lasagna’

Many factors have nudged districts away from using aligned curriculum for students in intervention services, according to TNTP, a school improvement consulting organization that worked with Knox County.

Large established publishing houses dominate the market for core curriculum, while dozens of smaller companies fill in the gaps. When states draw up lists of approved curriculum, core and supplemental materials might go through different approval processes, and districts might not see materials from the same company on both lists.

Grants might also require districts to pick materials from certain vendors, contributing to a proliferation of different learning materials that take different tacks.

“We build this lasagna of program over program over program,” said Devon Gadow, TNTP’s director of national consulting.

Surveys by the research organization Rand Corp. found that teachers frequently cobble together materials from different curriculum companies, with the average teacher reporting they used two core curriculums and five supplemental curriculums.

And a study by the Center for Education Market Dynamics found more than 350 different supplemental math products in use across 1,700 school districts. These same school districts chose from fewer than 20 core curriculum options.

While districts often put significant time and attention into assessing core curriculum options before making a decision, they adopted supplemental materials in an ad hoc way, in part because the contracts were shorter and less expensive, the analysis found.

TNTP is urging state policymakers to look at ways they may be steering districts away from using more-aligned materials. The group also wants district leaders to look at what they already have in their arsenal that they could redeploy.

Gadow said district officials should be wary of marketing pitches based on coherence or alignment. They may not need to buy something new as long as they’re already using high-quality materials.

Core curriculum often includes materials to support scaffolding, remediation, and intervention, Gadow said, but classroom teachers don’t have the time to read through every page and develop lessons for struggling students. That’s work that central office staff could take on.

In Knox County, Phillips said teachers had developed a habit of using supplemental materials in the past when the district’s core curriculum wasn’t as good. Those habits were hard to break, in part because those past experiences led teachers to distrust that any core curriculum could cover all the necessary ground.

Phillips spent roughly $1.4 million from what remained of Knox County’s pandemic relief on aligned supplemental materials from Benchmark at the beginning of the study period. But if she had it to do over again, she would have looked more closely at what already existed in the core curriculum, she said. That’s what she’s doing now for other subjects. Most teachers are on board with the change, she said.

Meanwhile, she’s phasing out materials from other publishers as licenses expire, saving money going forward.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

She was expelled from high school. Now, she’s one of NYC’s top teachers.

2026-04-13T21:40:35+00:00

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Fatimah Barrie knows the 30 sixth graders in her three history classes at Uncommon Canarsie Middle School really well. But she also prides herself on knowing the younger and older kids at the 5-8 school, which serves about 100 kids per grade.

“To me, that is joy,” Barrie said. “It is showing up every day as a whole school educator to pour into all students in the building, not just the ones on my roster.”

Barrie has been at Uncommon for eight years and serves as the school’s lead lesson planner, helping write the 5-8 curriculum, leading professional development, and mentoring new and returning educators. Barrie’s own educational journey was filled with highs and lows. She went from being expelled from high school — which she shares candidly with her students on the first day of school — to winning a 2025 Big Apple Award from the city’s Education Department, which recognizes 10 “exceptional teachers who go above and beyond to serve students and families.”

Barrie’s school, which is overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and economically disadvantaged, often outperforms its peers on standardized tests. About 63% of its students, for instance, passed last year’s Algebra 1 Regents exam, which was well above the average for students of similar backgrounds and also surpassed the state average.

But more importantly, Barrie said, her students have shown resilience and compassion in the face of loss. In 2023, a fatal fire claimed the lives of two students, Kelsee Miles (who would have been in sixth grade this year) and her sister Journee Milles (who would have graduated last year), along with their mother, Danielle Havens. Four of the girls’ cousins attend the school along with many of their friends. At last year’s eighth grade graduation, the school reserved a seat for Journee, had a gown for her, designed a cap in her memory, and presented her father with her diploma. The school plans to honor Kelsee in the same way, said Barrie, who is working on a more permanent memorial for the girls through funding from the Big Apple Awards fellowship.

“They’ve been through a lot,” Barrie said of her students, “but they continue to show up for each other in ways that mean a lot.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

Becoming a teacher was extremely unplanned. I was just about to graduate from City College of New York with my B.A. in Political Science and my B.A. in Black Studies, and the plan was to take a gap year interning at a law firm as I prepared for my LSATs.

A few weeks prior to graduation, I bumped into a former high school classmate who had recently relocated back to NYC and was starting her principal journey at Uncommon. She thought with my interests and concentrations in college, I’d be a great fit as a seventh grade history middle school teacher. I did not think I would get the job, but on Juneteenth of 2018, I was hired just two weeks post-graduation for a full-time history teaching position.

The plan was to teach for a year, study for my LSATs, and prepare for law school. However, I fell in love with teaching.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

This is such a hard question, I hope I can change it up. Since I have begun teaching, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching fifth, sixth, and eighth grade. My favorite grade to teach history is sixth grade not only because of their personalities but the content is foundational to scholars’ understanding of the United States. The essential questions of the year asks students to consider: Does a society’s culture shape their government or does a society’s government shape their culture?; What form of government best serves people?; What role do people play in their governments? Students start the year off learning about Ancient American Civilizations (Aztec, Maya, and Inca) and end the year learning about the formation of the United States.

And while I am sure my students would say their favorite lesson was when I dressed up as an English judge (and we put Columbus, his men, the King and Queen of Spain, the Tainos, and the system of empire on trial for the genocide of the Taino population), I was only able to do that because I had built genuine relationships with my students which not only resulted in strong classroom management but a comfortable learning environment.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom or your school?

One thing that really impacts my classroom is how much my students are on social media and just constantly taking in information. They have opinions, they have thoughts, but a lot of times they haven’t been taught how to actually question what they’re seeing. They’ll say something confidently, but not always know where it’s coming from. So, I’ve had to be really intentional about slowing them down and teaching them how to think, not just respond.

Tell us more about the importance of joy in school. How do you bring joy into the classroom?

Middle school is often one of the most challenging parts of a student’s learning journey. I know it was for me. I attended three middle schools during my journey because of my behavior. When students get to middle school, they are navigating everything from hormonal changes to major shifts in academic expectations. They have a different teacher for each subject, move between classrooms every hour, and face increased rigor. Because of that, joy is not extra. It is essential. It becomes the heart of learning, especially in middle school.

I bring joy into the classroom by removing the strict power dynamic between adult and child, or teacher and student. My scholars know that my classroom and our school building are safe places. For some, joy may look performative in the classroom, like sing-a-longs, chants, and dance breaks. For me, joy is building relationships with them, not just teaching them. It is about students feeling seen, valued, and safe.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I had the honor and privilege of growing up in the greatest and most influential neighborhood in the world, Harlem. Being from there, especially in the ‘90s, and attending schools in Harlem gave me a unique perspective on life, confidence in learning, and knowledge of Black and brown people.

In Harlem, I learned a lot through an inclusive education and learning about multiple perspectives. I always tell my peers and my mother that attending Child’s Memorial Christian Academy for Kindergarten and first grade gave me the tools I needed to excel academically in any setting. From second to eighth grade I attended public schools; including P.S. 166, FDA II, West Side Collaborative, and I.S. 164 Stitt. At a few of these schools (those not based in Harlem), instruction, especially regarding history, was often Eurocentric, which sometimes made it hard to see myself and my community reflected in what I was learning. At parent-teacher conferences I would often hear, “Fatimah is so bright, but she distracts her peers by constantly talking to them,” or “Fatimah challenged the lesson today by saying Christopher Columbus did not discover America.” It was a constant reminder that I was intelligent, but I was not necessarily a follower. I was a leader in some way, even if I did not always realize it.

Eighth grade brought me to one of the most challenging middle schools in New York City, where there was constant violence. I knew I needed a better environment. For high school, I attended the first and only boarding school for girls in New York City, Catherine McCauley Catholic Academy, where I developed independence and control over my studies. In true Fatimah fashion, I was later expelled and was given the opportunity to complete my high school journey at Frederick Douglass Academy I, earning a Regents diploma. While some may see that I attended seven different schools during my educational journey and assume the worst, however each school gave me an experience that led to this very moment in my life.

I would not change a single choice I made during my adolescent and teenage years as a student. I believe this is why I connect so well with middle school students.

I know firsthand what it feels like to make a mistake and not be given grace. I want them to know that not only do I understand what they are going through, but they can grow through it and truly excel.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

An alternative to gifted education: Why some NYC schools are embracing International Baccalaureate

2026-04-10T14:44:08+00:00

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A few years back, a groundswell of Brooklyn parents in District 13 wanted to ditch gifted and talented classes, concerned about sorting and segregating children starting in kindergarten.

Then-Superintendent Kamar Samuels, now chancellor of New York City schools, wanted to find an alternative that offered rigorous academics for all students in a school rather than a select few. He settled on the International Baccalaureate, or IB, program and encouraged schools in District 13, which spans from Brooklyn Heights to Bedford-Stuyvesant, to pursue the yearslong authorization process, using a grant to support the shift.

The IB approach embraces inquiry-based, transdisciplinary learning that allows students to go deep into a specific topic across classes, connecting global issues to their own experiences. Educators are trained to facilitate these connections and foster ways for students to become independent thinkers and leaders.

“It means something for a teacher to be an IB teacher. It means you’ve gone through a process,” Samuels said in 2021, when introducing the initiative, “and you’re really pushing the envelope as you think about all your students.”

Amy Hamberry and her second grade students at P.S. 56 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, on March 9.

The district now has five elementary schools and two middle schools in the program, representing New York City’s first IB “pathway” designed to serve children from 3-K through eighth grade. (The district also hopes that students continue on to the handful of public IB high schools in the city, including those in neighboring districts.)

The IB model might soon gain in popularity as schools grapple with the state’s graduation requirement overhaul, as the Portrait of a Graduate framework replaces Regents exams for diplomas starting in the 2027-28 school year. The approach closely aligns with the state’s six key qualities students must demonstrate (such as being creative innovators, effective communicators, and global citizens). And as schools await the state’s guidance on how to assess students under the new framework, IB schools already have a well-developed system of project-based assessments.

The schools also boast strong post-secondary outcomes: 71% of IB students in the U.S. enrolled in college compared to the average of 56%, the IB Schools and Colleges Association found.

Fifth grade students at P.S. 56 on March 9.

On a recent Monday at P.S. 56, in Clinton Hill, second graders hummed as they worked on a project for a unit on self-expression. The kids were creating shapes to use for fabric construction, incorporating math, writing, and social-emotional learning as they jotted down the way the colors they used made them feel.

In a fifth grade room down the hall, students — also doing a unit on self-expression — tackled a poem about technology, as they discussed the effect technology is having on education. Another fifth grade class read a poem about bullying, and students were asked to write their own poem about a problem they wanted to change.

Jayda, a fifth grader, wrote about concerns with the increase in immigration enforcement across the nation. She recently participated in an anti-ICE protest that Lucy, another fifth grader, organized. They and their peers talked about how they struggled with writing when they were younger but have since blossomed as writers, especially as they’ve been able to work on more creative writing.

“Now it’s my passion,” fifth grader Noah said. “I couldn’t imagine life without it.”

Tracey Scronic, the instruction lead and coordinator for District 13’s IB schools, sees the shift to the IB model as an “equity tool” to ensure all of a school’s students are exposed to enrichment. She said it “de-prioritizes traditional testing’s emphasis on regurgitation of information.”

Jayda speaks about her experience learning through the IB program at P.S. 56 on March 9.

Leaning on IB to tackle enrollment declines

The IB program at P.S. 56 has helped prop up enrollment, its principal, Eric Grande, said.

Just before Grande became principal of P.S. 56 a decade ago, the Clinton Hill elementary school tried to bolster enrollment, then hovering below 200 students, by adding a gifted and talented program. Grande added a “world language” program, focusing on Spanish, hoping that would attract more families. But the school didn’t feel cohesive.

“Even though we had a relatively small school, there was almost like schools within the school,” Grande said. “You had your world language Spanish program, your gifted and talented program, you had your special education classes and your gen ed classes, and it just started to feel a little bit off.”

Students within the school, which is more racially diverse than most New York City elementary schools, were not integrated within the different programs, he said. (Last year, about 36% of its students were Black, 36% were white, 17% were Latino, and 1% were Asian American; roughly 47% of children came from low-income families.)

Principal Eric Grande and Arelis Jimenez, IB coordinator, in a third grade classroom at P.S. 56.

Grande began looking for a model to bring everyone — and all of their different programs — together, appeasing families who wanted a foreign language and those who wanted a project-based approach to teaching. IB offered the “perfect synergy of all things that we were doing.”

The school is now in its second year as an authorized IB school following three years as a candidate school. Enrollment has increased, with about 230 students last year.

And while Grande said his school has never been too focused on test prep, he was proud to see a shift in state test scores since his teachers transitioned to the IB framework, from about 35% proficiency on reading in 2019, the year before the pandemic, to more than 60% last year.

The move to IB can be challenging

The buy-in from teachers on IB takes some time, said Scronic. They needed training to shift practices and must do more in-depth planning around the new units. They also needed to figure out how to meld the IB framework with the mandated literacy curriculum for their district, EL Education.

“It is a bit more cognitively intense for the teachers,” Scronic said. But after a while, she said teachers feel like they’re being respected again for their craft and facilitating connections between the curriculum and students’ own lives. “I feel like the passion that a brand-new teacher brings to the profession then kind of gets squashed sometimes, IB has brought that back.”

Rosa Davis and her seventh grade students during science class at Restoration Academy on March 9.

Becoming an authorized IB school is not easy. Schools have to pay the Switzerland-based nonprofit that oversees the IB program about $9,000 a year to start the training and candidacy process. It’s about $10,000 each year once a school is authorized to support the implementation and maintenance of IB programs, according to the organization’s website. District 13 used a grant to cover the costs for the initial training for the schools, though the schools have had to foot the bill for new teachers.

Though Scronic leads District 13’s IB initiative, she’s started holding monthly Zoom meetings for about 40 IB elementary and middle schools in the city, a grassroots effort to provide support and create a community to share best practices and resources.

Restoration Academy Principal Adele Simon's office displaying IB program notes and a diorama created by students.

Samuels continued to promote IB schools when he left his Brooklyn district to become superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3. He encouraged schools in Harlem to adopt the IB model as a way to tackle declining enrollment in a part of the district facing heavy competition from charter schools. (District 3 used a grant to cover the costs as well.)

But Samuels acknowledged the challenges in pursuing IB authorization.

“I do believe in a lot of the work of IB, but it really takes a big investment,” he recently told K-12 Dive. “It takes principals being onboard. It takes teachers being onboard and willing to go and get a lot of background and content knowledge, and to be able to personalize for young people and the kids in your school.”

A middle school IB program helps students find their ‘voice’

Sanai Gary, an eighth grader at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Restoration Academy — which is in its first full year as an authorized IB school after its yearslong candidacy — said the IB approach has helped her deepen her learning.

“I like how the topics transmit over to other classes. I feel like it helps me learn better,” said Sanai. “It gives me more time to focus on it.”

Last year, she and her peers became clean water advocates after diving into a unit on global sustainability.

Sanai Gary, an eighth grader, speaks during her language and literature class at Restoration Academy.

It started after they read a novel in English class, “A Long Walk to Water,” about the struggle in South Sudan for clean water. In their Individuals and Societies class (akin to social studies), a student brought up questions about the water crisis that started in 2014 in Flint, Michigan, that got the students wondering about the water quality in their own school. So, in science class, they tested their school’s water fountains and created makeshift filtration devices.

Concerned about the color and clarity of their school’s water, back in English class, the students mounted a letter-writing campaign to city officials demanding changes.

Restoration Academy has struggled with enrollment and has long served marginalized students. The middle school currently has roughly 80 middle schoolers; about 80% are Black and Latino, and more than 90% are from low-income families. Pre-pandemic, about 20% of its students were considered proficient in reading. Since transitioning to IB, the scores have improved, rising to about 30% last year.

Tomaso Millian and his eighth grade students during design and art class at Restoration Academy on March 9.

But more importantly, Principal Adele Simon said, students are increasingly linking what’s happening around the world to their own lives and finding their voices to advocate for change based on what they’re learning in school.

“It’s the connection between what they’re reading,” Simon said, “and not just reading it for the purpose of reading it, but reading it for the purpose of, ‘Okay, what am I going to do with this? … Who’s in power and who is not in power? And how can I make sure that the people in power represent me and my community?”

Their school is getting new water fountains with filtration devices this spring.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Why Sal Khan’s AI revolution hasn’t happened yet, according to Sal Khan

2026-04-09T21:11:13+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Three years ago, as Khan Academy founder Sal Khan rolled out an AI-powered tutoring chatbot, he predicted a revolution in learning.

So far, the revolution hasn’t happened, he acknowledges.

“For a lot of students, it was a non-event,” Khan told me recently about his eponymous chatbot, Khanmigo. “They just didn’t use it much.”

Khan gives this analogy: Imagine he walked into a class, sat in the back of the room, and waited for students to seek out help. “Some will; most won’t,” he said. That’s been the experience with AI tutoring, he said. It doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.

Khan’s comments are an acknowledgement that AI has not quickly allowed for the creation of an effective super-tutor, as some initially hoped. It’s an early indication of the limits of AI to drive massive learning gains, long an unrealized goal of various technologies. While Khan remains optimistic about various uses of AI in education, he’s also come to see its limits.

“I just view it as part of the solution; I don’t view it as the end-all and be-all,” Khan said in our interview.

In the summer of 2022, OpenAI leaders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman reached out to Sal Khan. They were months away from releasing ChatGPT, and were hoping Khan Academy — a large nonprofit that works with schools across the country — could showcase the technology’s potential benefits. “I didn’t realize it yet, but the world was about to be turned upside down,” Khan wrote in his 2024 book “Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing).”

OpenAI provided Khan Academy with early access to a more advanced AI model, GPT-4. With that the Khan Academy team then built a specialized chatbot, Khanmigo, designed to help students learn and restricted from simply giving them the answer. Khan himself quickly became an evangelist for the technology’s uses in schools.

“We’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” Khan said in a widely viewed TED Talk in 2023. “The way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”

He suggested that eventually AI could turn the average student into an academic standout, citing a seminal but controversial 1984 study on the value of individualized tutoring.

Khan also appeared in a “60 Minutes” segment that featured northwest Indiana’s Hobart High School, which was an early adopter of Khanmigo.

Kristen Musall, a geometry teacher at Hobart High, gave Khanmigo a try when it first rolled out. Musall appreciated its encouraging, teacher-like tone, but she found that students didn’t really care for the bot. They found it frustrating — Khanmigo sometimes made mistakes, but also wouldn’t give away the answer. “If students don’t engage with the material enough to know what they’re looking for, then an AI like Khanmigo doesn’t necessarily help,” she recently told me.

Musall no longer uses Khanmigo in her class. She says there’s been more enthusiasm for the product among administrators than teachers in her school.

A few of Musall’s most advanced students have taken advantage of AI to learn new topics. But, as far as she can tell, more students are using it to just find answers, which has created a massive headache for teachers. Nationally, a majority of teenagers say AI-powered cheating is at least somewhat prevalent in their schools, according to a recent Pew survey.

Peggy Buffington, Hobart’s superintendent, said there’s been a range of reactions from teachers and students to AI. There was initially a learning curve for students to ask Khanmigo questions, but that they’ve gotten a lot better, she said: “It’s like anything in education. You have to learn how to use the tool and use it appropriately.”

Buffington says that schools need to prepare students to use AI responsibly and Khanmigo is preferable to commercial products they would use on their own. Overall, she’s found the tool beneficial. “Our kids can log in at home and they can get help with their homework and it won’t give them the answer,” she said.

But Khan Academy officials have seen that many students won’t take advantage of that option or don’t know how to. Kristen DiCerbo, the organization’s chief learning officer, said AI can only respond to students based on what they ask. And it turns out, she said, “Students aren’t great at asking questions well.”

DiCerbo was initially hopeful that AI would be able to personalize instruction to students’ needs and interests. That hasn’t happened. “So far I am not seeing the revolution in education,” she said.

AI is still poised to shake up American education in many ways — by making cheating easier, reshaping how teachers approach their work, and changing the broader economy in ways that affect schools. So far the evidence base for AI in education remains “extremely limited,” according to an overview paper released last month.

Khan Academy officials say they’re learning from their experience with Khanmigo and pairing it with other offerings.

A recent study found that when teachers used Khan Academy to help students practice academic content, their classes made slightly faster learning gains. (Lower-performing students, though, saw few if any improvements from Khan Academy.) This was before Khanmigo.

Khan Academy recently announced an overhaul of its product that provides students additional academic practice. Now Khanmigo is incorporated directly as a way students can get advice as they’re working through specific problems. A spokesperson said the organization made this change because “students were not seeking out Khanmigo’s help as much as we had hoped.”

“AI is going to help,” said Khan of this reimagined Khan Academy. “But I think our biggest lever is really investing in the human systems.”

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

As Philadelphia advances $225 million cut to school spending, teachers worry learning will suffer

2026-04-07T21:07:11+00:00

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Larger class sizes. Less support for students with disabilities. Fewer school climate staff to help kids in need.

Philadelphia teachers say this is the future they’re preparing for as school leaders move forward with their plan to reduce spending by $225 million next fiscal year. The budget proposal — which the board gave preliminary approval to last month — would eliminate 220 building substitute positions and cut another 340 school-based positions, including climate staff, special education aides, and teachers.

The Board of Education has yet to adopt the budget, which will be subject to a hearing at City Council later this month. But Superintendent Tony Watlington has directed principals to move forward with drafting budgets that cut spending. His goal, he recently told the board, is to plug the district’s $300 million budget deficit while providing essential services to support student achievement.

But more than a dozen educators Chalkbeat spoke with said the plan threatens to upend their schools, leaving students and staff with less help during a time when many are already struggling. They said the plan has decimated morale inside their buildings and resulted in deep anxiety for which positions would ultimately be eliminated.

“They’re taking away all the care from outside the classroom and putting more problems in the classroom,” said one middle school teacher, who like other educators asked not to be named because she was not authorized to speak on the matter

District leaders have said no teachers would lose their jobs due to the cuts, and instead those in positions that get cut could move to other open ones.

The city’s teacher shortage means that the district generally begins the school year with many openings. But teachers said it remains unclear who would ultimately need to find a new position, and where they would be.

“We understand the district is facing significant budget cuts, but staff have been asking for clarification on placements for several weeks without updates from our principal,” said one elementary school teacher. “It’s a mess all around.”

The proposal comes as the district seeks approval from the Board of Education to close 18 schools beginning in 2027. District officials have said the closures are not meant to be a cost-saving measure, and that schools slated for closure will not be impacted by next fiscal year’s budget cuts.

But at a board meeting last month, Board President Reginald Streater acknowledged the combined strain both proposals could cause.

“It’s been less than 30 days and we are being given another presentation that could require us to make potential, tough decisions,” Streater said. He said he knew the cuts could be painful, but that something must be done to address the budget deficit.

District officials did not respond to questions about the impact of the cuts, saying that the proposal is now in the hands of the Board of Education.

Teachers worry about cuts to building substitutes, climate staff

Along with cuts to school-based staff, Watlington’s budget proposal includes eliminating 130 vacant central office positions. The plan would also cut some contracts that Watlington said aren’t directly improving students’ educational outcomes, though he has not elaborated on which contracts those may be.

Still, teachers and advocates say the cuts would inevitably impact student learning.

Many teachers said they were concerned district leaders may not understand the value of some of the positions they plan to cut. Building substitutes, for example, are full-time staff at schools that provide consistent support to kids who may have their main teacher out for days or weeks. And climate staff step in to keep hallways calm and students focused on learning.

One teacher said in her middle school classroom, a student has a meltdown nearly every day. When that happens, the climate staff at her school step in to take the student out of the classroom to calm down.

By cutting the number of climate staff at her school — she’s still not sure how many would be left after the budgets are finalized — she worries she and other teachers would have to choose between continuing their lessons and supporting a child having an outburst.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker has said she does not want the school cuts to go through. She has proposed a $1 per ride tax on Ubers and Lyfts to funnel more money to the school district in order to prevent many of them.

The tax would save 240 school-based positions from elimination, but it’s unclear if members of City Council will support the new tax.

In the meantime, Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said teachers are bracing for a challenging year ahead.

“The district itself is fond of saying that the most important variable in how kids achieve and grow is the teacher in the classroom,” said Steinberg. “So any reduction in services to kids is going to slow down the learning and really be an obstacle to further growth.”

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

When a teacher ditched screens, class got harder. That may be why it worked.

2026-04-07T14:43:04+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Seventh-grade math teacher Dylan Kane decided to conduct an experiment in his classes by going cold turkey on ed-tech.

Kane, like just about every other teacher in the country, has seen the use of screens proliferate in his classroom — its own sort of accidental experiment. Then, last December, Kane read “The Digital Delusion,” a harsh critique of ed-tech. Although he was not entirely convinced by its arguments, the book made him pause.

“I had kept some of my technology routines the same for a bunch of years without really thinking twice,” says Kane, who teaches in Leadville, a rural mountain town in Colorado. “So I said, ‘Hey, why don’t I just throw it all out?’”

Kane, who writes a popular Substack about teaching and learning, decided to drop screens from his class for the month of January to see what would happen.

More educators and policymakers are also having second thoughts about the growth of ed-tech — sold as a way of personalizing learning but increasingly criticized for doing the opposite. Some school systems are scaling back the use of screens, and some state lawmakers are adding restrictions to how they can be used in class.

I wanted to talk to Kane to understand the classroom-level pros and cons of winding back the clock on ed-tech. So far his experiment has been a success, he says — so much so that he has not brought screens back. Dropping ed-tech has turned out to be a lot more work for him and his students. That might be why it’s succeeding.

Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

More than three months since he began, Dylan Kane's classroom is still tech free.

How were you using tech previously?

All of my assessments were online. That was a shift I made during the pandemic, which most teachers made. And I just kept doing that. They were easier to grade. It was kind of on autopilot.

Number two, I used a math practice website called DeltaMath, which I liked a lot. I would have students at the end of pretty much every class spend five to 10 minutes working through a short online practice assignment.

And third, I would about once a week use part of a Desmos activity. These are free online activities that are interactive, that students do on their Chromebooks. They often give an interesting insight into some mathematical idea, or let students manipulate math in a different way than we often do on pencil and paper.

So how’d your experiment of dropping tech go?

I’m still tech free. I don’t find myself saying, ‘Wow, these things I used to do with technology are totally irreplaceable.’

A couple things I’ve liked. The biggest is just so many fewer little logistical challenges. No more ‘I forgot my charger, my Chromebook’s dead. My screen’s cracked. The internet’s not working.’ All those things are just out the window. We have pencil, we have paper, we have whiteboards, we have markers.

A lot of stuff that I had students doing on their own, I’m now doing interactively in front of the class, like asking questions, having them answer on mini-whiteboards. That has been better than I expected. I feel much more nimble, like I don’t have to get them to put their screens away — we can just talk about it.

I’m seeing a slight increase in effort across the board. Some students, especially students who are less confident in math, can sometimes hide behind their screens. Screens can just separate us into our own little worlds and be really easy to appear like you’re busy behind a screen.

The last thing is I feel more in touch with student thinking. Part of the premise of education technology is that we can see all this stuff about what students are doing, what they know, what they don’t know. My experience is the data is often overwhelming. And with pencil and paper, I just feel much more connected to what students are confused about, what I need to respond to, where I need to adjust.

What do students think of this?

I surveyed them, and they were mixed. The averages were honestly right down the middle. I have some students say they love it. They either just don’t like a lot of the stuff we do on Chromebooks, or they feel fatigued by the amount of screen time across their classes, or they feel frustrated with all the little logistical issues.

One interesting thing is some students say the work is easier on a Chromebook. One reason is handwriting involves more effort. The effort that goes into handwriting might lead to more durable learning — that might be a good type of effort. Another is working on screens often gives instant feedback, and so not having that feedback can feel a little more frustrating for students.

The loss of feedback feels like it could be a downside.

There’s good and bad here. Instant feedback can be really helpful, but students can also become reliant on it, or it can lead to guessing and checking that’s unproductive. In a lot of situations, delayed feedback works better than immediate feedback.

Is there any part of tech that you miss?

All of this is more work. It’s way easier to click a few buttons and assign a couple math problems for students to do online than it is to prepare a piece of paper, and have all that ready for students in class.

I also find that students are a little bit more self-reliant when they’re on technology. I think again, this is good and bad. They need less teacher interaction, because they’re getting that immediate feedback. But also the way that screens kind of divide people into their own world. Sometimes a student is really confused, but doesn’t quite know how to ask for help. There’s definitely higher energy in my class without screens, and I think that’s a good thing, but it can be exhausting as a teacher.

I’m giving quizzes and tests with pencil and paper now, and it’s a lot more work to grade. I’ve loved that because it’s helped me get students to engage more with their mistakes, but again, it’s more work.

Did you run into any sort of difficulties with school policies that made it hard to unwind tech, because it’s just so integrated in so many schools?

I had my formal observation a few weeks ago, and there are a number of items on the state rubric around using technology that were left blank. I am personally not very worried about my score on one very small subset of the state rubric. But that’s built into Colorado law that teachers should integrate technology in their classroom.

So is your plan for the foreseeable future to continue to be no-tech?

Yeah. I don’t want to be someone who just says, ‘Hey, no technology ever again.’ I plan on being a paper-and-pencil first teacher as much as possible. But if some new tools do come along that I think are doing a much better job than what I had access to before, I’m open to it.

Anything else you want to add?

A big belief of mine is that teachers can do their best work when we set clear expectations for what we think great teaching and learning look like, and within reasonable constraints give teachers some freedom. And I think in some cases, technological tools can be a crutch to take away some teacher autonomy. I don’t think it’s a path to a profession where teachers want to stay in the classroom and where teachers can be responsive to student needs.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

This elementary school banned screens in the middle of the year. Will it solve their reading crisis?

2026-03-25T21:08:17+00:00

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Chromebooks are scattered all around the classrooms of Floyd M. Jewett Elementary School in Mesick, Michigan.

Towers of them are teetering atop bookshelves. They’re piled up in corners of classrooms. They’ve even cropped up in one classroom’s dish rack.

But there’s one place you won’t find them: in students’ hands.

Last month, Mesick Consolidated Schools banned digital devices in its elementary school of about 250 students. The decision wasn’t an agonizing one. The ban came at astonishing speed, almost overnight, after a conversation between Mesick Superintendent Jack Ledford and Jewett Principal Elizabeth Kastl.

Ledford recalled asking Kastl how much teachers read to students in grades K-5. And he recalled her reply: “That has almost vanished.” Kastl’s response helped seal the deal.

Teachers had to have students off devices by the end of the week. School printers went into overdrive. Then the district went cold turkey.

Tablets are seen in first grade teacher Hope Parrish's classroom at Floyd M. Jewett Elementary School on Friday, March 20, 2026 in Mesick, Michigan. The school recently banned screens in a bid to improve students' reading skill.

Mesick’s midyear ban underscores a growing backlash against screen time in school, a battle that parents and educators are taking up nationwide. Fears about digital devices’ impact on learning have fused with ongoing concerns about a multi-year decline in national test scores that predates the pandemic. A stream of government hearings, op-eds, and social media posts have only magnified the sense of urgency.

Ledford and Kastl think the need for drastic action is warranted. About 18% of Jewett’s third graders scored proficient or higher on the state reading test last spring — half the state average and half what it was a decade ago.

In Mesick, a rural town known for its annual mushroom festival, 66% of students are economically disadvantaged. The district has done all the “normal things” to improve persistently low reading scores, Ledford said, like switching to an evidence-based curriculum. But he now views screens as an adversary to learning.

Jack Ledford, superindendent of Mesick Consolidated Schools, outside of Floyd M. Jewett Elementary School.

“When we’re competing with screens, we’re going to lose,” he said.

But blanket bans at school won’t affect kids’ screen time at home. And research about how screens affect students is inconclusive, although it does suggest that teachers should exercise caution. Not everyone is convinced that a complete prohibition on screens is the best way to help struggling learners.

Morgan Polikoff, a professor at the University of Southern California’s education school, said he understands the appeal of an all-or-nothing approach, but it avoids the reality that some technology does have a place in the classroom.

“It’s like taking a hammer when you need a scalpel,” he said. “A lot of the use of technology in schools is not appropriate. But rather than sitting down and thinking about, ‘What are appropriate uses of technology in classrooms serving young children,’ this approach would just obliterate all uses.”

A third grade student reads a book in Hanna Brechenser's classroom at Floyd M. Jewett Elementary.

Lawmakers in at least 16 states are have proposed bills that would limit education technology in public schools, following a spate of state-approved cellphone bans for schools.

Ledford said he’s been influenced by writers like Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychologist who is a prominent supporter of school cellphone restrictions and has more recently criticized the proliferation of tech in education. At the same time, a mid-March visit to Mesick’s classrooms shows the ed-tech backlash can be somewhat divorced from the reality of a school day.

For some at Jewett, the school day doesn’t feel that different. A few teachers said they hadn’t used screens very much. For others, the routine has changed substantially — and for the better, they believe, with students more engaged and learning less “gamified.”

Hanna Brechenser teaches a lesson to her third grade students.

When asked about her school’s screen ban, a girl wearing a “Lilo & Stitch” shirt in an intervention class for struggling readers, just growls. But her intervention instructor, Julie Kearns, said the students are simply adjusting.

The student “definitely seems like she enjoys” reading a book more than wearing headphones and peering at a screen, Kearns said.

As Kearns watched, the girl bounced in her chair while reading a passage about soccer.

Why a school banished screens and bought books

In classrooms, a screen ban for students doesn’t mean all screens are gone.

One Friday in March, third grade teacher Hanna Brechenser presented images on the Smartboard — the modern day version of a projector — of Indigenous communities to help foster a classroom conversation. Teachers also still have desktop computers.

This is Brechenser’s fifth year teaching and her second in Mesick. She said she had already tried to limit screentime in the classroom before the ban. Her class mostly used their Chromebooks a few times a week for a math fluency exercise and digital library access.

Elizabeth Kastl, elementary principal for Mesick Consolidated Schools, in her office.

Both Kastl and Ledford believe teachers may not have been aware of just how much of a crutch screens were in some classes.

Mesick went 1:1 with students and devices around 2015, Ledford said, when schools were under pressure by tech evangelists and politicians to add more technology so students would be prepared for jobs in the digital world. That was the argument at the time, anyway.

“I had started in my walkthroughs just noting, what are the students doing?” Kastl said. “More often than not, I was coming back with a list of students on devices. So the perception of how your day actually looks versus what we were seeing on the data piece are probably disjointed.”

Mesick’s new policy has been helpful for Brechenser because she doesn’t have to police students so much on their devices.

A selection of books are available in teacher Hanna Brechenser's classroom at Mesick Consolidated Schools.

Brechenser’s students have physical books from the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, “Twilight”, and “The Baby-sitter’s Club” stacked on their desks. That’s the other side of Mesick’s new screen ban: The district has set aside $30,000 for physical books to bulk up classroom libraries, along with beanbag chairs so students will have special spaces to read.

Students adjusted quickly, Brechenser said. “At first, they were kind of shocked, but we just have a lot more silent reading time.”

Still, it’s hard to miss signs of the amount of time students spend on screens outside of school: A “K-Pop Demon Hunters” water bottle. A Sonic the Hedgehog T-shirt. The image of a snake Brechenser put on the Smartboard prompted one student, Alaric, to say it reminded him of one in a “Harry Potter” movie he watched before school.

Alaric, who’s 9, said he doesn’t really miss his Chromebook, though he’d been reading something on the online library he can no longer access thanks to the screen ban.

He gets plenty of screen time at home playing Xbox, he said. He hasn’t thought about cutting down on that.

“Because I love Fortnight,” he giggled.

In reading instruction, students get a digital detox

Where Mesick’s screen-free initiative feels most significant is in the 30-minute small group sessions for Jewett’s struggling readers.

Mesick uses Read Naturally, an intervention program designed to build fluency. Before the screen ban, students would read a short passage aloud from a computer, then listen through bulky headphones as the software read the passage back to them. Students would then read the passage to themselves three times before reading it aloud again. Paraprofessionals would go from student to student to assist.

Now, Sharon Brown and other literacy aides sit with their students, and work through printed reading passages together. Brown can more easily point out when students stop tracking words with their fingers. She can help sound out words. Though she closely helped students on the computers, she finds herself more thrilled to engage this way, to see progress up-close. This is why she is in education.

“It’s our passion to sit and watch these kids go from struggling readers to eventually testing out … and not having to come back and see us,” she said.

Hanna Brechenser uses a whiteboard in her classroom. She also uses a Smartboard during lessons with her third graders.

With one second grader, she has an engaging conversation about the reading’s topic, mammals, before they begin. He asks if a shark is a mammal, and if it evolved from dinosaurs.

Brown can see improvements, particularly with some of her first graders. Students are reading more words per minute, based on data they track every session.

“They are so engaged,” she said. “It’s been amazing to us that we’re going, ‘Wow, this has actually been so fun.’”

The way students use technology is an important consideration when thinking about limiting or banning screens, said Dr. Joanna Parga-Belinkie, a pediatrician and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Educators and parents should focus on using technology in ways that are interactive and in group settings, instead of having students looking at screens on their own.

“When you are focusing on screens and technology and the use of them you might be not focusing on human relationships,” she said.

Samantha Daniels, the mother of three children in the district, said that last school year, some of the software the district used would offer students games if they read enough.

She’d watch her son, a first grader, try to rush through the reading to get to the game. He struggled a lot with reading, becoming easily frustrated like many young readers.

“It would be about getting to that, versus us enjoying what we’re reading and what we’re learning,” she said.

But now, he’s starting to pick up books on his own.

Students work at their desks in third grade teacher Hanna Brechenser's classroom at Mesick Consolidated Schools.

There are some difficult practical adjustments to a mid-year change as big as this one. A lot of classroom resources are based online, or have some kind of an online component. Kastl asked teachers to stop using those components.

Ultimately, every hour of screen time represented “an hour that we’ve lost direct teacher instruction where they’re actually getting that responsive feedback from a human,” Kastl said.

“That’s when you move the needle.”

Will eliminating screens help young readers?

Ledford doesn’t think he’s taking a gamble by eliminating screens at the elementary school, even though students take state assessments on computers. He thinks it’s much easier to teach students technology skills than social skills.

In fact, he already has plans to scale back technology use by older students, too.

Ledford moved rapidly to ban screens, but he expects improvements in reading scores to happen more gradually. Still, he’s laser-focused on the connection between screens and literacy. To him, education should unlock the ability to read for students, because it affects everything else the district is trying to do for kids.

“We’re failing in literacy,” Ledford said. “If we fail in literacy, how can we effectively teach science or social studies or any of the subjects?”

Getting rid of screens will not solve all of Mesick’s problems, like a leaky roof or clapped-out HVAC system. Kastl has also observed a deeper potential issue: a drop-off in parent involvement after schools closed during the pandemic.

In many cases, Kastl said, “Parents don’t know what actually happens inside their kids’ school building.”

But parents know about the screen ban, and they’re excited about it. They’ve said they’ve noticed their children take more interest in reading.

Kids are also socializing more during free periods, a bright spot for the principal’s son, Sam Kastl.

Fifth grade students build forts in teacher Marie Lance's classroom at Mesick Consolidated Schools.

Sam, 11, used to spend indoor recess — a regular occurrence in northern Michigan’s severe winters — playing games on his Chromebook. He thought the screen ban was “going to be annoying.” Classmates who used to ask him if his mom would declare a snow day started asking him to convince her to bring back devices.

But those requests went away pretty quickly. Students now play board games together instead of games on their Chromebooks alone — just like how reading intervention students now study in a group instead of solo. Another student taught Sam how to draw. Everyone’s adjusted pretty well, from his vantage point.

On the day Chalkbeat visited their school, Sam and his fifth grade classmates built a fort out of blankets during class time. Then they climbed inside to read with flashlights.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

America is turning against higher education. Students are still signing up.

2026-03-24T13:44:25+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

The narrative is by now familiar.

Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen precipitously. More commentators are wondering aloud whether a degree is worth the cost. High school graduates and their families fret about taking on student debt. The Trump administration has aggressively attacked — rhetorically and legally — higher education. Artificial intelligence could threaten the university business model.

And yet, hard data show seemingly positive trends for higher education.

After a dip during the pandemic, enrollment has risen for three straight years. Elite universities continue to have vastly more applicants than seats. College-educated workers still far out-earn those without a degree, on average. College has actually become somewhat more affordable in recent years.

At Chalkbeat Ideas, we recently held an event trying to understand and untangle these confusing facts. The recording is here; the slides featuring my presentation of data are here.

“A lot of discouragement of students around higher education has very little to do with education or economic outcomes,” Zachary Bleemer, an economist at Princeton University, said during the event.

The discussion helped clarify my own thinking about the paradoxical state of American higher education — and what the prevailing discourse gets wrong. Here are some key takeaways.

The higher education backlash hasn’t stopped enrollment from growing.

In 2023 and 2024, headlines about Americans giving up on the value of college dominated. Ivy League presidents were filleted before Congress over antisemitism on campus. Trump campaigned on reining in elite schools. Support in polls dropped to record lows.

But a funny thing also happened during this time, although it was less noticed: Actual student enrollment started to trend upward again. Now, overall college and university enrollment is above pre-pandemic levels. The negative sentiment around higher education may have deterred at least some students from pursuing a degree, but in recent years there have apparently been other factors pulling them in.

The backlash has been strongest against elite schools — but they’re still thriving.

It’s hard to know for sure why confidence in American education has fallen so sharply. But I suspect that a lot of it has to do with attention to the country’s most elite schools, the Ivy League and a handful of others. Those universities, which educate a tiny share of American students, have drawn incredible amounts of attention, largely negative: about their purportedly close-minded liberal culture, their remarkably high tuition rates, and their exclusive admissions practices.

Yet demand to attend these colleges remains strikingly high — they still reject the vast majority of students who apply. In recent years, enrollment has only grown at selective colleges, which remain dominated by students from high-income neighborhoods.

Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, noted archly during the Chalkbeat event that there is little indication of declining interest in college among affluent families, despite suggestions that young people are pivoting to blue-collar work.

“When you look at the wealthiest people in this country … they’re not having conversations about construction trades. They’re not having conversations about HVAC [work] when it comes to their kids,” said Jeffries. KIPP, the country’s largest nonprofit charter network, serving mostly students from low-income families, continues to prioritize access to college, he said.

The fundamental economics of higher education have not changed much — and are fairly strong.

What drives many people to pursue a degree is economic opportunity. In recent years, a narrative has emerged that pursuing a bachelor’s degree is no longer worth it, due to some combination of higher costs and lower returns. Neither claim is well supported by the data.

Real college tuition — what people actually pay, rather than the sticker price — has been flat or even falling for nearly two decades, according to tracking from the College Board. Meanwhile, the wage advantage for college graduates has remained at very high levels.

Rigorous research has typically found that students on the margin of attending college benefit economically from doing so. “Unambiguously, you see large returns to college-going,” said Bleemer. He pointed to studies in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Texas. That doesn’t mean everyone benefits, just that the typical student considering college does, at least where it’s been studied.

The persistent economic value of college may help explain why enrollment at four-year colleges has not responded strongly to the backlash.

Two-year colleges have also seen enrollment rise recently, though this followed years of declines. Between 2010 and 2023, student counts dropped precipitously at places like Wayne County Community College and Central New Mexico Community College, to name a couple. There were also steep declines at for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix Online Campus.

These were hardly the schools at the center of the recent higher education backlash, but they bore the brunt of enrollment declines.

This again may reflect economic fundamentals in which students see less value from certain schools. Rising unemployment rates, which typically make additional education more appealing, have corresponded with the recent uptick in enrollment.

Politics, shrinking student pools, and AI mean a new era of uncertainty for higher ed.

So if enrollment is growing and the economic case for a degree remains strong, are colleges in a secure spot? Well, no. They face many pressures at the moment. The first is the shrinking pool of potential students. For the foreseeable future, just about every graduating high school class will be smaller than the last, according to projections. Higher education still faces intense political opposition, which could result in less public funding for colleges and universities. Wealthy elite colleges are in many ways best positioned to weather this storm, while lesser-known schools may again be the hardest hit.

The other variable is artificial intelligence. For multiple generations, universities have benefitted from the fact that more-educated workers can often better take advantage of new innovations. This is sometimes called the race between education and technology — in other words, the country has long been racing to get more educated to keep up with evolving tech.

What’s not clear yet is whether this race will continue. It’s possible that AI could lead to even more demand for higher education, but it could also reduce interest by replacing white-collar work. At the moment, it’s too soon to say how this will play out.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Goodbye, Regents exams. NYC educators: Tell us how Portrait of a Graduate will change your classroom.

2026-03-20T19:35:18+00:00

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Next school year will be the last requiring students to pass their Regents exams to earn a high school diploma under the state’s current timeline.

Starting in the 2027-28 school year, students will be evaluated based on a new framework from the state called the Portrait of a Graduate, which includes six key qualities high schoolers should master to earn a diploma. They should be able to demonstrate they are academically prepared, creative innovators, critical thinkers, effective communicators, global citizens, and “reflective and future focused.”

State officials have offered few specifics about how students will be expected to meet those criteria, though they have sketched some broad possibilities such as research projects and internships.

Chalkbeat wants to hear from school leaders and teachers: How will these changes affect what’s happening in your classrooms? What will moving away from the Regents exams mean for you and your students? What questions do you have?

New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has signaled the Education Department plans to “ramp up” its work filling in the lines for the Portrait of a Graduate. He recently revamped his cabinet to include a new position for a high level official supervising high school leadership. It’s headed by Alan Cheng, who most recently oversaw Outward Bound schools, the Internationals Network serving newcomer immigrants, and New York Performance Standards Consortium schools, which require students to do performance-based assessments such as capstone projects or other presentations rather than Regents exit exams. Consortium schools could potentially serve as a model as the state overhauls graduation requirements.

“As Portrait of a Graduate starts to take shape, a New York City diploma needs to mean rigorous learning and genuine preparation for what is to come next,” Cheng said when his new role was announced.

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Next phase of NYC reading overhaul? Schools chief wants to help struggling middle, high school students

2026-03-19T18:39:41+00:00

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In recent years, New York City’s public school system has made improving elementary school literacy rates the top priority.

That focus, experts have warned, doesn’t address an equally pressing challenge: Many middle and high school students are far below grade level, and their schools are not always equipped to help them catch up.

Now, Chancellor Kamar Samuels is vowing to shift the Education Department’s agenda. Addressing that gap will be the “next stage” of NYC Reads, the city’s plan to improve reading instruction, Samuels said at a recent literacy conference convened by Columbia University’s Center for Public Research and Leadership.

Middle and high school teachers “love books, they are wonderful at comparing themes, they’re wonderful at getting most of our kids … excited about reading,” Samuels said. “But what they’re not necessarily good at is teaching our kids to read.”

He added: “We have to ensure that when our kids are off track at sixth grade, that there are research-based interventions that can help to get them on track.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Samuels have vowed to continue the previous administration’s focus on literacy, including a requirement that elementary schools remove discredited curriculums from their classrooms and adopt city-approved programs. Samuels has indicated that one of his top priorities will be getting older students who did not receive adequate reading instruction back on track.

The stakes of that effort are high. More than 40% of New York City middle school students were not considered proficient readers on last year’s state tests, and just under half of high school freshmen arrived on campus reading below grade level.

Officials have previously acknowledged the city’s approach to catching up students has been scattershot. For the first time this school year, all campuses — including middle and high schools — are required to use city-approved intervention programs for struggling readers. Officials are also requiring all middle schools transition to city-approved reading and math curriculums by fall 2027. Both of those efforts launched under Mayor Eric Adams.

Literacy experts welcomed Samuels’ focus on older students.

“I appreciate his acknowledgement that middle and high school students and teachers haven’t been a priority in this conversation around the shift to evidence-based instruction,” said Katie Pace Miles, a Brooklyn College professor and literacy expert.

The city should roll out training for middle and high school teachers on the latest evidence about how students learn to read, she said, and consider intensive tutoring programs for students who are behind.

The Education Department plans to share more detailed plans in the coming months, said agency spokesperson Onika Richards. She emphasized that schools are focused on using assessment data to identify students who need more help and ensuring dedicated time in the school day to provide extra help. (Officials did not say whether high schools will be required to use city-approved reading curriculums, as middle and elementary schools have.)

When it comes to supporting older students, making the interventions schools deploy more coherent would be a welcome change, some observers said. Teachers have sometimes relied on elementary school reading materials for those who are behind, which can be embarrassing for middle or high school students, said Evan Stone, the CEO of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group.

A challenge will be finding time during the school day to offer interventions without pulling students out of their regular English language arts classes.

“You don’t want them to miss the ELA block to get their support because then they never catch up,” Stone said. The materials teachers use for students who are behind should be aligned with their school’s regular reading curriculum, he added.

Stephanie Vazquez, a literacy coach at M.S. 101 in the Bronx, said teacher training will be a crucial element of any effort to improve reading outcomes. Her students arrive with a wide range of reading abilities; some are capable of high school level work while others are far behind.

“As a teacher, you’re trying to figure out, ‘How do I help my student gain access and fully comprehend this text without completely modifying the text?’” Vazquez said, noting the city could create more opportunities for teachers from different schools to share best practices.

Vazquez said teachers in upper grades could also use more exposure to a longstanding body of research on how children learn to read, known as the science of reading.

“Oftentimes, when you’re a teacher in middle and high school, your certification program may not have taught you about the science of reading,” she said. “We don’t always feel well-equipped because we don’t walk in with that foundation.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

A viral case against screens in schools is winning converts. Does the evidence hold up?

2026-03-17T14:39:42+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Schools have been struggling for nearly a decade with stagnant or declining test scores. Some have blamed external factors like the pandemic or children’s screen use outside of school. But what if, in a sort of educational horror movie, the call is coming from inside the house?

Such is the provocative theory advanced by Jared Cooney Horvath, a Ph.D-holding neuroscientist who runs an education consulting company. Students’ learning and attention have been derailed by the proliferation of screens in schools. “When tech enters education, learning goes down,” he told a U.S. Senate committee earlier this year.

Horvath has offered a synthesis of two anxieties of the moment: poor test scores and rising screen time among children, including in school. It’s a message that is resonating with some parents, educators, and lawmakers.

His Senate testimony has been viewed well over 2 million times on C-Span’s YouTube page. Clipped versions have ricocheted across Instagram. Prominent psychologist and tech critic Jonathan Haidt has promoted Horvath’s work. At least one tech-skeptical parent is attending school board meetings armed with copies of Horvath’s self-published book, “The Digital Delusion,” which is set to be re-released this summer by a major publisher. Meanwhile, some states are considering new restrictions on school-issued devices.

I wanted to figure out how strong the case against ed-tech really is, so I took a careful look at Horvath’s evidence. My takeaway: There’s no smoking-gun data showing that ed-tech is at the root of, or even contributing to, recent learning declines. But Horvath’s case should still give schools and educators some pause. Could the tech tools they’ve adopted be doing more harm than good?

In his book and Senate testimony, Horvath offers a three-pronged case against tech in schools.

First, he notes a basic correlation. On a number of international tests, students who spend more time on school computers tend to do worse, he finds. Both U.S. and international scores also started to drop once schools began giving students laptops, Horvath says.

Second, Horvath summarizes academic research — over 20,000 studies — on ed-tech tools, which he defines broadly. Startlingly, in his telling, they appear to harm learning. “Most general-use educational technologies perform below the effectiveness of ordinary classroom instruction,” Horvath said in his written Senate testimony.

Third, screens are not consistent with learning best practices, says Horvath, drawing from his neuroscience background. Human relationships are an important part of learning, which digital tools can’t match. Screens are also just distracting for students.

Plus, tech can make learning frictionless, which seems like a good thing but isn’t, Horvath contends. For instance, it’s easy to take notes on a computer. Yet the process of hand writing notes requires more consideration of what is being written, and that can help commit it to memory.

Across different strands of evidence, “the same exact pattern pops up again and again,” Horvath tells me — that ed-tech is actively harmful.

Yet this case has a number of significant holes.

His first point about correlation is just that: correlational. It does not show tech has caused lower achievement. Such declines in the U.S. and around the world have coincided with a number of other factors, including the pandemic and the growth of screens outside of school. Researchers are still struggling to pin down the key causal factors here. Horvath readily acknowledges this limitation.

His summary of research is also questionable. The overall impact of ed-tech in the studies he cites is actually positive. Horvath says the effect is too small to justify the use of tech because it’s smaller than the effect of “typical classroom instruction.” Taking that into account turns the ed-tech results negative, he says. This is a key methodological decision on which Horvath’s conclusion rests.

But it’s simply not the right approach, says Elizabeth Tipton, a Northwestern University statistician, who counts herself as an ed-tech skeptic. Horvath’s benchmark is wildly unrealistic, she says. In carefully designed studies, in which two groups are both receiving some sort of instruction, most effects are quite small. In that context, an effect above zero would be encouraging.

Perhaps more importantly, says Tipton, it’s not clear the vast array of research that Horvath is citing should be relied on at all. There are many poorly done studies in education. To do a good summary, low-quality papers need to be ruthlessly weeded out. Another challenge is that tech is constantly changing, making old studies quickly obsolete. She’s worried that there’s a “garbage in, garbage out” problem in Horvath’s summary, which is really an overview of multiple overview papers.

“We are so far from the original data, we have no idea what we’re studying at this point,” says Tipton. She’s not aware of a high-quality summary of research on ed-tech broadly. This would be hard to do because the uses of tech are so diverse.

Horvath acknowledges limits in his cause and effect evidence, but he says that’s inevitable in social science. We should look at the weight of the data and the overall coherence of the case, he argues.

Horvath is perhaps on the strongest ground in his summary of cognitive science research. Although it’s debated among researchers, there is some evidence that students learn less from reading and from taking notes on screens. Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, says he’s particularly concerned that tech opens up new avenues for distraction. “If kids have a Chromebook and they can find a way out of whatever they’re doing so they can do something more fun with the Chromebook, they will,” he says.

For his part, Horvath argues the burden of proof should not be on him but on the purveyors of ed-tech. “We are much closer to proving that it’s harmful than we are to proving it’s helping,” he says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Could NYC get a 2-year extension to meet class size caps? A key architect of the law is open to it.

2026-03-11T12:00:00+00:00

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A key architect of a state law that mandates smaller class sizes in New York City indicated he’s open to giving Mayor Zohran Mamdani more time to comply.

State Sen. John Liu, a sponsor of the class size law, said it would be reasonable to extend the timeline from two years to four years before the nation’s largest school system is expected to fully meet the class size caps.

“Mayor Mamdani has been very clear he wants to reduce class sizes in accordance with the mandate,” Liu said. But “both he and the chancellor have suggested that more time and more money may be needed.”

Under the state’s 2022 law, 80% of city classrooms must include no more than 20-25 students, depending on the grade level, by next school year. All classrooms must fall under those caps by the 2027-28 school year. (The teachers union contract allows class sizes up to 34 students in high school classrooms.)

“It would not be unreasonable for the city to commit to a 70%, 80%, 90%, and then 100% timetable,” said Liu, referring to the percentage of classes that would have to comply with the new class size caps in each of the next four school years.

Liu’s comments signal that state lawmakers and city officials may try to tuck tweaks to the class size law into the state budget, which often includes various policy changes and is due April 1. But any alterations are likely to be contentious since the class size policy was a major priority of the city teachers union, which carries significant political clout in Albany.

In a statement on Tuesday, Liu demanded a “clear plan” to shrink class sizes to comply with state law before lawmakers will agree to extend Mamdani’s control over the school system, which expires at the end of June.

The initial state law did not come with dedicated funding to hire thousands of new teachers required to staff smaller classes, which has been a major sticking point with city officials. In a budget proposal released Monday, lawmakers in the state assembly included $600 million to help New York City reduce class sizes. For his part, Mamdani has proposed an extra $543 million in city dollars next year to comply with the mandate.

A rep for City Hall did not respond to questions about whether the mayor supports the timeline Liu outlined. Mamdani voted for the legislation when he was a state lawmaker.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said the union does not support extending the deadline without a road map from the city to ramp up school construction to create more space for smaller classes.

“Only when a real plan and a clear timeline are in place — not the usual School Construction smoke and mirrors — would we have the information necessary to consider whether any amendments are needed,” Mulgrew said in a statement.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has previously said he would rather the city more efficiently use existing space, including by merging schools, before investing in new buildings.

City officials have already struggled to meet the mandate’s requirements. This school year, 60% of New York City schools were supposed to meet the new caps — a benchmark that officials met after exempting more than 10,000 classrooms from the class size caps.

Some proponents of reducing class sizes said the city has failed to adequately plan to implement the law and should not be given more time or money without a more detailed proposal.

“I would oppose any additional funding unless the DOE provides an actual, detailed multiyear plan to show how this funding will be used to provide the space and staffing to lower class size and achieve the caps in the law,” said Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters, an advocacy group. “Similarly, I wouldn’t support any extension of the deadlines unless the DOE provides this sort of plan.”

Critics of the law, including State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, have raised concerns that higher-need schools stand to benefit the least from the new class size caps because those campuses already tend to have smaller classes.

Representatives for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins did not reply to questions about whether they support changes to the class size law.

Gov. Kathy Hochul also did not indicate whether she supports any tweaks.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Holding kids back in 3rd grade can raise test scores — but a new study shows a long-run cost

2026-03-10T14:31:01+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work. Next week we have an online event on whether college is still worth it. Join us!

It’s an age-old debate with an emerging conventional wisdom: Third graders should not move on to the next grade if they are still struggling to read.

There’s both logic and evidence behind this policy. Studies have found that students have higher test scores after they’re held back. This practice may also have played a role in helping Mississippi make remarkable improvements in recent years. A chorus of policymakers and journalists have insisted with growing confidence that others should replicate the state’s model.

But a new study offers a warning about the downside risks of retention. Third graders who had to repeat a grade in Texas were far less likely to graduate from high school or earn a good living as young adults, nearly two decades later. The harmful effects were quite large and came despite initial improvements in test scores.

“Retaining low-achieving students in third grade further deepens educational and income inequalities,” writes Jiee Zhong, an economics professor at Miami University.

The findings are hardly the last word on this topic. But they complicate the evidence base for retention at a time when more states — like Arkansas, Indiana, and West Virginia — are adopting this policy.

The paper, set to be published in an economics journal, examines an early 2000s Texas policy to hold back struggling readers. Students had three chances to pass the state exam.

Zhong, the researcher, looked at those who just barely missed the passing score versus those who just reached it. These students were essentially identical — the only difference was a few questions right or wrong on the test. Yet those handful of questions changed the trajectory of many students’ lives by determining whether they would be held back. This also created a natural experiment that allowed Zhong to compare the two groups of students, thus isolating the effect of retention.

Failing the exam wasn’t a guarantee that students would repeat the grade — parents could seek exemptions — but it dramatically increased their chances. Relative to the overall student population, the retained students were more likely to be low-income, Black or Hispanic, and still learning English.

In the short term, the results were promising. By the time retained students finished fourth grade, their test scores were much higher. But there were warning signs. Students missed more school after they were held back. As the years went on, the test score gains, relative to non-retained students, started to fade. In middle school, the students who had been held back were more likely to exhibit violent behavior (although this remained rare).

By the end of high school, retained students were 9 percentage points less likely to graduate, compared to similar students who weren’t forced to repeat third grade. This is a very large effect. Even those students who graduated typically did so a year later, reflecting the extra year from being held back.

At the age of 26, the previously retained students, now young adults, earned less money than if they hadn’t been held back. Again, the effect was substantial: nearly $3,500, a decline of 19%.

So what happened?

Holding back a student essentially adds a year to the time in school required to graduate. Those students then reach minimum drop-out ages at earlier grades. Zhong notes that retention could have led to “stigma and school disengagement.” Even those who do graduate may be delayed in entering the workforce, which could reduce their earnings.

Prior research has been mixed on the long-run consequences of early-grade retention, with some negative effects found in studies in New York City and Louisiana but not Florida. In Texas, retention did not necessarily come with additional remediation, the paper notes.

That’s a key difference from the Mississippi policy, says Carey Wright, who was state superintendent there. Students who were held back received extra small group instruction. Her focus was never on retention, she adds. “Let’s talk about prevention and intervention,” Wright instructed her staff.

Wright says she’s not sure if there have been efforts to track retained students in Mississippi through high school. She notes that one study found that through sixth grade those students had higher reading scores and comparable attendance to similar non-retained students.

The Texas study should not be taken as decisive against retention. That’s because it doesn’t consider a key part of the policy: motivating teachers, parents, and students to improve reading scores to avoid retention.

“In theory you wouldn’t have to have retention,” says Brian Jacob, a University of Michigan education professor. “In practice, the stick in the background may make everyone in the system more focused.” This seems very possible, but we should understand that retention may very well be a stick, not a carrot.

Many parents resist having their children held back, and this study suggests there may be good reasons for that. Students from more advantaged families are more likely to receive exemptions from retention, according to some previous research.

For her part, Wright is not sure whether Mississippi would have seen the same gains without the retention law, though some research suggests it did play a role. In Maryland, where she’s now superintendent of schools, students can only be held back if parents agree.

“It’s a different climate here,” Wright says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers, parents, and students: What’s your take on homework? Is it worth it?

2026-03-09T15:56:01+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Homework is one of the most foundational aspects of American schooling. It’s also intensely debated and in flux. Some teachers swear by homework; others say it simply doesn’t work. Parents, too, have differing views on the value and role of homework. Researchers examine its effect on learning, with varying and disputed results.

Some educators have changed their approach in recent years to give less homework or to stop grading what they do give. Artificial intelligence is creating new complications, making it harder for teachers to ensure work done at home is students’ own.

We want to understand what’s going on here: how teachers are using homework, how that’s changed in recent years, and what the benefits and downsides of homework are. We also want to hear thoughts about making homework more beneficial when it is assigned.

If you’re a teacher, parent, or student, we want to hear from you about homework. Now’s your chance to sound off on this hotly debated topic.

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Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Fordham Institute’s Amber Northern says federal education research is worth rebuilding after DOGE cuts

2026-03-05T22:46:45+00:00

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It was a move that stunned many in the world of education research. Nearly a year ago, the sleepy, wonky, somewhat obscure research arm of the Education Department was rapidly decimated by Elon Musk’s DOGE. The Institute of Education Sciences, or IES, saw a slew of research contracts canceled and most of its staff laid off.

IES had for two decades funded research, collected basic data on schools, produced guides on “what works” in education, and run the national testing program. You may not know much about IES, but you’ve likely encountered its data.

In the year since the DOGE decimation, parts of IES have been restored and recently the administration released a report with recommendations on “reimagining” its work. The report was authored by Amber Northern, who took on a temporary role with the Education Department and whose day job is as vice president for research at the Fordham Institute, a center-right education think tank.

The lengthy report features a combination of high-level ideas (like making research more accessible and actionable) and wonkily detailed recommendations (like improving procurement processes). It also offered a staunch defense of the value of federally funded research.

Continue reading this article here.

NYC mom’s racist remark spurs schools chief’s push to expand Black Studies, parent training

2026-02-26T20:14:03+00:00

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Amid uproar over a Manhattan mom’s racist comments during a community meeting, New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels vowed to roll out new parent training and grow the number of schools that use the city’s Black Studies curriculum.

“We need to equip our staff to have courageous conversations focused on shifting attitudes and interrupting prejudice, addressing controversial issues, and coalition-building,” Samuels said during Wednesday night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

He promised to launch training next month to provide “our parents with the tools to combat racism” and said the city’s Black Studies curriculum “should be expanded throughout the city in more districts and schools.”

Samuels also said the Education Department is working on a “broader, system-wide plan because we know that this is not an issue that is localized in District 3,” referring to the commenter’s district, a diverse swath of Manhattan that spans from the Upper West Side to part of Harlem.

Samuels’ comments come in response to a District 3 education council meeting earlier this month. On a hot mic, a mom appeared to insult the intelligence of a Black student who was testifying against a plan to close the child’s school, which mostly serves Black and Latino students, before going on to comment about Black people’s place in society.

The schools chief said the episode “has exposed what many in the Black community believe to be ever-present and simmering anti-Blackness in our city.” Samuels’ promises came one day after Black parent leaders and elected officials urged the city to take more decisive action in response to the incident, which has drawn national and international headlines.

The parent’s offensive remarks came during a Feb. 10 District 3 Community Education Council meeting that included discussion of city proposals to close three of the area’s middle school programs. At the hybrid meeting, with people speaking in person and virtually, a Black student at the Community Action School was testifying in person against the plan to close the school when Allyson Friedman, a parent at another local public school, could be heard on a hot mic on Zoom.

“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” said Friedman, a professor at Hunter College.

She then appeared to misattribute and misquote Black historian Carter G. Woodson. “Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” Friedman said. (The District 3 interim acting superintendent had quoted from Woodson earlier in the meeting in his remarks on Black History Month.)

In the 1933 book, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” Woodson described how racism in schools can perpetuate inequities. “If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door,” Woodson wrote.

Friedman has since been placed on leave from Hunter College, the Daily News reported.

Friedman previously said in an email that she inadvertently unmuted herself on Zoom and did not intend to share her comments publicly. “As a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,” she wrote. “My remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values. Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm.”

Parent leaders push for more sweeping changes

Education Department officials did not indicate whether schools would be required to use the Black Studies curriculum, which is currently optional. The federal government has taken a hostile stance toward diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and has investigated some school districts for policies that are specifically geared toward Black students.

Nicole Brownstein, an Education Department spokesperson, said the city does not track how many schools use the Black Studies curriculum, but said it is available to all schools. She said more details about the city’s plans would be released soon.

Multiple parent leaders told Chalkbeat that they were glad that Samuels delivered a more forceful statement on Wednesday that specifically called out anti-Blackness, compared with his initial response on social media days earlier.

“I was very elated with the chancellor’s remark last night,” said NeQuan McLean, the president of the local parent council in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “He understands this work.”

McLean noted that Samuels is Black and worked on integration efforts during his previous roles as superintendent in Brooklyn’s District 13 and Manhattan’s District 3. City officials emphasized that Samuels worked to scale up the Black Studies curriculum in District 3, where it is taught in dozens of classrooms.

But McLean and other parent leaders also want the city to go further to equip schools with resources and give community education councils tools for handling racist comments.

Tanesha Grant, the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized a press conference earlier this week calling for broader changes, said the city should require schools to use the Black Studies curriculum. She said she has raised concerns that the city’s most popular elementary school reading curriculum is not culturally responsive.

“We need something in place that says that it is mandatory for every public school to offer Black Studies,” Grant said.

Grant said it was frustrating that Samuels’ more forceful response came after parents began pressuring the city. (Samuels said he regretted not speaking out sooner.)

“If it hadn’t been for the parents getting together and organizing,” Grant said, “I don’t think his response [on Wednesday evening] would have been like that.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Can the politics of schools be fixed?

2026-02-26T12:02:43+00:00

America’s schools exist to educate students — right?

Not exactly, says Vladimir Kogan, a political scientist at the Ohio State University. In his recently published book, “No Adult Left Behind,” Kogan lays out a provocative thesis: public education is not set out to maximize student learning. Instead, it prioritizes the various demands of adults.

Employee groups protect their members’ jobs, voters without children reject additional funding for schools, and activists derail a focus on academics by complaining about school mascots or the types of books in the library, he says.

“Kids can’t vote,” writes Kogan. “Most people who can (and do) aren’t particularly concerned about their learning.”

Click here to continue reading.

Empty desks, unplowed paths: Nearly 40% of NYC students absent from school after record snow

2026-02-25T00:18:10+00:00

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Large numbers of students and staff missing class, widespread transit delays, unplowed sidewalks: This is what it looked like on Tuesday when New York City public schools reopened for in-person learning after more than two feet of snow blanketed parts of the five boroughs.

Just 63% of students showed up to school, according to preliminary attendance numbers schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels shared at a Tuesday press conference. Roughly 12,000 of the city’s nearly 80,000 educators — or about 15% — were also absent, though 5,000 substitute teachers were called in to fill in for absent teachers, Samuels said.

Many parents tried to pressure the city to make Tuesday a remote day, with more than 172,000 people signing a petition in less than 24 hours. But the day after the massive storm, which set records in parts of Staten Island and the Bronx, schools resumed in person because they were not prepared to pivot to remote instruction immediately after mid-winter break, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at the press conference, citing concerns about device access.

“It was not possible to ensure that enough students had the devices they needed to effectively participate in remote learning,” Mamdani said.

Moreover, Mamdani said, schools were open because they provide meals and child care, and a remote day would leave some families in need.

Roughly 8,000 Department of Education staff worked over the weekend to clear entrances and prepare buildings for reopening, he added.

Despite those efforts, nearly half the sidewalk outside Bay Terrace P.S. 169 was unplowed during early-morning drop-off, Bayside, Queens parent Shawna Williams said.

Her principal sent an email to parents Tuesday morning warning of significant staff absences and possible changes in class schedules. The school canceled art and physical education, some students had substitute teachers, and certain pick-up and drop-off times were adjusted.

Williams, a parent and member of the District 25 Community Education Council, said some families questioned whether reopening was safe.

“I wasn’t surprised about schools being in-person,” Williams said. “But I wonder if it was worth the effort when so many staff and students seem to be absent.”

Roughly 32 staff members were out from her southeast Brooklyn school, said Kim Basile, a physical education teacher. She typically drives to work, but her Staten Island home’s driveway was snowed in. She then encountered severe delays trying to take the express bus instead.

She never made it to school.

Mamdani confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that the city deployed about 200 extra sanitation staff to Staten Island to help clear roads and resume regular service for buses. Regular service should resume in the borough on Wednesday, he said.

Parents to Improve School Transportation, a school bus advocacy group, said a remote day could have reduced lateness and absences for students who rely on yellow buses. But Mamdani downplayed busing issues.

As of about 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the city received only about 78 complaints about not being able to access school buses, and of 8,000 routes only 15 reported delays, the mayor said.

Roughly 150,000 children rely on yellow buses for their commutes. By the end of the school day, there were 37 reports of school bus vendor delays, according to public data.

Mamdani said more than 2,600 sanitation workers plowed every street at least once and cleared over 7,300 crosswalks and 3,366 bus stops after the storm began. Still, “due to blowing snow after the storm, many will need to be redressed,” he said.

New York City transit authority buses were operating with delays on Tuesday, and regular service was expected to resume Wednesday morning.

New York City schools had a traditional snow day on Monday rather than a remote day of learning after the mayor requested a waiver from the state’s 180-instructional day requirement. The city had already counted four professional development days toward that 180-day requirement.

Lizzie Walsh is a Data Fellow at Chalkbeat New York, reporting NYC local news and data-driven stories across Chalkbeat’s bureaus. Contact her atewalsh@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania’s teaching workforce is in trouble. ‘Strategic staffing’ could change that.

2026-02-23T22:41:50+00:00

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Teaching in Pennsylvania is at a breaking point, according to a new report.

The rate of educator attrition is rising, turnover is disproportionately impacting urban and rural districts, and on the ground teachers are reporting feeling burnt out, overworked, and underprepared.

All of this creates an inhospitable environment for student learning, according to new research from PA Needs Teachers, a statewide coalition led by the Teach Plus advocacy group and the National Center on Education and the Economy.

Their solution is to radically reimagine what it means to teach in Pennsylvania schools. The report’s authors, including Philly teacher Trey Smith, are proposing shifting from a traditional one-teacher-in-front-of-one-classroom approach to something that’s more collaborative that would help students as well as educators.

In the various models they propose, small groups of educators and support staff work together to schedule, plan lessons, give constructive feedback on their teaching, and help each other grow.

New teachers would receive mentorship and guidance, experienced teachers would be compensated and recognized in their schools, and paraprofessionals and tutors would pay extra attention to struggling students.

In practice, a group of 100 students may share a team of six educators who get guidance and support from a “lead teacher.” That would replace a model, for example, of four teachers each responsible for their own separate classroom of 25 students with little feedback on their individual teaching styles.

The report authors call it “strategic staffing.” Smith thinks of it as a teaching team. And schools in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, are primed for this sort of innovation.

“I really want us to think about, how are we honestly accounting for what teachers know and how they can grow?” said Smith, who teaches at Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy in Southwest Center City. “Teachers are not all the same, so whatever system we design, we can’t treat teachers like widgets or cogs in a big machine.”

Smith said any new teaching model has to “maximize the talent we have,” including teachers with varying levels of experience and classroom management skills.

New teachers with the least classroom experience are often given the most challenging school assignments. Black or Hispanic students and those from low-income families are therefore the least likely to receive the most experienced, qualified teachers in Pennsylvania.

And Philly, which employs less than 20% of the state’s teachers, accounts for 30% of statewide attrition, according to the report.

As a digital literacy teacher, Smith is a specialist. That means when other teachers need coverage, either because they’re absent or trying to find time to plan ahead, he’s often the first to get the call to step in. But what he said he really wants is to be in constant conversation with other teachers to game-plan and get creative about ways lessons can interlock and students can engage with the same ideas across multiple subjects.

“I have no collaborative planning time with my colleagues and my grades because I’m their coverage,” Smith said.

Doylestown middle school teacher Jill Weller-Reilly, another co-author of the report, said if the state wants teachers to stay in the field, schools need to provide educators with opportunities to grow and advance in their careers.

“We don’t lose new teachers because they can’t do the job. We lose them because we don’t help them learn how and set them up for success,” Weller-Reilly said.

According to Teach Plus polling from 2025, 70% of educators nationwide said they “definitely” or “probably” would want their school to adopt such an approach.

The report authors note there are no state-level limits on class size at the K-12 level, and the state does not mandate a specific student-to-teacher ratio. As a local control state, Pennsylvania school districts have a fair amount of autonomy for things like budgeting, teacher time, and compensation. Those factors could make “strategic staffing” easier to implement.

However, union negotiations and limited district resources do mean districts like Philly would have to get buy-in from multiple parties to launch a strategic staffing model.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg signaled some interest in the idea, saying in an email to Chalkbeat that “districts including ours must be more innovative with resource allocation to improve hiring, retention, and professional support.”

But change can be notoriously hard for educators, administrators, and school communities. And the report’s proposal comes with a cost.

While most strategic staffing models are intended to be budget-neutral after schools have gone through the design process, the Teach Plus advocates said, there are significant up-front costs to getting one of these models off the ground.

Teach Plus wants state lawmakers to establish a grant program and a way to evaluate the effectiveness of Pennsylvania’s programs alongside similar models like North Carolina’s Advanced Teaching Roles program. State evaluations of the North Carolina program are beginning to show promise, with some data demonstrating it helped improve students’ math and science scores and teachers’ perceptions of their jobs. North Carolina’s program costs about $16.5 million to run annually in 17 districts.

Another major hurdle to establishing strategic staffing in classrooms is simple exhaustion with new initiatives. Philadelphia, like other major city school districts, has experimented with innovative teaching and learning models in the past, only to have them fade away or lose funding and attention.

But Smith said if the changes are born from the bottom up, and truly take educators’ ideas into consideration, it could make Philly a prized destination for future teachers.

“I still am hopeful if the approach is such that it really honors what teachers know and think, that’s how the model can work,” he said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

These high school students are the caretakers of one of America’s dark chapters

2026-02-19T20:14:53+00:00

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GRANADA, Colo. — The black-and-white photographs show neat rows of young men wearing old-fashioned football uniforms and leather helmets. As elementary students jostled around the museum display, Granada High senior Emersen Hernandez explained that the Amache Boys’ Club team only ever played one home game, against nearby Holly.

Amache won that game. But most other teams in the region did not want to play at Amache — or play against them at all.

“Why?” one boy interrupted.

Emersen paused before answering. But she didn’t shy away from the reason. “At the time, there were a lot of racists in the area, and they did not want anything to do with the Japanese Americans.”

Cheraw School students gather around a panel at the Amache Museum during a field trip on Oct. 22, 2025.

The younger students, many in their purple Cheraw Wolverines T-shirts, had traveled an hour by yellow school bus for their October field trip to Amache. Located in southeast Colorado just outside the tiny town of Granada, it was one of 10 sites where the U.S. government imprisoned tens of thousands of its own citizens during World War II.

Under the leadership of teacher John Hopper, the site and its stories have for more than three decades had an unusual set of caretakers: Granada High School students like Emersen.

Students have sifted through dirt to find discarded children’s toys and broken glass bottles of lithium-laced Cheer Up soda. They’ve recorded firsthand stories from survivors and their families. They’ve mowed the grass and tended the cemetery.

Amache represents the kind of difficult American history that many teachers are wary of broaching in the classroom. Addressing it wasn’t popular back in the 1990s either, when Hopper first had his students send questionnaires to survivors.

“I had a lot of pushback from locals. ‘Leave it alone,’” Hopper recalled. “I was getting letters. I was getting phone calls. I was not very well-liked.”

Over time, Hopper’s Amache course became a sought-after elective at Granada High School, and the Amache Preservation Society became an elite club with its own letter jackets.

Members of the Amache Preservation Society clean glass display cases after a field trip leaves the museum. "You'd be surprised how many fingerprints get on those glass containers," said Tanner Grasmick, a Granada High School teacher who has taken over running the program.

The Amache Museum collection includes posters ordering people of Japanese ancestry to report for evacuation and suitcases that community members carried on the journey. Granada students research artifacts and write interpretive text with support from graduate students and faculty from the University of Denver.

The work done by Hopper’s students helped lay the foundation for Amache officially becoming a national historic site in 2024. That put the federal government in charge of the site. Hopper ensured Granada students would keep control of the small independent museum they run out of a converted bank in town. At this de facto visitor center, they give tours to school groups and tourists filling their National Parks Passports.

This is sensitive work. Few people today believe this history should be ignored. But exactly how it should be told, and what lessons this episode holds for the current political moment, have divided people for decades.

The Granada students have always steered clear of partisan politics while sharing those stories. But the Trump administration’s push for schools and national parks and museums to present a positive view of America’s past has made politics more challenging for students to sidestep.

QR codes went up last summer at Amache and every National Park Service site advising visitors to report anything “negative about either past or living Americans.”

The National Park Service has since removed a slavery exhibit from a Philadelphia home where George Washington lived, though a federal judge ordered it restored. The Pride flag came down at Stonewall National Monument, though New Yorkers promptly raised it again. The park service has plans to remove signs at more than a dozen other sites.

Hopper is getting questions again, from both visitors and locals. “What are you going to do about your museum? It’s mostly DEI.”

The reconstructed water tower is a signature feature of Amache and visible for miles around. After the camp closed, the tank was used to water cattle.

Amache museum tells story of Japanese American internment

Today at Amache, you can find a reconstructed water tower, community center, barracks building, and watchtower. Sage and blue grama have reclaimed much of the site, though elms planted by those incarcerated here still dot the landscape.

But between 1942 and 1945, this site was the 10th largest city in Colorado. In total, roughly 10,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them U.S. citizens, lived here behind barbed wire and under constant military guard, in hastily constructed barracks that afforded little privacy or protection from the wind and dust and cold.

“It just scared the living daylights out of me when we went by it on the highway,” said Sandra Ellis, who grew up in a nearby town. “We assumed they were locked up because they were dangerous.”

Plans to round up people of Japanese descent in the event of a war had been laid years earlier. After the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act to arrest non-citizen immigrants and community leaders.

Then on Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing exclusion zones from which military authorities could order the removal of civilians. Military officials first imposed curfews only on Japanese Americans, then encouraged them to leave the West Coast voluntarily, and then ordered their removal and detention in the U.S. interior.

The Amache Museum tells this story. There are posters ordering people of Japanese ancestry to report for evacuation and suitcases into which they crammed what they could carry.

Three young boys play baseball at Amache. The photo was taken by Jack Muro, a Japanese American man incarcerated there, sometime between 1943 and 1945. Cameras initially were banned at incarceration sites. U.S. citizens eventually were allowed to apply for the return of confiscated cameras.

“Little kids, like you guys, they couldn’t bring their toys,” Emersen, her dark hair pulled back in small braids, told the Cheraw students. “They had to take things that their families needed, so extra sheets, extra jackets, sweaters.”

Faculty and graduate students from the Amache Community Archeology Project, based at the University of Denver, helped Granada students learn how to catalog artifacts and display them in meaningful ways.

There are kimonos and traditional Japanese instruments, cards produced by Amache’s silk screen shop, and a wedding cake topper that was used again and again. There are loyalty tests that marked some for transfer to harsher camps and passes that allowed those deemed low-risk to leave the camp for work.

These items shape students’ discussions with visitors. Emersen recalled one person who questioned whether people at Amache were truly incarcerated.

“I was explaining how they could leave with permission and get passes and IDs to go into town, so one man asked me, ‘If they can leave and go in and out, they’re not really prisoners, right?’”

“But if you have to get permission to leave and you have to come back,” Emersen said she told him, “you’re not free.”

Carlene Tanigoshi Tinker, right, sifts through soil during an excavation at Amache in 2022. Tanigoshi Tinker was incarcerated at Amache as a very young child and participates in the University of Denver's archeology field school every summer. She met local resident Sandra Ellis on one of these trips and invited her to an open house at the end of the field season, the beginning of a lasting friendship.

Students let Amache visitors make up their own minds

A large group had just left the museum last summer when the students found something alarming tacked up in a semi-private cubicle where survivors and their descendants leave handwritten remembrances.

Next to note cards describing how one person’s mother had to report for removal a week after giving birth, and how another’s parents met at Amache, were the words “WE HAVE LEARNED NOTHING” and articles and photos about “Alligator Alcatraz,” the immigrant detention center recently built in the Florida Everglades.

The students don’t know if someone from that group put up the Alligator Alcatraz display, or if any visitors saw it.

“The person probably thought, ‘Oh, the people who work here or the people who are coming to visit, they would agree with what we’re putting up,’” Emersen said. “But the museum is supposed to be about the Japanese Americans, and putting up stuff like that takes away from what people are trying to learn.”

Out at the camp, next to the QR code, another visitor left their sarcastic take on what a positive version of the incarceration story might look like.

“It was the Spring of 1942 and President Roosevelt decided to treat people of Japanese descent to a fabulous free vacation at one of ten fantastic luxury resorts built just for the occasion,” it began.

Students worried that visitors might take it at face value.

“When people go there, they don’t expect something sarcastic,” said Destiny Garcia, also a senior at Granada High School and a member of the Amache Preservation Society. “So some people might have taken it serious, and that’s misinformation being spread.”

Granada High School junior Dayzriana Quintana leads Cheraw School students on a tour of the Amache Museum. Cheraw teachers bring the older elementary students to Amache every few years. Students learn more about Japanese American incarceration when they study Colorado history in fourth grade.

Granada students don’t see their work as political. They also believe Amache has lessons for today. “This can happen again,” Emersen said. “The Constitution hasn’t changed. Everything you see here, it could happen to another person again.”

A former Japanese American incarceration site at Fort Bliss in Texas has been reopened as an immigrant detention site. Several states are using an obscure law, last used to identify Japanese immigrants for relocation, to bring criminal charges against unauthorized immigrants who fail to register.

Today a majority of Granada students are Hispanic. Destiny said she worries about people being questioned or detained based just on their appearance. But the goal of the Amache Preservation Society is to present historical facts, not tell people what to think.

“We leave political opinions for the visitors to conclude,” Destiny said.

Amache offers students the chance to be historians

Hopper knew about Amache back when very few people talked openly about it. He grew up about an hour away, and a friend of his parents had been interned there. And whether people talked about it or not, signs of that history were everywhere.

The town used portions of the Amache site as a landfill and a fairgrounds. The physical materials of Amache, auctioned off after it closed, were scattered around the region. The Amache hospital laundry became the school district’s bus barn. Some residents grew up eating out of Amache’s soup bowls.

Hopper, who sports a mustache, has a quality particular to the best teachers, who can command kids’ attention and get them to do things they didn’t think were within their reach. But when he was young and inexperienced, he was looking for ways to make history more engaging. He was also curious about Amache, so he put his students on the case.

Starting with just a few addresses, they sent questionnaires to survivors. These interviews expanded the historical record of what happened there and slowly built trust with people who had not always been welcomed back when they started making pilgrimages in the 1970s.

Dayzriana Quintana shows Cheraw students a scale model of Amache. Earlier that morning, the students had visited the camp site, where there are a few reconstructed buildings and hundreds of barracks foundations.

Working with the school’s math teacher, students built a scale model of Amache. They calculated the slope of the site and measured barracks’ foundations to get it right. Drawing on his graduate school archeology experience, Hopper taught the students how to build sifters and took them to look for artifacts.

Students loved the chance to be historians and not just read about history. They formed bonds with survivors and their descendants, who entrusted them with artifacts and sought their help in researching family stories.

“It’s not just state standards this, state standards that,” Hopper said. “It’s practical knowledge of how to do things and how to do it correctly and how to use critical thinking skills to figure it out.”

Hopper got a tip after a local rancher died that the camp’s old water tank was in a field some 20 miles away, where it had been used to water cattle. But the estate was tied up in probate, and things were getting ugly.

Hopper gave the job to a student because he knew it would be harder to say no to a kid.

“He had to call 43 different people from that family,” Hopper said. “He called cousin Eddie and cousin Betty. He called this person and that one to get to the right person. And that person said, ‘It’s yours, but you got to get down there now and get it off.’ So that’s what we did.”

The restored water tower is now one of the site’s defining features.

Ellis, who felt scared when she drove past as a child, can see it from her window. Now it fills her with awe.

“They got to have been very strong and courageous people to be plunked down in the middle of that prairie and do what they did,” she said. “And then to find out they were American citizens.”

A guard tower is reflected in the window of a reconstructed barracks building at Amache National Historic Site. Amache was considered one of the less restrictive and better administered incarceration sites, but residents still lived under armed guard at all times.

Granada students’ work changed minds at home

When the Army ordered Japanese Americans to leave the West Coast, Mitch Homma’s grandfather Kyushiro Homma lost a thriving dental practice in Los Angeles that served Hollywood actors and University of Southern California football players. He died in Amache, most likely of a heart attack or stroke, at just 44 years old.

Homma’s father, Hisao, was 8 years old at the time.

Homma is now the president of the Amache Alliance, a California-based group that represents survivors and descendents. He didn’t learn much about his family’s story until his grandmother died in 2004, and he uncovered a trove of photographs — prewar family photos that church friends had saved and camp images his grandfather had taken with cameras smuggled in with his dental equipment.

Digital copies of those photographs — a rare find in a community forced to abandon family albums and restricted from taking new photos in camp — are now part of the Amache Museum’s collection. A panel tells the Homma-Wada family story.

Exploring that story wasn’t easy. Homma’s first trip to Amache with his father opened old wounds.

“When Dad got off the bus, and I saw the look on his face, I thought I was the worst son in the world,” Homma said. “You could see all the memories coming back. When I pushed and probed, he would remind me: ‘Amache took my father.’”

Hisao Homma, left, and Kumiko Hasegawa, right, look at the Amache Remembered memorial during a 2008 visit. The marker commemorates soldiers from Amache who died in combat as well as people who died while incarcerated. Hisao Homma was 8 years old when his father died at Amache.

President Ronald Reagan apologized for Japanese American incarceration in 1988 — the result of decades of Japanese American activism that sometimes divided the community.

But anti-Japanese sentiment from the war years remained widespread when Hopper started this work.

Then-Granada mayor Alan Pfeiffer told the alternative weekly Westword in 2001 that he didn’t see much value in learning about Amache. Pfeiffer’s father had been at Pearl Harbor and “didn’t have a good taste for the Japanese up to the day he died,” he said.

At one point, Hopper said, a woman came all the way from Idaho to confront him while he was working with students at the cemetery. She demanded to see his curriculum. He told her it was public knowledge, and she was welcome to review it.

In the face of skepticism and hostility, Hopper urged his students to stick to the facts. Their presentations were backed by primary source documents and vetted by survivors. Everything they told people about Amache, they could explain how they knew it to be true.

Slowly, attitudes changed. When Amache became a national historic site, Granada Mayor Argie Thrall Jr. issued a statement of support.

“It was the kids who changed the minds of their parents and other people in their region,” Homma said. “I always refer to them as little educators.”

Amache story remains in the hands of students and descendants

So far, no changes have been made at any of the six Japanese American incarceration sites in the NPS system, according to both parks supporters and the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service.

An Interior Department spokesperson denied that changes underway at other sites involve diluting or rewriting history. In an email, the spokesperson said the National Park Service is doing routine reviews and maintenance “to ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values” to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

Visitor comments in response to the QR code reviewed by Chalkbeat overwhelmingly supported telling the full history of Amache.

“I think our country is strong enough to understand the history of our nation in its totality, and I think that anything less than that makes us weak,” one person wrote.

Changes are coming for Amache, though. Existing signage includes a mix of materials put up by the Amache Preservation Society, Colorado Preservation Inc., and others over the years. Some signs are sun-bleached and hard to read.

Now that Amache is a national historic site, Japanese American organizations, academic experts, and others are working with the National Park Service on planned updates. Homma worries about the park service’s larger educational mission, but he said initial reviews of new material have gone well.

Advocates for Amache are choosing their language carefully. They don’t want to sanitize the story and risk people “thinking it was a YMCA summer camp,” Homma said. Nor do they want to “jab the government in the eye.”

“The site’s not there to make people feel horrible about what happened,” Homma said. “It should never happen again. I’m not trying to water that down. But there are great stories of resiliency.”

Granada social studies teacher and coach Tanner Grasmick poses for a portrait outside the Amache Museum on Oct. 22, 2025. Grasmick has taken over day-to-day operations of the Amache Preservation Society.

Those incarcerated at Amache coaxed vegetables from the soil with farming techniques brought from California. They published newspapers and formed dozens of clubs. Young men and women volunteered for military service at the highest rate of any camp.

That perseverance is a message Tanner Grasmick also hopes to impart on visitors. As a student, talking directly to people who were “uprooted from their home and had to move to the middle of nowhere and make the best of it” made a deep impression on him.

Inspired by Hopper, Grasmick became a teacher and returned to Granada. Hopper is officially retired, though he still works part-time, and Grasmick has taken over running the Amache Preservation Society. Students are already talking to him about wanting to join next year.

The museum remains in the control of the Amache Preservation Society, so the federal government won’t dictate the stories it tells. And as Grasmick steps up to guide students, Hopper said he’s playing the role of the superintendent who had his back when he was a young teacher. If there’s any heat to be taken, he’ll take it.

Grasmick said he feels supported by a community that once wanted Hopper to back off.

“We tell the story as it is, regardless of how uncomfortable it might be, regardless of anything,” Grasmick said. “If that’s the story that happened, we’re going to tell it how it was.”

Between 1942 and 1945, Amache was the 10th largest city in Colorado. After World War II ended, the building materials were auctioned off, leaving concrete foundations, the road grid, and elms planted by Japanese Americans confined here.

Teaching Japanese American incarceration

Arrange a visit to the Amache Museum and Amache National Historic Site.

Visit other Japanese American incarceration sites in the National Park system.

Densho offers lesson plans and video interviews with former incarcerees. Densho preserves oral histories, images, and other historical documents related to Japanese American incarceration and promotes civil liberties.

Heart Mountain Japanese American Confinement Site offers classroom resources and in-person and virtual field trips. This Wyoming incarceration site is managed by a private foundation independent of the National Park Service.

Japanese American National Museum offers a summer teacher training program and virtual workshops about the Japanese American experience, including incarceration. JANM is a Smithsonian-affiliate museum in Los Angeles.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how Colorado’s ‘Oscars of teaching’ award winner helps sixth graders tackle math

2026-02-18T18:53:34+00:00

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On a Thursday in January, Shana Engel and the rest of the teachers at Mountain Vista Community School in Colorado Springs gathered with their students for a special assembly. No one knew what it was for.

Engel, a sixth grade math teacher, figured one of her colleagues was being recognized.

But suddenly the cameras were trained on her, with students screaming and clapping as she picked her way through the packed bleachers to the gym floor, where Colorado’s education chief was waiting to give her a hug.

Shana Engel teaches math at Mountain Vista Community School.

Engel had won the Milken Educator Award, often referred to as the “Oscars of teaching.” The award is for early or mid-career teachers and comes with an unrestricted $25,000 prize.

“I was beyond surprised when my name was called,” she said.

Engel, who is one of 30 Milken award recipients nationwide this year, talked to Chalkbeat about how her fourth grade teacher calmed her “new student” nerves, what she learned from her mother’s struggle to learn English, and how she helps struggling students solve math problems.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was a student at Mesa Ridge High School in Colorado Springs. We had an elementary education elective class at school, which allowed us to visit the surrounding elementary schools and volunteer. I loved being in the school environment as someone the students looked up to and sought help from.

How did your own experience in school influence your approach to teaching?

When I was in fourth grade, we moved schools. I was nervous about moving to a new school and have always been a shy person. Somehow, my new fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Russel, sensed that. She brought me outside and introduced me to a group of students who would become some of my best friends at that school for the next couple of years.

I always remember the warmth I felt when I first spoke with her, and the satisfaction I felt when she introduced me to some new friends. It reminds me that all students are different and experience things that aren’t always pleasant, and that teachers have the power to help students adjust.

What other experiences shaped you as an educator?

My mother was born in Korea and moved to the United States after marrying my father, who was in the army. She spoke Korean at home. Throughout my life, I witnessed people’s reactions to my mom when they thought she could not understand them. It embarrassed her and made her feel ashamed that she did not read English and could not communicate very well.

She has gotten better at English over the years, but I always think of how hard it must have been for her.

This has helped me relate to students who aren’t English-speaking and those who have a challenging time understanding an educational world where terminology is so complicated.

Tell us about a favorite math lesson to teach.

My favorite math lessons are those on expressions or equations and those involving geometry. For example, students in sixth grade need to understand equivalent expressions, so knowing that 6(x + 5) is equivalent to 6x+30.

When my students struggle, I find the challenge of helping them understand enjoyable. By working in small groups, having students display their learning on white boards, and encouraging productive conversations with math vocabulary, students start to get better at concepts they once feared.

How do you help students who feel they are “bad” at math?

When students feel they are bad at math, I help them by asking questions. For example, if students need to calculate the surface area of a solid figure, I would ask them, “What is the first thing you need to do?” Many times, they think out loud and figure out where they are stuck.

For students who are very stuck, I ask them, “What shapes do you see?” “What do you know about the area of a triangle?” “If you are trying to find the total area of this figure, what would you need to do?”

Effective questioning helps students find the answer with minor prompting. When they realize they did the work, you can see their pride.

You also encourage “essential conversations” among students. Tell us how it works.

I have learned that students can help one another better than I can when given the opportunity to discuss things together. I provide sentence stems and give students specific topics to discuss. For example, I might say, “The partner with a higher number on their desk, tell your partner what shapes you see and how many of them there are. Lower number partner, agree or disagree, tell your partner why, and then identify the base and height of each shape.” I will then go to the group I notice is struggling or not talking, and ask questions.

Struggling students are paired with proficient students and students who are almost proficient are grouped with advanced students. So, there is always a partner who is stronger in math. However, students are required to speak back and forth through structured conversations so that the stronger math student isn’t just rambling to their partner.

The greatest secret for peer collaboration is building comfort with being incorrect. I often tell students, “Wrong answers are still great answers, because through fixing our mistakes, we develop a greater understanding.”

Tell us about a memorable time — good or bad — when contact with a student’s family changed your perspective or approach.

Last year, I showed a parent how much growth her daughter achieved from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year.

She just smiled and said, “I hope you know how much she likes your class … She never used to like math. Her sister has always been better, but this year they help each other. It’s because of you.”

What is something going on in the community that affects the students you teach? How do you address it?

The district I work in has many single-parent households and many families are economically disadvantaged. Our school has many programs to support those who need food or clothing, and we have many bilingual employees to assist families who do not speak English.

I work hard to help students build their confidence and realize they can do hard things. I have provided after-school tutoring and led clubs, such as robotics and STEM, to build interest in different fields.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I work with an enjoyable group of teachers, and we have a book club this year. We are on our third book, “Happy Place” by Emily Henry. The other book that I read for enjoyment every night is the Bible, which reminds me regularly to love and cherish others, and more importantly, to lend a helping hand.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Top teachers’ performance drops in high-poverty schools, showing school context is key

2026-02-17T21:45:00+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Please join us for our next event: It’s about whether a four-year college degree is still worth it. With a panel featuring the CEO of the KIPP Foundation and a Princeton University economist, we’ll try to separate fact from fiction about the value of American higher education. This online event will be at 2 p.m. ET on March 16. You can sign up and submit questions here.

In 2009, the federal government launched a remarkable educational experiment. Effective teachers were paid large bonuses ($30,000, adjusted for inflation, over two years) to move into a low-performing, high-poverty school.

This reflected the moment’s zeitgeist: use test scores to identify the best teachers (and also the worst). This so-called Talent Transfer Initiative worked, according to a 2013 study: Test scores rose by 3 to 5 percentile points among students taught by transferring educators. It was an example of the tangible benefits of having an excellent teacher.

Yet the story does not end there. A group of researchers recently released a paper reexamining this study and offered an intriguing twist. If the transferring teachers remained as effective as they had been in their prior school, test scores would have risen even more.

But in fact, in their new schools, these great teachers transformed into merely pretty good teachers. This reflects a profound and sometimes underappreciated fact about teacher performance: It’s not just about the inherent skills of an individual. It’s also about the school environment.

“Teacher effectiveness is dynamic,” says Matthew Kraft, a Brown University professor and coauthor of the new paper. “Teaching is a team sport.”

The study is important because there’s been a vacuum in policy efforts to improve teacher quality since the 2010s. The bevy of teacher evaluation laws during that period produced little in the way of overall student learning gains, according to a widely cited study coauthored by Kraft. Teachers are still very important, though. This new study is one small step in understanding how to bolster the profession.

In the original study, the researchers recruited 10 large districts. Some low-performing schools within each district got the chance to hire highly effective teachers with the lure of large bonuses; other schools did not. Genuine experiments like this are rare in education.

The study relied on “value-added” scores, which are statistical estimates of how much an individual teacher contributes to classroomwide test score gains. These measures were highly controversial when used to evaluate teachers, but remain widely used by academics for research purposes. Teachers were eligible for the transfer bonus if they were in the top fifth of value-added scores within their grade and subject.

The study was done through the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the Department of Education that has since been gutted by the Trump administration. Its future remains in flux.

Ultimately, 80 top teachers took the bonus and switched schools. In their new jobs, though, these teachers’ performance fell from the 85th percentile districtwide to the 66th percentile. (And for stats nerds, no, this probably wasn’t just regression to the mean.) So what happened?

Teachers’ context had dramatically changed. They reported lower student motivation and more behavior problems. Many more students were from low-income families, and their incoming test scores were lower. The value-added measure accounts for differences in student population, so it wasn’t inevitable that transferring teachers’ performance would fall. Teachers may simply have been less equipped and experienced for the challenges in their new schools.

Some of the challenges may have come from the schools themselves. Teachers reported having fewer resources and less autonomy over their classrooms compared to their prior school.

Other research has found that teachers perform better when they find a school they like, when they work with more effective peers, and when their school is conducive to learning and collaboration. Teachers also tend to do better when they’re teaching the same grade or the same group of students as in years past. Years of teaching experience matter a lot, too.

This adds nuance to the common sentiment that a child’s individual teacher is the most important in-school factor affecting learning. It’s really the teacher plus the various contexts that make it more or less likely that the teacher will succeed.

Teachers are not widgets in multiple senses. They cannot be simply moved around to different schools or classrooms or grades and expected to perform. “We need to move beyond thinking about teacher effectiveness as a fixed characteristic,” says Kraft.

Yet it’s not precisely clear how policymakers can take advantage of this insight. Yes, teachers do better in schools with strong leadership, good collaboration with colleagues, and support for handling student behavior challenges. Making sure all these things are in place is the tough part.

This new study hardly means that policymakers should give up on trying to use pay to get good teachers in high-poverty schools. The original Talent Transfer Initiative didn’t work as well as it might have, but it did make a difference. Kraft says it may have worked even better if the money was sustained over time and went toward retaining top teachers already working in those schools.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Kindergarten registration has started. What does it mean to be ready for school?

2026-02-05T13:48:36+00:00

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New federal data shows about two-thirds of the nation’s 3- to 5-year-olds are on track to enter kindergarten. But being ready for school involves a lot more than a child’s ability to count or recite their ABCs.

The effort to get a snapshot of kindergarten readiness is part of the National Survey of Children’s Health, and that metric has been reported each year since 2022. Thousands of parents and guardians submitted answers about their child in five categories — early learning, motor skills, social-emotional development, self-regulation and health — with the goal of answering the big question: Is your child ready for school?

While there’s growing interest in assessing school readiness, education experts differ on what to measure and how. And some dispute whether children should be ready for school or if schools should be ready for their students.

Despite the complexities, it’s indisputable that what a young child learns before they enter classrooms can set the course for the rest of their academic career.

What is kindergarten readiness?

Kindergarten readiness encompasses the foundational skills necessary to engage in a more formal learning environment, said Ohio State University educational psychology professor Laura Justice. In some ways, it’s very similar to the expectations for a college graduate to be successful in their first job, she said.

There isn’t a universal definition of kindergarten readiness, but many experts and educators rely on guidance from the bipartisan National Education Goals Panel’s five developmental domains critical to a child’s success upon entering grade school. The criteria emphasize a child’s health and motor skills, social-emotional development, cognition, language development, and general attitude toward learning — a very similar framework as the federal survey.

But school readiness is a relatively new concept, as the panel’s guidelines came in the 1990s. Historically, there weren’t many expectations for children entering kindergarten, although some students — typically from wealthier families — would come in with more advanced skills than others, said Robert Crosnoe, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. That meant providing enriching learning opportunities before children set foot in a kindergarten classroom – so they could learn not only their ABCs, but also skills such as carrying on a conversation and problem-solving during playtime.

“If we just focus on those strictly academic things, it’s only going to get us so far,” Crosnoe said.

Is your child ready for kindergarten? The answer is complex

There are a few ways to measure readiness, but each method has its drawbacks, said Jill Cannon, a senior policy researcher at global policy think tank RAND.

Parents can answer questions about their child — such as in the NSCH survey — but can be biased or misinterpret questions, especially if English isn’t their first language. Teachers can assess children instead, but interpretations of a child’s behavior can depend on which teacher is doing the assessment.

Alternatively, a young child can be directly assessed on certain skills. But that approach can be “hit or miss,” according to Cannon, because a child that young may perform differently on any given day.

Kindergarten readiness varies widely by income, new data shows. Cities are stepping in to help.

When to measure readiness can also be a factor.

A child’s age when they enter kindergarten — typically at age 5 — can also factor into readiness, as children who are several months older are often in the same class as students who just turned 5, Cannon said.

“Six months now to me means nothing, but back then … I had a lot of learning to do. I grew a lot,” Cannon said. “These kids, they grow a lot over the kindergarten year.”

If your child is scheduled for a kindergarten readiness assessment, don’t worry. Most experts agree that readiness tests are, overall, a crucial tool for educators – but only to identify what supports kids will need.

“We have an arsenal of interventions that can improve these skills in kids,” Justice said. “So the screening instrument can help us identify where the need is so that we can respond.”

How to boost kindergarten readiness

Research suggests that attending a high-quality preschool program is one of the best ways to boost kindergarten readiness.

However, preschool curriculums vary vastly across the U.S., with some prioritizing certain development areas, such as literacy, over others. And the quality of preschool can vary drastically depending on where someone lives, making that goal a lot easier said than done.

But some measures of quality are universal. Many early childhood education experts rely on the National Institute for Early Education Research’s 10 quality benchmarks to make broad assessments in all states that offer public preschool programs.

Parents can use the standards as a guide for choosing a preschool that’s most likely to help prepare their child for the next step. The standards include requiring prekindergarten teachers to hold bachelor’s degrees, keeping class sizes at 20 children or fewer, implementing professional development for staff, and offering health screenings and referrals. In 2024, 13 states met five or fewer of NIEER’s standards, while just five states met all 10 benchmarks.

At home, parents can take many steps to prepare their child for kindergarten, too.

You can read to your child every day to boost their early literacy skills. Giving your child small responsibilities around the house develops their independence and gets them acclimated to tasks that may be expected of them in kindergarten. And coaching your child to name their emotions can strengthen those social-emotional and self-regulation skills that are integral to building positive relationships with classmates and teachers.

Data journalist Todd Feathers contributed reporting.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Kindergarten readiness varies widely by income, new data shows. Cities are stepping in to help.

2026-02-05T13:48:22+00:00

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SAN ANTONIO - Sandra Mosqueda watched with an amused smile as her 2-year-old son, Atreus, began sweeping the floor with a miniature mop.

Atreus is part of the inaugural class of infants and toddlers receiving free preschool in a citywide program in San Antonio, Texas. It’s something his mother doesn’t take for granted. As a child, she herself wasn’t able to start preschool this young. In the case of her two older boys — now in first grade and kindergarten — the free preschool set them up for success in elementary school.

The first five years of a child’s life are among the most critical for their development. Those years lay a foundation and prepare them for kindergarten, often setting them up for success throughout school and beyond. But immense disparities exist in whether parents across the country report their child as ready for kindergarten, new data from the National Survey for Children’s Health shows.

Nationally, nearly two-thirds of children were reported in the survey as on track for kindergarten, regardless of their families’ income. However, the gap in kindergarten readiness is substantial when comparing reports from the poorest families and the wealthiest — approximately a 20% difference.

Administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal survey offers a glimpse into school readiness by collecting responses annually from thousands of parents and guardians on their children’s early learning, social-emotional development, self-regulation, motor development, and health. The latest results were released in December.

Low-income children often have less access to experiences that boost school readiness, such as high-quality early learning opportunities. That isn’t to say those kids haven’t made gains. Over the past few years, the survey’s portion of on-track children from families earning less than the federal poverty line — just under $32,000 for a family of four in 2024 — has trended upward nationwide by a few percentage points.

Some city and state programs are working to boost that improvement by expanding preschool opportunities for children from low-income families. The mission is even more urgent as parents juggle soaring child care costs and a widening affordability gap.

Pre-K 4 SA students play on the playground, Oct. 9, 2025, in San Antonio.

San Antonio’s program, called Pre-K 4 SA, is a prime example. It’s designed to serve low-income and working-class families throughout the city, offering 2,000 preschool seats for 3- and 4-year-olds — 80% of them free to families who qualify. The program, which opened in 2013, is funded through the city’s sales tax and expanded last year to include four infant and toddler classrooms in its new South Education Center. The preschools also offer an unusually broad mix of services, in recognition that poverty raises a complex blend of obstacles to kindergarten readiness.

Citywide early childhood programs have also emerged in recent years in Denver, New York, Boston, and Chicago, among others.

Students who have completed Pre-K 4 SA have scored higher than the state average on third grade math and reading, according to the Urban Education Institute at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Those outcomes contribute to what Sarah Baray, CEO of Pre-K 4 SA, views as a key success of the program: Children with the greatest needs receive the same quality education as kids from wealthier families.

“The quality is so high that even families who could afford to go anywhere try to get into our schools,” Baray said.

High-quality education a solution for all families, regardless of income

Many experts agree that one of the best ways to boost school readiness is to ensure programs meet high-quality standards, such as smaller class sizes and child-to-staff ratios.

Pre-K 4 SA has implemented a “whole child” approach that develops a range of skills, including socioemotional learning. Baray said the program prepares children “not just (for) academic success, but life success.”

Kids in Deziree Arce’s class learn to count and recognize shapes just like other preschoolers. But the children also receive guidance from Arce on social-emotional skills to test out all day, whether it’s consoling a crying classmate or resolving a conflict on who sits where at their classroom table.

“When I see kids that come from, like, where I came from, I’m giving them something that I never got,” said Arce, who grew up in a low-income family and has taught at Pre-K 4 SA for nine years.

Pre-K 4 SA also intentionally incorporates opportunities for children to refine their motor skills. For lunch, the children in Arce’s class pinched turkey burgers — provided by a local food bank — with tongs out of aluminum trays and onto their plates. Exploding ketchup packets were met with celebration, as some students opened them by themselves for the first time.

Outdoor play is another critical component to improving motor skills. Students spend an hour outside every day unless weather conditions are severe. In an era of too much screen time and time indoors, Pre-K 4 SA students are encouraged to engage in “risky play.” That could mean racing tricycles around the perimeter of the playground, climbing up the slide or spraying water from a pump. Those experiences teach students their physical limits early, said Pre-K 4 SA Chief of Schools Tonda Brown.

Finding solutions to get families off the waitlist

A major challenge for San Antonio’s program, as well as in citywide efforts around the country, is meeting the demand.

More than 1,600 families were on Pre-K 4 SA’s waitlist this school year, Baray said. To help wait-listed families, the program’s enrollment team connects them with other local options, such as school district-run preschools or private centers partnered with Pre-K 4 SA.

Other cities distribute the demand across a wide variety of high-quality preschool programs by offering financial assistance to families.

Denver Preschool Program offers tuition credits to all families with 4-year-olds. Selected families can then put that money toward any licensed public or private preschool participating in the sales tax-funded program, said Priscilla Hopkins, executive director of Denver Public Schools’ early education office. About 80% of DPP’s providers were rated four- or five-star in Colorado’s quality rating system, according to the program’s 2024 impact report.

What does it mean to be ready for kindergarten?

The level of financial support given to a family is determined by income. In 2024, nearly 1,800 4-year-olds who received DPP’s tuition support were in the lowest income tier — up to 135% of the federal poverty line. More than $21 million in tuition credits were dispersed in the 2023-24 school year, according to program leaders.

However, in large swathes of the country, especially rural areas, private preschools are the only high-quality option but often come with a hefty price tag and little financial assistance. That leaves low-income families with fewer preschool options than their wealthier peers, said Kelly Purtell, a human development and family science professor at Ohio State University.

“There’s all sorts of challenges that then really limit what preschools are even kind of on the table for them,” Purtell said.

Helping families outside the classroom, too

Reliable transportation can be another obstacle for low-income families, especially for parents who work outside normal business hours, Purtell said.

Pre-K 4 SA’s South Education Center offers free bus transportation to fill that gap.

Pre-K 4 SA students arrive to catch the school bus, Oct. 9, 2025, in San Antonio.

As children boarded the bus at a designated pickup spot near Southside Lions Park, cheerful bus monitors greeted them and strapped each one into their seat with a safety harness. Their bus driver offered each child a cartoon sticker for their school-provided backpacks.

The stress of poverty can hinder a parent’s ability to give their child enriching experiences key to school readiness, which is why services that promote family stability are important, said Katie Paschall, a researcher at Child Trends. At Pre-K 4 SA, that means healthy cooking classes, mobile vaccination clinics, and even “family cafes” where parents can get help from staff to apply for jobs. By eliminating those at-home issues, parents can focus more on setting their children up for a better future.

In Mosqueda’s case, having her kids in preschool allowed her to return to school after Atreus’ birth halted her studies to become a respiratory therapist. She completed a dental assistant degree and got a job at a nearby dental office. No one has cheered on Mosqueda more than her boys — her oldest son proudly took videos of his mom at her graduation last year.

“It’s showing them you can still do anything, no matter what comes in your way, and having the help to do it makes it possible,” she said.

Data journalist Todd Feathers contributed reporting.

This award-winning South Bronx teacher creates ‘living labs’ (and helps design Regents exams)

2026-02-04T20:02:20+00:00

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In New York, classroom educators often help create state assessments. Few however, are from New York City, like Bronx earth science teacher Carolina Castro-Skehan.

Since 2018, she has been working as an educational specialist with the New York State Department of Education, trekking to Albany to help develop the New York State Earth and Space Science Regents exams.

“The experience offers a true behind-the-scenes look at how the exams are designed and aligned to the standards,” Castro-Skehan said. “That insight is invaluable and has made me a stronger classroom teacher and a better mentor to other educators.”

But her path as an educator was not a straightforward one.

After college, Carolina Castro-Skehan worked for a New York City-based cosmetic company. It was fast-paced and even glamorous at times, she said. She used her biology and business background to understand the science behind the products and how they were marketed.

Then came the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and her job began to feel “empty.”

Award-winning Bronx earth science teacher Carolina Castro-Skehan.

She pivoted to teaching, landing 24 years ago at DeWitt Clinton High School, the same public school she attended as a student. For the past five years, Castro-Skehan has been at Comprehensive Model School Project in the South Bronx, where she is the science department chair and teaches earth science to freshmen and sophomores.

To bring earth science to life, Castro-Skehan’s students participate in real-world projects such as growing produce for the school community or local food banks through a hydroponics program with NY Sun Works. She was recently recognized by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers with an “Outstanding Earth Science Teacher”award for both New York state and the Eastern Section for her sustainability and environmental projects.

Castro-Skehan also continually seeks out professional development opportunities and fellowships taking her into the field. She’s explored the Jurassic Coast in England, studied dinosaur fossils at dig sites in Montana, and sailed on an ocean drilling ship to learn how core samples reveal Earth’s past environments.

“Staying curious and continuing to learn alongside my students,” she said, “is what keeps my teaching meaningful and my classroom a place where curiosity thrives.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

My favorite lesson is our rain garden and street tree unit, which is really our core lesson on green infrastructure. It starts with a real problem students see every day: flooding around our school.

In the classroom, students build water filters and explore porosity and permeability, seeing firsthand why some surfaces absorb water while others don’t. Then we move outside. Students study the compacted soil around our street trees, loosen it, add fresh soil and native plants, and observe how healthier ground improves infiltration after storms.

Street flooding becomes becomes a way to teach geology, hydrology, ecosystems, and community action all at once. Throughout the year, students return to the same sites, observe changes after rainfall, and use what they’ve learned to argue for greener, better-draining spaces around our school.

Tell us how you approach teaching challenging scientific concepts particularly for students who are simultaneously learning English as a new language.

Hands-on, real-world science lessons are especially important for students who are learning English as a new language. When we teach through phenomena, students don’t have to wait until they’ve mastered scientific vocabulary to participate. They can jump in right away by observing, questioning, and making sense of what they see, which isn’t limited by language.

This kind of learning also allows students to participate from the start by sharing their own lived experiences. For example, when we study hurricanes or earthquakes, many students bring in personal experiences from events like Hurricanes Maria or Sandy, or earthquakes they experienced while living in the Caribbean. They talk about how their families prepared, what worked, and what they think could have been done better. Those conversations become the foundation for learning the science behind these events.

Language develops naturally as students explain their thinking, listen to one another, and refine their ideas.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

The area around my school is heavily urban. We’re crisscrossed by major highways and surrounded by heavy traffic, auto repair shops, and very little green space. Air quality is poor, flooding is common, and dilapidated concrete dominates the landscape. This is the reality my students walk through every day, and it shapes not only what I teach, but how I teach.

We talk about why our neighborhood looks the way it does, including the legacy of urban planning decisions associated with people like Robert Moses, that prioritized highways and automobile access over existing communities, public transit, and quality of life, particularly in marginalized neighborhoods. From there, we focus on what can be done to make it better.

How did you start working with the NY Sun Works hydroponics program? And how has that helped your school’s community while also giving hands-on learning experiences to your students?

I first became involved with the NY Sun Works hydroponics program through my work as a Master Teacher with Math for America. During a workshop at DeWitt Clinton High School, I saw how deeply students were engaged in growing food while learning the science behind it.

They were testing systems, collecting data, and producing nutritious food for their school community. I wanted to bring that experience to my own school.

Hydroponics labs are bright, active spaces filled with water, light, and growing plants that transform a dry classroom into a living lab. If I couldn’t green the space outside our school, I thought, maybe I could do it inside a classroom. That idea became a reality in our high school, where the hydroponics lab is now one of our most popular and successful science electives.

Because of that success, I worked with the development director of NY Sun Works, Megan Nordgrén, who helped identify a grant opportunity and supported me in writing the proposal, to expand the program into our middle school. With the support of my principal, Ms. Ricci, and approval from City Council member Althea Stevens, the project was allocated $200,000 in funding. In June 2025, we received confirmation that, once the budget passes, the School Construction Authority will fully fund the construction of the new lab in partnership with NY Sun Works.

The new middle school hydroponics lab will allow students to begin this learning earlier and will be named in honor of Jacob Pimentel, a beloved student who passed away in 2024 and was one of the first participants in our high school hydroponics program.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

When I think back on my own learning in high school, the most memorable experiences were the ones where I was given opportunities to lead my own learning with the support of a teacher. Those were the moments when I felt most engaged, challenged, and confident because I wasn’t just receiving information, I was actively making sense of it.

That experience shapes how I teach today. I try to create classrooms where students have ownership over their learning, where they’re encouraged to ask questions, investigate real problems, and take intellectual risks, knowing there’s a teacher there to guide and support them.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

No meltdown, just ‘hiccups’: How NYC schools handled a remote snow day

2026-01-26T22:48:58+00:00

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As Bronx social studies teacher Seth Gilman sipped his coffee and prepared to log on for a day of virtual teaching, he was met with an error message.

At first, he worried it would be a repeat of a disastrous pivot to remote learning during a 2024 snowstorm.

“Oh no, not again,” he thought to himself. But within about 20 minutes, his school had resolved the issue and he logged in to Google Classroom, the platform schools use to share schedules and Zoom links.

“Once we got the classroom up and running, it was fine,” Gilman said.

Unlike two years ago when they pivoted to remote, New York City schools did not see a systemwide meltdown, but pockets of families and educators from across the city shared instances of glitches and snafus. Many of the issues seemed to be resolved quickly. School buildings will reopen for regular instruction on Tuesday, city officials announced Monday afternoon.

The switch to remote learning on Monday in the wake of a major snowstorm represented an early logistical challenge for the nation’s largest school system under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his schools chief, Kamar Samuels, who took office earlier this month.

About 395,000 students and their families were able to log in for virtual learning, according to preliminary figures city officials provided Monday afternoon. Officials estimated that 79% of students logged on for at least some virtual learning.

About 500,000 of the city’s nearly 900,000 students were required to report to virtual classrooms. High school students and those attending 6-12 schools had a previously scheduled day off for staff training.

“Things have gone very well this morning — it was a smooth start to the day,” Samuels told reporters during a Monday morning press conference.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein later acknowledged there were “minor hiccups” as families logged on but emphasized the agency’s technical support line fielded a similar number of complaints as a typical school day.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the 200,000-member United Federation of Teachers, gave the mayor an ‘A’ for his handling of the snow storm. “The one glitch seemed to be Google. They had the same notice as our students, parents, and teachers, so they need to do better.”

As the storm approached, Mamdani seemed to entertain the idea of a traditional snow day, though he later admitted there is no room in the school calendar to do that without running afoul of the state’s mandated number of instructional days.

Schools snapped into gear, distributing devices to students, offering reminders about how to log on to virtual classrooms, and sending home paper worksheets in case families ran into tech problems. Some schools tried to recreate a regular day on Zoom while others emphasized independent work or review lessons.

Attendance was lower than usual in many classrooms, according to teachers and families as well as Education Department figures. Some schools built time into the schedule for students to enjoy the snow.

Gilman, who works at the High School for Teaching and the Professions, said he was impressed with how many students showed up to virtual classes. Still, he stuck to a more “discussion-based lesson” in part to avoid leaving students behind who were absent. (Though most high schools were not in session, Gilman’s school runs on a different calendar through a program that grants exceptions to the teachers union contract.)

Tech problems and tiny victories with remote learning

The Education Department may not have melted down, but some parents did.

Chris Ninman, who has a third grader at P.S. 889 in Brooklyn, tried to help his son log into Google Classroom, but said the server was down. Then he wasn’t able to sign into Zoom from his son’s school-issued Chromebook. Things worked better when he switched from the Chromebook to Ninman’s own computer.

Once he was successfully logged in, Ninman thought his son’s teachers did a good job with remote learning. There was a live, 40-minute reading instruction, with other synchronous lessons scheduled throughout the day.

“I’d rather they just called it a snow day,” Ninman said. “But if you’re going to do school, do it right.”

Liz Groeschen, a mom who took her two sons to Prospect Park Monday morning, said that getting into her second grader’s morning Zoom meeting was just the first challenge. She had to page through multiple websites that were nested in each other.

Groeschen read aloud to a reporter from this morning’s chat in her classroom parent group:

“So you search for FUN HUB inside Google Classroom?” one parent wrote. “No,” another parent replied. “We had to log in through the browser, not the app, and then search for FUN HUB in the search bar.”

“Did you disable the popup blockers?” a third parent asked.

“P.E. is a slide show? The 21st century is crap.”

Tiffany Rodriguez-Noel's sixth grader, who attends P.S. 191 in Manhattan, works on a laptop.

Tiffany Rodriguez-Noel, a Manhattan mother with four children in city public schools, said her sixth-grade son struggled to log into his new school-issued Chromebook for remote instruction. He wound up propping his phone up on a laptop with his PlayStation 5 screen tantalizingly close by.

Despite grumbles from her sixth grader about having to wake up early and log on for school, Rodriguez-Noel said her son’s homeroom teacher at P.S. 191 made it easy, sending out a clear schedule with links. The school also sent home hard copies of assignments, saving him from typing into his phone.

“It’s actually pretty smooth,” Rodriguez-Noel said.

She decided not to log her kindergarten twins on for remote instruction, though, because they are hyperactive and have speech delays, and she felt they wouldn’t get much out of it. Her high school child spent the day working on college applications.

Her sixth-grade son’s school planned a half day of instruction, giving the family time to have fun outside. “I’m taking him to Central Park to sled down this rock we’ve been waiting to do since 2021,” she said.

Some families yearn for traditional snow day

Brooklyn dad Steven Mahoney, refused to log on for his 10-year-old son who is non-verbal and attends a school in District 75, which serves children with significant disabilities.

“The regression that I witnessed in my child during the remote/hybrid learning was heartbreaking,” Mahoney said of virtual instruction during the pandemic.

Since he and his wife had to work on Monday, their son’s sitter took him to a nearby park and then got hot chocolate.

Sledding at Brooklyn's Prospect Park on Monday.

Brooke Young, a Brooklyn mom, said her son’s 3-K teachers told parents their kids didn’t need to log on, and instead they gave families suggestions of snowy day activities. Many of the suggestions, however, like dyeing snow different colors, seemed too labor intensive, she noted.

Young helped her daughter log on from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. for her first grade class and then again from 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., while she herself logged onto work meetings. After that, they went to Prospect Park for sledding, with a plan to return to Zoom for an end-of-day meeting for her first grader, who attends P.S. 321.

If her kids were older and had “real attention spans” for Zoom meetings, remote learning could have been more productive, said Young, who struggled to balance her own job with having to mute and unmute her daughter on Zoom. She would have preferred just putting on an educational PBS show.

Ultimately, Young was grateful to spend time with her kids outside.

“I remember the joy myself of having a snow day,” she said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Abigail Kramer is a reporter in New York City. Contact Abigail at akramer@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Students are more likely to support this type of school cellphone ban, new research says

2026-01-26T15:16:54+00:00

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Rebekah Munro traded in Snapchat for novels this school year.

The Oklahoma teen, 17, said a complete ban on cellphones during the school day that state lawmakers passed in 2025 means she uses more of her free time to read sci-fi and dystopian novels, her favorite genres. She’s less glued to her phone, an Android in a pastel blue case, she said.

Munro is in the narrow minority of teens — 4 in 10 — who support classroom phone bans, according to a nationwide survey out this month from Pew Research Center. And data released Monday by researchers with the University of Southern California found that 78% of teens surveyed reported that their schools have a policy limiting or completely banning phones this year.

Policies range from restrictions on using phones during class to “bell-to-bell” bans that prohibit phone use in the hallways and during lunch.

As the reins tighten on phone use in schools — with some directives coming all the way from state governments — this research offers a glimpse into how teens feel about the attention on cell phone use in schools in recent years. Policymakers and educators credit phone bans with improving school culture as well as focus in the classroom. One study even found phone bans can improve test scores.

But the data indicates that the majority of teens aren’t on board with their school’s phone bans, and support among teens wavers as the bans become more strict. About 73% of students ages 13 to 17 reported to Pew that they opposed “bell-to-bell” bans. However, students may be open to some boundaries: 68% of teens in the USC survey said they preferred rules that require students to put away their phones during class time, with 8% supporting bell-to-bell bans. The USC survey used different questions than the Pew survey.

Phone policies are evolving fast in American schools: 50% of teens said in the USC survey that the rules are different from last year, and enforcement has ramped up. About half of teens in the USC survey said their school’s policy is stricter this school year than last year. About 42% said their school’s rules were “just right,” while 48% said they were too strict, and just 9% said they were too lenient.

“There were very few teens who said they didn’t have rules in place,” said Anna Saavedra, a research scientist with the University of Southern California.

More than 30 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws or executive orders around students using their phones in schools, according to the Phone-Free Schools State Report Card, which tracks state laws governing phones in schools.

In Oklahoma, the ban is limited to this school year, but lawmakers have already introduced legislation, S.B. 1719, to extend the ban permanently. Munro said before the state law some teachers at Santa Fe High School in Edmond banned phones in their classrooms, while others did not.

“It’s really good for us to be able to be actual children and function like actual people,” she said. “I think the school system should definitely keep the phone ban.”

The USC research found that 48% of teens reported that phones are allowed in their schools but not allowed to be out during the day, 42% said their schools don’t allow phones to be used during class time but are allowed during other times, and 5% said phones aren’t allowed on school grounds. The remaining 2% reported no rules at all.

Saavedra said this research indicates these rules are working: Teens in schools with no phones allowed out estimated using devices for 1.3 hours during the school day compared with an estimated 1.6 hours a day for teens in schools with phones allowed during non-instructional time.

“Kids with bell-to-bell bans are using cell phones much less at lunchtime and in hallways,” she said.

Both USC and Pew also asked adults how they felt about phone bans. Both reported a majority of adults support restrictions.

But the majority of both teens and parents also reported in the USC survey that they don’t think the policies have affected them when it comes to issues like a sense of community, relationships between teachers and students, and bullying. Those findings belie the onslaught of attention phone bans have received from policymakers and news stories.

A lack of pushback from the people who have to follow these policies, however, means schools could double down on their efforts, Saavedra said.

“It’s also notable the level of support for having restrictions on cell phone use in classrooms.”

For Munro, the ban in Oklahoma schools has allowed her some distance from Instagram, where she often found herself comparing her own life to the opulent and flawless lifestyles of influencers.

“I definitely get more out of just being in the present and not always constantly looking at social media,” she said. “Being able to be present and being in the moment of where I’m at just makes [life] a little more realistic.”

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

Snow day or ‘screen’ day? NYC to pivot to remote learning if winter storm hits, chancellor confirms

2026-01-21T23:40:51+00:00

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As forecasters warn that a winter storm could wallop New York City this weekend, the city’s schools will pivot to remote learning rather than cancel classes, if necessary.

With no room in the school calendar for a traditional snow day, schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels confirmed that the nation’s largest school system would go virtual in the event of a big storm — despite lobbying from his 11th grade son.

The National Weather Service is predicting snow on Sunday into Monday — though there is still uncertainty about the effect on the city. Some superintendents have already asked their principals to ensure they’re ready for a remote day and that their students have devices, according to emails obtained by Chalkbeat.

Samuels confirmed that schools would go virtual, if needed — even though the move is unpopular with many students, he told PIX11 on Wednesday.

It could be the first test of Samuels’ ability to manage a major logistical challenge, though he has a bit of a buffer: High school students as well as those attending 6-12 schools were already scheduled to be off for an educator professional development day. Parents of younger kids, however, tend to be the ones scrambling for child care, especially caregivers who must work in person. Many families also depend on schools to provide their children breakfast and lunch.

The last time schools closed in-person classes for a snow day, in February 2024, a technical meltdown prevented many students and teachers from logging on, despite efforts to practice in advance. The Education Department subsequently conducted another drill, but it was optional, and many students seem to have opted out.

Some principals said they felt ready from a device standpoint, but had concerns as to whether their families can or will log on.

“For us, most of the kids do some amount of learning on their devices in school, and we have 1:1 devices, so that part is manageable,” said one Brooklyn elementary school principal, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Ensuring families and students get online from home and learning when they’ve been out of practice with remote learning for so long may be more of a challenge.”

In 2020, New York City schools stopped having traditional snow days since schools can instead offer virtual learning and need to squeeze in as many instruction days as possible as more holidays have been added to the calendar. The state requires 180 days of instruction, but allows certain professional development days to count toward that number, and because of that, New York City students are only in class 176 days this year.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Most teachers don’t have access to paid parental leave. These 2 states are leading the way.

2026-01-12T05:55:49+00:00

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Lori Sebastian had saved up years worth of sick days when she had her first baby in 2016. Her careful planning allowed the Delaware third-grade teacher to spend time with her newborn and still pay the bills.

But after her husband Colin became a stay-at-home dad — the cost of child care would have eaten up his entire paycheck — the couple wondered how they could afford a second child. They had become dependent on Lori Sebastian’s income, and she no longer had a large bank of sick days. Without paid parental leave, they didn’t know how they would pay the bills.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Delaware were considering a paid leave bill, but their original version excluded teachers due to cost concerns. Sebastian joined other teachers from the Delaware State Education Association, the teachers union, to share their experiences and make the case to lawmakers that paid leave was an investment in the workforce — and ultimately in students.

In 2018, Delaware became the first state to adopt a full 12 weeks of paid parental leave for teachers. Critically, the state also agreed to cover the cost of substitute teachers, easing the financial concerns of school district leaders. Sebastian was present and pregnant at the signing ceremony. She still has the pen then Gov. John Carney used.

But more than seven years later, Delaware remains an outlier. Just 15 states and the District of Columbia guarantee any paid leave for teachers, according to a study released Monday by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Arkansas is the only other state that picks up the cost of substitutes for the full 12 weeks.

The United States is the only developed country without a national parental leave policy, and teachers aren’t alone in having to cobble together sick days, vacation time, and short-term disability when they have a baby. But just one-third of teachers reported access to any paid parental leave in a 2024 survey by the research group Rand Corp. — 14 percentage points lower than other workers. And even among those who had access to leave, fewer than half said the benefits were adequate.

That has important implications for school districts and students, NCTQ President Heath Peske said. Among teachers who leave the profession, about 15% cite family obligations, including pregnancy and childbirth. Hiring and training new teachers can end up costing more than family leave would have.

“When we have a revolving door of teacher turnover, this leads to poorer outcomes for students,” she said. “Paid parental leave is an investment in teachers but also in their students. We see it as a really smart policy.”

Delaware and Arkansas have what NCTQ considers model policies. Teachers get 12 weeks of leave at full pay, and the state covers the cost of a substitute teacher for that time period.

Another six states — Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon — offer 12 weeks with partial pay.

And seven states, most of them in the South, plus the District of Columbia, offer teachers full pay for some shorter amount of time.

Without paid parental leave, I went back to teaching three weeks after giving birth

Even in states without paid leave policies, some teachers have access to leave through school district policies. A 2025 NCTQ study found that the share of large districts offering some amount of paid leave had increased in recent years.

But more than half of the districts surveyed still didn’t offer any leave beyond whatever sick days the teacher accumulated.

Arkansas adopted paid leave in a very different political context. An optional paid leave program that involved cost-sharing between the state and school districts was part of a 2023 education reform package that included literacy requirements, a voucher expansion, and teacher pay increases.

When few districts participated in the voluntary program, House Minority Leader Andrew Collins introduced a bill to create a mandatory program in which the state picked up the entire cost of substitute teachers. The bill attracted support from both public education advocates and those who want people to have more children, and it passed on a bipartisan basis.

The program is new this school year.

Paid leave has benefits beyond money, advocates say

Policymakers and district leaders often worry about the financial impact of offering teachers paid parental leave. The profession is overwhelmingly female, and districts can’t just spread a teacher’s work among other employees. They need someone in the classroom.

But in Delaware, the costs have turned out to be manageable — only 3% of teachers used the benefit in 2024. NCTQ developed a cost calculator that considers the number of teachers in a state and typical daily rates for substitutes.

Taylor Hawk, director of legislative and political strategy for the Delaware State Education Association, said the union argued that employees who get paid leave are more likely to return to work after having a child.

Lori Sebastian poses with her husband Colin, left, her daughter Cora, then 2 years old, and Delaware Gov. John Carney at the 2018 signing ceremony for the state's paid parental leave bill.

“Educators are incredible professionals, and they are also human beings with lives,” Hawk said. “They cannot plan their lives around the school calendar. The benefit of acknowledging that they are human beings goes a long way to feeling respected.”

David Wienner found out his wife was pregnant on his first day of orientation as a new teacher back in 2016. He couldn’t take much time off when the baby was born the following April.

Even with Delaware’s paid leave policy in place for their second and third children, Wienner struggled with the idea of leaving his students and with a perceived stigma of a man taking extended leave.

But spending that time with his children turned out to be priceless, he said.

“It did take pushing from my wife because I love what I do,” he said. “But looking back, it was beyond worth it. It’s the greatest thing and I wish everyone had the opportunity. And full pay really makes it possible.”

Sebastian, the Delaware teacher, said knowing she would still have an income while she recovered from childbirth and bonded with her newborn made all the difference.

“It takes the pressure off of planning a family,” Sebastian said. “It allows teachers to breathe and enjoy the time and reset with their families.”

Correction: Jan. 12, 2025: This story has been updated to reflect that Arkansas is the only state other than Delaware that covers the cost of substitutes for 12 weeks. North Carolina and Alabama reimburse the cost of substitute teachers for a shorter period of time.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kamar Samuels says NYC will double down on literacy mandate — but signals changes to math overhaul

2026-01-06T22:05:29+00:00

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A reading curriculum overhaul launched by Mayor Eric Adams isn’t going anywhere, schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels told principals Tuesday. But he signaled changes could be coming to the prior administration’s math mandate.

“I completely believe in academic rigor and excellence — that’s why we are doubling down on what we’re doing with New York City Reads,” Samuels told principals during a Tuesday morning webinar, according to a recording obtained by Chalkbeat.

“We’re going to probably take a little bit of a different approach to New York City Solves, so you might see some shifts there,” Samuels said of the math mandate. Neither Samuels nor an Education Department spokesperson elaborated on what changes he is considering.

Under Adams, the city required all elementary schools to adopt one of three approved literacy curriculums. The program, known as NYC Reads, marked a major shakeup for a system that has long given principals freedom to choose what materials their schools use. Meanwhile, high schools had to adopt a standardized Algebra 1 curriculum, and a growing number of middle schools have been required to use new math programs, too.

Samuels’ comments indicate that key pieces of Adams’ education agenda will continue despite the transition between mayoral administrations — echoing sentiments shared by Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the campaign trail. The new schools chief also told high school principals “not to worry” about the fate of another key Adams initiative that created new career education pathways at over 130 schools, known as FutureReadyNYC.

That may be a relief to some school leaders who often fear promising programs could be discarded when the city’s political leadership changes. Still, Samuels indicated he is willing to make changes to the city’s math mandate, which has proved less popular with many educators and school leaders.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said he is encouraged that Samuels is taking a closer look at the math program. Some educators have raised concerns that the Illustrative Math curriculum, which emphasizes open-ended activities and discussion, is not in sync with the state’s exit exams that are currently required for graduation. The program’s critics say it can be a struggle for students who are behind or don’t have enough background knowledge in the subject.

The union leader said many teachers appreciate the curriculum’s approach but are frustrated with some of the implementation challenges. Mulgrew praised Samuels as a “practical” leader who could help troubleshoot. “He’s an educator — he gets the fact that you can’t start the first unit with something children have no baseline knowledge of,” Mulgrew said.

Samuels also praised some of the prior administration’s efforts to ramp up assessments to identify children who are struggling and standardize how schools help them catch up. For the first time this school year, all of the city’s public schools must pick from a list of approved programs to help students who are behind.

“Our most vulnerable students need to learn how to read,” Samuels said. “That is our number one goal.”

Samuels has also recently touted his own record on literacy. As superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3, Samuels presided over an increase in reading scores. Scores in his district climbed just over 3 percentage points last year, to 67.4% proficiency, after implementing a new reading curriculum. Citywide, about 56% of students were considered proficient last year, a roughly 7 percentage point increase, matching the gains statewide.

In his address to principals, Samuels reiterated his commitment to school safety and integration, an idea he said should go beyond shifting classroom demographics and focus on culturally responsive teaching.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani names Kamar Samuels as NYC schools chancellor, reverses course on ending mayoral control

2025-12-31T23:10:12+00:00

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As Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced Kamar Samuels as his new schools chancellor on Wednesday, he also reversed course on one of his main K-12 campaign pledges: He no longer plans to end mayoral control of the nation’s largest school system.

Instead, he will ask Albany to extend the governance model when it comes up for renewal in June. He said he will work alongside Samuels, a veteran New York City educator, toward a version of mayoral control that will “engage parents, teachers, and students in decision-making,” Mamdani said at a press conference on the northern tip of Central Park just hours before his inauguration.

His stance on mayoral control represents a major about-face for the city’s new chief executive. But Mamdani’s views on school governance were an outlier compared with other mayoral candidates, and the idea to ditch mayoral control entirely had many skeptics, especially when paired with Mamdani’s sweeping plan to build a free child care system.

Mamdani acknowledged the challenges of the massive system he’s inheriting, with its $43 billion budget, roughly 150,000 staff, and nearly 900,000 students. While literacy rates are improving, he said, nearly 45% of the city’s students in grades 3-8 remained below grade level, according to last year’s state tests. Roughly 154,000 students are homeless. And thousands of teachers are needed to meet the mandate to shrink classes, particularly in hard-to-staff positions for special education, bilingual education, math, and science.

He said he now realizes that New Yorkers should direct their concerns to him.

“I will be asking the legislature for a continuation of mayoral control,” Mamdani said, “and I will also be committed with my incoming schools chancellor to ensure that the mayoral control we preside over is not the same one that New Yorkers see today.”

Under the current governance model, the mayor unilaterally selects the schools chancellor and appoints the majority of the Panel for Educational Policy, a board that votes on school closures, contracts, and other major changes to Education Department regulations. The panel is typically considered a rubber stamp of mayoral priorities, though Mayor Eric Adams left some vacancies on the board, resulting in recent votes that pushed back more than usual.

Mamdani pledged to incorporate community involvement in a way that will not be “ceremonial or procedural, but tangible and actionable.” He wants to restructure parent meetings for community education councils so that “working parents can actually attend them” and improve awareness of these elected parent boards that oversee school zones and advise on policy. Voter turnout for these boards has been less than 2%.

Mamdani also promised to “improve the parent coordinator role to be a meaningful organizer of parents, rather than an administrative coordinator reporting to a principal.” The responsibilities of parent coordinators, a role created in the initial deal allowing for mayoral control, vary widely from school to school. Many do a tremendous amount of organizing already, particularly when it comes to helping homeless families, but many in the role have long complained about its low wages.

Mamdani said he chose Samuels because “this moment demands a new generation of leadership” that “understands our schools” and has a “transformative vision” on how to lead them.

As superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3 stretching from the Upper West Side to part of Harlem, Samuels oversaw some controversial school mergers, combining schools with different demographics as a way to foster integration in one of the country’s most segregated school systems. He initially used that approach while superintendent of Brooklyn’s District 13, where he also spearheaded a move away from gifted and talented programs that separate kids toward schoolwide enrichment models, embracing the International Baccalaureate program. Samuels started out as a teacher and principal in the Bronx.

Mamdani made clear on Wednesday that he remains opposed to gifted programs for kindergarten students, but that he has no plans to change the process for the current application season.

Samuels’ work overseeing the Adams administration’s literacy curriculum mandate, NYC Reads, led to an increase in test scores, Mamdani pointed out. Samuels also secured more than $10 million in grants across districts 3 and 13 to advance integration efforts through admissions policies, mergers, and rezonings.

“Equity is not an abstract idea. It’s a set of choices we make together in policy,” Samuels said. “But what matters is not just what we do, it’s how we do it, by listening to educators, by respecting families, by seeing students, not just as data points, but as whole people with enormous potential.”

In recent weeks, some parent groups had been calling for Mamdani to maintain stability of the school system and keep the current chancellor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos.

Liss will be the new child care office head

Mamdani also announced that Emmy Liss will serve as executive director for the mayor’s Office of Child Care, a position that will be critical in realizing Mamdani’s pledge to bring free child care to New Yorkers.

On Dec. 31, 2025, Zohran Mamdani tapped Emmy Liss, pictured with her son, to lead his office on child care. Liss was the chief of staff for Josh Wallack, a top aide in the de Blasio administration who oversaw the Education Department’s rollout for prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Liss was the chief of staff for Josh Wallack, a top aide in the de Blasio administration who oversaw the Education Department’s rollout for prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds. She has been advising the mayor-elect on child care issues.

“When I worked on the expansion of universal 3-k and pre-K, I saw firsthand what it means when city government comes together to deliver the families with the vision of universal child care,” Liss said on Wednesday. “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to come together again, to double down on the city’s investments and to design and implement a program that truly meets the needs of families and sustains our child care providers and educators.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Engaging students while looking for space: How smaller class sizes are reshaping NYC classrooms

2025-12-23T21:54:06+00:00

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Federico Zegarra, a special education teacher, spent a recent Thursday morning preparing lesson plans in his coworker’s classroom while her class was in session.

Outside of the assistant principals’ office, three students received reading intervention at a table. What used to be a “mindfulness room” down the hall is now part dean’s office, part instructional space, and part study hall for students.

This is what complying with New York’s class size reduction law looks like at Manhattan’s Stephen T. Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School.

While Zegarra and his colleagues agree that having smaller class sizes has made a world of a difference for them and their roughly 340 students, it’s meant playing a game of jigsaw puzzle in the building they share with four other schools.

“People are teaching in offices, people are teaching in the hallway at some point because we just don’t have enough classrooms,” said Ivette Dobarganes, a Spanish teacher and United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at the school.

The end of this semester marks the halfway point in the five-year implementation period of the class size law, which state lawmakers passed in 2022. The law requires New York City schools to have at most 20 students per class in grades K-3, 23 students for grades 4-8, and 25 students for grades 9-12 by September 2028.

Last month, the city announced that about 64% of public school classrooms met those limits, surpassing the required 60%, but only after thousands of classes received exemptions.

Educators with smaller classes are raving about the change. Out of about 50 educators who responded to a Chalkbeat survey about the class size mandate, nearly three-quarters said that their schools have reduced class sizes and they have seen positive changes in their classrooms. Educators said they could give students more attention, more detailed feedback, and allow for greater participation in class.

They’re also noticing fewer behavioral issues in students, and they’re able to reach out to parents in a more manageable way. They’re feeling less stressed about their workload and have energy to give to students.

But experts, advocates, teachers, and a lawmaker who spoke to Chalkbeat are also concerned the city is falling behind in its efforts to meet the mandate. They worry the second half of the implementation process will prove to be more challenging, and some teachers who responded to Chalkbeat’s survey expressed doubt that their class sizes will ever be reduced.

Education Department officials emphasized that the city is in compliance with the current target of the class size mandate.

“We remain committed to complying with state law and recognize that meeting the law’s future milestones of 80% and 100% will require an extensive commitment of resources,” Jenna Lyle, an Education Department spokesperson, said in a statement.

fall, the city spent $450 million on hiring new teachers and is planning to do a similar hiring spree next fall. To reach full compliance by 2028, the city must budget another $700 million for an additional 6,900 teachers, the Independent Budget Office said.

In a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander wrote that the city’s recent financial plan isn’t sufficient to cover expenses needed to meet next year’s 80% target and full compliance the following year. He refused to certify the Department of Education’s latest class size reduction plan. (The lack of certification does not carry legal implications, according to experts.)

Along with costs for additional teachers, classroom space remains a major concern.

According to the School Construction Authority, the city needs 70,000 more seats to meet the class size mandate. Over half of the educators who responded to Chalkbeat’s survey mentioned space as a challenge.

At Mather, which received city funding this year to hire six new teachers, nearly all classrooms are being used at all times, so teachers typically don’t have access to their desks to do their prep sessions and find whatever space they can.

But Mather’s teachers are still finding silver linings. For example, they agree that it’s created less isolation and more opportunities for teachers to learn from one another.

“We collaborate, we talk more,” Dobarganes said.

‘The biggest impact on education that I’ve ever seen’

Nicolina Mullins, from P.S. 146 in Howard Beach, Queens, has 18 students in her class, which she co-teaches with a special education teacher for students with disabilities alongside typically developing children. In her 24 years teaching Mullins previously had as many as 32 kids in a class.

She’s noticed more student engagement and fewer kids feeling overwhelmed with socializing. Her own mental health has also improved, and she can do more without having to bring as much work home.

Kelli Hesseltine, an English teacher at Manhattan’s High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College, feels the same.

“I feel like I’m coming home every day less exhausted, and I just have more energy to reinvest in the relationships with students,” Hesseltine said. “I’ve been teaching for over 20 years, so I really cannot stress this enough that this has made the biggest impact on education that I’ve ever seen.”

Last year, she had five classes of 34 students each. This year, four of her classes have 25 students or less. The difference, she said, is “powerful.”

For starters, her classroom is less cramped. Before, she could barely walk between the tables. She now has time for every student to participate, and she’s able to give papers back to students within a week instead of a month.

When a student is struggling she now has more time to talk to parents regularly.

“Before it was always just about putting out the fire, but now it’s about celebrating wins,” Hesseltine said. She’s able to email parents to say, “‘I saw your kid do something awesome in class today.’”

To address space constraints, Hesseltine’s principal and parent teacher association worked to turn some office spaces into teacher work rooms.

“It’s actually really cool. We have a ‘quiet room’ and sort of a ‘loud work’ room, so teachers can be either meeting with each other or meeting with students in this one space,” Hesseltine said.

Ivette Dobarganes, a Spanish teacher and United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at Manhattan’s Stephen T. Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School.

Bobson Wong, a math teacher at Bayside High School, never had his own desk or classroom, even before the class size reduction law. He said his Queens school, which has about 3,000 students, had to add more sessions to their staggered schedule to comply with the mandate.

Last year, students and teachers would either start their day during period two or three but this year, to accommodate smaller classes, some are starting their days during period four at 9:37 a.m. To reach full compliance, Wong said some students and teachers might eventually have to start during period five, which means their day would begin at 10:17 a.m. and end at 4:35 p.m., according to the school’s bell schedule.

The staggered schedule has created some logistical hurdles, Wong said. For example, it’s made it harder to schedule faculty meetings when everyone is on a different daily schedule.

For all of the logistical hurdles, however, Wong didn’t want to give the impression that smaller class sizes were a “bad thing,” Wong said. He emphasized that it’s not.

But as schools across the city work toward reaching full compliance, some teachers are worried about other unintended consequences.

Hesseltine estimated that her school is about 70% in compliance with the class size mandate, and if they don’t reach 100%, she fears it could create an equity issue within the teaching staff: How would her school decide who gets smaller class sizes and who doesn’t?

“I think we’re all kind of worried,” Hesseltine said. “Is there enough dedication to really making this happen 100% across the school, from state and from the city?”

Mullins, the Queens teacher, hopes other teachers will get to experience the same benefits of the law that she has.

“I hope all of my colleagues are able to benefit from it at some point because I’ll tell you,” Mullins said, “it definitely is a different world when you have [a] small classroom size.”

Correction: Jan. 2, 2026. This story initially included the Independent Budget Office projection based on 2023-24 school year data instead of figures accounting for current teachers and class sizes.

Jessica Shuran Yu is a New York City-based journalist. You can reach her at jshuranyu@chalkbeat.org.

Newark schools go phone free as part of New Jersey’s push to limit the use of cellphones in schools

2025-12-19T19:43:19+00:00

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Newark Public Schools is receiving $176,625 from the state to enforce phone-free schools and implement a “bell-to-bell” policy, aligning the state’s largest school district with a growing push in New Jersey to limit cellphone use in classrooms.

The funding, awarded through the state Education Department’s Phone-Free Schools Grant Program, is expected to help school districts purchase phone storage systems such as lockers, locked pouches, or check-in cabinets. The goal, state leaders have said, is to minimize distractions during the school day and ensure students are engaged throughout instructional hours.

The state is also awarding phone-free schools grants to 85 other school districts across the state, including charter schools in Newark, such as Maria L. Varisco-Rogers, which is receiving $1,490, and Great Oaks Legacy charter schools, receiving $9,022.

School boards of grant recipients are expected to adopt a formal policy by the end of the 2025–26 school year and those schools must enforce a “bell-to-bell” ban while maintaining flexibility to provide reasonable accommodations as appropriate, according to Michael Yaple, spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Education.

New Jersey’s push for phone-free schools is part of a growing trend nationwide to ban cellphone use from the first bell to dismissal. It also comes after California and New York implemented similar initiatives to limit phones in school and provide funding to districts to enforce policies.

The excessive use of smartphones and social media can impact sleep, have negative effects on youth mental health, and hinder academic performance, according to recent studies. Some school districts are also seeing a boost in test scores after implementing cellphone bans.

Gov. Phil Murphy has repeatedly called for banning phones during school, and this year, the state Commission on the Effects of Social Media Usage on Adolescents issued a report that recommended a “bell-to-bell” ban on cellphones. The Commission also found that cellphones and social media can affect youth self-esteem and cause anxiety and depression.

New Jersey lawmakers are also considering a statewide ban on cellphones in schools, as school districts that received the new phone-free grant become the first to implement phone-free schools. The bill is moving through the state assembly.

In Newark, the public school district has already experimented with limiting cellphone use in recent years, with mixed reactions from educators, students, and parents.

Under the district’s existing cellphone policy, adopted in 2008, students are allowed to carry cellphones as long as they are stowed away, turned off, or kept on silent at all times during the school day, and may not be used to make calls, take photos, or videos from within the school building, unless they receive permission from a school administrator.

If a student wants to carry a cellphone during the school day, a parent or guardian must sign a written agreement acknowledging that the district assumes no responsibility for any loss or damage. The form must be on file in the school office before the device is brought to school, per the district’s policy.

Across the country, parents have raised concerns about cellphone bans, and there is evidence in other surveys that parents want their children to have a phone in school in case of an emergency. Newark Public Schools’ cellphone policy says that in the event of an emergency, administrators will direct students on when they may safely turn on a cellphone.

You can find a full list of school districts receiving the new state grant on the education department’s website.

Update: This story has been updated to include a statement from the New Jersey Department of Education.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Union ramps up pressure in teachers’ fight against their Brooklyn principal

2025-12-16T19:34:36+00:00

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Educators at more than two dozen schools in Brooklyn wore black to work on a recent Thursday, an unusual public show of support for teachers at a school in their district who have concerns about mistreatment from their principal.

Teachers at P.S./I.S. 99, a K-8 school in Midwood, have complained about a lack of respect in the workplace, micromanagement, and a feeling of having to walk on “eggshells” created by the school’s principal, Hrysoula Niarhos, who’s been at the helm for more than four years. Several teachers told Chalkbeat they were reprimanded — including one who said she was also body shamed — in front of their classes.

Niarhos did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The conflict is notable because the United Federation of Teachers has taken a high-profile stance in support of teachers who oppose Niarhos by posting public testimonies, school survey data, and photos of last week’s solidarity action on social media addressed at the school’s building leader. On Monday, the UFT continued the public pressure by posting an editorial on its website and on Instagram calling out the principal for “intolerable” working conditions.

Union President Michael Mulgrew, who has also spoken out on social media, told Chalkbeat he’s infuriated that the principal has created a culture of “infantilizing” the staff. He said there’s a greater sense of urgency to address issues like this one because New York City is “no longer inoculated” from teacher shortages. With the state’s new class size law, the city must hire thousands more teachers.

Teacher turnover rates at P.S./I.S. 99 have been high in the past few years, with 28 teachers leaving the school since the principal took over in September 2021, according to union officials. The school has 71 teachers this year, according to school budget documents.

“It’s getting harder and harder to attract and retain teachers,” Mulgrew said. “Now, it’s more important than ever that … we make sure we are combating this type of behavior.”

Six complaints have been filed about Niarhos since she became principal with the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation, the city’s independent watchdog for the Education Department, officials confirmed. The complaints have since been referred to the Education Department’s Office of the Special Investigations, which handles allegations of improper behavior.

The Education Department did not respond directly to questions, referring Chalkbeat to agencies that oversee investigations.

Officials from the Council of School Advisors and Administrators, the union that represents principals and other school administrators, said the complaints represent the views of a subset of staff rather than the entire school community. Union President Henry Rubio also said teacher concerns are a result of the school leadership’s high standards for their staff.

“Ninety-nine is a school where the principal and both the current former superintendent, over time, have been slowly working with the staff to raise expectations and do what’s best for children,” said Rubio. “When that happens, adults sometimes feel uncomfortable.”

Rubio added that the concerns have not been raised directly with the principal.

“They’ve either gone straight to the superintendent or to social media,” he said.

But Kevin O’Donnell, a sixth grade special education teacher at the school who serves as the school’s UFT chapter leader, said that he’s tried “many different avenues” to resolve the issues, including formal conversations with Niarhos and bringing the issues to their representative for District 21.

The administrators’ union sent a letter to District 21’s superintendent Erin Lynch-Reyes on Tuesday, thanking her for her support of Niarhos.

“Effective school leadership often requires making difficult decisions in the best interest of children, even when those decisions are unpopular with some adults,” the letter read.

Lynch-Reyes did not respond to requests for comment.

Principal’s public discipline of teachers leave some humiliated

Annual surveys of teachers indicate a worsening problem at P.S./I.S. 99. In 2021, when Niarhos assumed her role, 100% of teachers reported a strong sense of trust in the principal. By last school year, that number had fallen to 54%, according to Education Department survey data.

Last year, the principal made teachers pull up their commute route on their phones and line up to show her that they could make it home in time for virtual parent teacher conferences, said Eric Goldberg, a middle school special education teacher who has been at P.S./I.S. 99 for 20 years.

“It’s just one of the many ways that she micromanages us on a day-to-day basis,” said Goldberg, adding that this happened at least twice before the UFT District 21 representative stopped the practice.

Last month, Nicole Scotti, a sixth grade teacher who’s been at the school since 2007, was teaching a class when the principal conducted a walk-through.

When the principal saw that Scotti had created a worksheet on ChatGPT, the principal shook her head, said “no, no, no,” and tsk-ed in front of her class, Scotti recalled.

Scotti said that her students noticed and began talking about it, which was “mortifying.”

“After teaching all these years, it’s almost like I’m second-guessing myself, but deep down inside, I know I’m a good teacher,” Scotti said.

Sixth grade teacher Cathy Guarnieri recounted how three years ago, she called out of work because she was in the hospital for kidney stones. When she returned to school the next day, Guarnieri said that Niarhos claimed her doctor’s note was fake and questioned her in front of her class.

When Niarhos asked Guarnieri how she was feeling, the teacher said that she was afraid to eat. In response, the principal told Guarnieri it was “a great way to lose weight for your wedding,” Guarnieri recalled.

“I was humiliated,” Guarnieri said.

Guarnieri kept that story to herself until she told it to Lynch-Reyes this fall during a schoolwide meeting. About 70 educators from the school brought their concerns to the superintendent in the hope that working conditions would improve, but some teachers feel that things have only gotten worse.

Not all teachers at P.S. 99 are unhappy with the principal, however. One teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation from her colleagues, said that Niarhos is a very “fair” principal who cares deeply about her students and holds her staff to a high standard. She recalled that Niarhos went out in the pouring rain to get Halloween party supplies for the kids this year.

“She cares about the students and the faculty, which is what you want in a principal,” the teacher said. She added that she thinks the social media campaign against Niarhos is “juvenile” and “disgusting.”

Guarnieri, who has been teaching at P.S. 99 for 15 years, said morale has plummeted. She used to always go to prom, graduation, and all the other after-school events, but not anymore.

“After 2:20 I walk out the door and I don’t think again about the school until I have to come in the next day,” said Guarnieri. “[The principal] grinds us down so much that we can’t wait to get out of the building.”

Jessica Shuran Yu is a New York City-based journalist. You can reach her at jshuranyu@chalkbeat.org.

Credit recovery: Is it a second chance to pass or permission to fail?

2025-12-12T22:11:35+00:00

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This originally aired on The Bell’s Miseducation podcast .

Thousands of New York City students rely on credit-recovery programs to earn course credit they need for the next grade or graduation. But do these second chances to pass give the system permission to fail?

A 2018 audit at a Brooklyn high school found that 96% of recovered credits were improperly awarded, exposing how uneven oversight and underqualified instruction can shortchange students.

In this episode, I share my own observations, along with my classmate Hawa’s firsthand experience navigating credit recovery. I also sit down with Shante Martin, a Williamsburg Charter High School administrator who sees the program’s promise, but also proposes changes such as limiting eligibility to seniors and raising the minimum grade requirement for a student to enter credit recovery.

A genuine second chance shouldn’t mean cutting corners. If credit recovery remains part of our school system, then it must deliver on the education it promises.

This is a video-first episode. You can watch it now on YouTube.

Miseducation is The Bell’s flagship podcast, which gives New York City public high school students the tools to report on inequities in the nation’s largest school system.

To join the conversation, send us a message and follow us on Instagram.

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‘Science of reading’ 101: Free course for NYC teachers helps unpack latest literacy research

2025-12-10T22:33:41+00:00

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Mayor Eric Adams’ shakeup to elementary school reading curriculums had a clear goal: to align instruction with the “science of reading,” the catchphrase for a longstanding body of research.

But in the rush to train teachers on the new curriculums, some literacy experts worried that there wasn’t enough emphasis on the basic theory and research behind the science of reading. As hundreds of schools transition away from popular programs that have become widely discredited, many teachers have craved guidance.

A free training program available to New York City teachers aims to fill that gap, helping thousands of educators parse the fundamental principles of the science of reading. The program, now in its second year, was developed by The Reading Institute, a nonprofit launched by Katie Pace Miles, a Brooklyn College professor.

“I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just about the how‚” Miles said. “No matter what curriculum they have, they’ve got to know: What are the tenets that actually move the needle for readers?”’

Miles underscored that the training could also help address a long-term challenge: Curriculums often come and go during a teacher’s career. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who will take control of the city’s schools on Jan. 1, has signaled he will continue the reading curriculum mandate, though he has indicated teachers should have more flexibility around how to implement it in their classrooms.

The 10-hour virtual course emphasizes phonics — how students learn the relationships between sounds and letters — a key piece of the city’s literacy push. Other segments cover vocabulary, comprehension, writing, and reaching neurodivergent learners. Video footage from three New York City public schools is woven throughout the training to show how teachers are using the science of reading in real-world classrooms.

Katie Pace Miles, a Brooklyn College professor and founder of The Reading Institute, authored the intro course.

The introductory course has free slots for nearly 1,200 New York City teachers for the remainder of this school year (it is also free for all CUNY students). When the slots are filled — or for teachers outside the city— the cost is $25. Of the 2,800 people who took the course last school year, more than 2,000 were from the city’s public schools. (The course is funded by the Benedict Silverman Foundation, which funds Chalkbeat, and the Heckscher Foundation for Children.)

Experts say the training could help fill gaps for teachers who did not receive adequate instruction in their teacher preparation programs about how children learn to read, as schools of education have been criticized for failing to embrace the latest research on reading. New York State officials have said they’re working to address the issue.

Cut to the video: Recorded literacy lessons inspire change

At P.S. 189 in Washington Heights, Principal Johanny Grullon has embraced the additional training, setting aside time during the school’s existing Monday training blocks.

Now, virtually all of the school staff are taking Miles’ science of reading course, including art, music, and gym teachers.

“Everybody plays an important role in teaching students how to read,” Grullon said. “The gym teachers aren’t gonna take out flashcards … but I want them to think about: What can I do in my daily routines as kids are warming up to develop vocabulary?”

Johanny Grullon, the principal of P.S. 189, has rolled out the training program to nearly all of the school's staff.

The science of reading intro course has won attention from other states. Last school year, P.S. 189 showed off the training program to the governors of Rhode Island and Colorado, along with a representative from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.

Julia Rosa, the library teacher at P.S. 189, was one of the first educators at the school to complete the training and helped convince her colleagues it was worth the time.

The video footage from other New York City classrooms helped persuade her to shift some of her approaches — and try new ones. When her students ask her to spell words during writing exercises, she used to reflexively give them the answers, worrying that veering into spelling exercises would district from the lesson. But videos of students making confident spelling guesses help convince her to change.

In another video, Rosa saw a phonics lesson that involved students using their fingers to trace out letters in blue sand. That activity seemed like it would make a mess in a room with over 20 children. But soon, she was off to the dollar store to buy tupperware containers to try it herself.

“Seeing it done — it gives you more confidence to try it,” she said.

Education Department officials said they hope the training will help teachers reluctant to change their practice and give them a more solid foundation as they deploy the new curriculums.

Staten Island’s superintendent is encouraging educators to take the training, and nearly 1,000 teachers in the borough are enrolled. Allison Angioletti, a district achievement and instructional specialist in the Staten Island superintendent’s office, said she hopes the training helps teachers tailor their lessons and navigate curriculums that are often packed with more content than can fit in a traditional literacy block. On Staten Island, teachers are required to use Into Reading, the most commonly mandated program across the city.

“I want them to be good decision makers,” said Angioletti. “I want them to keep the parts that are most helpful to kids about how they learn how to read.”

Literacy experts said the relatively short course was unlikely to spur major changes in student achievement by itself. But Tim Shanahan, a former Chicago Public Schools official who oversaw that district’s training efforts, said it is still important.

“There are lots of things that need to happen to raise reading achievement,” he said, “and one of them is professional development.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Doing high school and college simultaneously: Dual enrollment surges in NY, saving families money

2025-12-02T23:00:28+00:00

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Every morning, all of the roughly 100 seniors at Kingsborough Early College Secondary school start their day taking classes together at CUNY Kingsborough Community College.

In the afternoon, they hop on a yellow school bus and head back to their school on the Lafayette educational campus about 15 minutes away.

Kingsborough juniors make the reverse trek. They start their morning at the Lafayette campus then take the bus to the community college for afternoon classes.

By the time the students graduate high school, most have earned associate degrees from CUNY Kingsborough. In fact, the majority — 57% — of CUNY Kingsborough students are not stereotypical college students. They’re high schoolers, according to a new analysis released Tuesday from a New York coalition of advocates and education institutions.

CUNY Kingsborough is one of six community colleges across the state where high schoolers make up the majority of students. It could be the harbinger of something bigger. As community college enrollment has declined nationwide in recent years, dual enrollment programs — where high school students take college courses and earn college-level credit — are expanding in New York state and elsewhere.

The state Education Department is making these programs a priority. It recently proposed new reporting regulations requiring institutions to not only report their dual enrollment partnership agreements but also to provide data on enrollment and outcomes. The idea is to help officials and educators get a better grasp on the variety of dual enrollment programs and find ways to ensure the programs reach more students who are underrepresented in higher education.

The stakes are high: According to a 2024 report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, workers will need a bachelor’s degree for 66% of “good jobs” in 2031 — defined as one that pays a minimum of $43,000 a year nationally to workers ages 25-44.

The state’s proposed rules, which it’s expected to adopt early next year, will mark the state’s first consistent policy governing these programs. Additionally, the state recently created a $9.1 million College in High School Opportunity Fund to support dual enrollment and other early college programs to focus on enrolling more students from low-income families.

Several studies have celebrated dual enrollment programs for helping put students on a path to college by exposing them to high-level coursework.

At Kingsborough, the program has proven so successful that many of its students not only complete higher education degrees, they eventually return to work at the school. Of the school’s 80 staffers, 16 are graduates, its principal, Tracee Murren, said.

And there’s one other very obvious benefit dual enrollment programs frequently offer: Students can save money by earning college credits, often for free, before they finish high school.

Early college programs help families save on average $13,000 on the cost of a bachelor’s degree, said Alexandra Wilcox, deputy director of the New York Alliance for Early College Pathways, the group that studied the state’s dual enrollment expansion.

Research has found students in these programs are also more likely to attend school regularly, avoid suspension, graduate high school, and earn a college degree within six years.

“It really is a game changer in terms of being able to save time and money to a degree,” Wilcox said.

But a deeper understanding of the types of programs, who they’re serving, and what their outcomes are — the things the state is proposing to capture — will ultimately strengthen dual enrollment programs, said Wilcox.

Though New York pioneered dual enrollment programs, launching them more than 50 years ago, the state’s approach in terms of policy and funding has been “inconsistent and unpredictable,” Wilcox said.

NYC has range of early college programs

Across New York state, dual enrollment jumped 15% year-over-year, the alliance report found. It now has the nation’s third largest number of students in dual enrollment with more than 176,000, behind California and Texas.

In New York City, the majority of dual enrollment students are in College Now, where they take college-level courses at CUNY for free, generally as an add-on to their regular high school courses. But there’s rising interest in the early college approach, which integrates college courses more deeply into the curriculum. About 30,000 students take College Now courses while roughly 3,500 students take CUNY classes through early college courses, a CUNY spokesperson said.

Nearly 45 out of the city’s 400 high schools offer early college programs, according to the city’s MySchools lookup tool.

The early college model traces its roots to Middle College High School, which opened in 1974 to provide students who struggled in traditional schools with an opportunity to take courses at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, where the school is still located.

Some early college programs do not screen students based on their academic records, like Pathways in Technology Early College High School, known as P-TECH. That school launched in Brooklyn in 2011 and spawned eight other high schools across the boroughs that offer a six-year program, grades 9-14, each affiliated with different CUNY institutions. Students at these schools can graduate with an associate degree in a STEM field at no cost.

Other programs are highly selective. Bard College, a liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, has four New York City Bard Early College campuses, where Bard professors teach students, who go through a rigorous admissions process involving a test and interview. The newly opened HBCU Early College Prep in Queens — which partners with Delaware State University, a historically Black institution — also admits students based on GPAs, a writing exercise, and a video submission. The HBCU Early College students take online classes through Delaware State.

Access to dual enrollment programs shifts

At Kingsborough Early College, which opened in 2006, the school targets students who are underserved in higher education — those “not typically selected for gifted and talented,” Murren said.

The school starts in sixth grade, admitting students through a lottery. Demand for it is high: Roughly 1,000 students apply for 100 seats every year.

Roughly 40 to 50% enter the program reading below grade level, Murren said, and the school takes an intensive approach to ensure they’re ready to read dense college-level material as they reach the upper grades. Middle schoolers also have an advisory class every day to ensure they have the “mental fortitude” to take on college-level work, she said.

Students at HBCU Early College Prep High School in Queens on its first day of school, Sept. 4, 2025.

The students take their first college class in ninth grade, a Spanish course, stretching it from one semester to the entire year to make it slower and more digestible, Murren said. The school intentionally starts with a foreign language since it’s a course that many four-year colleges require and has no prerequisites.

Professors from CUNY Kingsborough Community College come to the Lafayette campus to teach the freshman and sophomores in the afternoon, and the school has an extended day to accommodate these courses.

Balancing high school and the more advanced college courses simultaneously isn’t easy, Murren acknowledged. But her staff is committed. There’s low teacher turnover, and they get to know most students from the age of 10.

The students, for the most part, take their college classes together once they start attending the CUNY campus, maintaining a sense of community.

Murren said the students also support each other, characterizing their approach in this way: “‘We’ve been going through this together, and I don’t want you to fall off, so I’m going to make sure that you don’t.’”

She added: “We should never doubt what our students are capable of, their abilities, and their tenacity really shines through when given the opportunity.”

Historically, many high schools have used dual enrollment programs as an acceleration strategy instead of also a strategy to promote college access, said John Fink, a researcher at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

But that’s changing. Research into dual enrollment is also shifting away from addressing whether it works and instead trying to understand how to make it work better — and for more students, not just the top students who are “already acing everything,” he said.

The key question, Fink believes, is how to make sure that families know there’s free college available to New York City high schoolers.

“Even though you think that word would get out, it doesn’t,” he said, “[but] when it’s implemented as a purposeful path to debt-free college … that marketing also helps sell the high school.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Would more emphasis on high-stakes testing help address America’s learning woes? Here’s what the evidence says.

2025-12-02T22:30:36+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

A striking wave of nostalgia is rippling through the education world these days.

A number of commentators and advocates have harkened back to the early aughts when test scores were rising and No Child Left Behind was the law of the land.

“This was an era when elected officials from both political parties came together around a reform agenda,” Harvard University professor Marty West said at a U.S. Senate hearing earlier this year. “That approach had plenty of critics and, as implemented, some real flaws, but it produced results.”

Federally imposed high-stakes testing kept the heat on schools, but after the repeal of No Child Left Behind, we’ve let them off the hook, say these accountability hawks. This is one reason, they argue, why test scores were stagnant before the pandemic and have fallen since.

To keep reading click here.

How do we know which states have the best schools?

2025-11-25T15:51:12+00:00

Welcome to Chalkbeat Ideas. We’re trying something a little different today: A roundup of interesting tidbits, data points, and links rather than a single piece. My plan is to do this once a month. Feel free to let me know what you think by replying to this email.

Wonking out

How should we judge states’ educational performance?

Mark Weber, a researcher and teacher, has a differing take from many on the Southern surge, which I also wrote about last month. Recall that Louisiana and Mississippi’s test scores look particularly strong when controlling for their high poverty rates, according to a widely cited Urban Institute analysis.

Weber argues that this is the wrong way to evaluate states because lower income levels may be a result of state policies, particularly the historic quality of their schools. He points to his home state of New Jersey, which does well in raw scores but is less impressive in Urban’s adjusted comparisons. Such statistical adjustments are “wiping away one of the primary outcomes of good schooling that public education advocates want: higher incomes,” Weber writes.

To continue reading, click here.

Teachers have the 6-7 trend well in hand. Here are their tips.

2025-11-19T21:03:37+00:00

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The answer to every ice breaker question? 6-7. The answer to what bad listening skills look like? Shouting 6-7 in your partner’s face.

And from the time a group of Indianapolis fourth graders on a recent field trip stepped off the bus to the time they sat down for lunch, it was 6-7, 6-7, 6-7.

All that will surprise no one who spends any time around kids or teens, who have spent months giggling, screaming, and otherwise losing it every time those numbers are uttered. The term originated from the Skrilla song “Doot Doot (6 7)” and made its way into meme culture via basketball video clips set to the song.

Dictionary.com declared 6-7 the word of the year. It became disruptive enough that some schools tried to ban it.

But if you can’t beat ’em — and you really can’t — then join ’em.

Teachers had students write 67-word essays about the 6-7 trend. A Michigan choir teacher had her students write and perform a song about 6-7, an endeavor that required them to control themselves while saying the numbers over and over. The Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana posted a spoof video of school resource officers handing out tickets to students who used the phrase.

We asked teachers how they’re handling the 6-7 trend in their classrooms, and we’ve got some great answers below. As 6-7 starts to wind down, you can apply these same tricks to the next big thing: 41.

‘I use 6-7 to my advantage’

Being an elementary teacher we’ve leaned into it as a building. Our principal and another teacher dressed as 6-7 for Halloween. During our Halloween parade, the costume created an ECE - 5 6-7 chant. It was hilarious. I use a 6-7 attention getter “1,2,3,4,5” and the kids respond with “6-7” while alternating their palms up. I have found that the more we use their language sometimes it goes away faster. 😂

Danielle Zuroweste, fourth grade, Columbine Elementary, Denver

I use 6-7 to my advantage. I only allow the kids to say 6-7 in one circumstance. I have created an attention getter/call and response where I say “4,5” and the kids respond “6,7” and put their eyes on me, listening for next instructions. It has been my most successful attention getter to date and immediately refocuses everyone on me. When the numbers 6 and 7 show up in class, such as in math or a lesson number, I also allow them to say 6-7 once to get it out of their system, with the expectation it will not be said any more after that.

Siena Fiorentino, second grade, P.S. 236 Langston Hughes, the Bronx, New York City

My school has block scheduling so I teach a class that is rostered for periods 6-7. It is a rowdy group. I have embraced the chaos, and I use it as a call and response to get their attention — I say 6 and they respond with 7 (complete with intonation). It works OK! I’m noticing that they are getting less enthusiastic about it as time goes on.

Sally O’Brien, 11th and 12th grade English, Kensington Health Sciences Academy, Philadelphia

I’ve just leaned into it — enough students are bored with it now that we just do the little 6-7 hand gesture, giggle, and resume our day. I’ll even throw it into a conversation with students to make them cringe. Like all fads, they’ll grow out of it, and this one isn’t malicious.

Kali Burks-Mosier, Lynhurst 7th and 8th Grade Center, Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Indianapolis

I made the mistake of reviewing numbers in Spanish I class. When I got to seis, siete, the whole class erupted in laughter saying seis-siete for minutes afterwards. And after a few minutes, we moved on. Our school really doesn’t need to treat it as a disciplinary matter.

Kathleen Stoker, New Heights Brockton Charter School, Brockton, Massachusetts

Most kids know better than to disrupt our class with 6-7, but we have a few who push the boundary. When we were doing our dice roll greeting for our morning greeting (our greeting changes weekly), every time a child rolled a 6, a couple of children would mouth 6-7!! And do the hand motion. I found it ridiculous since it wasn’t even 6 and then 7. There are no 7s on the die!

Anyway, I shoot them a look and do the teacher whisper-scream “6-7 minutes off recess next time it happens” and that pretty much makes it stop immediately. Kids do have fun saying it outside but if it’s not disrupting anything I think it’s mostly harmless, just annoying.

Grace Loew, District 4, Manhattan, New York

Our school celebrated the 67th day of school! Balloons of 6 and 7 hung around the building. Teachers of different grade levels wore different 6-7 themed shirts. Kindergarten has been working on subitizing [the ability to recognize how many objects are in a small group without counting] so their shirts had dice representing 6-7. Fifth grade used order of operations to create 6 or 7. Our first graders rotated to different rooms to do math activities including a STEM activity building a tower in 6 minutes, 7 seconds. Math fact games of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing 6 and 7 were used throughout all grade levels. Attention calls included teachers counting 1 to 5 and the students chorally answering “6-7.” The art teacher incorporated 6-7 in paintings when talking about different artists. So much fun!

Stacy Cartmel, instructional coach, Clearwater Elementary, Metropolitan School District of Washington Township, Indianapolis

I teach high school, but I also have a 7-year-old son. I do it on purpose — “This activity should take 6 or 7 minutes” — while doing the hand gesture (if you know, you know). It makes it less cool for them to say it because an adult has caught on. I love using Gen Z/Alpha slang in a silly or ironic way. I find this approach works well with both teens and second graders.

Susan Scroggins, English, Herron High School & Herron Preparatory Academy, Herron Classical Schools, Indianapolis

Chalkbeat reporter Aleksandra Appleton contributed reporting from Indianapolis.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

How Colorado’s 2026 Teacher of the Year channeled his dislike of viral TikTok challenges

2025-11-18T23:06:37+00:00

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The TikTok challenges were getting to Stephen Paulson. The ones where students steal items like soap dispensers from school bathrooms or smash Chromebooks, all for a viral moment on social media.

Paulson, a social studies teacher at Greeley Central High School in northern Colorado, knew the episodes were not only damaging school property but also staff and community perceptions of students.

As school started in the fall of 2023, he had an idea. Paulson and one of his ninth grade classes spearheaded a monthly school clean-up day. It started with 20 students and soon grew to include students from all four grades and tasks far beyond picking up trash and wiping down desks. Students began helping out at every major school event, volunteering at local elementary schools, and joined service projects in the community.

“The magic of this project was giving students an opportunity to lead and give back to the school,” he said.

Paulson, who was recently named Colorado’s 2026 Teacher of the Year, talked to Chalkbeat about how the clean-up project helped change minds, why his students write personal essays about family migration, and what he did to give 10th graders hands-on career experiences.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

When I first enrolled at the University of Northern Colorado, I was planning to pursue a pre-law path. But within a day of college orientation, I switched my major to education. I have always been driven to help others and I felt that a career in education would allow me to support my community.

How did your own experience in school influence your approach to teaching?

I loved elementary school and found it very easy, but as I got to middle school, that all changed. I no longer enjoyed school and had very little success. I was even attempting to fake illnesses to get out of going. Eventually, I realized that I had to play the game of school, even though I did not enjoy it. I did my best to get good enough grades and test scores to attend college, but I could have accomplished much more.

I try to remember my own struggles when I am working with students to help them avoid the mistakes that I made or recover from them when they do fail. I try to be honest to a fault, supportive, and to push students to be their best.

Tell us about a favorite lesson to teach.

If you happened to walk into room 321 during sixth period AP Human Geography in late September, you would see 35 students, all new to AP, working on their first essay. The curriculum says students must demonstrate understanding of different types of migration, causes, and common patterns. Our mission is to show understanding through a narrative essay of our own family migration histories.

To understand why I care so much about this lesson, you must understand who sits in room 321. These 35 students represent our school, community, and the world. Many students in the class (roughly 60%) are English learners. There are over 10 ethnicities represented and five different languages spoken. Seven students are advanced while 11 are behind. Every type of person is represented and welcomed into our space.

The migration essay exemplifies one of my key beliefs: Every person in my classroom belongs, and all of their experiences are valuable and add to every lesson I teach.

What is the Career Mentor project? Why did you start it?

A fundamental part of my teacher identity is being part of Advancement Via Individual Determination or AVID, a nationwide program designed to help first generation students access college and their dream careers. The 10th grade year emphasizes career exploration.

For my first two AVID cohorts, we took a deep dive into career fields. Students took surveys, did research, wrote essays, and made poster boards that they presented to staff and students. But deep down, I felt like this wasn’t enough. Then two former AVID students gave me an idea: Get your students into the community to see these careers up close.

I put up a simple Facebook post explaining the goals of the project and the careers that students wanted to explore. I received hundreds of comments, texts, emails, and messages. Within a few days, we had 90 AVID sophomores paired up with “career mentors.”

The project has three parts: a professional email from students asking to set up an interview, the interview, and a one-day job shadowing experience followed by a reflection essay. Students got to teach mini-lessons as elementary teachers and spend time with doctors, nurses, and lawyers. Others even got to fly in planes at the Greeley airport to learn more about aviation careers.

At a time where public education is being questioned and challenged, our community got to meet our students and see how incredible they are. The students got to meet mentors and show that they really value their school, their education, and their community.

You helped start the Castle Clean Up. What is it and how did it evolve?

TikTok Challenges have encouraged negative behavior and school vandalism. Even though more than 95% of students are not involved, it impacts staff and community perceptions of all students.

As we returned for school in the fall of 2023, we had a staff meeting on student behavior concerns. I listened to the suggested solutions and felt we needed a different approach. I took my idea to our AVID classes. We began a program called the “Castle Clean Up.” (Greeley Central was built in 1927 and looks like a historic castle.)

Every month we would pick a day and stay after school to pick up trash inside the building and around the campus. We would also go in and wipe down every single desk and whiteboard in the school.

Office staff, teachers, custodians, and administrators were blown away by the number of students who showed up and how serious they took this task. The first clean-up was attended by freshmen in my AVID class but by the time the next date came, students from all four grades began to show up.

The number of students became so big that I had to find new ways for them to get involved. Students began volunteering to act as family liaisons and translators for back-to-school night and ninth grade orientation. They were student leaders and program advocates during parent-teacher conferences.

This simple project has done much more than making the halls and classrooms look more inviting and presentable. It’s created more positive interactions between students and staff and chipped away at negative perceptions. I cannot say that this project has completely changed the culture of a 1,600-student school, but what it has done is brought a wide range of students and staff together.

Staff members who made negative comments about student behavior in that staff meeting now contact me and ask for student volunteers to help with their events. We have even begun connecting with the local elementary and middle schools and volunteering at events like field days, track meets, and acting as mentors for younger students. This project started with about 20 students wearing rubber gloves and carrying trash bags and is now expanding out into the community of Greeley.

Tell us about a memorable time — good or bad — when contact with a student’s family changed your perspective or approach.

I remember hosting parent-teacher conferences for the first time and having very poor attendance. I followed up later that week with families I was hoping to meet with, assuming that the language barrier was the reason they did not attend. I even had a translator call with me in hopes of resolving their concerns.

What I learned from those phone calls was many of my student’s parents did not get a formal education through 12th grade. In fact, many barely got to finish elementary school. So while language was a hurdle, the real issue was not feeling comfortable in an American school. They trusted me as an educator to a fault and would not even question me if I was wrong. This changed how I viewed school and its role in connecting students and families to the school itself.

I started sending home monthly newsletters that are translated so they feel more aware of what is happening in the classroom. I used to think that was an elementary school practice but it’s been well received by families. I also send them personal invitations to come to school and not mass communications and that makes them feel more welcomed.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I really enjoy understanding how people think and what they do to reach incredible levels of success. I am also a big sports fan and admire Coach Nick Saban. I am currently reading his book, “The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban” by John Talty. I really love how he pushes others to reach their full potential and even go beyond what they thought they were capable of.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

How a kid who hated school became a superstar Bronx teacher: Lunch-and-learns and basketball helped

2025-11-10T22:40:49+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free monthly newsletter How I Teach to get inspiration, news, and advice for — and from — educators.

Angelo Imperati never wanted to become a teacher. He disliked school and couldn’t wait to finish.

He only went to college to make his parents happy. But while there, he befriended a girl and began to take the same courses as her. Soon, he found himself student-teaching and signing up to take the teacher certification exams.

Twenty-one years later, Imperati is an award-winning fifth grade teacher at P.S. 75 in the Bronx, where he teaches math to three classes and leads social studies lessons twice a week to his homeroom class. He also started a basketball league for his students and beyond. As 2025’s FLAG Award for Teaching Excellence grand prize winner for elementary school educators, he received a grant for $25,000, and his school received $10,000. (Nominations for the 2026 FLAG awards are open through Nov. 30.)

Imperati couldn’t be happier than educating kids from the borough where he was born and raised, making learning feel relevant to their lives.

“I share stories about myself, and show them how I have used the topics I’m teaching in real life settings,” Imperati said. “I create word-problems using my students as characters in the problem. We, as a class, act out the problems to bring it to life, and students begin to make that connection between what they’re learning and the application of it in a real-world situation.”

He focuses on building community and a “sense of belonging” for his students. At lunch, he opens up his room to kids from across his school for tutoring. He cooks for his students on Thanksgiving and brings his outdoor pizza oven from home to make pizza with the fifth graders for an end-of-year party.

His approach yields academic results, Imperati said. Of his 60 students who took the state math tests, 55 of them — or 92% — showed proficiency levels. The citywide average for fifth grade math was 57%, according to public data.

And though he’s proud of his students’ test scores, he was disheartened to see that test prep programs were basically the only option in terms of after-school activities. So he started a basketball league and has been continually adding teams over about 10 years.

“It was a perfect outlet for kids to exhaust some of their energy, and give them an organized activity with something that they enjoy doing,” Imperati said.

We talked to Imperati about his approach to making school feel relevant and fun. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom or school?

My school is located in the South Bronx. Some of our students live in shelters, struggle financially, or come from broken homes. Some children don’t know where they are going to sleep, or where their next meal will come from; but yet they are still expected to care about a fraction, a decimal or anything else getting taught.

I believe this is a teacher’s and a school’s biggest obstacle. How can I get them to care about education when they have all these odds against them? How can I empower them and help them overcome life’s challenges? How can I make them feel like their existence matters and are essential parts of their communities? As an educator, I feel immense pressure to do everything in my power to help put these kids on a path to success.

How have you boosted student performance? What’s your secret?

It’s about building a relationship where students feel valued and respected. I believe once you’ve established that sense of trust and respect with your students, they will work harder to make you, their families, and most importantly themselves proud.

We are a community of learners that follow a growth model; a classroom where the focus is on realistic, individualized goals for every child.

Bronx teacher Angelo Imperati

In addition to this, I strategically pair students up to encourage collaboration in my classroom. It creates an atmosphere where they are all responsible for each other’s learning and success. I give up my lunch every day to do lunch-and-learns. My top math students stay to “tutor” any child who wants to come for extra help. They eat, mingle, and learn.

Lastly, I communicate often with my students and parents. I create online assignments that address topics that have been taught in previous lessons and questions that relate to the current topic being taught. Students are expected to complete and submit these daily assignments on Google Classroom. Every evening I check these assignments and leave feedback for every student.

I also created a digital math notebook that students, parents, and guardians can access anytime they need clarity or assistance with the work.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

When it comes to math, I don’t really have a favorite lesson to teach. I just love to teach. I love the challenge of finding ways to make math practical for my students. I love finding ways to motivate and inspire children (especially children from the Bronx) how to be successful in their educational paths, how to ultimately be successful in life, and how they can be positive contributors to their respected communities and world they live in.

I love educating students on past events like slavery, World War II, and what happened to the Native Americans during the age of exploration. I teach about the current injustices that are happening in our world today and how we can learn from the wrongdoings and injustices of the past. These lessons create excellent discourse around topics like racism and inequality, and allow students to look at the world from a different perspective. It helps build community within the classroom, and I believe students are transformed through these lessons.

Tell us about the basketball league you’ve founded. Why is coaching so important to you?

I began by organizing a basketball program during recess time for fourth and fifth graders to participate in. I had about 30 kids that would participate on a daily basis. I began to notice the difference it was making, especially with the “troubled” kids. I started to make them responsible for their behavior and academics to stay in the program.

Later that year, my principal hired a basketball organization to come and work with the kids. If I remember correctly, she paid about $15,000 for nine weeks. At the end of the year, I put forth a proposal to my principal allowing me to run my own after school basketball program for a lot cheaper than she was paying this organization. Thankfully, she granted my wish, and the following year, I set up an after-school basketball program for third to fifth graders. I partnered with another teacher and a school aide. We had about 40 kids.

While running this program, I began to reach out to other schools to set up exhibition games. We would take our 10 best players to travel to different schools to play against different competitions. I saw how these games would attract the surrounding community. My new goal became partnering with different schools to form our own basketball league.

With the support of my principal, I was able to partner with several other schools in my district to create a District 8 elementary basketball program. We are entering our seventh year as a league.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

An excellent piece of advice came from my boss when I worked in a dry cleaners while in college.

I was 19 years old and very short tempered. My boss noticed my temper and anger on a couple of occasions. This one particular night, after we closed, he called me into his office. I thought he was going to terminate me. The first thing he asked me to do was take one hand and ball it into a fist. He then asked me to use the pointer finger on my other hand and travel along my knuckles of the hand that was balled into a fist. He asked me what did I feel. I replied, “ups and downs.” He replied, “That’s life!”

He explained that when I’m feeling down, I should keep my head up because I am surely bound to go back up again.

I have used this analogy every year with my students. My hope is that they realize no matter how hard life gets, and no matter what individual adversities they may encounter, there are brighter, better days ahead.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Immigration enforcement appears to hurt test scores, and not just for immigrant students: study

2025-11-10T06:14:55+00:00

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Dramatic increases in immigration arrests could be hurting students in the classroom, including U.S. citizen students from Spanish-speaking households.

A study released Monday as a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research uses test score data from a large countywide school district in Florida and immigration arrest data to track the impact of increased enforcement after President Donald Trump took office. Study authors David Figlio and Umut Özek found modest but noticeable declines in spring test scores compared with recent years.

The test score declines didn’t just affect foreign-born students. The effect, which was concentrated in high-poverty schools and among students who were already struggling, was similar for Spanish-speaking immigrant and U.S. citizen students.

That’s “compelling evidence” that students are affected by being part of a community that’s subject to more scrutiny and arrests, regardless of their own or their parents’ immigration status, said Figlio, a University of Rochester economist.

Florida students take state standardized tests three times a year, allowing researchers to see how students were doing before and after immigration enforcement increased under the Trump administration. The analysis found that each percentage point increase in immigration enforcement intensity reduced Spanish-speaking students’ scores on state tests by an amount equivalent to about 10 to 15 points on the SAT.

This decrease accounted for about 10% of the average test score gap between English- and Spanish-speaking students in the district, the study found. The study does not name the district; researchers often grant anonymity to districts and organizations in exchange for data access.

Higher-performing Latino and Spanish-speaking students largely maintained their scores when compared with peers from previous years, but lower-performing students did not.

“This is not turning a kid who was knocking it out of the park into a kid who is struggling academically, but it does appear to be a drag on kids who were already struggling,” Figlio said.

The study adds to a body of research that had already established wide-ranging effects of immigration enforcement on young people, from increased anxiety to higher dropout rates. But this new research reflects the impacts of much more intense interior enforcement efforts under Trump.

Increased immigration enforcement was also associated with a decline in disciplinary incidents for both Latino students and Spanish-speaking students. Figlio and Özek are not sure if this was because students tried to avoid getting in trouble, or if administrators responded with more leniency out of sympathy for student hardships, or if they wanted to avoid exposing students to law enforcement.

Figlio and Özek did not find significant impacts on students’ attendance in the school district they studied, but other recent studies have.

Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor, found a 22% increase in daily absences in the two months after a January immigration raid in California’s Central Valley, an agricultural region with large numbers of immigrant farmworkers. That was a sharp deviation from attendance patterns in previous years.

Absences were higher among elementary students, perhaps because parents worried more about being separated from young children.

Another recent study from Kirsten Slungaard Mumma at Columbia University’s Teachers College found increased absences among English learners in both Connecticut and Rhode Island.

In the past, including under the first Trump administration, interior enforcement more often took the form of large workplace raids, which might affect a large number of families in one community.

In recent months, federal agents have raided apartment complexes, arrested parents and teens outside school buildings, and recently dragged a Chicago child care worker from the center where she worked. The Trump administration did away with a longstanding policy that deemed schools and day cares “sensitive locations” where immigration enforcement was largely prohibited.

Administration officials say they are targeting violent criminals. Public records show that many of those detained have no criminal record or committed only minor offenses. ProPublica documented at least 170 incidents in which federal immigration agents detained U.S. citizens, sometimes for days.

“This is an era of immigration enforcement unlike any in recent memory in terms of its intensity and scope,” Dee said. From a research standpoint, acute events like the Central Valley raids are easier to study — there’s a distinct before and after — but immigration enforcement now is an “everywhere and always” phenomenon, he said.

Figlio and Özek try to account for that by tracking increases in immigration arrests by country of origin, identifying schools with a higher percentage of students from those countries, and comparing test scores in schools that serve more and less affected communities.

One Latino mother in Chicago, who lives in a part of the city that’s been targeted by federal immigration agents, said her son traditionally earned As and Bs and is taking several advanced courses this year as a high school sophomore. She’s now noticing more Cs. (Chalkbeat is not identifying the mother due to the sensitivity of her situation and privacy concerns.)

The family doesn’t go out as much, the mother said. Her son is watching videos of alleged ICE activity on social media, and hearing from friends who are worried their families will be targeted by ICE. One of her son’s teachers told her, “before he was more participative and turning everything in, and now sometimes he falls asleep,” she said.

Figlio said his study doesn’t tell us what U.S. immigration policy should look like, but it does point to places where students may need more support.

“Educators are responsible for educating all the students who go to school,” he said. “School districts might want to put more resources into schools that have a lot of foreign-born students and students from the countries that are subject to more enforcement, and not just for the kids who are foreign-born but for everyone.”

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Reema Amin contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

IEPs, cheating, and math: MagicSchool’s founder on the potential and perils of AI

2025-11-06T22:30:28+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Adeel Khan was a former principal looking for his next act. It was late 2022 and ChatGPT had just been released. As he began to tinker with it, Khan had a revelation: Artificial intelligence could make teachers’ jobs dramatically easier. He decided to launch a company, MagicSchool, to help teachers harness the technology.

Today, MagicSchool is one of the most popular AI tools used by teachers. It offers a user-friendly interface where teachers can create worksheets, give students feedback on their writing, and create classroom presentations. The tool is powered by ChatGPT and Claude, another major AI tool.

MagicSchool has raised $60 million from investors and has a staff of 160. The company also has 20,000 schools that pay for the premium product. A basic version is free.

Khan says that 3.5 million U.S. educators have signed up to use MagicSchool, though he acknowledges that’s an overestimate of its true user base. In October, about 700,000 teachers in the U.S. actively used MagicSchool, he said. (There are about 4 million teachers in the country.)

I wanted to speak to Khan because his company is at the leading edge of the AI-inspired shifts in American education. I was curious whether he shared concerns about students, and even teachers, offloading their thinking to the technology. His answer was yes, somewhat to my surprise.

We also discussed whether it’s appropriate to use AI to write special education plans and AI’s struggles in math. These struggles were apparent when I tested out MagicSchool.

To continue reading, click here.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

3 ways AI will (and won’t) change schools

2025-11-04T15:49:53+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up to attend our first virtual event focusing on new insights from learning loss data with Emily Oster.

At a recent education technology conference in New York City — where companies were hawking their products and speakers were predicting great benefits from artificial intelligence — one attendee offered something of a heretical perspective.

“Right now, as it is, AI has had a net negative impact on students,” said Dacia Toll, co-founder of Coursemojo, an AI-powered teaching assistant.

Later, Toll told me that she’s convinced that there are many potential benefits of AI in education.

“It’s going to be a complex situation — there are going to be bad use cases, good use cases,” she said. “The jury is out on what the net impact will be.”

At this moment, our understanding of the impact of generative AI in schools is muddy and uncertain. But some clear realities are emerging. These are my three theories for what AI will and won’t mean in classrooms over the next several years.

Cheating is a big problem and it’s not going away

Ask a high school student or their teachers about AI, and there’s a good chance they will say that an alarming number of teenagers are using AI to write their essays, solve their math problems, and finish their assignments.

In one recent survey, fully 100% of high school principals said they were concerned about “academic integrity” challenges created by AI. A majority reported being “very concerned.”

Cheating is difficult to quantify, so it’s hard to prove there’s been an increase in it. AI advocates emphasize that cheating is not a new phenomenon. What is new is that generative AI has made it easier and therefore more tempting.

“The degree to which you can relatively easily find students who will tell you that they are doing complete assignments — and large numbers of them — entirely with this machine is different,” says Justin Reich, an MIT professor and ed-tech expert. He recently hosted a podcast series called “The Homework Machine” based on interviews with dozens of teachers and students. The theme: Many students are taking advantage of this innovative new cheating tool.

The implications are troubling. Some students are simply doing less work and learning less. Even a majority of high school students in one poll said they fear AI will harm their critical thinking.

In turn, classroom trust may be falling as teachers become worried about cheating and students fear being falsely accused. “You become a paranoid person. You distrust every single thing your students give you,” Sara Falls, a high school English teacher, explained on one of Reich’s podcast episodes.

It’s hard to see a clear way out of this conundrum. Efforts by teachers to monitor misuse lead to counterefforts to avoid detection, often with the help of sophisticated cheating tools.

Many teachers want more support, but most say they’re getting little. In the next few years we will see if schools start creating systematic strategies to combat cheating or if teachers continue to be left largely on their own.

AI will become a ubiquitous teaching assistant

Sandy Mangarella, a high school English teacher in New Jersey, used to spend upwards of an hour apiece on letters of recommendation for her students. Now, with artificial intelligence a letter takes only a few minutes.

“I write really good ones now, even better than I used to,” she says. Mangarella, who has been teaching for 44 years, typically uses AI multiple times a week for other things too, like brainstorming lesson ideas or getting a second take on a student essay.

Teachers are text generation machines. They are constantly drafting worksheets, classroom newsletters, special education plans, rubrics, presentations, notes home, quizzes, essay outlines, exit tickets, take-home work packets, and more. What generative AI is very good at is producing text.

AI is not yet a daily part of the work life for most teachers. Only 1 in 8 use it on a weekly basis for teaching-related work, according to a recent poll. About half don’t use it at all. Yet the experiences of Mangarella and others suggest that as more teachers get comfortable with the technology, AI will become a common, perhaps universal assistant for educators.

This comes with some risks. Teachers themselves could engage in the “cognitive offloading” we fear for students, using less care putting together lessons or relying on lower-quality material. Some advocates also worry about bias, particularly if AI is drafting special education plans.

But the upside of AI as a teacher’s assistant is substantial: It could free up teacher time — one of the most valuable commodities in schools.

AI will never be a supertutor (but it could help some students)

At last month’s ed-tech conference in New York City, OpenAI’s Vice President and General Manager of Education Leah Belsky touted the great benefits of tutoring. “We all aspire for every student to have that one-on-one tutoring experience,” she said. “ChatGPT and AI could one day make that possible.” This could be incredibly impactful, Belsky said, citing a 1984 study that claimed tutoring could vault the average student to the 98th percentile of performance.

This paper, by the late University of Chicago professor Benjamin Bloom, has been the touchstone of technologists for decades. The hope has been that technology can replicate the value of a human tutor at a fraction of the cost. I learned about this work several years ago when computer-based “personalized learning” advocates, like Mark Zuckerberg, were citing it.

Yet those aspiring for such dramatic learning gains from AI are likely to be disappointed. This was the case for personalized learning enthusiasts.

Through a spokesperson, Belsky of OpenAI declined to comment for this piece.

The problem is that Bloom’s results were wildly unrealistic, as detailed in a 2024 Education Next article. Gains of such size have not been widely replicated on math and reading tests. Bloom only found these improvements when applied to the novel subjects of cartography and probability. Modern studies of large-scale human tutoring programs show it is one of the most effective strategies for boosting learning — but results are about a tenth the size of what Bloom reported.

It’s risky for AI advocates to tout massive potential gains. “If that’s the bar, then the current AI capabilities are not set up to achieve that goal,” says Toll of Coursemojo, noting that AI is not as good as a human tutor. Still, she believes the bar shouldn’t be set unrealistically high and that the technology does have the potential to boost student learning.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Introducing Chalkbeat Ideas

2025-10-27T18:41:55+00:00

Sign up for the Chalkbeat Ideas newsletter to get reported columns on the big ideas changing education.

American schools are at a historic inflection point.

Now more than ever, we need good journalism to understand the convulsive and sometimes confounding trends shaping schools. That’s why we’re launching a new section devoted to explaining, examining, and elevating ideas about the policy, politics, and practice of American education.

I’ll be the editor and lead writer for Chalkbeat Ideas. I’m returning to Chalkbeat after two years covering U.S. schools for the Wall Street Journal. While there, I wrote about the efforts to close the federal Education Department, the way technology is changing education, and challenges facing underenrolled school systems. Before that, I helped launch Chalkbeat’s national coverage as the team’s first reporter in 2017, covering education policy and politics, while finding a niche writing about research on improving schools.

I decided to rejoin Chalkbeat because I’m convinced that there is a void in journalism at this moment. The traditional confines of news can make it difficult to step back and examine the big ideas and debates within education.

We’ll still be looking at topics in the news — the potential and perils of AI in schools, the future of the Education Department, the state of learning loss and recovery — but we’ll be taking a step back to offer deeper exploration. We’ll be approaching these and other issues as ideas worth dissecting, debating, and explaining.

In practice, that means we’ll be asking and trying to answer questions like: Why exactly did test scores start to slide even before the pandemic, and what are some solutions? Is AI changing schools and is that exciting, alarming, or both? What can the history of education technology tell us about the future of AI? How and why are Democrats debating each other over education? How should we make sense of Trump’s effort to close the Education Department at the same time he’s increasingly wielding its power?

We’ll also be covering under-the-radar ideas that deserve attention — say, compelling academic research or an intriguing classroom innovation. We’re interested too in the people and institutions that drive the ideas changing schools. And we’ll sometimes be looking backwards to understand how the past, including the unprecedented upheaval in American schools during the pandemic, continues to affect the present.

I’ll be writing a regular column about ideas in education. This will be a bit different than Chalkbeat’s regular news coverage because I’ll share my own perspective and analysis at times. The voice will be mine — sometimes in the first person, as here — rather than the omniscient voice that defines normal news coverage. And we’ll be trying out lots of different formats: explainers, Q&As, book reviews, and events with interesting people. (Don’t worry: Chalkbeat’s existing national coverage isn’t going anywhere. We expect this new section to complement it.)

At the same time, Chalkbeat Ideas will maintain the commitment to rigorous, open-minded reporting and fact-based analysis that defines all of our journalism. Like the rest of Chalkbeat, we’ll be covering this topic as a beat. That means I’ll be talking to people with a variety of perspectives: parents, teachers, policymakers, academics, nonprofit leaders, and anyone else who’s interested in schools and the ideas that shape them.

I’ll also be collaborating with the rest of the Chalkbeat newsroom to elevate interesting ideas and insights from our local bureaus.

We’re still developing this section and I’d love your help. Please consider following our work by signing up for the Ideas newsletter, which will get you access to my columns when they’re published. Sign up to join our first event, a webinar with fresh insights on learning loss and recovery data, featuring Brown University professor Emily Oster.

Finally, reach out to me directly to share your thoughts on how to approach this work.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Students with disabilities have unique rights under federal law. What if they weren’t alone?

2025-10-27T09:01:00+00:00

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Imagine two elementary students: One struggles to read because she has dyslexia. The other struggles to read because she received poor reading instruction.

The first student is entitled to specialized instruction — after an expensive evaluation process. The second student is entitled to nothing.

In a paper released Tuesday by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, education researchers Ashley Jochim and Alexander Kurz argue for rethinking the special education system and creating a legal entitlement to an adequate education for all students.

Jochim, a principal at CRPE, said she was motivated by professional and personal experience. Working on early literacy initiatives in Oakland, she saw teachers overwhelmed trying to address the disparate needs students brought to the classroom. At the same time, she saw her own daughter, who was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, make rapid improvements after switching from a progressive private school to a public school where she received more direct instruction.

“I started to wonder: How many kids are diagnosed with disabilities just because we fail to operationalize good instruction in the classroom?” Jochim said.

CRPE also digitized decades worth of data to chart the rise and fall of certain conditions as eligibility criteria changed. A new data dashboard also released Tuesday shows how widely special education identification varies by state as well.

When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act passed in 1976, 8% of students were identified as students with disabilities, compared with 15% now. Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder; learning disabilities such as dyslexia; and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a condition included under “other health impairment” since 1999, have contributed significantly to that increase.

Jochim said parents fight for diagnoses so their child can get an adequate education. She questions whether so much energy and money would be spent on identification if schools had a legal obligation to provide an adequate education to all students.

Large-scale studies found positive outcomes associated with special education services, including greater academic growth. But CRPE points to test score gaps between special education students and their peers that have widened over time.

The paper comes as the Trump administration is considering moving special education oversight to the Department of Health and Human Services, and after hundreds of staff who worked in civil rights enforcement and special education were laid off from the Education Department.

Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, an advocacy group, called the report’s recommendations flawed and the report itself “politically ill-timed.”

Marshall said addressing broader educational problems should not come “at the expense of the rights of students who need and benefit from the lifeline that IDEA provides.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Jochim about these and related issues. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What were the trends that stood out to you in disability identification and what are the policy implications?

There’s this notion in special ed that identification rates represent some true reflection of the number of kids with disabilities, but it’s really not.

A policy change changes the number of kids identified, but it’s not changing the number of kids who need help in the classroom.

We know from national data that there’s a lot of kids struggling in school right now. The vast majority of those kids are not identified for special ed. And the question is: How are we making determinations about who gets help and how should they get help?

We have a huge achievement gap in this country, and it’s really hard to disentangle. What a learning disability diagnosis does is it asks professional staff to make a judgment about the cause of low achievement. In the case of learning disabilities, we say that the cause is based on an innate difference in the child’s brain. We’re trying to exclude all the kids whose low achievement stems from some other, presumably environmental cause.

And there are costs to this. It’s perpetuated siloes at every level of the system, because it’s a totally different set of rules of the game, totally different set of expectations.

Are you suggesting that too many kids are being identified with disabilities? Are you suggesting that we have a problem with overidentification?

I struggle with that word. There is a group of children who are struggling in school. Some subset of those kids are going to get identified, but there’s a whole bunch of them that look very similar, but they don’t get any help. What does it mean to overidentify? The point is helping kids who need help.

I would like to see us move towards a system which is designed to be responsive to students’ needs. Then we don’t have this problem of trying to understand if we’re over- or under- identifying.

What are the features of a system that helps every kid who needs help?

A lot of what we talk about is very consistent with MTSS [Multi-tiered Systems of Support, a framework schools use to identify struggling students and provide escalating interventions]. But we don’t have the resources to back up an MTSS system in practice.

If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing, it would be to root effective instructional practices into teacher preparation programs so that every teacher walks into their classroom knowing how to manage behavior effectively and knowing how to provide really high quality Tier One reading and math instruction.

To be clear, Tier One is not enough. I firmly believe that kids are going to need different amounts of instruction to reach the same end point, because they start at different points. But it would have a profound impact on the system as a whole.

We have seen some states move to universal screening and universal access to literacy tutoring for kids that are deemed at-risk based on the results of one of these screeners. So that’s an example of how this could work.

You call for the creation of a new needs-based entitlement. What could that look like? And what do you think that would do for students?

There’s a lot of programs that target funding and resources to kids who are educationally disadvantaged in some way. Special education is the only one of those that is structured as an entitlement. Schools are obligated to provide you what you need to succeed at school if you are eligible, and money is not a factor that they can consider in this. If they fail to do so, you go to the courts to seek remedies.

This does not exist for any other group of students in America. A needs-based entitlement would help to solve that problem. It would give families real power.

This is not the way to fix everything wrong in education. But if a parent could sue a district for adopting a math curriculum that is misaligned with the science of good math instruction, I’m betting that more of them would spend time getting up to speed on that science and choosing more wisely.

The Education Department has laid off most of the staff that oversee special education. Many advocates are worried about the loss of civil rights protections. Is this a good time to be questioning the underpinning of the whole system?

I am sympathetic to the concerns of disability advocates, and I want to just acknowledge the grief and the fear that exists in this moment. There’s so much happening, and there’s so much uncertainty that I think there is an impulse to preserve and protect what already exists because it feels threatened.

What I have concluded is that we have a situation in which schools can comply with the law and still fail students.

This is the moment to define the future of special education. When we simply defend what already exists, even though what exists is failing so many kids, that’s what fuels the undercurrent of the politics of resentment, the politics of slash and burn. So we really see it as an antidote to this particular political moment.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

A new study confirms a hunch: School cellphone bans can boost test scores

2025-10-20T12:15:09+00:00

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Charles Longshore distinctly remembers the tipping point that led his Alabama middle school to ban cellphones, two years before the state adopted its own ban.

Longshore, then the assistant principal at Dothan Preparatory Academy, had gotten wind that two girls planned to fight in the courtyard between classes and pulled them into the office about 10 minutes before the scheduled rumble. That prevented the fight, but it didn’t stop hundreds of other students from racing to the courtyard hoping to watch a spectacle advertised through texts and chats, with their own phones out ready to record it.

Stories like these — along with countless less dramatic moments of distraction and disengagement — have made cellphone bans a rare point of bipartisan agreement on education policy. Twenty-six states now have state-level bans or restrictions on cellphone use in schools. Two-thirds of principals said their school had a bell-to-bell ban in a recent RAND Corp. survey.

But so far there hasn’t been much concrete evidence about the impacts of school cellphone bans.

“The policy action is just happening at a level that far surpasses the available evidence,” said David Figlio, an economics professor at the University of Rochester. “The available evidence is largely people’s hunches.”

Figlio and Umut Özek, a senior economist at RAND Corp., a research organization, set out to address that gap. Their study, released Monday as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzes data from a large, county-level urban school district in Florida, which was the first state to adopt a cellphone ban.

The study found modest improvements in test scores in the second year of the ban, after an increase in suspensions in the first year.

The Florida school district had adopted a bell-to-bell ban, more restrictive than the state law, which requires that students not use their phones during instructional time. Students violating the ban had their phones confiscated but got them back at the end of the school day. Students could also face discipline, including suspension, for violating the ban.

Florida students take standardized tests three times a year, and schools report discipline and attendance daily, giving researchers a lot of information to work with.

Using data about cellphone usage coming from each school building, the researchers first identified schools where students used cellphones at higher and lower levels before the ban, which went into effect in 2023. Middle schools had higher cellphone use than high schools before and after the ban.

Researchers then used data from the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years to compare changes in schools with the highest cellphone use before the ban and those with the lowest.

This study design, known as difference within difference, allows researchers to draw stronger conclusions about causality.

In the second year of the ban, average test scores on the higher-stakes spring test went up by 1.1 percentiles more in the schools where students previously used their phones a lot, compared with low-activity schools. The results were more significant for middle and high school students, and boys seemed to benefit more than girls.

But the gains came with tradeoffs. Suspensions went up in the first year of the ban, the study found, especially for Black boys.

And white students saw greater test score growth than Black students.

“Black students seem to be accruing fewer of the benefits of the cellphone ban and more of the disciplinary costs,” Figlio said.

The study can’t answer why Black students — who often face disproportionate discipline — were suspended more often. The increase largely went away in the second year of the ban. Still, Figlio said, the finding calls for schools to be thoughtful about how they approach enforcement.

The study didn’t directly measure school climate — the kind of improvement Longshore and other principals often notice most after they adopt a ban — but researchers did track unexcused absences and students changing schools, potential proxies for how content or safe students feel at school.

Both metrics improved after the cellphone ban was in effect. In fact, the study found that the improvements in attendance contributed to about half the increase in student test scores after the ban.

Figlio called the test score increases “meaningful but not game-changing.”

“It’s not transforming test scores,” he said. “But we’re observing palpable improvement. We’re observing kids attending school more.”

Test score declines blamed on cellphones

American students’ scores on key national and international tests have been trending down for the past decade, well before COVID disruptions. Researchers are not entirely sure why, but one theory is that the rise of cellphone and social media use among children has had deleterious cognitive and social effects.

“We lack direct evidence of a causal link between smartphones and learning, but I’m convinced that this technology is a key driver of youth mental health challenges, a distraction from learning, both inside and outside of schools, and a deterrent to reading,” Harvard education professor Martin West told the Senate education committee at a hearing last month.

Because social media wasn’t introduced to children through a randomized controlled trial, it’s hard to isolate the effects, West said at the hearing. Cellphone bans provide an opportunity to study what happens when social media is removed from the school environment.

Girls Athletic Leadership School, a Denver middle school, collects cellphones and other devices at the start of the school day.

But West urged policymakers and parents to address social media use outside of school as well. A study published in JAMA earlier this month found that children who used more social media did worse in reading, vocabulary, and memory tests in their early teen years than those who used little or no social media.

Figlio said he’s prepared to say that cellphones are a driver of test score declines, but there’s not enough evidence to say whether they’re the primary driver.

Longshore, whose school was not involved in the study and who had not read the study when he spoke to Chalkbeat, said state test scores didn’t change significantly after the school started requiring students to leave their phones in a lockbox all day. The school maintained its trajectory of slow but steady growth.

But far fewer students failed their classes, he said. Longshore referred roughly 80 students to summer school the year before the ban. This past summer, it was just 20.

Longshore, who left Dothan at the end of last school year to take a principal job in another district, didn’t suspend students who violated the ban. Instead, after the first offense, the school would hold onto the phone until a parent could pick it up. At a high-poverty school where many parents work multiple jobs, students might go days without their phones — and the parent usually made sure the child didn’t bring it to school again.

With chronic absenteeism already high, Longshore said the last thing he wanted was more students out of class as a result of the ban.

And in fact, discipline at the school improved significantly. There was less drama, Longshore said, and far fewer fights. The lunchroom got loud again with students talking to their classmates.

Future research on cellphone bans could dig into school climate surveys or examine academic or discipline data in different school contexts, Figlio said. The question of impact is “not asked and answered,” he said.

“I care a lot about test scores, but I care even more about kids’ life outcomes — graduating high school, attending college, workforce participation,” he said. “These are things we won’t know for a while.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani’s $12 million teacher hiring plan: Tuition aid for 3-year commitment to NYC schools

2025-10-15T19:18:03+00:00

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To help New York City hire thousands of extra teachers to lower class sizes, mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani wants to offer prospective educators tuition assistance in exchange for a commitment to teach three years in city schools, he said Wednesday.

The plan, one of only a handful of K-12 education proposals Mamdani has put forward in the runup to November’s mayoral election, would bring in roughly 1,000 extra teachers a year at an annual cost of $12 million, he said at a press conference outside an elementary school in Astoria, Queens, the area he represents in the state assembly. Mamdani said savings from cutting contracts and bloat within the Education Department’s bureaucracy would cover the cost.

Under the state’s 2022 class size law, all city classrooms must meet the designated caps of between 20 and 25 students by 2028 — an effort that will require both carving out new space and hiring thousands more educators.

All told, the city will have to hire nearly 18,000 additional teachers to meet the law’s demands, according to estimates from the Independent Budget Office.

“This city faces an urgent question of where and how will we find them,” Mamdani said.

The Democratic socialist was flanked by Queens State Sen. John Liu, one of his early endorsers and a chief architect of the state’s class size law, along with officials from the city teachers union, which backed Mamdani after the Democratic primary and was a major force in lobbying for the state class size law.

“The teachers we have are doing incredible work, but we need to ensure that we ask them to do a job that is in fact possible, and one key part of that is ensuring that they have a limited number of students in their classroom,” he said.

City officials embarked on an unprecedented hiring spree starting last spring to meet the legal requirement of bringing at least 60% of classrooms citywide under the caps by this fall.

The Education Department doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funding to over 700 schools to hire roughly 3,700 new teachers needed to lower class sizes. That’s on top of the 4,000 to 5,000 teachers schools hire each summer to fill vacant positions.

By the end of September, city schools had hired around 6,300 teachers for this school year. That’s up from roughly 4,800 hired over the same period last year, but city officials didn’t respond to a question about whether it was enough to meet the mandated caps.

Mamdani plan builds on existing programs

Mamdani’s proposal is similar to some existing programs like NYC Men Teach and New York City Teaching Fellows that subsidize tuition or offer an expedited path into the teaching profession.

K-12 education has largely taken the back burner in the mayoral election, but attracted some attention in recent weeks after Mamdani made a controversial proposal to eliminate kindergarten admissions for gifted and talented programs.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s running as an independent and has sought to contrast his education plans with Mamdani’s, has also proposed similar teacher recruitment plans, including growing NYC Teaching Fellows, investing more in “Grow Your Own” programs, and offering tuition assistance for future teachers and career changers.

Mamdani’s plan, which he calls “Community to Classroom,” would offer two tracks: one for high school students who can get college credits, mentorship, and up to $12,000 a year in tuition assistance if they commit to teaching in city schools. The other is for career changers, who would also receive $12,000 in tuition assistance to take adult education courses through CUNY or SUNY.

In addition to tuition assistance, program participants would get free OMNY cards, support on certification exams, and mentorship from current city teachers.

Mamdani didn’t immediately offer details about which contracts or central costs he would cut to achieve the savings needed to fund the program.

He acknowledged the program would not meet the city’s full teacher need for the class size law, but said he hopes to expand the program in the future and improve retention of existing teachers.

City officials have already leaned on programs like Teaching Fellows to boost hiring numbers, doubling the size of that program’s cohort from 500 last summer to 1,000 this summer.

Former First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg, who led teacher recruitment efforts in New York City before stepping down this summer, said that while he hasn’t reviewed Mamdani’s plan, effective efforts to boost hiring should combine “targeted recruiting, tuition subsidies, and support.”

Pointing to programs like the Teaching Follows program, he said “there’s no telling how much we could scale them up effectively” but is “confident we could do it significantly.”

Teacher hiring won’t be enough at overcrowded schools

Even if the city reaches its elevated hiring goals in the coming years, hundreds of schools are too crowded to meet the class size caps. Those schools will need to either find additional space or cut their student numbers by capping enrollment — a strategy the city so far has not embraced.

Mamdani criticized Mayor Eric Adams for doing too little to plan ahead for those schools — and vowed to fill vacant positions in the School Construction Authority to speed new school projects.

“My first order of business will be to exhaust every single option we have in front of us,” he said.

Mamdani, who has said little about who is eyeing as his schools chief, praised current Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos for her “creativity” and “ingenuity” in seeking to meet the class size law’s demands so far.

“I think she has been doing a good job,” Mamdani said when asked if he might keep Aviles-Ramos in the position. “I will consider anyone on the basis of the work that they have done, not hold it against them as to who appointed them as to who appointed them to that job.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

How this Tennessee teacher builds student confidence through show lambs and bees

2025-10-15T11:30:00+00:00

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While growing up on a livestock production farm in Arkansas, Megan Clegg probably couldn’t imagine how her upbringing would translate into a career years later.

She first used her degree in agriculture to work in veterinary science while she coached competitive gymnastics, before she dipped her toes into substitute teaching at Northwest High School, located in northwest Clarksville, Tennessee.

After an administrator encouraged her to become a certified teacher, Clegg realized she was qualified for a transitional license to teach students the subject she’d been steeped in her entire life.

“As a teenager, I was an avid 4H member and always wished that my high school had an agriculture program so I could have been a Future Farmers of America member,” Clegg said. “There is a lot of irony in me becoming an agriculture teacher. I am blessed to give students something that I always wanted when I was their age.”

After 14 years at Northwest, Clegg has helped build a robust agriculture program, imparting her passion for sustainability not just inside the classroom but by developing a school farm.

Clegg says her class prepares some students for post-graduation jobs in agriculture.

Clegg draws on her background in vet science to teach Clarksville teens animal husbandry, working with sheep and cattle, while classes also help maintain school bee hives. Students also take on the responsibilities of caretaking land and animals, repairing fences and managing groundskeeping.

“The farm idea all started because I was asking for permission to keep a few animals on the school campus,” Clegg said.

The farm has helped teach hard work and discipline, Clegg said, in addition to showing students school beyond a desk.

Though Montgomery County was once a rural area of Tennessee, Clarksville has risen as one of the fastest growing and rapidly developing cities in the state. As farmland dwindles in the area, Clegg is even more committed to spark a connection between the land and her students.

“People need to understand and know where their food is coming from for agriculture to be protected and live on to future generations,” Clegg said.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What is your favorite agriculture lesson to teach, and why?

Animal husbandry lessons are my favorite to teach. The basic care and reproduction of animals are essential to successful agriculture, and these are the lessons that usually intrigue the students the most. I also think I enjoy these lessons the most because they link to my personal experience of growing up on a farm and working at a veterinary clinic. The class discussions and student questions during these lessons are exciting as an educator.

What other topics/lessons does Northwest’s agriculture program include, and why do you think it is an important offering for high schoolers?

My fourth-year course includes the opportunity for students to obtain an industry certification in animal science along with hands-on experience working on the school’s farm. These seniors get a taste of what it is to work on a farm and with livestock. The students spend time with the show lambs and cattle, checking the health of the bee hives, building and maintaining fences, and basic groundskeeping.

Many of these students plan to work in an animal field upon graduating high school and this course is a resume builder. Time spent on the farm makes these students more marketable in any applicant pool.

Clegg's students help maintain the farm's beehives and care for various other animals.

Do you have a memorable teaching moment where you saw a student really connect with the subject or build a relationship with agriculture outside of the classroom?

Since my time at Northwest, the agriculture department along with the help of wonderful community members have developed a school farm. One of the opportunities that the farm has provided is the development of a livestock show team. We participate in local livestock shows, and the farm provides a place for students to house and train their animals to prepare for the shows.

This has provided opportunities to many of the students but one student particular stands out. This young man came into my class with no agriculture experience or connection. In the three years that I had him in class, he went from a very reserved student to the kid in the show ring, showing livestock animals with confidence.

He learned so much from the show team program. His mother even shared that she was no longer concerned about sending him off to college because his level of responsibility had grown so much from being a part of the show team.

Your school is in a once rural area of Clarksville. Do you feel the location and community affects what and how you teach agriculture lessons, and vice versa?

Clarksville is growing faster and faster, and a lot of the farmland is being developed into homes. I do not have many students who are directly connected to agriculture, which is why I feel the importance of my job is growing. The further students are removed from the origin of their food source, the more that they need to be educated on agriculture.

The community I teach in is very supportive of our agriculture program and have shown a lot of support to help us grow. They have been instrumental to the development of the school farm and livestock show team. My senior level students utilize the farm almost daily during the school day. The farm has allowed for my students to have more hands-on learning opportunities.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how do you put it into practice at work?

Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed, from Proverbs. I strive to have a growth mindset and remember to reach out for advice and help no matter how small or large the project or situation. It is a blessing that the agriculture community in my area is made up of some of the best people I know, and they are all willing to share their expertise with me. The district that I teach in is also a wonderful network of support to reach out and seek wise counsel.

What advice would you give other teachers interested in incorporating sustainability and agriculture lessons in their work?

I advise other teachers to network within their local agriculture community. Working with local agriculturists has been one of the smartest things that I have done to help students make connections with agriculture and sustainability. One activity that I started a few years ago with my older students is a farm tour series. We visit local farms and agriculture businesses and hear how agriculture is working within our community both on a large scale and small scale. These visits really show the students the opportunities that are here locally for them to enter the field of agriculture.

If you have a student who comes into the class disinterested in agriculture, how do you help them connect with the material?

I start with getting to know them as a person and find out their interests. Usually from there, I am able to find a connection between what they like or plan to do in the future to agriculture. Agriculture is everywhere and most people do not realize these connections. And if that fails, I have still developed a relationship with the student and then they tend to at least start to see and understand the value and importance of agriculture. If they can grasp that it is important to their future, even if they do not want to go into the industry, they become a more willing participant in the learning.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

NYC high school applications: Your essential guide to navigating the admissions process

2025-10-07T17:30:09+00:00

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The clock is ticking.

New York City’s high school applications opened Tuesday, giving families of eighth graders two months to sort through 700 programs at 400 schools across the five boroughs.

Navigating the process often requires time and savvy to sign up for tours and open houses and figure out what might be the best fit for your child. And not to stress out families even more, but if you’re only starting now, you’re a bit behind. Tours started in September. Open houses at many schools have already filled up.

“Don’t wait for a counselor or PTA meeting; or a DOE information session to start your research,” said Laura Zingmond, senior editor at InsideSchools, a free resource that offers nuanced reviews of schools across the city. “Exploring schools should be your main focus throughout October and November.”

Applications are due Dec. 3, and offers are expected to be sent by March 5, 2026.

Families might have their make-or-break criteria: Do they want their kids to stay local or can they commute more than an hour each way? Is a volleyball team a must-have? Do they want a school with a strong robotics program?

But a family’s wants or needs aren’t the only factor given the level of competition for certain schools, many of which screen students based on GPAs from seventh grade.

With such a labyrinthine admissions process, many families are hungry for information and often seek help from their school’s counselors, other parents, or even through paid consultants.

“NYC high school admissions are citywide, but support is hyperlocal and uneven,” Zingmond said. “Knowing the rules and deadlines is only half the battle.Figuring out which schools to apply to is the real work.”

Chalkbeat talked to experts with years of experience helping families to help make sense of the process, and provide insights on what questions to consider when ranking schools.

New York City has lots of selective programs with different entry requirements

The city is home to more schools that screen students based on academic performance than other large school districts nationwide.

Roughly 120 programs “screen” students based on seventh grade GPAs in core subjects. About two dozen also use essays and interviews. Roughly two dozen programs require auditions. Eight schools base admissions solely on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, and the application process for these schools, along with LaGuardia High School, is completely separate from the rest of the process.

About 45 schools are part of the city’s “Diversity in Admissions” program, setting aside a portion of seats for students from low-income families, English learners, or other underrepresented groups. Schools also set aside a certain number of seats for students with disabilities.

You can rank an unlimited number of high school programs, but make an ‘informed list’

Like last year, families can rank an unlimited number of schools on their list.

To help build those lists, families should understand their child’s “random” number, often referred to as a “lottery” number. Their child’s “tier” also can help families understand their odds at certain selective schools, with children in tier 1 having a better chance. (The tier cutoffs were tweaked slightly this year, with tier 1 for students in the top 15% of their school’s eighth graders or with a GPA above 94.33 in seventh grade core classes.)

“The hardest part of admissions is the research,” said Joyce Szuflita, a consultant with NYC Schools Help. “Reaching beyond the usual suspects is a challenge for even the most experienced and energetic families.”

While specific school names or interests can help students identify schools, many 12- and 13-year-olds don’t have a deep interest yet, she said. They just want “a nice normal well-rounded school.”

MySchools includes a helpful applicant-to-offer ratio for general education students as well as for students with disabilities. For example, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, a coveted school on the Upper East Side that gives priority to families living in Manhattan, had 29 applications per seat for general education students, and six applications per seat for students with disabilities.

MySchools also shows your odds of getting into various programs.

Once your MySchools account is active and complete — along with your child’s grades sorted into the “tiered” groups for screened schools, ED Opt group (needed for certain schools), and random number — you will be able to see up to three bars, showing whether you have a high, medium, or low chance of getting into a particular program.

While it’s fine to list programs that show a low likelihood of getting in — no matter what order you rank them — Szuflita advises families to have at least three programs showing a high likelihood somewhere on your list “to make sure that you get a placement from the schools you prefer.”

Go on NYC school tours — and take your child when possible

Many middle schools know their eighth graders might miss class for high school tours, and some schools organize their own tours. It’s not always easy to get time off of work for school visits, but experts agree that it can be helpful to see schools in person.

Pamela Wheaton, a co-founder of InsideSchools who now runs School Scout NYC, suggested buddying up with other families to spread the work, sharing information and offering to take their child on tours when you can and vice versa.

“There’s nothing like seeing a school in action and getting a feel for the building and vibe, as well as the commute,” Wheaton said. “I look at the work on the walls and also the bulletin boards which list upcoming activities. You get such a good sense of the school’s energy.”

Consider schools a little out of your comfort zone — and cover your bases

That’s the advice Szuflita gives to families.

“If your child has only been in small progressive schools, consider something a little bigger and more traditional or vice versa,” she suggested. “Many parents feel like if it is not broken, don’t fix it, but if your child can potentially do well in a different environment, a view of a wider world (different population, commute, size, pedagogy) is as much a part of their education as the subjects they will be studying.”

The variety of experiences, she said, can help provide students with insights into their strengths and preferences when considering their next steps to college and beyond.

Wheaton advises families to cover their bases if their child has an arts talent or is willing to prep for the SHSAT.

“That way they will have more chances at acceptances and may end up being able to choose between several schools,” she said, adding “There are a few good charter high schools too and that gives yet another option.”

Don’t dismiss the academics at arts programs

Parents of very academic — and talented — kids might think that schools requiring auditions don’t focus enough on academics or that such schools might not be a good fit for a college-bound kid who isn’t interested in an arts career.

But that’s not so, Wheaton said.

“Many audition schools offer excellent academics and are a good place for kids to excel in both,” she said. “Taking arts classes leads to a well-rounded college applicant and helps students become more focused and happy.”

A lot of schools have gender imbalances

Families are often surprised to learn that many programs have significant gender imbalances. Arts programs, for instance, skew female, while tech-focused schools skew male.

Roughly 17% of the city’s high schools were at least 65% male or female, meaning boys outnumbered girls 2 to 1 or vice versa, a 2023 Chalkbeat analysis found.

“It may not make a big difference for some students, but it is something that is worth being aware of when looking at school culture,” Szlufita said.

There’s more to a school than its graduation rate

A high graduation rate might not translate into a strong academic program, Zingmond said. She’s talked to families at schools that don’t offer physics or their children have to take language or advanced courses online. There are also a lot of great career and technical programs, but at some, not many students graduate with the CTE endorsement, she said.

Zingmond’s preferred metric to look at: the College and Career Readiness, or CCR, rate, which takes into account how students do after four years at the school in terms of their grades, advanced courses completed, and certifications earned for CTE schools. She advises to look for schools that have a College and Career Readiness rate at or above the citywide average of 52%.

“And yes, there are plenty of schools that don’t screen for grades with strong academics reflected in good CCR scores,” she said, noting that InsideSchools includes the stat on all high school profile pages.

Parents and students: Double-check your application

Some parents may not realize that they can apply separately to different programs at one high school, Wheaton said.

“If there’s a school you really like, apply to as many of the programs as makes sense for your child. It will improve their chance of acceptance,” she advised.

Zingmond’s main advice: Seek help.

“Everyone — parents and students — needs help,” she said. “Talk to your counselors and families in your community. Check out school websites; attend open houses and borough fairs.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado’s 2026 Teacher of the Year is Greeley social studies teacher Stephen Paulson

2025-10-02T22:43:24+00:00

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Social studies teacher Stephen Paulson was named Colorado’s 2026 teacher of the year on Thursday — the first ever winner from the Greeley-Evans school district.

Paulson, who teaches at Greeley Central High School, was mobbed with celebrating students after a Thursday morning ceremony in the school’s gym.

A high school teacher for 11 years, Paulson has led the school’s Advancement Via Individual Determination or AVID program, which helps many first-generation students prepare for college and careers. He also spearheaded a mentorship project that matches 10th graders with local professionals and launched a school cleanup project that turned into a broader service effort.

Greeley Central High School students rally around teacher Stephen Paulson after he was named Colorado's 2026 Teacher of the Year on Thurs.

Paulson was among 419 applicants for the 2026 Colorado Teacher of the Year Award. State officials announced 22 semifinalists in June and eight finalists in September. As part of his award, he’ll receive a $5,000 check from the Boettcher Foundation. During his term as Colorado Teacher of the Year, which starts in January, he’ll attend NASA space camp.

Paulson will also represent Colorado in the National Teacher of the Year competition. Janet Damon, a Denver teacher who is the 2025 Colorado Teacher of the Year, was one of four finalists selected for the national award last year. A high school English teacher from Pennsylvania was named the winner in April.

Paulson was described as a dedicated teacher who makes students feel seen and helps them realize their potential, according to a press release from the Colorado Department of Education.

Student Rodrigo Garcia, in a letter submitted to the state on Paulson’s behalf, wrote, “He pushes us not because he has to, but because he believes and has even more faith in us than we have in ourselves. … Mr. Paulson isn’t only preparing us for the next grade level, but for life. We will forever be grateful for him.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

‘Absolutely devastating’: Rural schools say $100K visa fee could make it hard to hire teachers

2025-10-01T19:32:06+00:00

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The Kuspuk School District owns two small planes and employs a pilot to stay connected with schools spread across 12,000 square miles along the Kuskokwim River in western Alaska.

And to keep those schools staffed, the remote school district works with its own immigration attorney.

Some 60% of Kuspuk’s certified teachers come from the Philippines. That includes all of the special education teachers and all of the teachers at five of the district’s eight currently operating schools. (A ninth school is temporarily closed.)

Most of those teachers hold J1 visas, a cultural exchange visa that allows people to work in the United States for up to five years before returning to their home countries. But a growing number in Kuspuk and in rural districts around the United States hold H1B visas, which allow for longer-term work. That matters in tight-knit rural communities, where connection is key but teacher turnover is high.

Last month, President Donald Trump issued an order to impose a $100,000 fee on new applications for H1B visas, part of a broader effort to restrict immigration and preserve opportunities for Americans. The order focuses on tech sector jobs, which account for the majority of H1B visa holders and where critics argue that foreign-born engineers and programmers have crowded out Americans.

Proponents say that companies can afford the fee if they’re bringing on truly exceptional employees who will generate more than that in profit — otherwise those jobs should go to American workers. But the fee could make it nearly impossible for rural and underserved districts like Kuspuk to hire enough teachers for hard-to-fill jobs, district leaders said.

Kuspuk Superintendent Madeline Aguillard said many of the American teachers she hires are inexperienced new graduates, and many don’t stay long. Grow-your-own programs that train people from small communities to be teachers hold promise, but they’re slow. The international teachers who work in her district’s far-flung villages aren’t a short-term stop gap, she said. They’re a critical part of the long-term workforce — and they stay for years.

“We are able to hire more experienced teachers,” she said. “I have multiple teachers with doctorates. They max out our pay scale. They are top-notch teachers that we can put in front of our kids.”

Susan Nedza, superintendent of the Hoonah district in southeast Alaska, recently hired three teachers on H1B visas to fill positions in special education and high school English and math that had sat vacant for an entire school year. A $100,000 fee would be “absolutely devastating,” she said.

“No district could afford that even for one teacher, much less multiple teachers,” Nedza said. “We would have so many students without teachers.”

Teachers on visas make up a relatively small share of the total teacher workforce and of the H1B program. Federal data analyzed by Chalkbeat indicates at least 2,000 H1B visas sponsored by school districts and charter networks were approved this year. Those teachers work for large districts like New York City, Dallas, Chicago, and Denver, and they work in one-room schoolhouses in Montana.

Many of them work in hard-to-fill positions like secondary math and science, bilingual education, and special education, but in rural districts they can be found in nearly every role, including working as principals in Kuspuk. The large majority of them come from the Philippines, where teachers are fluent in English and the educational system is similar to the United States.

While J1 teachers typically work with an agency that helps place them at no cost to the district, school districts already take on considerable administrative costs and fees — anywhere from $3,000 to $20,000 per teacher candidate, according to superintendents — to sponsor H1B visas. Some superintendents say it’s worth it to hire teachers who can work in their districts long-term. In Alaska, districts have been forced to use the H1B program after J1 agencies stopped placing teachers in school districts off the road system, where amenities, housing, and access to medical care are scarce.

The School Superintendents Association is hoping to secure an exemption from the fee for K-12 educators. The proclamation allows Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to waive the fee for certain sectors if she finds that it is “in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

“Clearly I’m biased, but I think making sure all children have access to quality educators would be of the greatest national interest,” said Tara Thomas, senior government affairs manager for the superintendents’ group.

Whatever the dynamics are in the tech sector, they don’t apply to rural schools, said Tobin Novasio, superintendent of the Hardin school district in Montana. He’s not outsourcing American jobs or undercutting wages, he said. On the contrary, teachers on visas tend to earn more because they have more experience and education.

“The mindset is that this is a Silicon Valley thing where this is a quarter-million-a-year engineering job, and they’re bringing in an Indian engineer to do it for half the price,” Novasio said. “That’s just not the situation.”

Hardin serves about 1,800 students, most of them on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. Out of 150 certified teachers, 27 are on J1 visas and two are on H1B visas, with a third H1B visa pending. Fully half of Novasio’s special education teachers are visa holders.

“The value of the H1B and the reason we’ve been trying to find pathways, is that once they’re here, they can stay here and stay part of the community,” Novasio said.

Districts are working to increase the supply of American teachers, he said, but it’s a slow process.

“We’ve been very deliberate in building relationships with our local colleges,” Novasio said. “We’ve started a para pathway and have four people in that program. We’re starting an apprenticeship program. We increased our starting salary by $5,000. We’re trying everything we can.”

H1B visas allow districts more stability

The Kuspuk School District had always struggled with staffing, Aguillard said, but Alaska schools used to be able to draw teachers from the lower 48 with higher salaries, even if they didn’t stay long.

But other states have raised their pay — and milk doesn’t cost $16 a gallon in Washington State. The villages in the Kuspuk district are only accessible by plane or, in the summer, by boat. Some villages don’t have stores, and some teachers have to live in their schools because there isn’t any other housing.

“It’s difficult to get here, it’s difficult to live here, it’s difficult to function here,” Aguillard said.

She hired her first international teacher after she had four of five special education teacher positions open and didn’t receive a single application from an American teacher. That teacher, Dale Ebcas, came from the Philippines and is still with the district six years later. He works with preschool through second grade students at Joseph and Olinga Gregory Elementary School in Kalskgag and helps with case management for high school students. With support from Aguillard and the district’s immigration attorney, he was able to convert his J1 visa to an H1B, a difficult process.

It wasn’t an easy adjustment — “I had never seen snow,” he said — but Ebcas said he was drawn to the small class sizes, low student-teacher ratios, and opportunities for professional growth, along with a competitive pay scale. He fully intended to return to the Philippines at the end of his tour, but as he approached his fifth year, the district didn’t want to lose him and he didn’t want to leave his students.

“It takes time to build relationships and trust,” Ebcas said. “It’s really important for the students here. With the community being so welcoming, I really wanted to continue and help the kids.”

Ebcas hopes the federal government considers the needs of rural and underserved schools.

“If exemptions are not given, it would really close the doors for international teachers who bring their skills and knowledge,” he said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica atemeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

How one bilingual Chicago Public Schools graduate became a dual language educator in the district

2025-09-29T22:02:26+00:00

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Yehiri Gonzalez first heard about a new program to shepherd Chicago students into teaching careers at the height of the pandemic. After receiving an email from the school district, the then-high school senior and her friends debated whether the program could be real.

Gonzalez was intrigued.

The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she had spoken little English in the early grades and struggled to keep up, at one point leaning on a tutor who came to the shelter where she had stayed for a time. She credits growing as a student and getting into the highly selective Lane Tech College Prep High School to finding peers and educators who shared and understood her background. She wanted to offer that support to other students.

As it turned out, the program, known as Teach Chicago Tomorrow, was no scam. It was a new district partnership with City Colleges of Chicago and Illinois State University that offered students financial assistance, academic guidance, and eventually, priority for CPS teaching jobs.

Gonzalez became one of 20 students in the program’s first cohort in 2021. She was one of five to graduate with an education degree in four years and begin teaching this fall. Another five are still on track to graduate in the next couple of years.

In total, 246 students have enrolled in the program, including a record 102 who started this fall. The district’s goal is triple the number of CPS grads it hires to teach each year, from about 140 to more than 500.

After graduating from Illinois State University and student-teaching at Talcott Elementary on Chicago’s Northwest Side, Gonzalez returned to the school in August as a sixth grade teacher in its dual language program. She spoke with Chalkbeat about being an English learner in CPS, making it through Teach Chicago Tomorrow, and learning to lead her own classroom over the past month.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What stands out the most about your experience as a student in Chicago Public Schools?

What stands out is the experience of being an English language learner. It can be hard to accept the fact that you’re an English learner if you are born and raised here. That was a big part of growing up for me, and I know that many of my classmates had that similar experience of feeling like a weird English language learner. I do belong in this program because I don’t speak English, but then I don’t belong, because why don’t I know English? Obviously, I do not think that anymore.

When I was a child, I really loved being in a bilingual program. I was in the program up until third grade, and I had a really good sense of community and belonging even though I was transferring constantly. Especially if the teachers looked like me and spoke the same language as me, I felt an even greater, more authentic connection.

Do you have a memory that captures just how challenging it was to be an English learner at the time?

When I was in fourth grade, I got put into a monolingual English program. All my classmates spoke English. My teacher only spoke English. I had a really challenging time, especially because the school community did not look like me, and I felt like I didn’t belong there. How do I connect with these people? How can I create a friendship? How can I learn in this environment? Because of that language barrier, I didn’t understand what I was doing most of the time. I remember getting straight Fs that year.

You were learning English and also for a time living in a shelter. How did you navigate that?

At the shelter, we were learning English for a bit. It was a little bit more basic, and it was whenever we had the chance to do it, because sometimes the hours and the timing were difficult for me. But there was some support there, and sometimes they had things like homework help. But when I was in fourth grade, I was not living in the shelter anymore, so that actually made it more difficult to get any support outside of school.

How did you eventually find your stride as a student and your way into Lane Tech, one of the most selective high schools in CPS?

In fifth grade, I got put into a different school. It was also monolingual English, but I felt more connected because there were more people who looked like me and spoke my language, and I didn’t feel ashamed of speaking Spanish. I felt more comfortable trying to speak and write English. In fifth grade and sixth grade, I had already adapted to English, so that I was helping the newcomers who had just arrived. I was translating all the work to Spanish for them.

As a person who’s first generation and the oldest in my family, I didn’t know what selective enrollment was at all. In eighth grade, there was a mentor from the nonprofit City Year. Her name was Colleen. She said, “You have really good grades, and there are different types of high schools that you can go to.” She walked me through the process. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have been successful in getting into Lane or even trying to apply.

When did you first start thinking about becoming a teacher and why?

It was something that I always had in the back of my mind. I’m the oldest of four, so I was always helping my siblings with school. In middle school, I would help the newcomers translate their work. When I was in high school and we had service learning hours, I would volunteer at the local park and help fundraise money for kids so that they would have access to programming. So I found myself going into education because I really wanted to help and let students have that authentic connection and someone who represents them in their classroom.

How did you find your way into the Teach Chicago Tomorrow program?

My friends who are in the program and I always joke about this. It was COVID, the winter of 2020-2021. Everyone is trying to figure out where you’re going in the middle of a pandemic. All of a sudden, we get this email from CPS that says, “Do you want to be a teacher? Join a Q & A session for the Teach Chicago Tomorrow initiative.” And we’re like, “This sounds too good to be true.”

I remember speaking with my counselor at Lane, and she said, “It’s a new program. That’s why no one has heard of it, but you should definitely apply. I think you would be a good fit for it.” I got in, and I met other people who had that same mentality as me, who were products of CPS, who wanted to teach at CPS, and who were bilingual and first generation. We were really able to connect and learn from each other. And all of us are educators today, teaching in CPS.

How much academic, financial, and other support did you get through the program?

My first two years, I went to community college at Truman virtually. I was able to have support from a program partnered with Teach Chicago Tomorrow called Supporting Emerging Educator Development. They explained, “This is what community college looks like. These are the classes that you need to take to successfully connect to Illinois State University.”

They helped us get access to mental health resources. We were also able to get academic help through One Million Degrees (a nonprofit that provides academic, personal, and other support to City Colleges students). We had access to staff who were able to support us through our transition to Illinois State. Every single credit that I took at Truman went into my Illinois State degree so I was able to finish my bachelor’s in four years.

The district says that the program is set up so ideally, students can complete it without paying any tuition or fees. Is that how it played out in your case?

Through CPS, I connected to Lincoln Park Zoo, and I interned there. Then they hired me as a part-time educator. I worked at the zoo for three years, and then because of Teach Chicago Tomorrow, we were offered positions in the CPS Tutor Corps initiative that started in 2021.

They also have some scholarships, but it really depends. You get a scholarship your first two years of community college, but when you transfer out, you don’t have that scholarship anymore. I’m a Golden Apple scholar as well, so that’s how I paid for school.

This fall you are teaching sixth grade at Talcott. What have these first weeks of leading your own classroom been like?

It’s been a lot of trial and error. How do we make sure that students give their input and their value? For example, when I graded their math classwork, instead of just giving them a grade, I asked them, “What does it look like to get an A in this classroom?” Co-creating those norms and expectations together helps them see, “I know that I can do this because we came up with it together and have that mutual agreement.”

They are taking initiative in their own learning and becoming more independent. Thankfully, I have the students that I student-taught last year. So I’m able to better support them and pick up off where I left off last year.

Do you feel that during this first month, you’ve learned something about teaching that you can’t necessarily pick up taking classes or even student-teaching?

I feel like a lot of it is making decisions on the spot. You learn a little bit about that during your student-teaching, but you still have support from someone else. Being by yourself and having to do everything on your own, it’s a lot of, “Wow, I have to really make this decision quickly, and what’s the best decision?”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

How NYC educators are pushing the joys of ‘cellphone-free’ over fears of ‘cellphone ban’

2025-09-22T21:34:39+00:00

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Two weeks into the school year, Manhattan school social worker Jessica Chock-Goldman spotted about 20 students huddled in the courtyard during lunch. Her first thought: a student had smuggled in a cellphone.

As part of New York’s statewide ban on personal internet-enabled devices, Bard High School Early College had just rolled out its cellphone collection policy, and Chock-Goldman was prepared for students to test its limits.

She approached the group and made a surprising discovery. They were marveling at a baby bird nestled inside of a plant.

She called it the “perfect fairy-tale story example” of how the cellphone ban has opened up new opportunities for students to engage with the world and with each other.

“It’s truly more socializing than I’ve seen in my 10 years working in a high school,” she said.

As students adapt to the “bell-to-bell” ban on cellphones in schools, parents, educators, and mental health workers have already noticed benefits — from stronger social connections and improved focus to fewer fights and incidents of bullying.

Still, not all students are on board with the changes, and adults are working to support them through the transition, figuring out ways to better respond to their emotional needs and trying to shift their mindset by using language like “cellphone free” instead of “cellphone ban” to emphasize students’ freedom from their devices.

“The word ‘ban,’ the word ‘don’t,’ the words ‘take away’ — kids don’t want to hear that. Even as adults, we don’t want to hear that,” said Whitney Walton, a social worker and professional development facilitator at Counseling In Schools, a nonprofit that places mental health professionals in New York City schools.

Students check their phones after dismissal from the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan.

KIPP NYC College Prep High School in the Bronx began enforcing its own “bell-to-bell” ban on cellphones in 2023. Instead of calling it a ban, the school used the term “electronic free zone” and reinforced it with regular student check-ins.

“I would just ask them, ‘Well, what do you think? How do you think the cellphone-free zone has shifted?’” Principal Monica Samuels said.

At first, students were quiet, but over time, they became more vocal about the benefits, she said, especially in the classroom.

Abrielle, a 17-year-old senior, said she has developed a better relationship with her teachers.

“ Sometimes when I was confused and I wasn’t sure, I would search it up on my phone, but now I just ask my teachers,” she said.

Highlighting these kinds of positive outcomes will be key to a smoother transition, said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling In Schools. He urged adults to “put the emphasis on freedom” and help students see the opportunities that come from being less tied to their devices.

City and state leaders have already made an effort to focus on the positive aspects of the new law. Recently, New York City Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos described banning cellphones as creating “distraction-free zones.”

And Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled “Frankie Focus,” a fuzzy, neon-green mascot, during an appearance at a Brooklyn middle school as part of her ongoing campaign to promote the ban.

“He is very focused on learning in school, focused on the teachers, focused on making friends,” Hochul said about the mascot.

Despite these and other efforts to make the ban more palatable to students, some still don’t like it.

“It’s kind of bad, honestly,” said Danny Diaz, a sophomore at A-Tech High School in Brooklyn.

Danny said the school day drags on now without access to personal devices.

“It can get boring sometimes … to socialize because you have nothing to talk about,” the 15-year-old said.

Schools work to ease communication fears about cellphone ban

Many schools are collecting and storing phones, while others let students keep their devices locked in cloth Yondr pouches. Some of the city’s largest high schools have opted for velcro pouches, including Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Townsend Harris, and Edward R. Murrow High School. These less expensive options block the internet but don’t have locks. Other schools allow students to store their devices in their own lockers.

According to the Department of Education, roughly 820 schools are using pouches, about 600 employ some type of storage bin, and approximately 550 rely on classroom collection methods.

A group of friends check their phones after dismissal from the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan.

Under the new law, schools must explain how students, families, and schools can communicate in the event of an emergency.

KIPP NYC College Prep uses DeansList, a system it relied on before the ban. Murrow and Townsend Harris use a messaging system called GAMA (Townsend Harris also uses Jupiter), and Brooklyn Tech uses the NYC Schools Account app.

Some schools, like Beacon High School in Manhattan, have delayed implementation of the ban as they work through logistical concerns.

“[W]e first need time to build the communication systems that ensure student and parent comfort,” Principal Jeannie Ferrari wrote to teachers and families before the start of the school year.

As Beacon rolls out its cellphone policy later this fall, the school will use the Kinvo texting app, which allows parents to stay in touch with staff and receive important messages. Beacon’s main office landline and school email will also remain available.

Beacon’s principal did not respond to an interview request.

Chock-Goldman, Bard Manhattan’s social worker, said this fall is a transition for parents as well as students.

“I do think a lot of this is parent anxiety,” she said. “ I do believe schools have the ability to be in touch with parents if anything happens.”

Walton said cellphones often function as modern-day “transitional objects” — not unlike stuffed animals that children may hold close as they gain independence or cope with stressful life events.

She said she’s noticed some schools take that into account in their rollout of the policy. For example, some are encouraging students to decorate their Yondr pouches.

Allowing KIPP students to carry their cellphones — even though they are locked in Yondr pouches — helped ease the transition not just into a phone-free school but also back to in-person learning after COVID, Samuels said.

“ Initially it was like a security blanket. And I understand because they were required to be on screen for a year-and-a-half, so it was a big shift for them,” she said.

Students check their phones after dismissal from the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan.

Two years into the ban, Samuels said the changes didn’t come without challenges.

“We collected hundreds of burner phones the first year,” Samuels said, laughing.

One student even charged classmates a dollar to unlock pouches using a gadget, she said, prompting staff to communicate and enforce clear consequences.

KIPP senior Yaovi, 17, said that transition to a phone-free school wasn’t easy at first.

“I didn’t know what to do with the free time that I had when I wasn’t on my phone,” he said.

But over time, he noticed he was earning better grades and developing stronger friendships.

“Honestly, I would say be patient with it,” he advised other students.

Seyma Bayram is a New York City-based journalist. You can reach her at sbayram@chalkbeat.org.

Brain breaks and fairy wings: Why an all-girls model works so well for this Denver middle school

2025-09-18T23:37:18+00:00

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A throng of seventh graders huddled on the dirt path surrounding their school’s athletic field. They were about to run a timed mile, and they were buzzing with excitement.

“Are you ready?” a teacher shouted.

“We were born ready!” the students shouted back.

It was a Thursday morning at the Girls Athletic Leadership School, an all-girls charter middle school in Denver, where the students run the mile three times a year. Their enthusiasm to participate in a ritual that many tweens dread on a sunny 80-degree day exemplifies their enthusiasm for their school, known affectionately as GALS.

At a time when enrollment in Denver Public Schools has shrunk, enrollment at GALS is growing. GALS opened in 2010 and has about 250 students this year, up 35% from the 187 it had three years ago but lower than its pre-pandemic high of 325. GALS is open to both girls and genderqueer youth and is the only single-gender public school in the city.

Efforts to expand the model have failed. A GALS high school lasted 10 years before closing this past spring due to low enrollment. An all-boys spinoff, called The Boys School of Denver, was open for just three years before it closed in 2020 for the same reason.

The closures are part of a pattern. Declining enrollment has caused 15 Denver charter schools to shutter in recent years. Ten district-run schools have closed for low enrollment as well.

From left: Sixth graders Maisie and Drew smile as they work together during their English language arts class at Girls Athletic Leadership School.

So why does GALS — which combines the camaraderie of summer camp with the academic principles of small class sizes, frequent movement breaks, and lessons in relationship-building — work so well for middle school girls?

“The success of GALS middle school is because the design was around rethinking how middle school works, and has worked forever, for specifically this group of people,” GALS Principal Leah Bock said. “In middle school, girls learn to be small, physically and emotionally. We want them to be loud. We want them to run in the hallway. We want them to say what they feel, in an honest space that is protected for them.”

The research on single-gender schools is mixed. Some studies show all-girls schools boost girls’ self-confidence and academic achievement. Other research finds that separating boys and girls reinforces gender stereotypes and makes students more anxious about coed environments. A 2014 metaanalysis by the American Psychological Association found that single-gender schools offer girls no advantages over coed schools.

But that research doesn’t seem to matter to GALS students and their families. Moms describe the school as magical. Girls say it’s a place where they’re seen and heard — and where they don’t have to fight for attention.

“I’d had a lot of trouble with boys in elementary school,” said Rory Chambers, an eighth grader who started at GALS in sixth grade. “I didn’t want to go through that in middle school — the boys being like, ‘You can’t do that because you’re a girl.’”

Back on the GALS field, the athletic director sounded an air horn. The girls — some wearing fairy wings and tutus over their tank tops and running shorts — took off, kicking up dust.

‘All the students have a voice’

Julie Thornton’s classroom doesn’t have desks or chairs. The math teacher got rid of them as a way to signal to students that in her class, there are no rigid, preconceived notions.

“I want them to play with numbers and not think that perfection is what we’re going for,” Thornton said.

Instead, the girls start on the carpeted floor before they’re up and standing at full-sized whiteboards stationed around the room. On one recent day, they worked in groups to solve increasingly complex division problems. Thornton told them to take turns with the dry erase marker — and when she noticed one girl being left out, she gave her groupmates a reminder.

“All the students have a voice,” Thornton said as she watched the students work. “Sometimes some girls take over, but not to the same extent.”

Not to the same extent as in coed schools, that is. Compared with a typical middle school classroom, Thornton’s seventh grade math class is quiet. When the students do speak, their voices are nearly drowned out by the sound of the air conditioning. Thornton doesn’t like it.

“More sass,” she tells them.

After the group work, Thornton handed out worksheets. When one girl asked if she could sit against the far wall to work on hers, Thornton playfully admonished her.

“You don’t have to ask!” she said. “Be rebellious.”

Julie Thornton, a math teacher at GALS, teaches seventh graders about division.

That same philosophy didn’t work as well at The Boys School. There’s a difference, school leaders said, between building the confidence of girls, whom society expects to be obedient and agreeable, and building the confidence of boys, who get different societal messages.

“With girls, you’re trying to get them to be bigger,” said Bock, who was at GALS when The Boys School opened in 2017. “And you’re trying to do the same thing with boys, but also undo a lot of things, and I don’t know if we nailed that in the same way.”

There were other hurdles for The Boys School. GALS has its own building, but The Boys School rented space in two different churches, which may have made it less attractive to families.

A GALS student draws "superman."

The GALS high school ran into a different set of challenges. GALS expanded into the high school grades because students said they didn’t want to leave. But not enough wanted to stay, either. When the high school closed at the end of last year, it had just 58 students.

At GALS middle school, Jennie-Brenton Burness said she went from a shy sixth grader to an eighth grader who sang in the a capella group and acted in plays. But when it came time for high school, she chose George Washington High, a traditional school with 1,300 students.

“I wanted to test what I learned and put it into action in a community where there would be people louder than me,” said Jennie-Brenton, now a 17-year-old senior. “And with boys.”

‘I move a lot when I learn’

Movement and social-emotional learning are two of the most important parts of the GALS model.

Every class has “brain breaks.” That can involve a game in which students swat a kickball at each others’ shins, or “the chair flip,” in which one girl sits in a chair, gripping the sides, while her classmates try to turn her 360 degrees and a teacher ensures she doesn’t fall.

Each school day starts with 45 minutes of movement, from running to yoga to dance.

“They don’t love all of those ways of movement, but the hope is they find one that really sits with them,” Bock said. “Who wouldn’t want to come and be sleepy in the morning and then have this burst of movement that gets your brain ready for the day?”

Students move while doing schoolwork too. On a recent afternoon, seventh grade literacy teacher Lindsay Drapkin had her students write down examples of metaphors and similes from the novel “The House on Mango Street” and then run across the classroom to show her.

“I move a lot when I learn,” eighth grader Aliyah Morales said. “I can’t sit still for 10 minutes.”

Seventh graders at GALS stretch as they prepare to run the mile.

Aliyah also loves a class called GALS Series that school leaders say focuses on the things adolescent girls should know but no one teaches: How do I be a good friend? How can I stand up for myself without stepping on someone else? How do I decide what I care about?

To teach about how nature and nurture shape people’s identities, teacher Sydney Costa had her eighth graders start last week by analyzing fictional characters. A lot of students chose Meredith Grey, the flawed main character from the medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.” Their homework was to analyze how they’ve been nurtured by answering a series of questions with a family member.

“You feel unique for having that class,” Aliyah said. “It’s kind of like I’m learning so much more about myself than I would in another school.”

Parents love it too. Shellie Chambers is a former middle school teacher. On a tour of GALS when her daughter Rory was in fifth grade, Chambers remembers saying to the GALS staff that she just wanted Rory to survive middle school and “come out whole.”

“They said, ‘Absolutely, but we want more. We want these girls to thrive,’” Chambers said. “That was a shift. Middle school does not need to be these three years we get through.”

On the recent Thursday morning, Bock, the principal, ran the mile with each group of students, setting the pace and finishing first each time. The fastest girls were not far behind her, clocking in at six minutes and 35 seconds.

But the teachers didn’t praise the fast runners any more than the slower ones.

“You slayed!” Bock said to a girl who finished near the back of the pack but scored a personal best. “You beat your time by four minutes!”

The girl smiled big.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.