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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Writing lesson plans has traditionally been a big part of a teacher’s job. But this doesn’t mean they should be starting from a blank slate. Ideally, teachers are supposed to base their lessons on the textbooks, worksheets and digital materials that school leaders have spent a lot of time reviewing and selecting. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a recent national survey of more than 1,000 math teachers reveals that many are rejecting the materials they should be using and cobbling together their own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A surprising number of math teachers, particularly at the high school level, simply said we don’t use the district or school-provided materials, or they claimed they didn’t have any,” said \u003ca href=\"https://crmse.sdsu.edu/members/zahner\">William Zahner\u003c/a>, an associate professor of mathematics at San Diego State University, who \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mathematics-Teachers-Impressions-of-Instructional-Materials-for-English-Learners_-Results-from-a-National-Survey.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">presented the survey at the April 2024 annual meeting\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of the American Educational Research Association in Philadelphia. Students, he said, are often being taught through a “bricolage” of materials that teachers assemble themselves from colleagues and the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What I see happening is a lot of math teachers are rewriting a curriculum that has already been written,” said Zahner. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The survey results varied by grade level. More than 75% of elementary school math teachers said they used their school’s recommended materials, but fewer than 50% of high school math teachers said they did. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cb>Share of math teachers who use their school’s recommended materials\u003c/b>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63659\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63659\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1-160x79.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1-768x378.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Less than half of high school math teachers reported using their school’s recommended instructional materials. \u003ccite>(Source: Zahner et al, Mathematics Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Instructional Materials for English Learners: Results from a National Survey, presented at AERA 2024.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The do-it-yourself approach has two downsides, Zahner said, both of which affect students. One problem is that it’s time consuming. Time spent finding materials is time not spent giving students feedback, tailoring existing lessons for students or giving students one-to-one tutoring help. The hunt for materials is also exhausting and can lead to teacher burnout, Zahner said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The other problem is that teacher-made materials may sacrifice the thoughtful sequencing of topics planned by curriculum designers. When teachers create or take materials from various sources, it is hard to maintain a “coherent development” of ideas, Zahner explained. Curriculum designers may weave a review of previous concepts to reinforce them even as new ideas are introduced. Teacher-curated materials may be disjointed. Separate research has found that some of the most popular materials that teachers grab from internet sites, such as Teachers Pay Teachers, are \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/most-english-lessons-on-teachers-pay-teachers-and-other-sites-are-mediocre-or-not-worth-using-study-finds/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">not high quality\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The national survey was conducted in 2021 by researchers at San Diego State University, including Zahner, who also directs the university’s Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education, and the English Learners Success Forum, a nonprofit that seeks to improve the quality of instructional materials for English learners. The researchers sought out the views of teachers who worked in school districts where more than 10% of the students were classified as English learners, which is the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgf/english-learners#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20public%20school,%2C%20or%204.5%20million%20students).\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">national average\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. More than 1,000 math teachers, from kindergarten through 12th grade, responded. On average, 30% of their students were English learners, but some teachers had zero English learners and others had all English learners in their classrooms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teachers were asked about the drawbacks of their assigned curriculum for English learners. Many said that their existing materials weren’t connected to their students’ languages and cultures. Others said that the explanations of how to tailor a lesson to an English learner were too general to be useful. Zahner says that teachers have a point and that they need more support in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60104/how-to-structure-academic-math-conversations-to-support-english-learners\">how to help English learners develop the language of mathematical reasoning and argumentation\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was not clear from this survey whether the desire to accommodate English learners was the primary reason that teachers were putting together their own materials or whether they would have done so anyway. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There are a thousand reasons why this is happening,” said Zahner. One high school teacher in Louisiana who participated in the survey said his students needed a more advanced curriculum. Supervisors inside a school may not like the materials that officials in a central office have chosen. “Sometimes schools have the materials but they’re all hidden in a closet,” Zahner said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the midst of a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61581/how-a-debate-over-the-science-of-math-could-reignite-the-math-wars\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">national debate on how best to teach math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, this survey is an important reminder of yet another reason why many students aren’t getting the instruction that they need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-many-high-school-math-teachers-cobble-together-their-own-instructional-materials-from-the-internet-and-elsewhere-a-survey-finds/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">math lessons\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Writing lesson plans has traditionally been a big part of a teacher’s job. But this doesn’t mean they should be starting from a blank slate. Ideally, teachers are supposed to base their lessons on the textbooks, worksheets and digital materials that school leaders have spent a lot of time reviewing and selecting. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a recent national survey of more than 1,000 math teachers reveals that many are rejecting the materials they should be using and cobbling together their own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A surprising number of math teachers, particularly at the high school level, simply said we don’t use the district or school-provided materials, or they claimed they didn’t have any,” said \u003ca href=\"https://crmse.sdsu.edu/members/zahner\">William Zahner\u003c/a>, an associate professor of mathematics at San Diego State University, who \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mathematics-Teachers-Impressions-of-Instructional-Materials-for-English-Learners_-Results-from-a-National-Survey.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">presented the survey at the April 2024 annual meeting\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of the American Educational Research Association in Philadelphia. Students, he said, are often being taught through a “bricolage” of materials that teachers assemble themselves from colleagues and the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What I see happening is a lot of math teachers are rewriting a curriculum that has already been written,” said Zahner. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The survey results varied by grade level. More than 75% of elementary school math teachers said they used their school’s recommended materials, but fewer than 50% of high school math teachers said they did. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cb>Share of math teachers who use their school’s recommended materials\u003c/b>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63659\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63659\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1-160x79.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-1-768x378.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Less than half of high school math teachers reported using their school’s recommended instructional materials. \u003ccite>(Source: Zahner et al, Mathematics Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Instructional Materials for English Learners: Results from a National Survey, presented at AERA 2024.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The do-it-yourself approach has two downsides, Zahner said, both of which affect students. One problem is that it’s time consuming. Time spent finding materials is time not spent giving students feedback, tailoring existing lessons for students or giving students one-to-one tutoring help. The hunt for materials is also exhausting and can lead to teacher burnout, Zahner said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The other problem is that teacher-made materials may sacrifice the thoughtful sequencing of topics planned by curriculum designers. When teachers create or take materials from various sources, it is hard to maintain a “coherent development” of ideas, Zahner explained. Curriculum designers may weave a review of previous concepts to reinforce them even as new ideas are introduced. Teacher-curated materials may be disjointed. Separate research has found that some of the most popular materials that teachers grab from internet sites, such as Teachers Pay Teachers, are \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/most-english-lessons-on-teachers-pay-teachers-and-other-sites-are-mediocre-or-not-worth-using-study-finds/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">not high quality\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The national survey was conducted in 2021 by researchers at San Diego State University, including Zahner, who also directs the university’s Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education, and the English Learners Success Forum, a nonprofit that seeks to improve the quality of instructional materials for English learners. The researchers sought out the views of teachers who worked in school districts where more than 10% of the students were classified as English learners, which is the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgf/english-learners#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20public%20school,%2C%20or%204.5%20million%20students).\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">national average\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. More than 1,000 math teachers, from kindergarten through 12th grade, responded. On average, 30% of their students were English learners, but some teachers had zero English learners and others had all English learners in their classrooms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teachers were asked about the drawbacks of their assigned curriculum for English learners. Many said that their existing materials weren’t connected to their students’ languages and cultures. Others said that the explanations of how to tailor a lesson to an English learner were too general to be useful. Zahner says that teachers have a point and that they need more support in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60104/how-to-structure-academic-math-conversations-to-support-english-learners\">how to help English learners develop the language of mathematical reasoning and argumentation\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was not clear from this survey whether the desire to accommodate English learners was the primary reason that teachers were putting together their own materials or whether they would have done so anyway. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There are a thousand reasons why this is happening,” said Zahner. One high school teacher in Louisiana who participated in the survey said his students needed a more advanced curriculum. Supervisors inside a school may not like the materials that officials in a central office have chosen. “Sometimes schools have the materials but they’re all hidden in a closet,” Zahner said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the midst of a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61581/how-a-debate-over-the-science-of-math-could-reignite-the-math-wars\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">national debate on how best to teach math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, this survey is an important reminder of yet another reason why many students aren’t getting the instruction that they need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-many-high-school-math-teachers-cobble-together-their-own-instructional-materials-from-the-internet-and-elsewhere-a-survey-finds/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">math lessons\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>How many times per day do you check your phone? According to Gloria Mark, psychologist and author of \u003ca href=\"https://gloriamark.com/attention-span/\">\u003cem>Attention Span\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, people swipe from screen to screen about 566 times per day, and about half of those switches are self-motivated, meaning they weren’t prompted by a notification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Digital technologies have been innovated quicker than humans are capable of processing, and our new tools and social media are designed to keep us tapping and swiping. This has become an issue that impedes attention span because “the mind has a limited pool of cognitive resources,” said Mark, who is a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine. \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360131519301642#:~:text=Students%20used%20their%20phones%20for,min%20for%20over%20a%20minute.&text=Predictors%20of%20in%2Dclass%20usage,class%20size%2C%20and%20lecture%20organization.\">In a 2019 study\u003c/a> of 84 college students in Korea, Mark’s colleagues found that the students spent 28% of class duration \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62004/so-your-tween-wants-a-smartphone-read-this-first\">distracted on smartphones\u003c/a>. These tech distractions were also associated with lower grades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Mark, most of the time that we spend interacting with digital technology like smartphones is done unconsciously. But our brains like our bodies experience fatigue, and when we are overloaded with an impossible amount of tech distractions, executive function is negatively affected. When executive function is maxed out “it affects our ability to filter out distractions and stay on path,” Mark said during her recent keynote talk at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.learningandthebrain.com/\">Learning and The Brain: Teaching Engaged Brains\u003c/a> conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her research, Mark has identified three myths of attention span and tech use. Understanding these myths can help teachers and parents \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63497/parents-make-mistakes-when-setting-screen-time-rules-for-their-kids-thats-ok\">guide young people\u003c/a> in maintaining – and regaining – focus throughout the school day.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The myth of endless focus\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Mark, the first myth is assuming that when computers are used “we should strive to be focused as long as possible.” That’s not realistic, she said. When we try to focus on rigorous tasks for long periods on screens without taking breaks to restore our cognitive resources, “our minds can also get injured, and it’s called burnout,” she said. Focus is a limited resource and can fluctuate depending on how engaged or challenged a student feels. So, when teachers strike a balance between harder and simpler tasks in the classroom, it gives students a chance to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63497/parents-make-mistakes-when-setting-screen-time-rules-for-their-kids-thats-ok\">regain cognitive and executive function\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The myth of multitasking\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Myth number two of attention span is multitasking. As humans, “we cannot parallel process unless one of those activities is automatic,” said Mark. Not only does multitasking impair accuracy with individual tasks, “the nail in the coffin is that multitasking creates more stress,” she continued. So when students are switching from task to task and from screen to screen, not only is their executive function declining, but their stress levels are rising. In their research, Mark and her colleagues have found “a correlation with the amount of attention shifting and [participants’] reports of perceived stress,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The myth of self-discipline\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The third myth of attention span and tech is that lack of focus is due to low self-discipline. Social media algorithms appeal to our desire to gravitate towards rewards-based social systems, said Mark. For young people, social media can \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62233/how-to-help-your-kids-navigate-social-media-without-getting-lost\">play a big role in social connection\u003c/a>. Receiving affirmation from others is important to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62189/school-shapes-teens-identities-and-relationships-what-role-do-teachers-play\">teens’ identity development\u003c/a>, and social media is highly scalable, so teens also gain social capital from likes and online interactions. Because social media and smartphone use is so time consuming and ingrained in identity building, “there’s this competition of interest between what the teacher is talking about and what your friend is saying on the phone,” Mark said. “And it’s probably way more interesting to pay attention to what your friend is saying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Solutions\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mark sees the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63470/indiana-lawmakers-ban-cellphones-in-class-now-its-up-to-schools-to-figure-out-how\">banning of smartphones\u003c/a> from the classroom as a social equalizer for students in K-12 education. Students should be encouraged to “always put a person, a human being before a smartphone,” said Mark. She said that setting this social standard can appeal to adolescents’ natural desire to be part of a group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finding what might seem like infinite ways to keep students engaged and happy throughout the day can be daunting. But Mark recommended simple teaching strategies like playing short games, incorporating funny and engaging static cartoons throughout a lesson, class-wide meditation and allowing for small group participation. These teaching strategies pair well with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122271/#:~:text=The%20broaden%2Dand%2Dbuild%20theory%20posits%20that%20experiences%20of%20positive,to%20social%20and%20psychological%20resources.\">broaden and build theory\u003c/a>, which hypothesizes that “the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Mark, teachers can help students hone in on their attention by practicing forethought and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63441/10-hacks-to-boost-teens-executive-function-skills-and-manage-screen-time\">imagining a future self\u003c/a>. Because this is a skill that teens have to build from scratch, “for a young person, it could be their future self at the end of the day,” said Mark. Having a sense of concrete future visualization will \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/50947/how-reverse-planning-for-goals-can-help-students-succeed-in-school\">help students stay goal-oriented\u003c/a>, even if the goals seem small. Eventually, goals can be set farther in the future, like planning for the weekend, or even for the next academic semester, she continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During an interview, Mark stressed the importance of the integration of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63390/ai-images-and-conspiracy-theories-are-driving-a-push-for-media-literacy-education\">media literacy\u003c/a> into the curriculum. It is important for young people to learn about the importance of mono-tasking, and dangers of media overuse, said Mark. But it is also imperative that students understand the dangers of misinformation, disinformation and cyberbullying.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>How many times per day do you check your phone? According to Gloria Mark, psychologist and author of \u003ca href=\"https://gloriamark.com/attention-span/\">\u003cem>Attention Span\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, people swipe from screen to screen about 566 times per day, and about half of those switches are self-motivated, meaning they weren’t prompted by a notification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Digital technologies have been innovated quicker than humans are capable of processing, and our new tools and social media are designed to keep us tapping and swiping. This has become an issue that impedes attention span because “the mind has a limited pool of cognitive resources,” said Mark, who is a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine. \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360131519301642#:~:text=Students%20used%20their%20phones%20for,min%20for%20over%20a%20minute.&text=Predictors%20of%20in%2Dclass%20usage,class%20size%2C%20and%20lecture%20organization.\">In a 2019 study\u003c/a> of 84 college students in Korea, Mark’s colleagues found that the students spent 28% of class duration \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62004/so-your-tween-wants-a-smartphone-read-this-first\">distracted on smartphones\u003c/a>. These tech distractions were also associated with lower grades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Mark, most of the time that we spend interacting with digital technology like smartphones is done unconsciously. But our brains like our bodies experience fatigue, and when we are overloaded with an impossible amount of tech distractions, executive function is negatively affected. When executive function is maxed out “it affects our ability to filter out distractions and stay on path,” Mark said during her recent keynote talk at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.learningandthebrain.com/\">Learning and The Brain: Teaching Engaged Brains\u003c/a> conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her research, Mark has identified three myths of attention span and tech use. Understanding these myths can help teachers and parents \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63497/parents-make-mistakes-when-setting-screen-time-rules-for-their-kids-thats-ok\">guide young people\u003c/a> in maintaining – and regaining – focus throughout the school day.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The myth of endless focus\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Mark, the first myth is assuming that when computers are used “we should strive to be focused as long as possible.” That’s not realistic, she said. When we try to focus on rigorous tasks for long periods on screens without taking breaks to restore our cognitive resources, “our minds can also get injured, and it’s called burnout,” she said. Focus is a limited resource and can fluctuate depending on how engaged or challenged a student feels. So, when teachers strike a balance between harder and simpler tasks in the classroom, it gives students a chance to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63497/parents-make-mistakes-when-setting-screen-time-rules-for-their-kids-thats-ok\">regain cognitive and executive function\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The myth of multitasking\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Myth number two of attention span is multitasking. As humans, “we cannot parallel process unless one of those activities is automatic,” said Mark. Not only does multitasking impair accuracy with individual tasks, “the nail in the coffin is that multitasking creates more stress,” she continued. So when students are switching from task to task and from screen to screen, not only is their executive function declining, but their stress levels are rising. In their research, Mark and her colleagues have found “a correlation with the amount of attention shifting and [participants’] reports of perceived stress,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The myth of self-discipline\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The third myth of attention span and tech is that lack of focus is due to low self-discipline. Social media algorithms appeal to our desire to gravitate towards rewards-based social systems, said Mark. For young people, social media can \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62233/how-to-help-your-kids-navigate-social-media-without-getting-lost\">play a big role in social connection\u003c/a>. Receiving affirmation from others is important to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62189/school-shapes-teens-identities-and-relationships-what-role-do-teachers-play\">teens’ identity development\u003c/a>, and social media is highly scalable, so teens also gain social capital from likes and online interactions. Because social media and smartphone use is so time consuming and ingrained in identity building, “there’s this competition of interest between what the teacher is talking about and what your friend is saying on the phone,” Mark said. “And it’s probably way more interesting to pay attention to what your friend is saying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Solutions\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mark sees the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63470/indiana-lawmakers-ban-cellphones-in-class-now-its-up-to-schools-to-figure-out-how\">banning of smartphones\u003c/a> from the classroom as a social equalizer for students in K-12 education. Students should be encouraged to “always put a person, a human being before a smartphone,” said Mark. She said that setting this social standard can appeal to adolescents’ natural desire to be part of a group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finding what might seem like infinite ways to keep students engaged and happy throughout the day can be daunting. But Mark recommended simple teaching strategies like playing short games, incorporating funny and engaging static cartoons throughout a lesson, class-wide meditation and allowing for small group participation. These teaching strategies pair well with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122271/#:~:text=The%20broaden%2Dand%2Dbuild%20theory%20posits%20that%20experiences%20of%20positive,to%20social%20and%20psychological%20resources.\">broaden and build theory\u003c/a>, which hypothesizes that “the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Mark, teachers can help students hone in on their attention by practicing forethought and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63441/10-hacks-to-boost-teens-executive-function-skills-and-manage-screen-time\">imagining a future self\u003c/a>. Because this is a skill that teens have to build from scratch, “for a young person, it could be their future self at the end of the day,” said Mark. Having a sense of concrete future visualization will \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/50947/how-reverse-planning-for-goals-can-help-students-succeed-in-school\">help students stay goal-oriented\u003c/a>, even if the goals seem small. Eventually, goals can be set farther in the future, like planning for the weekend, or even for the next academic semester, she continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During an interview, Mark stressed the importance of the integration of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63390/ai-images-and-conspiracy-theories-are-driving-a-push-for-media-literacy-education\">media literacy\u003c/a> into the curriculum. It is important for young people to learn about the importance of mono-tasking, and dangers of media overuse, said Mark. But it is also imperative that students understand the dangers of misinformation, disinformation and cyberbullying.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Stanford’s Jo Boaler Discusses Her New Book ‘MATH-ish’ and Takes On Her Critics",
"headTitle": "Stanford’s Jo Boaler Discusses Her New Book ‘MATH-ish’ and Takes On Her Critics | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education with a devoted following of teachers who cheer her call to make math education more exciting. But despite all her fans, she has sparked controversy at nearly every stage of her career. Critics say she misrepresents research to make her case and her ideas actually impede students. Now, with a new book coming out in May, provocatively titled “MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is fighting back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This is a whole effort to shut me down, my research and my writing,” said Boaler. “I see it as a form of knowledge suppression.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Academic fights usually don’t make it beyond the ivory tower. But Boaler’s popularity and influence have made her a focal point in the current math wars, which also seem to reflect the broader culture wars. In the last few months, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dei-math-ed-prof-who-helped-get-algebra-banned-in-frisco-is-accused-of-faulty-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tabloids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/jo-boaler-misrepresented-citations\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">conservative publications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have turned Boaler into something of an education villain who’s captured the attention of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770663755149656458\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Elon Musk\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1770659605774786758\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Texas Sen. Ted Cruz\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on social media. Critics have even questioned Boaler’s association with a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/yolande-beckles-scammer-california-education-system\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">former reality tv star\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am the next target,” Boaler said, describing the death threats and abusive email she’s been receiving.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This controversy matters on a much larger level because there is a legitimate debate about how math should be taught in American schools. Cognitive science research suggests that students need a lot of practice and memorization to master math. And once students achieve success through practice, this success will motivate them to learn and enjoy math. In other words, success increases motivation at least as much as motivation produces success. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yet, from Boaler’s perspective, too many students feel like failures in math class and hate the subject. That leaves us with millions of Americans who are innumerate. Nearly 2 out of every 5 eighth graders don’t even have the most basic math skills, according to the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/2022/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (NAEP). On the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-there-is-a-worldwide-problem-in-math-and-its-not-just-about-the-pandemic/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, American 15-year-olds rank toward the bottom of economically advanced nations in math achievement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler draws upon a different body of research about student motivation that looks at the root causes of why students don’t like math based on surveys and interviews. Students who are tracked into low-level classes feel discouraged. Struggling math students often describe feelings of anxiety from timed tests. Many students express frustration that math is just a collection of meaningless procedures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler seeks to fix these root causes. She advocates for ending tracking by ability in math classes, getting rid of timed tests and starting with conceptual understanding before introducing procedures. Most importantly, she wants to elevate the work that students tackle in math classes with more interesting questions that spark genuine curiosity and encourage students to think and wonder. Her goal is to expose students to the beauty of mathematical thinking as mathematicians enjoy the subject. Whether students actually learn more math the Boaler way is where this dispute centers. In other words, how strong is the evidence base?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The latest battle over Boaler’s work began with an anonymous complaint published in March by the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://freebeacon.com/california/san-francisco-cited-this-professor-to-end-8th-grade-algebra-her-research-had-reckless-disregard-for-accuracy-complaint-alleges/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Washington Free Beacon\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the same conservative website that first surfaced plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University. The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.proton.me/urls/P7BYBG7E6R#VCfOpReAcH9F\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">complaint\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> accuses Boaler of a “reckless disregard for accuracy” by misrepresenting research citations 52 times and asks Stanford to discipline Boaler, a full professor with an endowed chair. Stanford has said it’s reviewing the complaint and hasn’t decided whether to open an investigation, according to news reports. Boaler \u003ca href=\"https://joboaler.people.stanford.edu/\">stands by her research\u003c/a> (other than one citation that she says has been fixed) and calls the anonymous complaint “bogus.” \u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">(\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>UPDATE: The Hechinger Report learned after this article was published that Stanford has decided \u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/7e_rCXDM32FOJLk3SkNtc7?domain=stanforddaily.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan style=\"font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>not to open an investigation\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">)\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They haven’t even got the courage to put their name on accusations like this,” Boaler said. “That tells us something.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler first drew fire from critics in 2005, when she presented new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nrich.maths.org/content/id/7011/nrich%20paper.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research claiming that students at a low-income school\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> who were behind grade level had outperformed students at higher achieving schools when they were taught in classrooms that combined students of different math achievement levels. The supposed secret sauce was an unusual curriculum that emphasized group work and de-emphasized lectures. Critics disparaged the findings and hounded her to release her data. Math professors at Stanford and Cal State University \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Articles/v8n1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">re-crunched the numbers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and declared they’d found the opposite result.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler, who is originally from England, retreated to an academic post back in the U.K., but returned to Stanford in 2010 with a fighting spirit. She had written a book, “What’s Math Got to Do with It?: How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject,” which explained to a general audience why challenging, open-ended problems would help more children to embrace math and how the current approach of boring drills and formulas was turning too many kids off. Teachers loved it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler accused her earlier critics of academic \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-professor-goes-public-attacks-over-her-math-education-research\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bullying and harassment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But she didn’t address their legitimate research questions. Instead, she focused on changing classrooms. Tens of thousands of teachers and parents flocked to her 2013 online course on how to teach math. Building on this new fan base, she founded a nonprofit organization at Stanford called youcubed to train teachers, conduct research and spread her gospel. Boaler says a half million teachers now visit youcubed’s website each month.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler also saw math as a lever to promote social justice. She lamented that too many low-income Black and Hispanic children were stuck in discouraging, low-level math classes. She advocated for change. In 2014, San Francisco \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/19433?view_id=47&redirect=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">heeded that call\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, mixing different achievement levels in middle school classrooms and delaying algebra until ninth grade. Parents, especially in the city’s large Asian community, protested that delaying algebra was holding their children back. Without starting algebra in middle school, it was difficult to progress to high school calculus, an important course for college applications. Parents blamed Boaler, who applauded San Francisco for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-how-one-city-got-math-right/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">getting math right\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Ten years later, the city is slated to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/2024-02-14-sfusd-offer-algebra-1-8th-grade-beginning-2024-25-school-year#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20(February%2014%2C%202024,at%20its%20regular%20meeting%20Tuesday.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reinstate algebra for eighth graders\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> this fall. Boaler denies any involvement in the unpopular San Francisco reforms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before that math experiment unraveled in San Francisco, California education policymakers tapped Boaler to be one of the lead writers of a new math framework, which would guide math instruction throughout the state. The first draft discouraged tracking children into separate math classes by achievement levels, and proposed delaying algebra until high school. It emphasized “social justice” and suggested that students could take data science instead of advanced algebra in high school. Traditional math proponents worried that the document would water down math instruction in California, hinder advanced students and make it harder to pursue STEM careers. And they were concerned that California’s proposed reforms could spread across the nation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the battle to quash the framework, critics attacked Boaler for trying to institute “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://blog.independent.org/2023/07/10/californias-flawed-k-12-math-framework/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">woke\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” mathematics. The battle became personal, with some criticizing her \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oxnardsd.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=16044&ViewID=DEDCCD34-7C24-4AF2-812A-33C0075398BC&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=25705&PageID=10939&Tag=&Comments=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">$5,000-an-hour\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> consulting and speaking fees at public schools while sending her own children to private school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Critics also dug into the weeds of the framework document, which is how this also became a research story. A Stanford mathematics professor catalogued a list of what he saw as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research misrepresentations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Those citations, together with additional characterizations of research findings throughout Boaler’s writings, eventually grew into the anonymous complaint that’s now at Stanford.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time the most recent complaint against Boaler was lodged, the framework had already been revised in substantial ways. Boaler’s critics had arguably won their main policy battles. College-bound students still need the traditional course sequence and cannot substitute data science for advanced algebra. California’s middle schools will continue to have the option to track children into separate classes and start algebra in eighth grade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the attacks on Boaler continue. In addition to seeking sanctions from Stanford, her anonymous critics have asked academic journals to pull down her papers, according to Boaler. They’ve written to conference organizers to stop Boaler from speaking and, she says, they’ve told her funders to stop giving money to her. At least one, the Valhalla Foundation, the family foundation of billionaire Scott Cook (co-founder of the software giant Intuit), stopped funding youcubed in 2024. In 2022 and 2023, it gave Boaler’s organization more than $560,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler sees the continued salvos against her as part of the larger right-wing attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. She also sees a misogynistic pattern of taking down women who have power in education, such as Claudine Gay. “You’re basically hung, drawn and quartered by the court of Twitter,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From my perch as a journalist who covers education research, I see that Boaler has a tendency to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/march-13th-2019\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">overstate the implications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of a narrow study. Sometimes she cites a theory that’s been written about in an academic journal but hasn’t been proven and labels it research. While technically true – most academic writing falls under the broad category of research – that’s not the same as evidence from a well-designed classroom experiment. And she tends not to factor in evidence that runs counter to her views or adjust her views as new studies arise. Some of her numerical claims seem grandiose. For example, she says one of her 18-lesson summer courses raised achievement by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/pd/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2.8 years\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People have raised questions for a long time about the rigor and the care in which Jo makes claims related to both her own research and others,” said Jon Star, a professor of math education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Star says many other education researchers have done exactly the same, and the “liberties” Boaler takes are common in the field. “That’s not to suggest that taking these liberties is okay,” Star said, “but she is being called out for it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is getting more scrutiny than her colleagues, he said, because she’s influential, has a large following of devoted teachers and has been involved in policy changes at schools. Many other scholars of math education share Boaler’s views. But Boaler has become the public face of nontraditional teaching ideas in math. And in today’s polarized political climate, that’s a dangerous public face to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The citation controversy reflects bigger issues with the state of education research. It’s often not as precise as the hard sciences or even social sciences like economics. Academic experts are prone to make wide, sweeping statements. And there are too few studies in real classrooms or randomized controlled trials that could settle some of the big debates. Star argues that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/jrme/49/1/article-p98.xml\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more replication studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> could improve the quality of evidence for math instruction. We can’t know which teaching methods are most effective unless the method can be reproduced in different settings with different students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also possible that more research may never settle these big math debates and we may continue to generate conflicting evidence. There’s the real possibility that traditional methods could be more effective for short-term achievement gains, while nontraditional methods might attract more students to the subject, and potentially lead to more creative problem solvers in the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even if \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://notepad.michaelpershan.com/youcubed-is-more-than-just-sloppy-about-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is loose\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with the details of research studies, she could still be right about the big picture. Maybe advanced students would be better off slowing down on the current racetrack to calculus to learn math with more depth and breadth. Her fun, hands-on approach to math might spark just enough motivation to inspire more kids to do their homework. Might we trade off a bit of short-term math achievement for a greater good of a numerate, civic society?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her new book, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/math-ish-jo-boaler?variant=41226038083618\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is doubling down on her approach to math with a title that seems to encourage inexactitude. She argues that approaching a problem in a “math-ish” way gives students the freedom to take a guess and make mistakes, to step back and think rather than jumping to numerical calculations. Boaler says she’s hearing from teachers that “ish” is far more fun than making estimates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’m hoping this book is going to be my salvation,” she said, “that I have something exciting to do and focus on and not focus on the thousands of abusive messages I’m getting.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-stanfords-jo-boaler-book-math-ish-critics/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education with a devoted following of teachers who cheer her call to make math education more exciting. But despite all her fans, she has sparked controversy at nearly every stage of her career. Critics say she misrepresents research to make her case and her ideas actually impede students. Now, with a new book coming out in May, provocatively titled “MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is fighting back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This is a whole effort to shut me down, my research and my writing,” said Boaler. “I see it as a form of knowledge suppression.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Academic fights usually don’t make it beyond the ivory tower. But Boaler’s popularity and influence have made her a focal point in the current math wars, which also seem to reflect the broader culture wars. In the last few months, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dei-math-ed-prof-who-helped-get-algebra-banned-in-frisco-is-accused-of-faulty-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tabloids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/jo-boaler-misrepresented-citations\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">conservative publications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have turned Boaler into something of an education villain who’s captured the attention of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770663755149656458\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Elon Musk\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1770659605774786758\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Texas Sen. Ted Cruz\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on social media. Critics have even questioned Boaler’s association with a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/yolande-beckles-scammer-california-education-system\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">former reality tv star\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am the next target,” Boaler said, describing the death threats and abusive email she’s been receiving.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This controversy matters on a much larger level because there is a legitimate debate about how math should be taught in American schools. Cognitive science research suggests that students need a lot of practice and memorization to master math. And once students achieve success through practice, this success will motivate them to learn and enjoy math. In other words, success increases motivation at least as much as motivation produces success. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yet, from Boaler’s perspective, too many students feel like failures in math class and hate the subject. That leaves us with millions of Americans who are innumerate. Nearly 2 out of every 5 eighth graders don’t even have the most basic math skills, according to the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/2022/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (NAEP). On the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-there-is-a-worldwide-problem-in-math-and-its-not-just-about-the-pandemic/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, American 15-year-olds rank toward the bottom of economically advanced nations in math achievement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler draws upon a different body of research about student motivation that looks at the root causes of why students don’t like math based on surveys and interviews. Students who are tracked into low-level classes feel discouraged. Struggling math students often describe feelings of anxiety from timed tests. Many students express frustration that math is just a collection of meaningless procedures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler seeks to fix these root causes. She advocates for ending tracking by ability in math classes, getting rid of timed tests and starting with conceptual understanding before introducing procedures. Most importantly, she wants to elevate the work that students tackle in math classes with more interesting questions that spark genuine curiosity and encourage students to think and wonder. Her goal is to expose students to the beauty of mathematical thinking as mathematicians enjoy the subject. Whether students actually learn more math the Boaler way is where this dispute centers. In other words, how strong is the evidence base?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The latest battle over Boaler’s work began with an anonymous complaint published in March by the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://freebeacon.com/california/san-francisco-cited-this-professor-to-end-8th-grade-algebra-her-research-had-reckless-disregard-for-accuracy-complaint-alleges/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Washington Free Beacon\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the same conservative website that first surfaced plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University. The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.proton.me/urls/P7BYBG7E6R#VCfOpReAcH9F\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">complaint\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> accuses Boaler of a “reckless disregard for accuracy” by misrepresenting research citations 52 times and asks Stanford to discipline Boaler, a full professor with an endowed chair. Stanford has said it’s reviewing the complaint and hasn’t decided whether to open an investigation, according to news reports. Boaler \u003ca href=\"https://joboaler.people.stanford.edu/\">stands by her research\u003c/a> (other than one citation that she says has been fixed) and calls the anonymous complaint “bogus.” \u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">(\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>UPDATE: The Hechinger Report learned after this article was published that Stanford has decided \u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/7e_rCXDM32FOJLk3SkNtc7?domain=stanforddaily.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan style=\"font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>not to open an investigation\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">)\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They haven’t even got the courage to put their name on accusations like this,” Boaler said. “That tells us something.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler first drew fire from critics in 2005, when she presented new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nrich.maths.org/content/id/7011/nrich%20paper.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research claiming that students at a low-income school\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> who were behind grade level had outperformed students at higher achieving schools when they were taught in classrooms that combined students of different math achievement levels. The supposed secret sauce was an unusual curriculum that emphasized group work and de-emphasized lectures. Critics disparaged the findings and hounded her to release her data. Math professors at Stanford and Cal State University \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Articles/v8n1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">re-crunched the numbers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and declared they’d found the opposite result.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler, who is originally from England, retreated to an academic post back in the U.K., but returned to Stanford in 2010 with a fighting spirit. She had written a book, “What’s Math Got to Do with It?: How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject,” which explained to a general audience why challenging, open-ended problems would help more children to embrace math and how the current approach of boring drills and formulas was turning too many kids off. Teachers loved it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler accused her earlier critics of academic \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-professor-goes-public-attacks-over-her-math-education-research\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bullying and harassment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But she didn’t address their legitimate research questions. Instead, she focused on changing classrooms. Tens of thousands of teachers and parents flocked to her 2013 online course on how to teach math. Building on this new fan base, she founded a nonprofit organization at Stanford called youcubed to train teachers, conduct research and spread her gospel. Boaler says a half million teachers now visit youcubed’s website each month.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler also saw math as a lever to promote social justice. She lamented that too many low-income Black and Hispanic children were stuck in discouraging, low-level math classes. She advocated for change. In 2014, San Francisco \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/19433?view_id=47&redirect=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">heeded that call\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, mixing different achievement levels in middle school classrooms and delaying algebra until ninth grade. Parents, especially in the city’s large Asian community, protested that delaying algebra was holding their children back. Without starting algebra in middle school, it was difficult to progress to high school calculus, an important course for college applications. Parents blamed Boaler, who applauded San Francisco for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-how-one-city-got-math-right/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">getting math right\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Ten years later, the city is slated to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/2024-02-14-sfusd-offer-algebra-1-8th-grade-beginning-2024-25-school-year#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20(February%2014%2C%202024,at%20its%20regular%20meeting%20Tuesday.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reinstate algebra for eighth graders\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> this fall. Boaler denies any involvement in the unpopular San Francisco reforms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before that math experiment unraveled in San Francisco, California education policymakers tapped Boaler to be one of the lead writers of a new math framework, which would guide math instruction throughout the state. The first draft discouraged tracking children into separate math classes by achievement levels, and proposed delaying algebra until high school. It emphasized “social justice” and suggested that students could take data science instead of advanced algebra in high school. Traditional math proponents worried that the document would water down math instruction in California, hinder advanced students and make it harder to pursue STEM careers. And they were concerned that California’s proposed reforms could spread across the nation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the battle to quash the framework, critics attacked Boaler for trying to institute “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://blog.independent.org/2023/07/10/californias-flawed-k-12-math-framework/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">woke\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” mathematics. The battle became personal, with some criticizing her \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oxnardsd.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=16044&ViewID=DEDCCD34-7C24-4AF2-812A-33C0075398BC&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=25705&PageID=10939&Tag=&Comments=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">$5,000-an-hour\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> consulting and speaking fees at public schools while sending her own children to private school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Critics also dug into the weeds of the framework document, which is how this also became a research story. A Stanford mathematics professor catalogued a list of what he saw as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research misrepresentations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Those citations, together with additional characterizations of research findings throughout Boaler’s writings, eventually grew into the anonymous complaint that’s now at Stanford.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time the most recent complaint against Boaler was lodged, the framework had already been revised in substantial ways. Boaler’s critics had arguably won their main policy battles. College-bound students still need the traditional course sequence and cannot substitute data science for advanced algebra. California’s middle schools will continue to have the option to track children into separate classes and start algebra in eighth grade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the attacks on Boaler continue. In addition to seeking sanctions from Stanford, her anonymous critics have asked academic journals to pull down her papers, according to Boaler. They’ve written to conference organizers to stop Boaler from speaking and, she says, they’ve told her funders to stop giving money to her. At least one, the Valhalla Foundation, the family foundation of billionaire Scott Cook (co-founder of the software giant Intuit), stopped funding youcubed in 2024. In 2022 and 2023, it gave Boaler’s organization more than $560,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler sees the continued salvos against her as part of the larger right-wing attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. She also sees a misogynistic pattern of taking down women who have power in education, such as Claudine Gay. “You’re basically hung, drawn and quartered by the court of Twitter,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From my perch as a journalist who covers education research, I see that Boaler has a tendency to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/march-13th-2019\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">overstate the implications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of a narrow study. Sometimes she cites a theory that’s been written about in an academic journal but hasn’t been proven and labels it research. While technically true – most academic writing falls under the broad category of research – that’s not the same as evidence from a well-designed classroom experiment. And she tends not to factor in evidence that runs counter to her views or adjust her views as new studies arise. Some of her numerical claims seem grandiose. For example, she says one of her 18-lesson summer courses raised achievement by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/pd/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2.8 years\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People have raised questions for a long time about the rigor and the care in which Jo makes claims related to both her own research and others,” said Jon Star, a professor of math education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Star says many other education researchers have done exactly the same, and the “liberties” Boaler takes are common in the field. “That’s not to suggest that taking these liberties is okay,” Star said, “but she is being called out for it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is getting more scrutiny than her colleagues, he said, because she’s influential, has a large following of devoted teachers and has been involved in policy changes at schools. Many other scholars of math education share Boaler’s views. But Boaler has become the public face of nontraditional teaching ideas in math. And in today’s polarized political climate, that’s a dangerous public face to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The citation controversy reflects bigger issues with the state of education research. It’s often not as precise as the hard sciences or even social sciences like economics. Academic experts are prone to make wide, sweeping statements. And there are too few studies in real classrooms or randomized controlled trials that could settle some of the big debates. Star argues that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/jrme/49/1/article-p98.xml\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more replication studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> could improve the quality of evidence for math instruction. We can’t know which teaching methods are most effective unless the method can be reproduced in different settings with different students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also possible that more research may never settle these big math debates and we may continue to generate conflicting evidence. There’s the real possibility that traditional methods could be more effective for short-term achievement gains, while nontraditional methods might attract more students to the subject, and potentially lead to more creative problem solvers in the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even if \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://notepad.michaelpershan.com/youcubed-is-more-than-just-sloppy-about-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is loose\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with the details of research studies, she could still be right about the big picture. Maybe advanced students would be better off slowing down on the current racetrack to calculus to learn math with more depth and breadth. Her fun, hands-on approach to math might spark just enough motivation to inspire more kids to do their homework. Might we trade off a bit of short-term math achievement for a greater good of a numerate, civic society?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her new book, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/math-ish-jo-boaler?variant=41226038083618\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is doubling down on her approach to math with a title that seems to encourage inexactitude. She argues that approaching a problem in a “math-ish” way gives students the freedom to take a guess and make mistakes, to step back and think rather than jumping to numerical calculations. Boaler says she’s hearing from teachers that “ish” is far more fun than making estimates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’m hoping this book is going to be my salvation,” she said, “that I have something exciting to do and focus on and not focus on the thousands of abusive messages I’m getting.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-stanfords-jo-boaler-book-math-ish-critics/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every school day, thousands of students are suspended for vague, subjective reasons, such as defiance and disorderly conduct. The Hechinger Report’s investigative team recently took a deep dive into these punishments, based on 20 states for which we were able to obtain data. Our analysis revealed \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/vague-school-rules-at-the-root-of-millions-of-student-suspensions/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more than 2.8 million\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> suspensions and expulsions from 2017-18 to 2021-22 under these ambiguous categories. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s a closer look at some of what we found:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>1. Suspensions for these categories of behavior are incredibly common.\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/hechingers-school-discipline-project-how-we-did-it/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">analysis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> found that nearly a third of suspensions and expulsions reported by states was meted out under these types of categories, which also included insubordination, disruptive behavior, and disobedience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Alabama, educators have 56 categories to choose from as justification for student punishment; a full third in our sample were assigned for one of four vague violations. This is what the state calls them: “defiance of authority,” “disorderly conduct — other,” “disruptive demonstrations,” and “disobedience — persistent, willful.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon, about half or more of all suspensions were classified in similar categories.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src class=\"OWAAutoLink\" height=\"“800”\" width=\"100%\" scrolling=\"yes\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are a few reasons why these categories are so widely used. For one, they often capture the low-level infractions that are most common in schools, such as ignoring a teacher’s direction, yelling in class or swearing. By comparison, more clearcut and serious violations, such as those involving weapons or illegal substances, are rarer. They made up only 2% and 9% of the discipline records, respectively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But experts also say that terms such as disorder or defiance are so broad and subject to interpretation that they can quickly become a catchall. For instance, in Oregon, the umbrella category of disruptive behavior includes insubordination and disorderly conduct, as well as harassment, obscene behavior, minor physical altercations, and “other” rule violations.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>2. Educators classify a huge range of behavior as insubordination or disruption.\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As part of our reporting, we obtained more than 7,000 discipline records from a dozen school districts across eight states to see what specific behavior was leading to suspensions labeled this way. It was a wide range, sometimes even within a single school district. Sometimes students were suspended for behavior as minor as being late to class; others, because they punched someone. And it was all called the same thing, which experts say prevents school discipline decisions from being transparent to students and the greater public. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were some common themes though, behaviors like yelling at peers, throwing things in a classroom or refusing to do work. We developed a list of 15 commonly repeated behaviors and coded about 3,000 incidents by hand, marking whether they described that type of conduct. We used machine learning to analyze the rest. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fewer than 15% of cases, students got in trouble for using profanity, or for talking back, or for yelling at school staff. In at least 20% of cases, students refused a direct order and in 6%, they were punished for misusing technology, including being on their cell phones during class or using school computers inappropriately.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>3. Inequities can be even more pronounced in these ambiguous categories. \u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We know from decades of research and federal data collection that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/disobedience-discipline-and-racial-disparity/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Black students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are more likely to be suspended from school than their white peers. In many places, that is especially true when it comes to categories like insubordination.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Indiana, for example, Black students were suspended or expelled for defiance at four times the rate of white students on average. In 2021-22, eight Black students received this punishment per 100 students, compared with just two white students. In all other categories, the difference was three times the rate.\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Research suggests that teachers sometimes react to the same behavior differently depending on a child’s race. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edens.berkeley.edu/PDF/2strikes.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2015 study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> found that when teachers were presented with school records describing two instances of misbehavior by a student, teachers felt more troubled when they believed\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> a Black student repeatedly misbehaved rather than a white student.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"%E2%80%9Chttps://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/17094851/embed%E2%80%9D\" height=\"“800”\" width=\"100%\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They “are more likely to be seen as ‘troublemakers’ when they misbehave in some way than their white peers,” said Jason Okonofua, assistant professor at University of California-Berkeley and a co-author of the study. Teachers are usually making quick decisions in situations where they are removing a child from the classroom, he said, and biases tend to “rear their heads” under those circumstances.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Similar disparities exist for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/students-with-disabilities-often-snared-by-subjective-discipline-rules/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">students with disabilities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. In all states for which we had demographic data, these students were more likely to be suspended for insubordination or disorderly conduct violations than their peers. In many states, those differences were larger than for other suspensions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>4. Suspension rates vary widely within states.\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further underscoring how much educator discretion exists in determining when or whether to suspend a student, individual districts report hugely different suspension rates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take Georgia, for instance, which allows for students to be punished for disorderly conduct and “student incivility.” In 2021-22, the 3,300-student McDuffie County School System cited these two reasons for suspensions more than 1,250 times, according to state data. That’s nearly 40 times per 100 students. Similarly sized Appling County issued so few suspensions for disorderly conduct and student incivility that the numbers were redacted to protect student privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Editors’ note: The Hechinger Report’s\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/remembering-our-friend-and-colleague-fazil-khan/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fazil Khan\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> had nearly completed the data analysis and reporting for this project when he died in a fire in his apartment building. Read about the\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/fazil-khan-internship-fund/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">internship fund\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> created to honor his legacy as a data reporter. USA TODAY Senior Data Editor Doug Caruso completed data visualizations for this project based on Khan’s work.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-four-things-a-mountain-of-school-discipline-records-taught-us\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">school discipline data\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every school day, thousands of students are suspended for vague, subjective reasons, such as defiance and disorderly conduct. The Hechinger Report’s investigative team recently took a deep dive into these punishments, based on 20 states for which we were able to obtain data. Our analysis revealed \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/vague-school-rules-at-the-root-of-millions-of-student-suspensions/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more than 2.8 million\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> suspensions and expulsions from 2017-18 to 2021-22 under these ambiguous categories. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s a closer look at some of what we found:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>1. Suspensions for these categories of behavior are incredibly common.\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/hechingers-school-discipline-project-how-we-did-it/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">analysis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> found that nearly a third of suspensions and expulsions reported by states was meted out under these types of categories, which also included insubordination, disruptive behavior, and disobedience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Alabama, educators have 56 categories to choose from as justification for student punishment; a full third in our sample were assigned for one of four vague violations. This is what the state calls them: “defiance of authority,” “disorderly conduct — other,” “disruptive demonstrations,” and “disobedience — persistent, willful.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon, about half or more of all suspensions were classified in similar categories.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src class=\"OWAAutoLink\" height=\"“800”\" width=\"100%\" scrolling=\"yes\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are a few reasons why these categories are so widely used. For one, they often capture the low-level infractions that are most common in schools, such as ignoring a teacher’s direction, yelling in class or swearing. By comparison, more clearcut and serious violations, such as those involving weapons or illegal substances, are rarer. They made up only 2% and 9% of the discipline records, respectively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But experts also say that terms such as disorder or defiance are so broad and subject to interpretation that they can quickly become a catchall. For instance, in Oregon, the umbrella category of disruptive behavior includes insubordination and disorderly conduct, as well as harassment, obscene behavior, minor physical altercations, and “other” rule violations.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>2. Educators classify a huge range of behavior as insubordination or disruption.\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As part of our reporting, we obtained more than 7,000 discipline records from a dozen school districts across eight states to see what specific behavior was leading to suspensions labeled this way. It was a wide range, sometimes even within a single school district. Sometimes students were suspended for behavior as minor as being late to class; others, because they punched someone. And it was all called the same thing, which experts say prevents school discipline decisions from being transparent to students and the greater public. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were some common themes though, behaviors like yelling at peers, throwing things in a classroom or refusing to do work. We developed a list of 15 commonly repeated behaviors and coded about 3,000 incidents by hand, marking whether they described that type of conduct. We used machine learning to analyze the rest. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fewer than 15% of cases, students got in trouble for using profanity, or for talking back, or for yelling at school staff. In at least 20% of cases, students refused a direct order and in 6%, they were punished for misusing technology, including being on their cell phones during class or using school computers inappropriately.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>3. Inequities can be even more pronounced in these ambiguous categories. \u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We know from decades of research and federal data collection that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/disobedience-discipline-and-racial-disparity/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Black students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are more likely to be suspended from school than their white peers. In many places, that is especially true when it comes to categories like insubordination.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Indiana, for example, Black students were suspended or expelled for defiance at four times the rate of white students on average. In 2021-22, eight Black students received this punishment per 100 students, compared with just two white students. In all other categories, the difference was three times the rate.\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Research suggests that teachers sometimes react to the same behavior differently depending on a child’s race. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edens.berkeley.edu/PDF/2strikes.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2015 study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> found that when teachers were presented with school records describing two instances of misbehavior by a student, teachers felt more troubled when they believed\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> a Black student repeatedly misbehaved rather than a white student.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"%E2%80%9Chttps://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/17094851/embed%E2%80%9D\" height=\"“800”\" width=\"100%\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They “are more likely to be seen as ‘troublemakers’ when they misbehave in some way than their white peers,” said Jason Okonofua, assistant professor at University of California-Berkeley and a co-author of the study. Teachers are usually making quick decisions in situations where they are removing a child from the classroom, he said, and biases tend to “rear their heads” under those circumstances.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Similar disparities exist for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/students-with-disabilities-often-snared-by-subjective-discipline-rules/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">students with disabilities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. In all states for which we had demographic data, these students were more likely to be suspended for insubordination or disorderly conduct violations than their peers. In many states, those differences were larger than for other suspensions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>4. Suspension rates vary widely within states.\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further underscoring how much educator discretion exists in determining when or whether to suspend a student, individual districts report hugely different suspension rates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take Georgia, for instance, which allows for students to be punished for disorderly conduct and “student incivility.” In 2021-22, the 3,300-student McDuffie County School System cited these two reasons for suspensions more than 1,250 times, according to state data. That’s nearly 40 times per 100 students. Similarly sized Appling County issued so few suspensions for disorderly conduct and student incivility that the numbers were redacted to protect student privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Editors’ note: The Hechinger Report’s\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/remembering-our-friend-and-colleague-fazil-khan/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fazil Khan\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> had nearly completed the data analysis and reporting for this project when he died in a fire in his apartment building. Read about the\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/fazil-khan-internship-fund/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">internship fund\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> created to honor his legacy as a data reporter. USA TODAY Senior Data Editor Doug Caruso completed data visualizations for this project based on Khan’s work.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-four-things-a-mountain-of-school-discipline-records-taught-us\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">school discipline data\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">Imagine interacting with an avatar that dissolves into tears – and being assessed on how intelligently and empathetically you respond to its emotional display.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Or taking a math test that is created for you on the spot, the questions written to be responsive to the strengths and weaknesses you’ve displayed in prior answers. Picture being evaluated on your scientific knowledge and getting instantaneous feedback on your answers, in ways that help you better understand and respond to other questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">These are just a few of the types of scenarios that could become reality as generative artificial intelligence advances, according to \u003c/span>Mario Piacentini, a senior analyst of innovative assessments with the Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">He and others argue that AI has the potential to shake up the student testing industry, which has evolved little for decades and which critics say too often falls short of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53241/how-mastery-based-learning-can-help-students-of-every-background-succeed\">evaluating students’ true knowledge\u003c/a>. But they also warn that the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/59560/how-do-you-stop-cheating-students-hint-tech-isnt-the-only-answer\">use of AI in assessments carries risks\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“AI is going to eat assessments for lunch,” said Ulrich Boser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he co-authored a research \u003ca href=\"https://www.americanprogress.org/article/future-testing-education-artificial-intelligence/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">series\u003c/span>\u003c/a> on the future of assessments. He said that standardized testing may one day become a thing of the past, because AI has the potential to personalize testing to individual students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">PISA, the influential international test, expects to integrate AI into the design of its 2029 test. Piacentini said the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs PISA, is exploring the possible use of AI in several realms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"ul1\">\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">It plans to evaluate students on their ability to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62462/8-free-ai-powered-tools-that-can-save-teachers-time-and-enhance-instruction\">use AI tools\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63390/ai-images-and-conspiracy-theories-are-driving-a-push-for-media-literacy-education\">to recognize AI-generated information\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">It’s evaluating whether AI could help write test questions, which could potentially be a major money and time saver for test creators. (Big test makers like Pearson are already doing this, he said.)\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">It’s considering whether AI could score tests. According to Piacentini, there’s promising evidence that AI can accurately and effectively score even relatively complex student work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">Perhaps most significantly,\u003cb> \u003c/b>the organization is exploring how AI could help create tests that are “much more interesting and much more authentic,” as Piacentini puts it.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">When it comes to using AI to design tests, there are all sorts of opportunities. Career and tech students could be assessed on their practical skills via AI-driven simulations: For example, automotive students could participate in a simulation testing their ability to fix a car, Piacentini said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Right now those hands-on tests are incredibly intensive and costly – “it’s almost like shooting a movie,” Piacentini said. But AI could help put such tests within reach for students and schools around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">AI-driven tests could also do a better job of assessing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46781/three-tools-for-teaching-critical-thinking-and-problem-solving-skills\">students’ problem-solving abilities\u003c/a> and other skills, he said. It might prompt students when they’d made a mistake and nudge them toward a better way of approaching a problem. AI-powered tests could evaluate students on their \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61361/using-poetry-to-sharpen-students-claims-for-argument-writing\">ability to craft an argument\u003c/a> and persuade a chatbot. And they could help tailor tests to a student’s specific cultural and educational context.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“One of the biggest problems that PISA has is when we’re testing students in Singapore, in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s a completely different universe. It’s very hard to build a single test that actually works for those two very different populations,” said Piacentini. But AI opens the door to “construct tests that are really made specifically for every single student.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">That said, the technology isn’t there yet, and educators and test designers need to tread carefully, experts warn. During a recent \u003ca href=\"https://schedule.sxswedu.com/2024/events/PP139207\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">SXSW EDU panel\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said any conversation about AI’s role in assessments must first acknowledge disparities in access to these new tools. (\u003cem>Editor’s note: The panel was moderated by Javeria Salman, one of the writers of this article\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Many schools still use paper products and struggle with spotty broadband and limited digital tools, Turner Lee said: The digital divide is “very much part of this conversation.” Before schools begin to use AI for assessments, teachers will need professional development on how to use AI effectively and wisely, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p5\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">There’s also the issue of \u003ca href=\"https://hbr.org/2019/10/what-do-we-do-about-the-biases-in-ai\">bias embedded in many AI tools\u003c/a>. \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s5\">AI is often sold as if it’s “magic,”\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s4\"> Amelia Kelly\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s6\">,\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s5\"> chief technology officer at SoapBox Labs, a software company that develops AI voice technology, said during the panel. But it’s really “a set of decisions made by human beings, and unfortunately human beings have their own biases and they have their own cultural norms that are inbuilt.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p5\">\u003cspan class=\"s5\">With AI at the moment, she added, you’ll get “a different answer depending on the color of your skin, or depending on the wealth of your neighbors, or depending on the native language of your parents.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s4\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">But the potential benefits for students and learning excite experts such as Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, where she helps develop online assessments. Huff, who also spoke on the panel, said AI tools could eventually not only improve testing but also “accelerate learning” in areas like early literacy, phonemic awareness and early numeracy skills. Huff said that teachers could integrate AI-driven assessments, especially AI voice tools, into their instruction in ways that are seamless and even “invisible,” allowing educators to continually update their understanding of where students are struggling and how to provide accurate feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">PISA’s Piacentini said that while we’re just beginning to see the impact of AI on testing, the potential is great and the risks can be managed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“I am very optimistic that it is more an opportunity than a risk,” said Piacentini. “There’s always this risk of bias, but I think we can quantify it, we can analyze it, in a better way than we can analyze bias in humans.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003ci>This story about \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-ai-could-transform-the-way-schools-test-kids\">\u003cspan class=\"s7\">\u003ci>AI testing\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was produced by \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>The Hechinger Report\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Hechinger’s newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan class=\"s8\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">Imagine interacting with an avatar that dissolves into tears – and being assessed on how intelligently and empathetically you respond to its emotional display.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Or taking a math test that is created for you on the spot, the questions written to be responsive to the strengths and weaknesses you’ve displayed in prior answers. Picture being evaluated on your scientific knowledge and getting instantaneous feedback on your answers, in ways that help you better understand and respond to other questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">These are just a few of the types of scenarios that could become reality as generative artificial intelligence advances, according to \u003c/span>Mario Piacentini, a senior analyst of innovative assessments with the Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">He and others argue that AI has the potential to shake up the student testing industry, which has evolved little for decades and which critics say too often falls short of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53241/how-mastery-based-learning-can-help-students-of-every-background-succeed\">evaluating students’ true knowledge\u003c/a>. But they also warn that the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/59560/how-do-you-stop-cheating-students-hint-tech-isnt-the-only-answer\">use of AI in assessments carries risks\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“AI is going to eat assessments for lunch,” said Ulrich Boser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he co-authored a research \u003ca href=\"https://www.americanprogress.org/article/future-testing-education-artificial-intelligence/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">series\u003c/span>\u003c/a> on the future of assessments. He said that standardized testing may one day become a thing of the past, because AI has the potential to personalize testing to individual students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">PISA, the influential international test, expects to integrate AI into the design of its 2029 test. Piacentini said the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs PISA, is exploring the possible use of AI in several realms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"ul1\">\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">It plans to evaluate students on their ability to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62462/8-free-ai-powered-tools-that-can-save-teachers-time-and-enhance-instruction\">use AI tools\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63390/ai-images-and-conspiracy-theories-are-driving-a-push-for-media-literacy-education\">to recognize AI-generated information\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">It’s evaluating whether AI could help write test questions, which could potentially be a major money and time saver for test creators. (Big test makers like Pearson are already doing this, he said.)\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">It’s considering whether AI could score tests. According to Piacentini, there’s promising evidence that AI can accurately and effectively score even relatively complex student work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li3\">Perhaps most significantly,\u003cb> \u003c/b>the organization is exploring how AI could help create tests that are “much more interesting and much more authentic,” as Piacentini puts it.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">When it comes to using AI to design tests, there are all sorts of opportunities. Career and tech students could be assessed on their practical skills via AI-driven simulations: For example, automotive students could participate in a simulation testing their ability to fix a car, Piacentini said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Right now those hands-on tests are incredibly intensive and costly – “it’s almost like shooting a movie,” Piacentini said. But AI could help put such tests within reach for students and schools around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">AI-driven tests could also do a better job of assessing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46781/three-tools-for-teaching-critical-thinking-and-problem-solving-skills\">students’ problem-solving abilities\u003c/a> and other skills, he said. It might prompt students when they’d made a mistake and nudge them toward a better way of approaching a problem. AI-powered tests could evaluate students on their \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61361/using-poetry-to-sharpen-students-claims-for-argument-writing\">ability to craft an argument\u003c/a> and persuade a chatbot. And they could help tailor tests to a student’s specific cultural and educational context.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“One of the biggest problems that PISA has is when we’re testing students in Singapore, in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s a completely different universe. It’s very hard to build a single test that actually works for those two very different populations,” said Piacentini. But AI opens the door to “construct tests that are really made specifically for every single student.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">That said, the technology isn’t there yet, and educators and test designers need to tread carefully, experts warn. During a recent \u003ca href=\"https://schedule.sxswedu.com/2024/events/PP139207\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">SXSW EDU panel\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said any conversation about AI’s role in assessments must first acknowledge disparities in access to these new tools. (\u003cem>Editor’s note: The panel was moderated by Javeria Salman, one of the writers of this article\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Many schools still use paper products and struggle with spotty broadband and limited digital tools, Turner Lee said: The digital divide is “very much part of this conversation.” Before schools begin to use AI for assessments, teachers will need professional development on how to use AI effectively and wisely, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p5\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">There’s also the issue of \u003ca href=\"https://hbr.org/2019/10/what-do-we-do-about-the-biases-in-ai\">bias embedded in many AI tools\u003c/a>. \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s5\">AI is often sold as if it’s “magic,”\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s4\"> Amelia Kelly\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s6\">,\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s5\"> chief technology officer at SoapBox Labs, a software company that develops AI voice technology, said during the panel. But it’s really “a set of decisions made by human beings, and unfortunately human beings have their own biases and they have their own cultural norms that are inbuilt.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p5\">\u003cspan class=\"s5\">With AI at the moment, she added, you’ll get “a different answer depending on the color of your skin, or depending on the wealth of your neighbors, or depending on the native language of your parents.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s4\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">But the potential benefits for students and learning excite experts such as Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, where she helps develop online assessments. Huff, who also spoke on the panel, said AI tools could eventually not only improve testing but also “accelerate learning” in areas like early literacy, phonemic awareness and early numeracy skills. Huff said that teachers could integrate AI-driven assessments, especially AI voice tools, into their instruction in ways that are seamless and even “invisible,” allowing educators to continually update their understanding of where students are struggling and how to provide accurate feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">PISA’s Piacentini said that while we’re just beginning to see the impact of AI on testing, the potential is great and the risks can be managed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“I am very optimistic that it is more an opportunity than a risk,” said Piacentini. “There’s always this risk of bias, but I think we can quantify it, we can analyze it, in a better way than we can analyze bias in humans.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003ci>This story about \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-ai-could-transform-the-way-schools-test-kids\">\u003cspan class=\"s7\">\u003ci>AI testing\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was produced by \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>The Hechinger Report\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Hechinger’s newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan class=\"s8\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Surprising Effects of $10,000 Pay Hikes for Teachers in Hard-to-Staff Areas",
"headTitle": "The Surprising Effects of $10,000 Pay Hikes for Teachers in Hard-to-Staff Areas | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">School leaders nationwide often complain about how \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/10_17_2023.asp\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hard it is to hire teachers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and how teaching job vacancies have mushroomed. Fixing the problem is not easy because those shortages aren’t universal. Wealthy suburbs can have a surplus of qualified applicants for elementary schools at the same time that a remote, rural school cannot find anyone to teach high school physics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/01623737241235224?journalCode=epaa\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> published online in April 2024 in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis illustrates the inconsistencies of teacher shortages in Tennessee, where one district had a surplus of high school social studies teachers, while a neighboring district had severe shortages. Nearly every district struggled to find high school math teachers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tennessee’s teacher shortages are worse in math, foreign languages and special education\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63490\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63490\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2-160x98.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2-768x473.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A 2019–2020 survey of Tennessee school districts showed staffing challenges for each subject. Tech = technology; CTE = career and technical education; ESL = English as a second language. \u003ccite>(Source: Edwards et al (2024), “Teacher Shortages: A Framework for Understanding and Predicting Vacancies.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>High school math teacher shortages were widespread in Tennessee\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63488\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4-160x36.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4-768x173.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Surpluses of high school social studies teachers were next door to severe shortages\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63489\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3-160x37.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3-768x178.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elementary school teacher shortages were problems in Memphis and Nashville, but not in Knoxville\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63486\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6-160x38.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6-768x184.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63487\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63487\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"143\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5-160x29.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5-768x141.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Perceived staffing challenges from a 2019-20 survey of Tennessee school districts. \u003ccite>(Source: Edwards et al (2024), “A Framework for Understanding and Predicting Vacancies.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Economists have long argued that solutions should be \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.future-ed.org/a-smart-strategy-for-tackling-teacher-shortages/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">targeted at specific shortages\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Pay raises for all teachers, or subsidies to train future teachers, may be good ideas. But broad policies to promote the whole teaching profession may not alleviate shortages if teachers continue to gravitate toward popular specialties and geographic areas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some school systems have been experimenting with targeted financial incentives. Separate groups of researchers studied what happened in two places – Hawaii and Dallas, Texas – when teachers were offered significant pay hikes, ranging from $6,000 to $18,000 a year, to take hard-to-fill jobs. In Hawaii, special education vacancies continued to grow, while the financial incentives to work with children with disabilities unintentionally aggravated shortages in general education classrooms. In Dallas, the incentives lured excellent teachers to high-poverty schools. Student performance subsequently skyrocketed so much that the schools no longer qualified for the bump in teacher pay. Teachers left and student test scores fell back down again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This doesn’t mean that targeted financial incentives are a bad or a failed idea. But the two studies show how the details of these pay hikes matter because there can be unintended consequences or obstacles. Some teaching specialities – such as special education – may have challenges that teacher pay hikes alone cannot solve. But these studies could help point policy makers toward better solutions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I learned about the Hawaii study in March 2024 when Roddy Theobald, a statistician at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), presented a working paper, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://caldercenter.org/publications/impact-10000-bonus-special-education-teacher-shortages-hawai%E2%80%98i\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Impact of a $10,000 Bonus on Special Education Teacher Shortages in Hawai’i\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” at the annual conference of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. (The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal and could still be revised.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the fall of 2020, Hawaii began offering all of its special education teachers an extra $10,000 a year. If teachers took a job in an historically hard-to-staff school, they also received a bonus of up to $8,000, for a potential total pay raise of $18,000. Either way, it was a huge bump atop a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/DOE%20Forms/OTM/TeachersSalarySchedule20-21.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">$50,000 base salary\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Theobald and his five co-authors at AIR and Boston University calculated that the pay hikes reduced the proportion of special education vacancies by a third. On the surface, that sounds like a success, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/hawaii-disability-education-teacher-shortage/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">other news outlets reported it that way\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But special ed vacancies actually rose over the study period, which coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, and ultimately ended up higher than before the pay hike. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What was reduced by a third was the gap between special ed and general ed vacancies. Vacancies among both groups of teachers initially plummeted during 2020-21, even though only special ed teachers were offered the $10,000. (Perhaps the urgency of the pandemic inspired all teachers to stay in their jobs.) Afterwards, vacancies began to rise again, but special ed vacancies didn’t increase as fast as general ed vacancies. That’s a sign that special ed vacancies might have been even worse had there been no $10,000 bonus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As the researchers dug into the data, they discovered that this relative difference in vacancies was almost entirely driven by job switches at hard-to-staff schools. General education teachers were crossing the hallway and taking special education openings to make an extra $10,000. Theobald described it as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These job switches were possible because, as it turns out, many general education teachers initially trained to teach special education and held the necessary credentials. Some never even tried special ed teaching and decided to go into general education classrooms instead. But the pay bump was enough for some to reconsider special ed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hawaii’s special education teacher vacancies initially fell after $10,000 pay hikes in 2020, but subsequently rose again\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63491\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63491\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"493\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-160x101.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-768x485.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The dots represent the vacancy rates for two types of teachers. \u003ccite>(Source: Theobald et al, “The Impact of a $10,000 Bonus on Special Education Teacher Shortages in Hawai‘i,” CALDER Working Paper No. 290-0823)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This study doesn’t explain why so many special education teachers left their jobs in 2021 and 2022 despite the pay incentives or why more new teachers didn’t want these higher paying jobs. In a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/hawaii-disability-education-teacher-shortage/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">December 2023 story in Mother Jones\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, special education teachers in Hawaii described difficult working conditions and how there were too few teaching assistants to help with all of their students’ special needs. Working with students with disabilities is a challenging job, and perhaps no amount of money can offset the emotional drain and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244020918297\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">burnout that so many special education teachers experience\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dallas’s experience with pay hikes, by contrast, began as a textbook example of how targeted incentives ought to work. In 2016, the city’s school system designated four low-performing, high-poverty schools for a new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dallasisd.org/Page/46767\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE)\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> initiative. Teachers with high ratings could earn an extra $6,000 to $10,000 (depending upon their individual ratings) to work at these struggling elementary and middle schools. Existing teachers were screened to keep their jobs and only 20% of the staff passed the threshold and remained. (There were other reforms too, such as uniforms and a small increase in instructional time, but the teacher stipends were the main thrust and made up 85% of the ACE budget.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Five researchers, including economists Eric Hanushek at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and Steven Rivkin at the University of Illinois Chicago, calculated that test scores jumped immediately after the pay incentives kicked in while scores at other low-performing elementary and middle schools in Dallas barely budged. Student achievement at these previously lowest-performing schools came close to the district average for all of Dallas. The district launched a second wave of ACE schools in 2018 and again, the researchers saw similar improvements in student achievement. Results are in a working paper, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://caldercenter.org/publications/attracting-and-retaining-highly-effective-educators-hard-staff-schools\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.” I read a January 2024 version. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The program turned out to be so successful at boosting student achievement that three of the four initial ACE schools no longer qualified for the stipends by 2019. Over 40% of the high-performing teachers left their ACE schools. Student achievement fell sharply, reversing most of the gains that had been made.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For students, it was a roller coaster ride. Amber Northern, head of research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, blamed adults for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/ups-and-downs-dallass-pay-performance-roller-coaster\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">failing to “prepare for the accomplishment they’d hoped for\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, it’s unclear what should have been done. Allowing these schools to continue the stipends would have eaten up millions of dollars that could have been used to help other low-performing schools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And even if there were enough money to give teacher stipends at every low-performing school, there’s not an infinite supply of highly effective teachers. Not all of them want to work at challenging, high poverty schools. Some prefer the easier conditions of a high-income magnet school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These were two good faith efforts that showed the limits of throwing money at specific types of teacher shortages. At best, they are a cautionary tale for policymakers as they move forward. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-when-schools-experimented-with-10000-pay-hikes-for-teachers-in-hard-to-staff-areas-the-results-were-surprising/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">teacher pay\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">School leaders nationwide often complain about how \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/10_17_2023.asp\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hard it is to hire teachers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and how teaching job vacancies have mushroomed. Fixing the problem is not easy because those shortages aren’t universal. Wealthy suburbs can have a surplus of qualified applicants for elementary schools at the same time that a remote, rural school cannot find anyone to teach high school physics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/01623737241235224?journalCode=epaa\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> published online in April 2024 in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis illustrates the inconsistencies of teacher shortages in Tennessee, where one district had a surplus of high school social studies teachers, while a neighboring district had severe shortages. Nearly every district struggled to find high school math teachers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tennessee’s teacher shortages are worse in math, foreign languages and special education\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63490\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63490\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2-160x98.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image2-768x473.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A 2019–2020 survey of Tennessee school districts showed staffing challenges for each subject. Tech = technology; CTE = career and technical education; ESL = English as a second language. \u003ccite>(Source: Edwards et al (2024), “Teacher Shortages: A Framework for Understanding and Predicting Vacancies.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>High school math teacher shortages were widespread in Tennessee\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63488\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4-160x36.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image4-768x173.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Surpluses of high school social studies teachers were next door to severe shortages\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63489\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3-160x37.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image3-768x178.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elementary school teacher shortages were problems in Memphis and Nashville, but not in Knoxville\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63486\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6-160x38.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image6-768x184.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63487\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63487\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"143\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5-160x29.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image5-768x141.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Perceived staffing challenges from a 2019-20 survey of Tennessee school districts. \u003ccite>(Source: Edwards et al (2024), “A Framework for Understanding and Predicting Vacancies.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Economists have long argued that solutions should be \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.future-ed.org/a-smart-strategy-for-tackling-teacher-shortages/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">targeted at specific shortages\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Pay raises for all teachers, or subsidies to train future teachers, may be good ideas. But broad policies to promote the whole teaching profession may not alleviate shortages if teachers continue to gravitate toward popular specialties and geographic areas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some school systems have been experimenting with targeted financial incentives. Separate groups of researchers studied what happened in two places – Hawaii and Dallas, Texas – when teachers were offered significant pay hikes, ranging from $6,000 to $18,000 a year, to take hard-to-fill jobs. In Hawaii, special education vacancies continued to grow, while the financial incentives to work with children with disabilities unintentionally aggravated shortages in general education classrooms. In Dallas, the incentives lured excellent teachers to high-poverty schools. Student performance subsequently skyrocketed so much that the schools no longer qualified for the bump in teacher pay. Teachers left and student test scores fell back down again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This doesn’t mean that targeted financial incentives are a bad or a failed idea. But the two studies show how the details of these pay hikes matter because there can be unintended consequences or obstacles. Some teaching specialities – such as special education – may have challenges that teacher pay hikes alone cannot solve. But these studies could help point policy makers toward better solutions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I learned about the Hawaii study in March 2024 when Roddy Theobald, a statistician at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), presented a working paper, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://caldercenter.org/publications/impact-10000-bonus-special-education-teacher-shortages-hawai%E2%80%98i\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Impact of a $10,000 Bonus on Special Education Teacher Shortages in Hawai’i\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” at the annual conference of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. (The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal and could still be revised.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the fall of 2020, Hawaii began offering all of its special education teachers an extra $10,000 a year. If teachers took a job in an historically hard-to-staff school, they also received a bonus of up to $8,000, for a potential total pay raise of $18,000. Either way, it was a huge bump atop a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/DOE%20Forms/OTM/TeachersSalarySchedule20-21.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">$50,000 base salary\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Theobald and his five co-authors at AIR and Boston University calculated that the pay hikes reduced the proportion of special education vacancies by a third. On the surface, that sounds like a success, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/hawaii-disability-education-teacher-shortage/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">other news outlets reported it that way\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But special ed vacancies actually rose over the study period, which coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, and ultimately ended up higher than before the pay hike. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What was reduced by a third was the gap between special ed and general ed vacancies. Vacancies among both groups of teachers initially plummeted during 2020-21, even though only special ed teachers were offered the $10,000. (Perhaps the urgency of the pandemic inspired all teachers to stay in their jobs.) Afterwards, vacancies began to rise again, but special ed vacancies didn’t increase as fast as general ed vacancies. That’s a sign that special ed vacancies might have been even worse had there been no $10,000 bonus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As the researchers dug into the data, they discovered that this relative difference in vacancies was almost entirely driven by job switches at hard-to-staff schools. General education teachers were crossing the hallway and taking special education openings to make an extra $10,000. Theobald described it as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These job switches were possible because, as it turns out, many general education teachers initially trained to teach special education and held the necessary credentials. Some never even tried special ed teaching and decided to go into general education classrooms instead. But the pay bump was enough for some to reconsider special ed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hawaii’s special education teacher vacancies initially fell after $10,000 pay hikes in 2020, but subsequently rose again\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63491\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63491\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"493\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-160x101.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/image1-768x485.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The dots represent the vacancy rates for two types of teachers. \u003ccite>(Source: Theobald et al, “The Impact of a $10,000 Bonus on Special Education Teacher Shortages in Hawai‘i,” CALDER Working Paper No. 290-0823)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This study doesn’t explain why so many special education teachers left their jobs in 2021 and 2022 despite the pay incentives or why more new teachers didn’t want these higher paying jobs. In a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/hawaii-disability-education-teacher-shortage/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">December 2023 story in Mother Jones\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, special education teachers in Hawaii described difficult working conditions and how there were too few teaching assistants to help with all of their students’ special needs. Working with students with disabilities is a challenging job, and perhaps no amount of money can offset the emotional drain and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244020918297\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">burnout that so many special education teachers experience\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dallas’s experience with pay hikes, by contrast, began as a textbook example of how targeted incentives ought to work. In 2016, the city’s school system designated four low-performing, high-poverty schools for a new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dallasisd.org/Page/46767\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE)\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> initiative. Teachers with high ratings could earn an extra $6,000 to $10,000 (depending upon their individual ratings) to work at these struggling elementary and middle schools. Existing teachers were screened to keep their jobs and only 20% of the staff passed the threshold and remained. (There were other reforms too, such as uniforms and a small increase in instructional time, but the teacher stipends were the main thrust and made up 85% of the ACE budget.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Five researchers, including economists Eric Hanushek at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and Steven Rivkin at the University of Illinois Chicago, calculated that test scores jumped immediately after the pay incentives kicked in while scores at other low-performing elementary and middle schools in Dallas barely budged. Student achievement at these previously lowest-performing schools came close to the district average for all of Dallas. The district launched a second wave of ACE schools in 2018 and again, the researchers saw similar improvements in student achievement. Results are in a working paper, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://caldercenter.org/publications/attracting-and-retaining-highly-effective-educators-hard-staff-schools\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.” I read a January 2024 version. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The program turned out to be so successful at boosting student achievement that three of the four initial ACE schools no longer qualified for the stipends by 2019. Over 40% of the high-performing teachers left their ACE schools. Student achievement fell sharply, reversing most of the gains that had been made.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For students, it was a roller coaster ride. Amber Northern, head of research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, blamed adults for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/ups-and-downs-dallass-pay-performance-roller-coaster\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">failing to “prepare for the accomplishment they’d hoped for\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, it’s unclear what should have been done. Allowing these schools to continue the stipends would have eaten up millions of dollars that could have been used to help other low-performing schools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And even if there were enough money to give teacher stipends at every low-performing school, there’s not an infinite supply of highly effective teachers. Not all of them want to work at challenging, high poverty schools. Some prefer the easier conditions of a high-income magnet school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These were two good faith efforts that showed the limits of throwing money at specific types of teacher shortages. At best, they are a cautionary tale for policymakers as they move forward. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-when-schools-experimented-with-10000-pay-hikes-for-teachers-in-hard-to-staff-areas-the-results-were-surprising/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">teacher pay\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "How COVID-19 Narrowed the STEM Pipeline",
"headTitle": "How COVID-19 Narrowed the STEM Pipeline | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"p7\">Universities, philanthropies and even the U.S. government are all trying to encourage more young Americans to pursue careers in STEM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many business sectors, from high tech to manufacturing, are plagued with \u003ca href=\"https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/understanding-the-gaps-in-the-us-stem-labor-market/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">shortages of workers with technical skills\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. In New York City, where I live, the subway is frequently plastered with \u003ca href=\"https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-expands-advertising-new-york-citys-grand-central-station-and-metro-north-rail-lines\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">advertisements\u003c/span>\u003c/a> carrying the message that \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1769363055341604947?s=20\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">STEM fields pay well\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. But studying STEM requires more than an interest in science or a desire to make good money. Students also need adequate training, even in elementary and middle school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">That’s why it’s concerning that high-achieving students, who’ve received less public attention than lower achieving students, were also set back by remote learning and pandemic uncertainty. Fewer students with math skills shrinks the pool of people who are likely to cultivate an expertise in science, engineering and technology a decade from now. In other words, the STEM pipeline – a metaphor for the development of future scientists, engineers and other high tech workers – likely starts with a narrower funnel in the post-pandemic era.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The stakes are high not only for Gen Z, as they age out of school and enter the workforce, but also for the future of the U.S. economy, which needs skilled scientists and engineers to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The leading indicators of STEM troubles ahead are apparent within the 2022 scores from a national test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The immediate headlines from that first post-pandemic test focused on the fact that two decades of academic progress had been suddenly erased. Low-achieving children, who tend to be poor, had lost the most ground. An alarming number of American children – as high as \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/nation/achievement/?grade=8\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">38%\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of eighth graders – were functioning below the “basic” level in math, meaning that they didn’t have even the most rudimentary math skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Statisticians at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have continued to dig into the 2022 data, and they’ve been also turning their attention to students at the top. These children are on grade level, but the eighth grade NAEP assessment shows that far fewer of them are hitting an advanced performance level, or even a proficient one. Math scores among top performers dropped as steeply as scores did among low performers. Even the scores of students at Catholic schools, who otherwise weathered the pandemic well, plummeted in eighth grade math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">We don’t have data for other private schools because they have refused to participate in NAEP testing, but the eighth grade math declines among both high-achieving public school and Catholic school students are not good signs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">NAEP tests reading and math in both fourth and eighth grades every two years in order to track educational progress. It’s one of the only tests that can be used for comparisons across states and generations. More than \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/?grade=4\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">400,000 students\u003c/span>\u003c/a> are specially selected to represent the regions and demographic characteristics of the nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Among the four NAEP tests, eighth grade math showed the sharpest pandemic drop. Math took a bigger hit than reading because kids can still read at home, while math is something that students primarily learn at school. If you didn’t read “The Hobbit” in your seventh grade English class because you were out sick with Covid, you can still be a good lifelong reader But not getting enough practice with rates, ratios and percentages in middle school can derail someone who might have otherwise excelled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Why eighth grade math was hit harder than fourth grade math is a bit less obvious. One explanation is that the concepts that students need to learn are more difficult. Square roots and exponents are possibly more challenging to master than multiplication and division. And fewer parents are able to assist with homework as the math increases in complexity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Yet another explanation is a psychological one. These eighth graders were in sixth grade when the pandemic erupted in the spring of 2020. This is a critical time in adolescent development when children are figuring out who they are and where they belong. A lot of this development occurs through social interaction. The isolation may have stunted psychological development and that ultimately affected motivation, study skills and the ability to delay gratification – all necessary to excel in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Let’s walk through the numbers together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p8\">\u003cb>Highest achieving students lost ground in eighth grade math\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63378\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63378\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-800x437.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"437\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-800x437.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-1020x557.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-160x87.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-768x419.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1.png 1410w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This \u003cspan class=\"s2\">chart\u003c/span> shows that the highest performing students, those at the top 10% and the top 25%, lost as much as low-achieving students at the bottom in eighth grade math. These eighth graders were in the spring of sixth grade when the pandemic hit in 2020, and it’s possible that they didn’t master important prerequisite skills, such as rates and ratios. These kids at the top are performing at grade level, but not as high performing as past eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p8\">\u003cb>Fewer eighth grade students hit advanced and proficient levels\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63379\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63379\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-800x175.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"175\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-800x175.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-1020x223.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-160x35.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-768x168.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1.png 1364w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This \u003cspan class=\"s2\">bar chart\u003c/span> shows that before the pandemic 10% of the nation’s eighth graders were performing at an advanced level in math. That fell to 7%. And the number of students deemed proficient in eighth grade math fell even more, from 24% to 20%. Before the pandemic, arguably, 34% of the eighth grade population was on track to pursue advanced math in high school and a future STEM career if they wanted one. After the pandemic in 2022, only 27% were well prepared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Students at Catholic schools are generally much higher performing than students at public schools. In large part, that’s because of family income; wealthier students tend to have higher test scores than poorer students. Catholic school students tend to be wealthier; their families can afford private school tuition. In recent years, the Catholic Church has closed hundreds of schools that catered to low-income families, leaving a higher income population in its remaining classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003cb>Catholic schools outperformed public schools but also dropped \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63377\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63377\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4-160x85.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4-768x408.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This \u003cspan class=\"s2\">chart\u003c/span> shows that Catholic school students, depicted by the diamonds, outperformed public school students, depicted by the circles, in eighth grade math. But it was still a sharp five-point decline in eighth grade math performance for Catholic school students, almost as large as the eight-point decline for public school students. Scores of white students at Catholic schools declined five points; scores of students at Catholic schools in the suburbs declined seven points. Almost a quarter of Catholic school students are now functioning below a basic level in math for their grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Despite the good academic reputation of Catholic schools and the praise Catholic schools received for resuming in-person instruction sooner, math scores suggest a problem. And it’s a problem that potentially extends to the whole private school universe, where \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgc/private-school-enrollment\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">9% of students are enrolled\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, according to the most recently available data from 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">I talked with Ron Reynolds, the executive director of the California Association of Private School Organizations, who explained that not just Catholic schools, but also many other private schools suffered even if they hadn’t been closed for long. Reynolds said that private schools were still hit by illnesses, deaths and absences and that might have affected instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">“Private schools are tightly knit communities in which teachers tend to be more intertwined in the lives of the children and families they serve,” he said. “When you have a crisis, and so many people experiencing stress and loss, that can certainly impact the teacher in some significant ways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly how other private schools fared during the pandemic because they have refused to participate in the NAEP tests for the past decade. Reynolds, who serves on the governing board that oversees the NAEP exam, has been trying to lobby more private schools to participate, but so far, to no avail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Together private schools, selective public schools and affluent suburban schools have been important training grounds for the nation’s future scientists and engineers. Of course, it is possible that these high achieving students, now 10th graders, will catch up. Many of them are from wealthier families who can afford tutors, or attend well-resourced schools. But I am not seeing much evidence that schools have had the ability to think about the pipeline of advanced students when many students are so needy. And with post-pandemic grade inflation, students and parents may not be getting the signals they need to seek extra help independently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The administration of the 2024 NAEP test wrapped up in March, but results won’t be known for many months. I’ll be keeping an eye on eighth grade math and on SAT, ACT and Advanced Placement scores in the years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003ci>This story about\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-how-covid-narrowed-the-stem-pipeline/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>math scores\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/i>The Hechinger Report\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Proof Points newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p7\">Universities, philanthropies and even the U.S. government are all trying to encourage more young Americans to pursue careers in STEM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many business sectors, from high tech to manufacturing, are plagued with \u003ca href=\"https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/understanding-the-gaps-in-the-us-stem-labor-market/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">shortages of workers with technical skills\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. In New York City, where I live, the subway is frequently plastered with \u003ca href=\"https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-expands-advertising-new-york-citys-grand-central-station-and-metro-north-rail-lines\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">advertisements\u003c/span>\u003c/a> carrying the message that \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1769363055341604947?s=20\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">STEM fields pay well\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. But studying STEM requires more than an interest in science or a desire to make good money. Students also need adequate training, even in elementary and middle school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">That’s why it’s concerning that high-achieving students, who’ve received less public attention than lower achieving students, were also set back by remote learning and pandemic uncertainty. Fewer students with math skills shrinks the pool of people who are likely to cultivate an expertise in science, engineering and technology a decade from now. In other words, the STEM pipeline – a metaphor for the development of future scientists, engineers and other high tech workers – likely starts with a narrower funnel in the post-pandemic era.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The stakes are high not only for Gen Z, as they age out of school and enter the workforce, but also for the future of the U.S. economy, which needs skilled scientists and engineers to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The leading indicators of STEM troubles ahead are apparent within the 2022 scores from a national test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The immediate headlines from that first post-pandemic test focused on the fact that two decades of academic progress had been suddenly erased. Low-achieving children, who tend to be poor, had lost the most ground. An alarming number of American children – as high as \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/nation/achievement/?grade=8\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">38%\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of eighth graders – were functioning below the “basic” level in math, meaning that they didn’t have even the most rudimentary math skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Statisticians at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have continued to dig into the 2022 data, and they’ve been also turning their attention to students at the top. These children are on grade level, but the eighth grade NAEP assessment shows that far fewer of them are hitting an advanced performance level, or even a proficient one. Math scores among top performers dropped as steeply as scores did among low performers. Even the scores of students at Catholic schools, who otherwise weathered the pandemic well, plummeted in eighth grade math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">We don’t have data for other private schools because they have refused to participate in NAEP testing, but the eighth grade math declines among both high-achieving public school and Catholic school students are not good signs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">NAEP tests reading and math in both fourth and eighth grades every two years in order to track educational progress. It’s one of the only tests that can be used for comparisons across states and generations. More than \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/?grade=4\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">400,000 students\u003c/span>\u003c/a> are specially selected to represent the regions and demographic characteristics of the nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Among the four NAEP tests, eighth grade math showed the sharpest pandemic drop. Math took a bigger hit than reading because kids can still read at home, while math is something that students primarily learn at school. If you didn’t read “The Hobbit” in your seventh grade English class because you were out sick with Covid, you can still be a good lifelong reader But not getting enough practice with rates, ratios and percentages in middle school can derail someone who might have otherwise excelled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Why eighth grade math was hit harder than fourth grade math is a bit less obvious. One explanation is that the concepts that students need to learn are more difficult. Square roots and exponents are possibly more challenging to master than multiplication and division. And fewer parents are able to assist with homework as the math increases in complexity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Yet another explanation is a psychological one. These eighth graders were in sixth grade when the pandemic erupted in the spring of 2020. This is a critical time in adolescent development when children are figuring out who they are and where they belong. A lot of this development occurs through social interaction. The isolation may have stunted psychological development and that ultimately affected motivation, study skills and the ability to delay gratification – all necessary to excel in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Let’s walk through the numbers together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p8\">\u003cb>Highest achieving students lost ground in eighth grade math\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63378\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63378\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-800x437.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"437\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-800x437.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-1020x557.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-160x87.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1-768x419.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-1.png 1410w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This \u003cspan class=\"s2\">chart\u003c/span> shows that the highest performing students, those at the top 10% and the top 25%, lost as much as low-achieving students at the bottom in eighth grade math. These eighth graders were in the spring of sixth grade when the pandemic hit in 2020, and it’s possible that they didn’t master important prerequisite skills, such as rates and ratios. These kids at the top are performing at grade level, but not as high performing as past eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p8\">\u003cb>Fewer eighth grade students hit advanced and proficient levels\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63379\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63379\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-800x175.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"175\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-800x175.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-1020x223.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-160x35.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1-768x168.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-1.png 1364w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This \u003cspan class=\"s2\">bar chart\u003c/span> shows that before the pandemic 10% of the nation’s eighth graders were performing at an advanced level in math. That fell to 7%. And the number of students deemed proficient in eighth grade math fell even more, from 24% to 20%. Before the pandemic, arguably, 34% of the eighth grade population was on track to pursue advanced math in high school and a future STEM career if they wanted one. After the pandemic in 2022, only 27% were well prepared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Students at Catholic schools are generally much higher performing than students at public schools. In large part, that’s because of family income; wealthier students tend to have higher test scores than poorer students. Catholic school students tend to be wealthier; their families can afford private school tuition. In recent years, the Catholic Church has closed hundreds of schools that catered to low-income families, leaving a higher income population in its remaining classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003cb>Catholic schools outperformed public schools but also dropped \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63377\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63377\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4-160x85.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image4-768x408.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This \u003cspan class=\"s2\">chart\u003c/span> shows that Catholic school students, depicted by the diamonds, outperformed public school students, depicted by the circles, in eighth grade math. But it was still a sharp five-point decline in eighth grade math performance for Catholic school students, almost as large as the eight-point decline for public school students. Scores of white students at Catholic schools declined five points; scores of students at Catholic schools in the suburbs declined seven points. Almost a quarter of Catholic school students are now functioning below a basic level in math for their grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Despite the good academic reputation of Catholic schools and the praise Catholic schools received for resuming in-person instruction sooner, math scores suggest a problem. And it’s a problem that potentially extends to the whole private school universe, where \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgc/private-school-enrollment\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">9% of students are enrolled\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, according to the most recently available data from 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">I talked with Ron Reynolds, the executive director of the California Association of Private School Organizations, who explained that not just Catholic schools, but also many other private schools suffered even if they hadn’t been closed for long. Reynolds said that private schools were still hit by illnesses, deaths and absences and that might have affected instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">“Private schools are tightly knit communities in which teachers tend to be more intertwined in the lives of the children and families they serve,” he said. “When you have a crisis, and so many people experiencing stress and loss, that can certainly impact the teacher in some significant ways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly how other private schools fared during the pandemic because they have refused to participate in the NAEP tests for the past decade. Reynolds, who serves on the governing board that oversees the NAEP exam, has been trying to lobby more private schools to participate, but so far, to no avail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Together private schools, selective public schools and affluent suburban schools have been important training grounds for the nation’s future scientists and engineers. Of course, it is possible that these high achieving students, now 10th graders, will catch up. Many of them are from wealthier families who can afford tutors, or attend well-resourced schools. But I am not seeing much evidence that schools have had the ability to think about the pipeline of advanced students when many students are so needy. And with post-pandemic grade inflation, students and parents may not be getting the signals they need to seek extra help independently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The administration of the 2024 NAEP test wrapped up in March, but results won’t be known for many months. I’ll be keeping an eye on eighth grade math and on SAT, ACT and Advanced Placement scores in the years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003ci>This story about\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-how-covid-narrowed-the-stem-pipeline/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>math scores\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/i>The Hechinger Report\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Proof Points newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "only-a-quarter-of-federally-funded-education-innovations-benefited-students-report-says",
"title": "Only a Quarter of Federally Funded Education Innovations Benefited Students, Report Says",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p7\">Education journalism is chock full of stories touting some brand new idea that could fix schools. Artificial intelligence is the current obsession. Philanthropic funders often say they want to see fewer stories about problems and more stories about solutions. But the truth is that lifting student achievement is really hard, and the vast majority of innovations don’t end up working.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">A \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2024002/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">February 2024 report\u003c/span>\u003c/a> about a research-and-development program inside the Department of Education makes this truth crystal clear. The failure rate was 74%. Under this program, called Investing in Innovation or i3, the federal government gave out $1.4 billion between 2010 and 2016 to education nonprofits and researchers for the purpose of developing and testing new ideas in the classroom. But only 26% of the innovations yielded \u003ci>any\u003c/i> positive benefits for students and no negative harms, according to the program’s final report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Most of the 172 grants tested ideas about improving instruction or turning around low-performing schools. Almost 150 of them reported results with more than 20 still unfinished. Of the completed ones, a quarter of the innovations hadn’t been properly tested. Doing rigorous research isn’t easy; you need to set up a group of comparison students who don’t get the intervention and track everyone’s progress. Of the 112 properly evaluated grants, the most common result was a null finding, meaning that the intervention didn’t make a difference. Only a small handful left students worse off. The results for each program are hidden in pages 55 through 64 of a separate \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2024002/pdf/2024002_appendices.pdf\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">appendices document\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, but I have created a \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Appendix-results.pdf\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">pdf of them\u003c/span>\u003c/a> for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The low success rate for new ideas is “psychologically disappointing,” said Barbara Goodson, lead author of the report and an expert in educational research at the consulting firm Abt Global. “You would hope that all this [innovation] would pan out for students and that we would know better how to make education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p8\">\u003cb>A 26% success rate\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63343\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 716px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63343\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"716\" height=\"822\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3.png 716w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-160x184.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Twenty-six percent of i3 evaluations found at least one positive effect and no negative effects on student academic outcomes (39 grants). WWC refers to the What Works Clearinghouse, a library of evidence-based teaching practices. \u003ccite>(IES, February 2024)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The original ideas all showed promise and outside reviewers rated applications. But when you try new things and put them to a rigorous test in real classrooms, human behavior and students achievement are influenced by so many things that you cannot control, from struggles at home and poverty to health issues and psychological stress. And it can be difficult to generate downstream results for students on a year-end achievement test when an intervention is targeting something else, such parent engagement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Some innovations did work well. \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/a-little-known-program-has-lifted-9th-grade-performance-in-virtually-every-type-of-school/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Building Assets, Reducing Risks\u003c/span>\u003c/a> (BARR) is the poster child for what this grant program had hoped to produce. The idea was an early warning system that detects when children are starting to stumble at school. Teachers, administrators or counselors intervene in this early stage and build relationships with students to get them back on track. It received a seed grant to develop the idea and implement it in schools. The results were good enough for BARR to receive a bigger federal grant from this R&D program three years later. Again it worked with different types of students in different parts of the country, and BARR received a \u003ca href=\"https://www.air.org/resource/report/building-assets-and-reducing-risks-barr-i3-scale-evaluation\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">third grant\u003c/span>\u003c/a> to scale it up across the nation in 2017. Now BARR is in more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/minnesota-schools-awarded-funding-to-implement-evidence-based-barr-system-301955641.html\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">300 schools\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and Maine is adopting it statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Some ideas that were proven to work in the short term didn’t yield long-term benefits or backfired completely. One example is Reading Recovery, a tutoring program for struggling readers in first grade that costs $10,000 per student and was a recipient of one of these grants. A randomized control trial that began in 2011 produced a \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0162373718764828\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">giant boost in reading achievement for first graders\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. However, three years later, Reading Recovery students subsequently fell behind and by \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2022/04/23/reading-recovery-negative-impact-on-children\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">fourth grade were far worse readers\u003c/span>\u003c/a> than similar students who hadn’t had the tutoring, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19345747.2023.2209092\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">follow-up study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. The tutoring seemed to harm them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">It can be hard to understand these contradictions. Henry May, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who conducted both the short-term and long-term Reading Recovery studies, explained that the assessment used in the first grade study was full of simple one-syllable words. The tutoring sessions likely exposed children to these words so many times that the students memorized them. But Reading Recovery hadn’t taught the phonics necessary to read more complex words in later grades, May said. Reading Recovery disputes the long-term study results, pointing out that three-fourths of the study participants had departed so data was collected for only 25% of them. A spokesperson for the nonprofit organization also says it does teach phonics in its tutoring program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">I asked Abt’s Goodson to summarize the lessons learned from the federal program:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"ul1\">\n\u003cli class=\"li10\">\u003cstrong>More students.\u003c/strong> It might seem like common sense to try a new idea on only a small group of students at first, but the Department of Education learned over time that it needed to increase the number of students in order to produce statistically significant results. There are two reasons that a study can end with a null result. One is because the intervention didn’t work, but it can also be a methodological quirk. When the achievement benefits are small, you need a large number of students to be sure that the result wasn’t a fluke. There were too many fluke signals in these evaluation studies. Over the years, sample sizes were increased even for ideas that were in the early development stage.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li10\">\u003cstrong>Implementation.\u003c/strong> Goodson still believes in the importance of randomized control trials to create credible evidence for what works, but she says one of the big lessons is that these trials alone are not enough. \u003cspan class=\"s2\">Documenting and studying the implementation\u003c/span> are just as important as evaluating the results, she said. Understanding the barriers in the classroom can help developers tweak programs and make them more effective. They might be too expensive or require too many weeks of teacher training. The disappointing results of the i3 program have helped spawn a new \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2023005/pdf/2023005.pdf\">“science of implementation”\u003c/a> to learn more about these obstacles.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li11\">\u003cstrong>National scale up.\u003c/strong> Too much money was spent on expanding new ideas to more students across the nation, and some of these ideas ended up not panning out in research evaluations. In the successor program to i3, the scale up grants are much smaller. Instead of using the money to directly implement the intervention nationwide, the funds help innovators make practical adjustments so that it can be replicated. For example, instead of using expensive outside coaches, a program might experiment with training existing teachers at a school to run it.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Though the original i3 program no longer exists, its successor program, Education Innovation and Research (EIR), continues with the same mission of developing and evaluating new ideas. Currently, it is ramping up funding to deal with the post-pandemic crises of learning loss, mental health and teacher attrition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p12\">\u003cb>Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants 2017-2023\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63344\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"904\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2.png 904w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-800x356.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-160x71.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-768x342.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 904px) 100vw, 904px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">It’s easy to feel discouraged that the federal government has invested around $3 billion in the last dozen years on educational innovation with so little to show for it. But we are slowly building a \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">good evidence database\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of some things that do work – ideas that are not just based on gut instincts and whim, but are scientifically proven with a relatively small investment compared to what the government spends on research in other areas. By contrast, \u003ca href=\"https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47564\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">defense research gets over $90 billion a year. Health research receives nearly $50 billion\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. I wonder how much further we might be in helping students become proficient in reading and math if we invested even a little bit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003ci>This story about\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-only-a-quarter-of-federally-funded-education-innovations-benefited-students-report-says/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>education R&D\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/i>The Hechinger Report\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Proof Points newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p7\">Education journalism is chock full of stories touting some brand new idea that could fix schools. Artificial intelligence is the current obsession. Philanthropic funders often say they want to see fewer stories about problems and more stories about solutions. But the truth is that lifting student achievement is really hard, and the vast majority of innovations don’t end up working.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">A \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2024002/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">February 2024 report\u003c/span>\u003c/a> about a research-and-development program inside the Department of Education makes this truth crystal clear. The failure rate was 74%. Under this program, called Investing in Innovation or i3, the federal government gave out $1.4 billion between 2010 and 2016 to education nonprofits and researchers for the purpose of developing and testing new ideas in the classroom. But only 26% of the innovations yielded \u003ci>any\u003c/i> positive benefits for students and no negative harms, according to the program’s final report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Most of the 172 grants tested ideas about improving instruction or turning around low-performing schools. Almost 150 of them reported results with more than 20 still unfinished. Of the completed ones, a quarter of the innovations hadn’t been properly tested. Doing rigorous research isn’t easy; you need to set up a group of comparison students who don’t get the intervention and track everyone’s progress. Of the 112 properly evaluated grants, the most common result was a null finding, meaning that the intervention didn’t make a difference. Only a small handful left students worse off. The results for each program are hidden in pages 55 through 64 of a separate \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2024002/pdf/2024002_appendices.pdf\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">appendices document\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, but I have created a \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Appendix-results.pdf\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">pdf of them\u003c/span>\u003c/a> for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The low success rate for new ideas is “psychologically disappointing,” said Barbara Goodson, lead author of the report and an expert in educational research at the consulting firm Abt Global. “You would hope that all this [innovation] would pan out for students and that we would know better how to make education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p8\">\u003cb>A 26% success rate\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63343\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 716px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-63343\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"716\" height=\"822\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3.png 716w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image3-160x184.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Twenty-six percent of i3 evaluations found at least one positive effect and no negative effects on student academic outcomes (39 grants). WWC refers to the What Works Clearinghouse, a library of evidence-based teaching practices. \u003ccite>(IES, February 2024)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The original ideas all showed promise and outside reviewers rated applications. But when you try new things and put them to a rigorous test in real classrooms, human behavior and students achievement are influenced by so many things that you cannot control, from struggles at home and poverty to health issues and psychological stress. And it can be difficult to generate downstream results for students on a year-end achievement test when an intervention is targeting something else, such parent engagement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Some innovations did work well. \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/a-little-known-program-has-lifted-9th-grade-performance-in-virtually-every-type-of-school/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Building Assets, Reducing Risks\u003c/span>\u003c/a> (BARR) is the poster child for what this grant program had hoped to produce. The idea was an early warning system that detects when children are starting to stumble at school. Teachers, administrators or counselors intervene in this early stage and build relationships with students to get them back on track. It received a seed grant to develop the idea and implement it in schools. The results were good enough for BARR to receive a bigger federal grant from this R&D program three years later. Again it worked with different types of students in different parts of the country, and BARR received a \u003ca href=\"https://www.air.org/resource/report/building-assets-and-reducing-risks-barr-i3-scale-evaluation\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">third grant\u003c/span>\u003c/a> to scale it up across the nation in 2017. Now BARR is in more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/minnesota-schools-awarded-funding-to-implement-evidence-based-barr-system-301955641.html\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">300 schools\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and Maine is adopting it statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Some ideas that were proven to work in the short term didn’t yield long-term benefits or backfired completely. One example is Reading Recovery, a tutoring program for struggling readers in first grade that costs $10,000 per student and was a recipient of one of these grants. A randomized control trial that began in 2011 produced a \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0162373718764828\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">giant boost in reading achievement for first graders\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. However, three years later, Reading Recovery students subsequently fell behind and by \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2022/04/23/reading-recovery-negative-impact-on-children\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">fourth grade were far worse readers\u003c/span>\u003c/a> than similar students who hadn’t had the tutoring, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19345747.2023.2209092\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">follow-up study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. The tutoring seemed to harm them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">It can be hard to understand these contradictions. Henry May, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who conducted both the short-term and long-term Reading Recovery studies, explained that the assessment used in the first grade study was full of simple one-syllable words. The tutoring sessions likely exposed children to these words so many times that the students memorized them. But Reading Recovery hadn’t taught the phonics necessary to read more complex words in later grades, May said. Reading Recovery disputes the long-term study results, pointing out that three-fourths of the study participants had departed so data was collected for only 25% of them. A spokesperson for the nonprofit organization also says it does teach phonics in its tutoring program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">I asked Abt’s Goodson to summarize the lessons learned from the federal program:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"ul1\">\n\u003cli class=\"li10\">\u003cstrong>More students.\u003c/strong> It might seem like common sense to try a new idea on only a small group of students at first, but the Department of Education learned over time that it needed to increase the number of students in order to produce statistically significant results. There are two reasons that a study can end with a null result. One is because the intervention didn’t work, but it can also be a methodological quirk. When the achievement benefits are small, you need a large number of students to be sure that the result wasn’t a fluke. There were too many fluke signals in these evaluation studies. Over the years, sample sizes were increased even for ideas that were in the early development stage.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li10\">\u003cstrong>Implementation.\u003c/strong> Goodson still believes in the importance of randomized control trials to create credible evidence for what works, but she says one of the big lessons is that these trials alone are not enough. \u003cspan class=\"s2\">Documenting and studying the implementation\u003c/span> are just as important as evaluating the results, she said. Understanding the barriers in the classroom can help developers tweak programs and make them more effective. They might be too expensive or require too many weeks of teacher training. The disappointing results of the i3 program have helped spawn a new \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2023005/pdf/2023005.pdf\">“science of implementation”\u003c/a> to learn more about these obstacles.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"li11\">\u003cstrong>National scale up.\u003c/strong> Too much money was spent on expanding new ideas to more students across the nation, and some of these ideas ended up not panning out in research evaluations. In the successor program to i3, the scale up grants are much smaller. Instead of using the money to directly implement the intervention nationwide, the funds help innovators make practical adjustments so that it can be replicated. For example, instead of using expensive outside coaches, a program might experiment with training existing teachers at a school to run it.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Though the original i3 program no longer exists, its successor program, Education Innovation and Research (EIR), continues with the same mission of developing and evaluating new ideas. Currently, it is ramping up funding to deal with the post-pandemic crises of learning loss, mental health and teacher attrition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p12\">\u003cb>Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants 2017-2023\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63344\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"904\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2.png 904w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-800x356.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-160x71.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/03/image2-768x342.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 904px) 100vw, 904px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">It’s easy to feel discouraged that the federal government has invested around $3 billion in the last dozen years on educational innovation with so little to show for it. But we are slowly building a \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">good evidence database\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of some things that do work – ideas that are not just based on gut instincts and whim, but are scientifically proven with a relatively small investment compared to what the government spends on research in other areas. By contrast, \u003ca href=\"https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47564\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">defense research gets over $90 billion a year. Health research receives nearly $50 billion\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. I wonder how much further we might be in helping students become proficient in reading and math if we invested even a little bit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003ci>This story about\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-only-a-quarter-of-federally-funded-education-innovations-benefited-students-report-says/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>education R&D\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/i>The Hechinger Report\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Proof Points newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A growing chorus of education researchers, pundits and “science of reading” advocates are calling for young children to be taught more about \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60793/gholdy-muhammad-wants-teachers-to-see-the-world-as-curriculum\">the world around them\u003c/a>. It’s an indirect way of teaching reading comprehension. The theory is that what we grasp from what we read depends on whether we can hook it to concepts and topics that we already know. Natalie Wexler’s 2019 best-selling book, \u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://nataliewexler.com/the-knowledge-gap/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Knowledge Gap\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, championed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54452/why-deeply-diving-into-content-could-be-the-key-to-reading-comprehension\">knowledge-building curricula\u003c/a> and more schools around the country, from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.baltimorecp.org/resources/core-knowledge-lessons/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Baltimore\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/reading-comprehension-hinges-on-building-knowledge-new-curricula-aim-to-help/2024/01\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Michigan\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.libertycommon.org/about/news-and-events/colorado-core-knowledge-network\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Colorado\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, are adopting these content-filled lesson plans to teach geography, astronomy and even art history. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Makers of knowledge-building curricula say their lessons are based on research, but the truth is that there is scant classroom evidence that building knowledge first increases future reading comprehension. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2023, University of Virginia researchers promoted \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edworkingpapers.com/index.php/ai23-755\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a study of Colorado charter schools that had adopted E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Children who had won lotteries to attend these charter schools had higher reading scores than students who lost the lotteries. But it was \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61475/what-the-latest-reading-study-thats-getting-a-lot-of-buzz-says-and-where-its-evidence-falls-short\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">impossible to tell whether the Core Knowledge curriculum itself made the difference\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> or if the boost to reading scores could be attributed to other things that these charter schools were doing, such as hiring great teachers and training them well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">More importantly, the students at these charter schools were largely from middle and upper middle class families. And what we really want to know is whether knowledge building at school helps poorer children, who are less likely to be exposed to the world through travel, live performances and other experiences that money can buy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A new study, published online on Feb. 26, 2024, in the peer-reviewed journal Developmental Psychology, now provides stronger causal evidence that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-55174-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">building background knowledge can translate into higher reading achievement for low-income children\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The study took place in an unnamed, large urban school district in North Carolina where most of the students are Black and Hispanic and 40% are from low-income families.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2019, a group of researchers, led by James Kim, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, randomly selected 15 of the district’s 30 elementary schools to teach first graders special \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://scholar.harvard.edu/jameskim/pages/research-summary\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">knowledge-building lessons\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for three years, through third grade. Kim, a reading specialist, and other researchers had developed two sets of multi-year lesson plans, one for science and one for social studies. Students were also given related books to read during the summer. (\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This research was funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The remaining 15 elementary schools in the district continued to teach their students as usual, still delivering some social studies and science instruction, but not these special lessons. Regular reading class was untouched in the experiment. All 30 schools were using the same reading curriculum, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edreports.org/reports/overview/el-education-k-5-language-arts-2017\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Expeditionary Learning\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which follows science of reading principles and teaches phonics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">COVID-19 hit in the middle of the experiment. When schools shut down in the spring of 2020, the researchers scrapped the planned social studies units for second graders. In 2021, students were still not attending school in person. The researchers revised their science curriculum and decided to give an abridged online version to all 30 schools instead of just half. In the end, children in the original 15 schools received one year of social studies lessons and three years of science lessons compared to only one year of science in the comparison group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, approximately 1,000 students who had received the special science and social studies lessons in first and second grades outperformed the 1,000 students who got only the abbreviated online science in third grade. Their reading and math scores on the North Carolina state tests were higher not only in third grade, but also in fourth grade, more than a year after the knowledge-building experiment ended. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It wasn’t a huge boost to reading achievement, but it was significant and long-lasting. It cost about $400 per student in instructional materials and teacher training.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in this research or the development of these science lessons, praised the study. “The study makes it very clear (as have a few others recently) that it is possible to combine reading with social studies and science curriculum in powerful ways that can improve both literacy and content knowledge,” he said by email. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Connecting background knowledge to reading comprehension is not a new idea. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-0663.80.1.16\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">famous 1987 experiment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> documented that children who were weaker readers but knowledgeable about baseball understood a reading passage about baseball better than children who were stronger readers but didn’t know much about the sport. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously, it’s not realistic for schools to attempt to familiarize students with every topic they might encounter in a book. And there is disagreement among researchers about how general knowledge of the world translates into higher reading performance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kim thinks that a knowledge-building curriculum doesn’t need to teach many topics. Random facts, he says, are not important. He argues for depth instead of breadth. He says it’s important to construct a thoughtful sequence of lessons over the years, allowing students to see how the same patterns crop up in different ways. He calls these patterns “schemas.” In this experiment, for example, students learned about animal survival in first grade and dinosaur extinction in second grade. In third grade, that evolved into a more general understanding of how living systems function. By the end of third grade, many students were able to see how the idea of functioning systems can apply to inanimate objects, such as skyscrapers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the patterns that can be analogized to new circumstances, Kim explained. Once a student is familiar with the template, a new text on an unfamiliar topic can be easier to grasp.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kim and his team also paired the science lessons with clusters of vocabulary words that were likely to come up again in the future – almost like wine pairings with a meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The full benefits of this kind of knowledge building didn’t materialize until after several years of coordinated instruction. In the first years, students were only able to transfer their ability to comprehend text on one topic to another if the topics were very similar. This study indicates that as their content knowledge deepened, their ability to generalize increased as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot going on here: a spiraling curriculum that revisits and builds upon themes year after year; an explicit teaching of underlying patterns; new vocabulary words, and a progression from the simple to the complex. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are many versions of knowledge-rich curricula and this one isn’t about exposing students to a classical canon. It remains unclear if all knowledge-building curricula work as well. Other programs sometimes replace the main reading class with knowledge-building lessons. This one didn’t tinker with regular reading class. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The biggest challenge with the approach used in the North Carolina experiment is that it requires schools to coordinate lessons across grades. That’s hard. Some teachers may want to keep their favorite units on, say, growing a bean plant, and may bristle at the idea of throwing away their old lesson plans.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also worth noting that students’ math scores improved as much as their reading scores did in this North Carolina experiment. It might seem surprising that a literacy intervention would also boost math. But math also requires a lot of reading; the state’s math tests were full of word problems. Any successful effort to boost reading skills is also likely to have positive spillovers into math, researchers explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">School leaders are under great pressure to boost test scores. To do that, they’ve often doubled time spent on reading and cut science and social studies classes. Studies like this one suggest that those cuts may have been costly, further undermining reading achievement instead of improving it. As researchers discover more about the science of reading, it may well turn out to be that more time on science itself is what kids need to become good readers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-learning-science-might-help-kids-read-better/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">background knowledge\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A growing chorus of education researchers, pundits and “science of reading” advocates are calling for young children to be taught more about \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60793/gholdy-muhammad-wants-teachers-to-see-the-world-as-curriculum\">the world around them\u003c/a>. It’s an indirect way of teaching reading comprehension. The theory is that what we grasp from what we read depends on whether we can hook it to concepts and topics that we already know. Natalie Wexler’s 2019 best-selling book, \u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://nataliewexler.com/the-knowledge-gap/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Knowledge Gap\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, championed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54452/why-deeply-diving-into-content-could-be-the-key-to-reading-comprehension\">knowledge-building curricula\u003c/a> and more schools around the country, from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.baltimorecp.org/resources/core-knowledge-lessons/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Baltimore\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/reading-comprehension-hinges-on-building-knowledge-new-curricula-aim-to-help/2024/01\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Michigan\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.libertycommon.org/about/news-and-events/colorado-core-knowledge-network\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Colorado\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, are adopting these content-filled lesson plans to teach geography, astronomy and even art history. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Makers of knowledge-building curricula say their lessons are based on research, but the truth is that there is scant classroom evidence that building knowledge first increases future reading comprehension. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2023, University of Virginia researchers promoted \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edworkingpapers.com/index.php/ai23-755\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a study of Colorado charter schools that had adopted E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Children who had won lotteries to attend these charter schools had higher reading scores than students who lost the lotteries. But it was \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61475/what-the-latest-reading-study-thats-getting-a-lot-of-buzz-says-and-where-its-evidence-falls-short\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">impossible to tell whether the Core Knowledge curriculum itself made the difference\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> or if the boost to reading scores could be attributed to other things that these charter schools were doing, such as hiring great teachers and training them well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">More importantly, the students at these charter schools were largely from middle and upper middle class families. And what we really want to know is whether knowledge building at school helps poorer children, who are less likely to be exposed to the world through travel, live performances and other experiences that money can buy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A new study, published online on Feb. 26, 2024, in the peer-reviewed journal Developmental Psychology, now provides stronger causal evidence that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-55174-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">building background knowledge can translate into higher reading achievement for low-income children\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The study took place in an unnamed, large urban school district in North Carolina where most of the students are Black and Hispanic and 40% are from low-income families.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2019, a group of researchers, led by James Kim, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, randomly selected 15 of the district’s 30 elementary schools to teach first graders special \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://scholar.harvard.edu/jameskim/pages/research-summary\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">knowledge-building lessons\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for three years, through third grade. Kim, a reading specialist, and other researchers had developed two sets of multi-year lesson plans, one for science and one for social studies. Students were also given related books to read during the summer. (\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This research was funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The remaining 15 elementary schools in the district continued to teach their students as usual, still delivering some social studies and science instruction, but not these special lessons. Regular reading class was untouched in the experiment. All 30 schools were using the same reading curriculum, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edreports.org/reports/overview/el-education-k-5-language-arts-2017\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Expeditionary Learning\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which follows science of reading principles and teaches phonics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">COVID-19 hit in the middle of the experiment. When schools shut down in the spring of 2020, the researchers scrapped the planned social studies units for second graders. In 2021, students were still not attending school in person. The researchers revised their science curriculum and decided to give an abridged online version to all 30 schools instead of just half. In the end, children in the original 15 schools received one year of social studies lessons and three years of science lessons compared to only one year of science in the comparison group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, approximately 1,000 students who had received the special science and social studies lessons in first and second grades outperformed the 1,000 students who got only the abbreviated online science in third grade. Their reading and math scores on the North Carolina state tests were higher not only in third grade, but also in fourth grade, more than a year after the knowledge-building experiment ended. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It wasn’t a huge boost to reading achievement, but it was significant and long-lasting. It cost about $400 per student in instructional materials and teacher training.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in this research or the development of these science lessons, praised the study. “The study makes it very clear (as have a few others recently) that it is possible to combine reading with social studies and science curriculum in powerful ways that can improve both literacy and content knowledge,” he said by email. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Connecting background knowledge to reading comprehension is not a new idea. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-0663.80.1.16\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">famous 1987 experiment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> documented that children who were weaker readers but knowledgeable about baseball understood a reading passage about baseball better than children who were stronger readers but didn’t know much about the sport. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously, it’s not realistic for schools to attempt to familiarize students with every topic they might encounter in a book. And there is disagreement among researchers about how general knowledge of the world translates into higher reading performance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kim thinks that a knowledge-building curriculum doesn’t need to teach many topics. Random facts, he says, are not important. He argues for depth instead of breadth. He says it’s important to construct a thoughtful sequence of lessons over the years, allowing students to see how the same patterns crop up in different ways. He calls these patterns “schemas.” In this experiment, for example, students learned about animal survival in first grade and dinosaur extinction in second grade. In third grade, that evolved into a more general understanding of how living systems function. By the end of third grade, many students were able to see how the idea of functioning systems can apply to inanimate objects, such as skyscrapers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the patterns that can be analogized to new circumstances, Kim explained. Once a student is familiar with the template, a new text on an unfamiliar topic can be easier to grasp.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kim and his team also paired the science lessons with clusters of vocabulary words that were likely to come up again in the future – almost like wine pairings with a meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The full benefits of this kind of knowledge building didn’t materialize until after several years of coordinated instruction. In the first years, students were only able to transfer their ability to comprehend text on one topic to another if the topics were very similar. This study indicates that as their content knowledge deepened, their ability to generalize increased as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot going on here: a spiraling curriculum that revisits and builds upon themes year after year; an explicit teaching of underlying patterns; new vocabulary words, and a progression from the simple to the complex. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are many versions of knowledge-rich curricula and this one isn’t about exposing students to a classical canon. It remains unclear if all knowledge-building curricula work as well. Other programs sometimes replace the main reading class with knowledge-building lessons. This one didn’t tinker with regular reading class. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The biggest challenge with the approach used in the North Carolina experiment is that it requires schools to coordinate lessons across grades. That’s hard. Some teachers may want to keep their favorite units on, say, growing a bean plant, and may bristle at the idea of throwing away their old lesson plans.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also worth noting that students’ math scores improved as much as their reading scores did in this North Carolina experiment. It might seem surprising that a literacy intervention would also boost math. But math also requires a lot of reading; the state’s math tests were full of word problems. Any successful effort to boost reading skills is also likely to have positive spillovers into math, researchers explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">School leaders are under great pressure to boost test scores. To do that, they’ve often doubled time spent on reading and cut science and social studies classes. Studies like this one suggest that those cuts may have been costly, further undermining reading achievement instead of improving it. As researchers discover more about the science of reading, it may well turn out to be that more time on science itself is what kids need to become good readers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-learning-science-might-help-kids-read-better/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">background knowledge\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Surprising Effectiveness of Having Kids Study Why They Failed",
"headTitle": "The Surprising Effectiveness of Having Kids Study Why They Failed | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"p7\">For a few weeks in the spring of 2016, nearly all the eighth graders at a small \u003ca href=\"https://www.columbiasecondary.org/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">public school affiliated with Columbia University\u003c/span>\u003c/a> agreed to stay late after school to study math. They were preparing for a critical test, the New York State’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/testing/ny-state-high-school-regents-exams\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Regents examination\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in algebra. Half of the kids came from families that lived below the poverty line in Harlem and upper Manhattan. They attended a selective middle school and were advanced enough to be taking algebra in eighth instead of ninth grade. Many others were the children of Columbia professors, and none of them – rich or poor – really needed help passing the test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">But researchers set up a review class to test a theory about the best way to study for a test. For the first eight sessions, half the students had a traditional review class. They were given a Barron’s Regents review study guide with lots of practice problems. Their teachers worked through the first half of the problems, explaining how to solve them step by step.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The other half of their classmates studied the same algebra topics in a different way. They spent the first 45-minute session taking a mini practice test. They received no instruction and worked independently. The following day, their teachers went over the students’ errors. The students had four test-and-review cycles like this, for a total of four mini tests and four sessions of error review.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Then, the two groups swapped. The kids who had been taught via traditional, explicit instruction switched to reviewing the remaining algebra topics through their errors. And the kids who had been correcting their errors received eight sessions of traditional test prep. Their teachers taught both ways too, so that differences between the two modes couldn’t be attributed to a particular teacher. The following year, the same four teachers repeated the entire experiment with a fresh group of eighth graders. All told, 175 kids participated in the experiment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Which method worked best?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">On the surface, it was a tie. Students improved by about the same amount – 12% – whether they learned through explicit instruction or error review. Students had taken tests before and after the test prep course. Noting how much they improved on various algebra topics, researchers were able to trace those gains back to whether students learned that topic through explicit instruction or through their errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">There was one big difference, however. Learning through errors was twice as powerful based on instructional time. Teachers had to teach all eight sessions in the traditional instruction condition, totaling 360 minutes of instructional time. But teachers only had to teach every other session when students learned through errors, adding up to only 180 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">“You get more bang from your teacher buck, if you will, from the learning from errors condition,” said Janet Metcalfe, a psychologist at Columbia University who led the study, which was \u003ca href=\"https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjep.12651\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">published online in the British Journal of Educational Psychology\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in January 2024. (\u003ci>The Hechinger Report is an independent news organization based at Teachers College, Columbia University, but has no relationship with the middle school or the researchers involved in the study.\u003c/i>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Of course, students might not see it that way. They still had to be in class for the full 360 minutes after school, with half the time spent taking practice tests in order to generate the errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The study is not a repudiation of explicit instruction. The students were also taking an algebra class during the school day where they had likely had a lot of explicit instruction and were already familiar with the concepts. Metcalfe said that having this background knowledge is critical for learning by errors to work. The students aren’t just guessing, but they’re making common mistakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">“They’re just doing one little thing wrong,” said Metcalfe. “And once they understand what that one little thing is, and remember not to fall into a habit where they’ll make the same mistake, they can overcome it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Metcalfe offered the example of fractions. A student might mistakenly think that a large denominator means it’s a large number, but then remembers discussing the error in a review session and knows that a fraction with a large denominator might actually be a tiny number. The memory of discussing the error stops the student from making it again, she explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Learning from errors, however, was inconsistent. One of the four teachers produced more than twice the test score gains for students than a colleague. It’s not that this teacher was much better than the others. All four teachers produced almost identical test score gains when they taught explicitly how to solve problems. They were all good explainers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">But being a good explainer is not always the same thing as being a good teacher. Metcalfe and her team analyzed videos and transcripts of the review sessions to understand what the teachers were doing differently. And it turns out there are multiple ways to teach through errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The teacher who got the best results employed a sort of Socratic method. “Okay, you guys got this wrong? Why would somebody get this wrong?” recalled Metcalfe. “And he did very little lecturing, almost none.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This teacher asked his students to talk about how they had solved the problem and why they did it that way.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>He asked them to talk about what they found difficult. Students would often explain their thinking to each other. Finally, the teacher would ask his students to come up with ideas on how to recognize and avoid such mistakes in the future. This teacher had a knack for maintaining a fast pace and getting through a lot of problems from the previous day’s mini test. His students’ test scores jumped by far more than 12% when he taught this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">By contrast, the teacher who produced the lowest test score gains tended to lecture students on the correct way to solve the problems that they had gotten wrong. The focus was on the corrections, not the errors. His classes weren’t very interactive.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>His students’ test scores improved by only 6% instead of 12%. Still, on a per minute basis, he was as effective teaching through errors as he had been teaching traditionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Another teacher was extremely slow paced. “I was convinced when I was watching the teachers that the second teacher would have no success at all,” recalled Metcalfe. “He would take five minutes on one problem, and just let them mull over it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Her prediction was wrong. “His students did really well,” Metcalfe said, laughing. Like the star teacher, he didn’t lecture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">It’s worth emphasizing again that these were highly motivated, high-achieving students who cared about their Regents exam scores. This method might not work with less motivated students who are struggling in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Even with ideal students, it also seems like it takes a special teacher to pull off this kind of teaching. It reminds me of other progressive teaching approaches, from inquiry learning to project-based learning, for which researchers have documented remarkable results with masterful teachers. But maybe it’s asking too much of the average teacher to teach this way, thinking of questions on the fly that will magically steer students to the right answers. Should we be promoting ways of teaching that only a small minority of teachers can realistically do well?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">My big takeaway from this study is for students. When preparing for a math exam, they should take a practice test, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53524/how-revising-math-exams-turns-students-into-learners-not-processors\">go over mistakes and make sure they understand\u003c/a> why they made them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003ci>This story about \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-the-surprising-effectiveness-of-having-kids-study-why-they-failed/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>test prep\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/i>The Hechinger Report\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Proof Points newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p7\">For a few weeks in the spring of 2016, nearly all the eighth graders at a small \u003ca href=\"https://www.columbiasecondary.org/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">public school affiliated with Columbia University\u003c/span>\u003c/a> agreed to stay late after school to study math. They were preparing for a critical test, the New York State’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/testing/ny-state-high-school-regents-exams\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Regents examination\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in algebra. Half of the kids came from families that lived below the poverty line in Harlem and upper Manhattan. They attended a selective middle school and were advanced enough to be taking algebra in eighth instead of ninth grade. Many others were the children of Columbia professors, and none of them – rich or poor – really needed help passing the test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">But researchers set up a review class to test a theory about the best way to study for a test. For the first eight sessions, half the students had a traditional review class. They were given a Barron’s Regents review study guide with lots of practice problems. Their teachers worked through the first half of the problems, explaining how to solve them step by step.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The other half of their classmates studied the same algebra topics in a different way. They spent the first 45-minute session taking a mini practice test. They received no instruction and worked independently. The following day, their teachers went over the students’ errors. The students had four test-and-review cycles like this, for a total of four mini tests and four sessions of error review.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Then, the two groups swapped. The kids who had been taught via traditional, explicit instruction switched to reviewing the remaining algebra topics through their errors. And the kids who had been correcting their errors received eight sessions of traditional test prep. Their teachers taught both ways too, so that differences between the two modes couldn’t be attributed to a particular teacher. The following year, the same four teachers repeated the entire experiment with a fresh group of eighth graders. All told, 175 kids participated in the experiment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Which method worked best?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">On the surface, it was a tie. Students improved by about the same amount – 12% – whether they learned through explicit instruction or error review. Students had taken tests before and after the test prep course. Noting how much they improved on various algebra topics, researchers were able to trace those gains back to whether students learned that topic through explicit instruction or through their errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">There was one big difference, however. Learning through errors was twice as powerful based on instructional time. Teachers had to teach all eight sessions in the traditional instruction condition, totaling 360 minutes of instructional time. But teachers only had to teach every other session when students learned through errors, adding up to only 180 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">“You get more bang from your teacher buck, if you will, from the learning from errors condition,” said Janet Metcalfe, a psychologist at Columbia University who led the study, which was \u003ca href=\"https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjep.12651\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">published online in the British Journal of Educational Psychology\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in January 2024. (\u003ci>The Hechinger Report is an independent news organization based at Teachers College, Columbia University, but has no relationship with the middle school or the researchers involved in the study.\u003c/i>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Of course, students might not see it that way. They still had to be in class for the full 360 minutes after school, with half the time spent taking practice tests in order to generate the errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The study is not a repudiation of explicit instruction. The students were also taking an algebra class during the school day where they had likely had a lot of explicit instruction and were already familiar with the concepts. Metcalfe said that having this background knowledge is critical for learning by errors to work. The students aren’t just guessing, but they’re making common mistakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">“They’re just doing one little thing wrong,” said Metcalfe. “And once they understand what that one little thing is, and remember not to fall into a habit where they’ll make the same mistake, they can overcome it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Metcalfe offered the example of fractions. A student might mistakenly think that a large denominator means it’s a large number, but then remembers discussing the error in a review session and knows that a fraction with a large denominator might actually be a tiny number. The memory of discussing the error stops the student from making it again, she explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Learning from errors, however, was inconsistent. One of the four teachers produced more than twice the test score gains for students than a colleague. It’s not that this teacher was much better than the others. All four teachers produced almost identical test score gains when they taught explicitly how to solve problems. They were all good explainers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">But being a good explainer is not always the same thing as being a good teacher. Metcalfe and her team analyzed videos and transcripts of the review sessions to understand what the teachers were doing differently. And it turns out there are multiple ways to teach through errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">The teacher who got the best results employed a sort of Socratic method. “Okay, you guys got this wrong? Why would somebody get this wrong?” recalled Metcalfe. “And he did very little lecturing, almost none.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">This teacher asked his students to talk about how they had solved the problem and why they did it that way.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>He asked them to talk about what they found difficult. Students would often explain their thinking to each other. Finally, the teacher would ask his students to come up with ideas on how to recognize and avoid such mistakes in the future. This teacher had a knack for maintaining a fast pace and getting through a lot of problems from the previous day’s mini test. His students’ test scores jumped by far more than 12% when he taught this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">By contrast, the teacher who produced the lowest test score gains tended to lecture students on the correct way to solve the problems that they had gotten wrong. The focus was on the corrections, not the errors. His classes weren’t very interactive.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>His students’ test scores improved by only 6% instead of 12%. Still, on a per minute basis, he was as effective teaching through errors as he had been teaching traditionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Another teacher was extremely slow paced. “I was convinced when I was watching the teachers that the second teacher would have no success at all,” recalled Metcalfe. “He would take five minutes on one problem, and just let them mull over it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Her prediction was wrong. “His students did really well,” Metcalfe said, laughing. Like the star teacher, he didn’t lecture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">It’s worth emphasizing again that these were highly motivated, high-achieving students who cared about their Regents exam scores. This method might not work with less motivated students who are struggling in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">Even with ideal students, it also seems like it takes a special teacher to pull off this kind of teaching. It reminds me of other progressive teaching approaches, from inquiry learning to project-based learning, for which researchers have documented remarkable results with masterful teachers. But maybe it’s asking too much of the average teacher to teach this way, thinking of questions on the fly that will magically steer students to the right answers. Should we be promoting ways of teaching that only a small minority of teachers can realistically do well?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">My big takeaway from this study is for students. When preparing for a math exam, they should take a practice test, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53524/how-revising-math-exams-turns-students-into-learners-not-processors\">go over mistakes and make sure they understand\u003c/a> why they made them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p7\">\u003ci>This story about \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-the-surprising-effectiveness-of-having-kids-study-why-they-failed/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>test prep\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/i>The Hechinger Report\u003ci>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003ci>Proof Points newsletter\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "As Schools Embrace the Science of Reading, Researchers are Criticizing an Overemphasis on Auditory Skills",
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"content": "\u003ch2>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Educators around the country have embraced the “science of reading” in their classrooms, but that doesn’t mean there’s a truce in the reading wars. In fact, controversies are emerging about an important but less understood aspect of learning to read: phonemic awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s the technical name for showing children how to break down words into their component letter sounds and then fuse the sounds together. In a phonemic awareness lesson, a teacher might ask how many sounds are in the word cat. The answer is three: “k,” “a,” and “t.” Then the class blends the sounds back into the familiar sounding word: from “kuh-aah-tuh” to “kat.” The 26 letters of the English alphabet produce \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.readingrockets.org/sites/default/files/migrated/the-44-phonemes-of-english.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">44 phonemes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which include unique sounds made from combinations of letters, such as “ch” and “oo.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many schools have purchased scripted oral phonemic awareness lessons that do not include the visual display of letters. The oral lessons are popular because they are easy to teach and fun for students. And that’s the source of the current debate. Should kids in kindergarten or first grade be spending so much time on sounds without understanding how those sounds correspond to letters? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/AN2XIWFWJ3YZDJ3SIFPZ/full?target=10.1080/10888438.2024.2309386\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new meta-analysis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> confirms that the answer is no. In January 2024, five researchers from Texas A&M University published their findings online in the journal Scientific Studies of Reading. They found that struggling readers, ages 4 to 6, no longer benefited after 10.2 hours of auditory instruction in small group or tutoring sessions, but continued to make progress if visual displays of the letters were combined with the sounds. That means that instead of just asking students to repeat sounds, a teacher might hold up cards with the letters C, A and T printed on them as students isolate and blend the sounds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meta-analyses sweep up all the best research on a topic and use statistics to tell us where the preponderance of the evidence lies. This newest 2024 synthesis follows three previous meta-analyses on phonemic awareness in the past 25 years. While there are sometimes shortcomings in the underlying studies, the conclusions from all the phonemic meta-analyses appear to be pointing in the same direction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC3050981118&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If you teach phonemic awareness, students will learn phonemic awareness,” which isn’t the goal, said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://understandingreading.home.blog/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tiffany Peltier\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a learning scientist who consults on literacy training for teachers at NWEA, an assessment company. “If you teach blending and segmenting using letters, students are learning to read and spell.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Phonemic awareness has a complicated history. In the 1970s, researchers discovered that good readers also had a good \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/23769540\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">sense of the sounds that constitute words\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This sound awareness helps students map the written alphabet to the sounds, an important step in learning to read and write. Researchers proved that these auditory skills could be taught and early studies showed that they could be taught as a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/748042\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">purely oral exercise without letters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But science evolved. In 2000, the National Reading Panel outlined the five pillars of evidence-based reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. This has come to be known as the science of reading. By then, more studies on phonemic awareness had been conducted and oral lessons alone were not as successful. The reading panel’s meta-analysis of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">52 studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> showed that phonemic awareness instruction was almost twice as effective when letters were presented along with the sounds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many schools ignored the reading panel’s recommendations and chose different approaches that didn’t systematically teach phonics or phonemic awareness. But as the science of reading grew in popularity in the past decade, phonemic awareness lessons also exploded. Teacher training programs in the science of reading emphasized the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">importance of phonemic awareness\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://heggerty.org/curriculum/?utm_term=heggerty&utm_campaign=(D)+Branded+-+Search+(CORE)&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=8080130874&hsa_cam=10845962543&hsa_grp=105585801103&hsa_ad=473028550698&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-315916039120&hsa_kw=heggerty&hsa_mt=e&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA_tuuBhAUEiwAvxkgTrb7QXk6Q-sfzjdjbXZ0Slz4rS0CvAY10pE_vHsD2ggQe_OxB4Z-gxoCtAUQAvD_BwE\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Companies sold phonemic programs to schools\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and told teachers to teach it every day. Many of these lessons were auditory, including chants and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDSGFUhCxjI\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">songs without letters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Researchers worried that educators were overemphasizing auditory training. A 2021 article, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ajxbv\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction ‘In the Dark’, But Should You?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” by nine prominent reading researchers criticized how phonemic awareness was being taught in schools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twenty years after the reading panel’s report, a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2022_LSHSS-21-00160\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">second meta-analysis came out in 2022\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with even fresher studies but arrived at the same conclusion. Researchers from Baylor University analyzed over 130 studies and found twice the benefits for phonemic awareness when it was taught with letters. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.triplesr.org/sites/default/files/uploads/draft_program_6-18-2022.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">third meta-analysis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was presented at a poster session of the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. It also found that instruction was more effective when sounds and letters were combined.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the surface, adding letters to sounds might seem identical to teaching phonics. But some reading experts say phonemic awareness with letters still emphasizes the auditory skills of segmenting words into sounds and blending the sounds together. The visual display of the letter is almost like a subliminal teaching of phonics without explicitly saying, “This alphabetic symbol ‘a’ makes the sound ‘ah’.” Others explain that there isn’t a bright line between phonemic awareness and phonics and they can be taught in tandem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The authors of the latest 2024 meta-analysis had hoped to give teachers more guidance on how much classroom time to invest on phonemic awareness. But unfortunately, the classroom studies they found didn’t keep track of the minutes. The researchers were left with only 16 high-quality studies, all of which were interventions with struggling students. These were small group or individual tutoring sessions on top of whatever phonemic awareness lessons children may also have been receiving in their regular classrooms, which was not documented. So it’s impossible to say from this meta-analysis exactly how much sound training students need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The lead author of the 2024 meta-analysis, Florina Erbeli, an education psychologist at Texas A&M, said that the 10.2 hours number in her paper isn’t a “magic number.” It’s just an average of the results of the 16 studies that met her criteria for being included in the meta-analysis. The right amount of phonemic awareness might be more or less, depending on the child. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Erbeli said the bigger point for teachers to understand is that there are diminishing returns to auditory-only instruction and that students learn much more when auditory skills are combined with visible letters.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I corresponded with Heggerty, the market leader in phonemic awareness lessons, which says its programs are in 70% of U.S. school districts. The company acknowledged that the science of reading has evolved, and that’s why it revised its phonemic awareness program in 2022 to incorporate letters and introduced a new program in 2023 to pair it with phonics. The company says it is working with outside researchers to keep improving the instructional materials it sells to schools. Because many schools cannot afford to buy a new instructional program, Heggerty says it also explains how teachers can modify older auditory lessons.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The company still recommends that teachers spend eight to 12 minutes a day on phonemic awareness through the end of first grade. This recommendation contrasts with the advice of many reading researchers who say the average kid doesn’t need this much. Many researchers say that phonemic awareness continues to develop automatically as the child’s reading skills improve without advanced auditory training. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NWEA literacy consultant Peltier, whom I quoted earlier, suggests that phonemic awareness can be tapered off by the fall of first grade. More phonemic awareness isn’t necessarily harmful, but there’s only so much instructional time in the day. She thinks that precious minutes currently devoted to oral phonemic awareness could be better spent on phonics, building vocabulary and content knowledge through reading books aloud, classroom discussions and writing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another developer of a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.equippedforreadingsuccess.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">phonemic awareness program\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> aimed at older, struggling readers is David Kilpatrick, professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Cortland. He told me that five minutes a day might be enough for the average student in a classroom, but some struggling students need a lot more. Kilpatrick disagrees with the conclusions of the meta-analyses because they lump different types of students together. He says severely dyslexic students need more auditory training. He explained that extra time is needed for advanced auditory work that helps these students build long-term memories, he said, and the meta-analyses didn’t measure that outcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another reading expert, Susan Brady, professor emerita at the University of Rhode Island, concurs that some of the more advanced manipulations can help some students. Moving a sound in and out of a word can heighten awareness of a consonant cluster, such as taking the “l” out of the word “plant” to get “pant,” and then inserting it back in again.* But she says this kind of sound substitution should only be done with visible letters. Doing all the sound manipulations in your head is too taxing for young children, she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brady’s concern is the misunderstanding that teachers need to teach all the phonemes before moving on to phonics. It’s not a precursor or a prerequisite to reading and writing, she says. Instead, sound training should be taught at the same time as new groups of letters are introduced. “The letters reinforce the phoneme awareness and the phoneme awareness reinforces the letters,” said Brady, speaking at a 2022 teacher training session. She said that researchers and teacher trainers need to help educators shift to integrating letters into their early reading instruction. “It’s going to take a while to penetrate the belief system that’s out there,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I once thought that the reading wars were about whether to teach phonics. But there are fierce debates even among those who support a phonics-heavy science of reading. I’ve come to understand that the research hasn’t yet answered all our questions about the best way to teach all the steps. Schools might be over-teaching phonemic awareness. And children with dyslexia might need more than other children. More importantly, the science of reading is the same as any other scientific inquiry. Every new answer may also raise new questions as we get closer to the truth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC3050981118&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-controversies-within-the-science-of-reading/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">phonemic awareness\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*Clarification: An earlier version of this story suggested a different example of removing the “r” sound from “first,” but “r” is not an independent phoneme in this word. So a teacher would be unlikely to ask a student to do this particular sound manipulation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Welcome to MindShift where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Ki Sung.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today we’re going to talk about a really important skill that’s at the root of learning how to read, phonemic awareness. How it’s taught in schools is hotly debated and reading is something too many students and adults still struggle with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our guest is education journalist Jill Barshay of the Hechinger Report. She has a weekly column about education research called “Proof Points.” She’s here to discuss her latest piece about phonemic awareness. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Jill Barshay I’m so glad you’re here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> It’s a pleasure to be here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Your article about phonemic awareness is the most viewed on MindShift right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So clearly, there’s a lot of interest in this topic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Really?! [laughs]\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nKi Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, literally tens of thousands of people are reading about phonemic awareness right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d like to start by asking you to establish a glossary of terms related to learning how to read. Three terms I’d like for you to explain very simply are phonics, phonemes and phonemic awareness. And on phonemes, can you also spell the word out for us?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Sure, phone name, phoneme phoneme.\u003cbr>\nSo it’s sort of like the word phone with em at the end.\u003cbr>\nAnd what that is, I had a hard time grasping it for many years. It’s sort of sound awareness that you understand the sounds that words are made up of. So, for example, in the word cat, there are three phonemes and they are Cuh, aa, tuh. Phonics is about the letters that we see and what sounds they make. So when you see the circle shape that you know, that’s an O and that it makes the o sound like, as in pot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, phonemic awareness is this awareness that words are made up of sounds. So just like I did cat before, that would be a segmenting or isolating skill cuh, aa , tuh. And then another phonemic awareness skill would be blending them back together, going from cuh aa, tuh to cat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> There are also some other fancy schmancy phonemic awareness skills, but maybe we’ll talk about those later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> I appreciate how you said it took you some time to understand these because it took me some time to understand this too because it is so complex.And maybe that speaks to the fact that there are more phonemes than there are letters in the alphabet. And that makes learning how to teach kids how to read all the more challenging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Right, I just learned in reporting this story that while there are 26 letters to the English alphabet, there are 44 phonemes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So every letter has a sound like, R is err, but IR is its own phoneme and CH makes the chuh sound that’s a phone name, OO, oooh, that’s a phoneme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so yes, there’s more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> So, what did you learn about how phonemic awareness is being taught in schools, especially for kids, age 4 to 6?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I had become aware from a bunch of reading researchers and also reading advocates that schools were embracing phonemic awareness lessons with the whole rise of the science of reading. And they’re spending many, many minutes in kindergarten and first grade, especially, with all kinds of oral exercises. There are songs that they can do to segment and blend the sounds. And there was a concern that maybe schools are going a little bit overboard with phonemic awareness. Maybe students don’t need so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Can you explain what educators’ understanding of phonemic awareness was? Was it just auditory or was it also how it connects to the visual experience of reading?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> My understanding is that many teachers were trained that there are two separate things to teach kids. One is phonemic awareness and another thing is phonics and in many teacher training sessions, they were saying this is auditory, an oral only skill and you don’t need letters to teach it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And one of the leading vendors of phonemic awareness lessons was encouraging teachers to teach it as an auditory only lesson. And the instructional materials were largely auditory until very recently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And what problem does that introduce when it’s just auditory?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> In my research, I learned that when phonemic awareness was first being talked about by education or reading experts, they first thought that it could be taught as an oral only exercise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so there were experiments in the 1970’s showing that students who were explicitly taught phonemic awareness became better readers just through these kind of songs and chants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then more and more researchers started to do studies in it. And by 2000, one of the first meta analysis, this is a kind of study where you sweep up lots of studies together and you use statistics to say where the evidence lies, Already over 20 years ago, they said it was much more effective if you combine these phonemic awareness exercises like Cuh aah tuh Cat, with visible displays of the letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So like a teacher could hold up a card or write it on the chalkboard and then the students would see the letters as they say the sounds and become aware of the sounds in their brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what was funny was how even as this research was building and building, many schools weren’t teaching much phonemic awareness at all or phonics, phonics again, is putting the sounds to the visible letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And many, many schools around the country were ignoring this and using different methods to teach reading, things that you may have heard of like balanced literacy or the reader’s workshop, reading recovery. And those were methods that didn’t emphasize phonemic awareness or phonics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then more recently, like in the last five years, the science of reading has really gained traction around the country and schools have been really embracing phonemic awareness and that’s where the concern came, that maybe they’re doing too much of it without the letters while all this research is showing, dating back to the year 2000, that if you do phonemic awareness with the letters, it’s much more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And what was the connection you found or maybe the advice around how much time to spend on phonemic awareness?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Well, that was the study that really caught my attention. Just earlier this year, a group of researchers from Texas A&M University, they were really trying to like nail down the dosage.\u003cbr>\nLike how many minutes of this stuff do the kids really need? Is it two? Is it five, is it 10?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they collected all the studies that they could find that measured the minutes and they were so frustrated because none of the classroom studies documented the minutes well. And instead they were just left with 16 studies that looked at the amount of time that struggling kids were spending on phonemic awareness in extra sessions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So these might be like a special small group session for a child who’s at risk of dyslexia or a 1 to 1 tutoring session and there they measured the minutes and what they noticed was after 10 hours, phonemic awareness, the auditory only phonemic awareness topped out. Kids weren’t benefiting at all anymore after 10 hours of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the tutors or the small group teachers, if they combined it with letters, the kids kept getting better and better and better. And so it showed the researchers that if you combine phonemic awareness with the display of the letters, it’s so much more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> So it sounds like just the auditory lessons for this sample, 10 hours was fine, though like even just settling on that number is questionable because of the data the researchers have to work with.\u003cbr>\nOverall, the takeaway is connect the sound with the visual letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Right. What they found is phonemic awareness, oral only can be effective in say a small dose or a medium dose of it, 10 hours, right? But if you want to keep children learning and if you want them to keep improving, that it needs to be connected with the letters after a certain amount of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> You’ve explained a lot about phonemic awareness and we’ve talked about 4 to 6 year olds. But what, I guess there are also advanced phonemic awareness techniques that we should also be aware of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> This is where I thought I had went really deep down the rabbit hole. I couldn’t believe advanced phonemic awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So in addition to the segmenting cuh aa tuh and blending cat that I discussed before, there are all these other manipulations like you could subtract a sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So instead of plant, you get pant and then you can add a sound. Let’s say you can add L back into pant and make it plant. Then there are substitutions. So you can take mat and, and substitute the M with a P and make it pat. And can you imagine doing all these in your head? They’re really hard. And so it, it actually takes many…That’s one of the reasons that so much class time is being spent on these advanced phonemic awareness skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what the research literature shows is that the two very simple ones of segmenting and blending, they give you the biggest benefits and some experts say just focus on those and just do them as a quick warm up exercise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> But there are other people, particularly experts in helping children with dyslexia that say no, these really, these advanced phonemic awareness skills can be really helpful in building long term memories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And others have said to me, you know, it can really heighten awareness of a consonant cluster like the difference between Puh and Pula. But they say really these are very complicated exercises, they should only be done with letters, not as oral, only exercises and probably best for struggling students in you know, maybe a pull out session or a tutoring session.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> I hear a lot about the term phonological awareness. I know we’re adding a lot of we’re adding another term to our glossary list. But can you explain what phonological awareness is and its role in learning how to read?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I was really confused about this. And I personally used to use phonological awareness and phonemic awareness interchangeably. And in researching this story, I learned that they’re separate and that phonemic awareness is really the important ingredient in learning to read. And that this phonological awareness is not as important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phonological awareness is a much broader category that includes not just the sounds that letters and clusters of letters make, but also syllables like pantry that you would clap [claps] pan-try 1, 2 or rhymes like flight, night, sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there are probably zillions, more of these various sound exercises that are really disconnected from the letters and the sounds that they make. And the researchers are very concerned that teachers who have embraced the science of reading have been told to do too much of these broader phonological awareness exercises that are, you know, great for a poetry unit but not essential building blocks to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> I want to ask you about curriculum because at the root of a lot of these issues, you know, you can maybe even call them mistakes, is curriculum. And ultimately teachers have to go along with the curriculum, the district purchases and sometimes it’s not up to date or not correct or not caught up with the latest research. So what can teachers do when they come across curriculum that goes against what they know works with students?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I am not an expert in teaching and I don’t feel like my role is to give advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what I can say is that the leading purveyor of phonemic awareness lessons and curriculum, if you, you can call it, it’s called Haggerty and they themselves responded to the science and in 2022 they added letters to their phonemic awareness lessons. And then in 2023 they added a a phonics approach to show how to combine phonemic awareness and phonics together in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, there’s a misunderstanding, that a lot of teachers have, that you need to teach phonemic awareness first and students need to master it first before you move on to phonics. And the reading researchers, I talked to say, no, you kind of do them in tandem, like you can have a group of letters and simultaneously be teaching the phonemic awareness with them and the phonics with them and then move on to another group of letters. And you just, you keep teaching both together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> And so I was impressed that this leading seller of phonemic awareness programs has, has moved on and is now combining it with letters and also with phonics and it says for, it knows that many teachers in many schools cannot afford to buy brand new lesson plans and curriculum. And it says that it offers ideas on how teachers can modify their old books and their old printed lessons, and to do things better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know if that’s a good answer.I mean, it’s probably hard to do these modifications on the fly. And as a journalist from the outside it seems like if, like, when a company says our products not working well and they recall it and they, they put out a new product, they should probably, like, just give you the new product, I’m thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And what have you heard from people, you know, especially on social media or maybe they’re reaching out to you by email, like what have people been telling you about your reporting?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I’ve seen two reactions to it. One is people are grateful that the science of reading isn’t a cult and that just because someone says you need a lot of phonemic awareness in order to do the science of reading, right, that isn’t necessarily correct. You have to look at what the studies actually say and also the science evolved. So we, we have more meta analysis now, more syntheses of the research confirming that auditory alone is not as effective today. Whereas in the seventies, it seemed like it was the best way to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we, I think people who are you know, hold up signs, science of reading, science of reading need to understand that the science of reading, like any science evolves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other reaction I’ve seen are for people who have been critics of the science of reading and say, “see the, the researchers are arguing. Who knows what’s right? This shows we should go back to something called balanced literacy.”\u003cbr>\nAnd so I’ve also, I’ve also seen people taking this as ammunition that,, the whole science of reading is perhaps misguided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And where’s the truth?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Well, I think I tried to just express that, that science evolves. I mean, it, it, I think about it like, oh, masking and COVID, remember how first when COVID broke out, the federal authorities were saying, “well, you don’t need to wear masks. It’s not so important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then later, more studies came out and said, you know what, “we should really wear masks,” and I think we need to be comfortable with science evolving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so so maybe there was a time almost 50 years ago that oral only phonemic awareness was the way to go. And now we have a ton of confirmation that we need to combine it with letters and there are still questions out there. We still don’t know the exact right dosage in the classroom for example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Jill, thank you for taking the time to talk through this complex issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, thanks for talking this through. It’s a complicated area and I appreciate another chance to talk about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Jill Barshay is a journalist with the Hechinger report. She has a weekly column about education research called Proof Points. Her latest piece is about phonemic awareness research. We’ll bring you ideas and innovations from experts in education and beyond. Hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> The MindShift team includes me, Ki Sung, Nimah Gobir, Kara Newhouse, Marlena Jackson-Retondo and Jennifer Ng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our editor is Chris Hambrick, Chris Hoff is our sound designer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additional support from Jen Chien and Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldaña and Holly Kernan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MindShift is supported in part by the generosity of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and members of KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003ch2>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Educators around the country have embraced the “science of reading” in their classrooms, but that doesn’t mean there’s a truce in the reading wars. In fact, controversies are emerging about an important but less understood aspect of learning to read: phonemic awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s the technical name for showing children how to break down words into their component letter sounds and then fuse the sounds together. In a phonemic awareness lesson, a teacher might ask how many sounds are in the word cat. The answer is three: “k,” “a,” and “t.” Then the class blends the sounds back into the familiar sounding word: from “kuh-aah-tuh” to “kat.” The 26 letters of the English alphabet produce \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.readingrockets.org/sites/default/files/migrated/the-44-phonemes-of-english.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">44 phonemes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which include unique sounds made from combinations of letters, such as “ch” and “oo.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many schools have purchased scripted oral phonemic awareness lessons that do not include the visual display of letters. The oral lessons are popular because they are easy to teach and fun for students. And that’s the source of the current debate. Should kids in kindergarten or first grade be spending so much time on sounds without understanding how those sounds correspond to letters? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/AN2XIWFWJ3YZDJ3SIFPZ/full?target=10.1080/10888438.2024.2309386\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new meta-analysis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> confirms that the answer is no. In January 2024, five researchers from Texas A&M University published their findings online in the journal Scientific Studies of Reading. They found that struggling readers, ages 4 to 6, no longer benefited after 10.2 hours of auditory instruction in small group or tutoring sessions, but continued to make progress if visual displays of the letters were combined with the sounds. That means that instead of just asking students to repeat sounds, a teacher might hold up cards with the letters C, A and T printed on them as students isolate and blend the sounds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meta-analyses sweep up all the best research on a topic and use statistics to tell us where the preponderance of the evidence lies. This newest 2024 synthesis follows three previous meta-analyses on phonemic awareness in the past 25 years. While there are sometimes shortcomings in the underlying studies, the conclusions from all the phonemic meta-analyses appear to be pointing in the same direction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC3050981118&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If you teach phonemic awareness, students will learn phonemic awareness,” which isn’t the goal, said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://understandingreading.home.blog/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tiffany Peltier\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a learning scientist who consults on literacy training for teachers at NWEA, an assessment company. “If you teach blending and segmenting using letters, students are learning to read and spell.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Phonemic awareness has a complicated history. In the 1970s, researchers discovered that good readers also had a good \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/23769540\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">sense of the sounds that constitute words\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This sound awareness helps students map the written alphabet to the sounds, an important step in learning to read and write. Researchers proved that these auditory skills could be taught and early studies showed that they could be taught as a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/748042\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">purely oral exercise without letters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But science evolved. In 2000, the National Reading Panel outlined the five pillars of evidence-based reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. This has come to be known as the science of reading. By then, more studies on phonemic awareness had been conducted and oral lessons alone were not as successful. The reading panel’s meta-analysis of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">52 studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> showed that phonemic awareness instruction was almost twice as effective when letters were presented along with the sounds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many schools ignored the reading panel’s recommendations and chose different approaches that didn’t systematically teach phonics or phonemic awareness. But as the science of reading grew in popularity in the past decade, phonemic awareness lessons also exploded. Teacher training programs in the science of reading emphasized the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">importance of phonemic awareness\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://heggerty.org/curriculum/?utm_term=heggerty&utm_campaign=(D)+Branded+-+Search+(CORE)&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=8080130874&hsa_cam=10845962543&hsa_grp=105585801103&hsa_ad=473028550698&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-315916039120&hsa_kw=heggerty&hsa_mt=e&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA_tuuBhAUEiwAvxkgTrb7QXk6Q-sfzjdjbXZ0Slz4rS0CvAY10pE_vHsD2ggQe_OxB4Z-gxoCtAUQAvD_BwE\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Companies sold phonemic programs to schools\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and told teachers to teach it every day. Many of these lessons were auditory, including chants and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDSGFUhCxjI\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">songs without letters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Researchers worried that educators were overemphasizing auditory training. A 2021 article, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ajxbv\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction ‘In the Dark’, But Should You?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” by nine prominent reading researchers criticized how phonemic awareness was being taught in schools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twenty years after the reading panel’s report, a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2022_LSHSS-21-00160\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">second meta-analysis came out in 2022\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with even fresher studies but arrived at the same conclusion. Researchers from Baylor University analyzed over 130 studies and found twice the benefits for phonemic awareness when it was taught with letters. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.triplesr.org/sites/default/files/uploads/draft_program_6-18-2022.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">third meta-analysis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was presented at a poster session of the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. It also found that instruction was more effective when sounds and letters were combined.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the surface, adding letters to sounds might seem identical to teaching phonics. But some reading experts say phonemic awareness with letters still emphasizes the auditory skills of segmenting words into sounds and blending the sounds together. The visual display of the letter is almost like a subliminal teaching of phonics without explicitly saying, “This alphabetic symbol ‘a’ makes the sound ‘ah’.” Others explain that there isn’t a bright line between phonemic awareness and phonics and they can be taught in tandem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The authors of the latest 2024 meta-analysis had hoped to give teachers more guidance on how much classroom time to invest on phonemic awareness. But unfortunately, the classroom studies they found didn’t keep track of the minutes. The researchers were left with only 16 high-quality studies, all of which were interventions with struggling students. These were small group or individual tutoring sessions on top of whatever phonemic awareness lessons children may also have been receiving in their regular classrooms, which was not documented. So it’s impossible to say from this meta-analysis exactly how much sound training students need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The lead author of the 2024 meta-analysis, Florina Erbeli, an education psychologist at Texas A&M, said that the 10.2 hours number in her paper isn’t a “magic number.” It’s just an average of the results of the 16 studies that met her criteria for being included in the meta-analysis. The right amount of phonemic awareness might be more or less, depending on the child. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Erbeli said the bigger point for teachers to understand is that there are diminishing returns to auditory-only instruction and that students learn much more when auditory skills are combined with visible letters.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I corresponded with Heggerty, the market leader in phonemic awareness lessons, which says its programs are in 70% of U.S. school districts. The company acknowledged that the science of reading has evolved, and that’s why it revised its phonemic awareness program in 2022 to incorporate letters and introduced a new program in 2023 to pair it with phonics. The company says it is working with outside researchers to keep improving the instructional materials it sells to schools. Because many schools cannot afford to buy a new instructional program, Heggerty says it also explains how teachers can modify older auditory lessons.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The company still recommends that teachers spend eight to 12 minutes a day on phonemic awareness through the end of first grade. This recommendation contrasts with the advice of many reading researchers who say the average kid doesn’t need this much. Many researchers say that phonemic awareness continues to develop automatically as the child’s reading skills improve without advanced auditory training. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NWEA literacy consultant Peltier, whom I quoted earlier, suggests that phonemic awareness can be tapered off by the fall of first grade. More phonemic awareness isn’t necessarily harmful, but there’s only so much instructional time in the day. She thinks that precious minutes currently devoted to oral phonemic awareness could be better spent on phonics, building vocabulary and content knowledge through reading books aloud, classroom discussions and writing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another developer of a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.equippedforreadingsuccess.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">phonemic awareness program\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> aimed at older, struggling readers is David Kilpatrick, professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Cortland. He told me that five minutes a day might be enough for the average student in a classroom, but some struggling students need a lot more. Kilpatrick disagrees with the conclusions of the meta-analyses because they lump different types of students together. He says severely dyslexic students need more auditory training. He explained that extra time is needed for advanced auditory work that helps these students build long-term memories, he said, and the meta-analyses didn’t measure that outcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another reading expert, Susan Brady, professor emerita at the University of Rhode Island, concurs that some of the more advanced manipulations can help some students. Moving a sound in and out of a word can heighten awareness of a consonant cluster, such as taking the “l” out of the word “plant” to get “pant,” and then inserting it back in again.* But she says this kind of sound substitution should only be done with visible letters. Doing all the sound manipulations in your head is too taxing for young children, she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brady’s concern is the misunderstanding that teachers need to teach all the phonemes before moving on to phonics. It’s not a precursor or a prerequisite to reading and writing, she says. Instead, sound training should be taught at the same time as new groups of letters are introduced. “The letters reinforce the phoneme awareness and the phoneme awareness reinforces the letters,” said Brady, speaking at a 2022 teacher training session. She said that researchers and teacher trainers need to help educators shift to integrating letters into their early reading instruction. “It’s going to take a while to penetrate the belief system that’s out there,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I once thought that the reading wars were about whether to teach phonics. But there are fierce debates even among those who support a phonics-heavy science of reading. I’ve come to understand that the research hasn’t yet answered all our questions about the best way to teach all the steps. Schools might be over-teaching phonemic awareness. And children with dyslexia might need more than other children. More importantly, the science of reading is the same as any other scientific inquiry. Every new answer may also raise new questions as we get closer to the truth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC3050981118&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-controversies-within-the-science-of-reading/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">phonemic awareness\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*Clarification: An earlier version of this story suggested a different example of removing the “r” sound from “first,” but “r” is not an independent phoneme in this word. So a teacher would be unlikely to ask a student to do this particular sound manipulation.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Welcome to MindShift where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Ki Sung.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today we’re going to talk about a really important skill that’s at the root of learning how to read, phonemic awareness. How it’s taught in schools is hotly debated and reading is something too many students and adults still struggle with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our guest is education journalist Jill Barshay of the Hechinger Report. She has a weekly column about education research called “Proof Points.” She’s here to discuss her latest piece about phonemic awareness. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Jill Barshay I’m so glad you’re here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> It’s a pleasure to be here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Your article about phonemic awareness is the most viewed on MindShift right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So clearly, there’s a lot of interest in this topic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Really?! [laughs]\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nKi Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, literally tens of thousands of people are reading about phonemic awareness right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d like to start by asking you to establish a glossary of terms related to learning how to read. Three terms I’d like for you to explain very simply are phonics, phonemes and phonemic awareness. And on phonemes, can you also spell the word out for us?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Sure, phone name, phoneme phoneme.\u003cbr>\nSo it’s sort of like the word phone with em at the end.\u003cbr>\nAnd what that is, I had a hard time grasping it for many years. It’s sort of sound awareness that you understand the sounds that words are made up of. So, for example, in the word cat, there are three phonemes and they are Cuh, aa, tuh. Phonics is about the letters that we see and what sounds they make. So when you see the circle shape that you know, that’s an O and that it makes the o sound like, as in pot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, phonemic awareness is this awareness that words are made up of sounds. So just like I did cat before, that would be a segmenting or isolating skill cuh, aa , tuh. And then another phonemic awareness skill would be blending them back together, going from cuh aa, tuh to cat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> There are also some other fancy schmancy phonemic awareness skills, but maybe we’ll talk about those later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> I appreciate how you said it took you some time to understand these because it took me some time to understand this too because it is so complex.And maybe that speaks to the fact that there are more phonemes than there are letters in the alphabet. And that makes learning how to teach kids how to read all the more challenging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Right, I just learned in reporting this story that while there are 26 letters to the English alphabet, there are 44 phonemes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So every letter has a sound like, R is err, but IR is its own phoneme and CH makes the chuh sound that’s a phone name, OO, oooh, that’s a phoneme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so yes, there’s more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> So, what did you learn about how phonemic awareness is being taught in schools, especially for kids, age 4 to 6?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I had become aware from a bunch of reading researchers and also reading advocates that schools were embracing phonemic awareness lessons with the whole rise of the science of reading. And they’re spending many, many minutes in kindergarten and first grade, especially, with all kinds of oral exercises. There are songs that they can do to segment and blend the sounds. And there was a concern that maybe schools are going a little bit overboard with phonemic awareness. Maybe students don’t need so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Can you explain what educators’ understanding of phonemic awareness was? Was it just auditory or was it also how it connects to the visual experience of reading?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> My understanding is that many teachers were trained that there are two separate things to teach kids. One is phonemic awareness and another thing is phonics and in many teacher training sessions, they were saying this is auditory, an oral only skill and you don’t need letters to teach it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And one of the leading vendors of phonemic awareness lessons was encouraging teachers to teach it as an auditory only lesson. And the instructional materials were largely auditory until very recently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And what problem does that introduce when it’s just auditory?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> In my research, I learned that when phonemic awareness was first being talked about by education or reading experts, they first thought that it could be taught as an oral only exercise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so there were experiments in the 1970’s showing that students who were explicitly taught phonemic awareness became better readers just through these kind of songs and chants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then more and more researchers started to do studies in it. And by 2000, one of the first meta analysis, this is a kind of study where you sweep up lots of studies together and you use statistics to say where the evidence lies, Already over 20 years ago, they said it was much more effective if you combine these phonemic awareness exercises like Cuh aah tuh Cat, with visible displays of the letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So like a teacher could hold up a card or write it on the chalkboard and then the students would see the letters as they say the sounds and become aware of the sounds in their brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what was funny was how even as this research was building and building, many schools weren’t teaching much phonemic awareness at all or phonics, phonics again, is putting the sounds to the visible letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And many, many schools around the country were ignoring this and using different methods to teach reading, things that you may have heard of like balanced literacy or the reader’s workshop, reading recovery. And those were methods that didn’t emphasize phonemic awareness or phonics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then more recently, like in the last five years, the science of reading has really gained traction around the country and schools have been really embracing phonemic awareness and that’s where the concern came, that maybe they’re doing too much of it without the letters while all this research is showing, dating back to the year 2000, that if you do phonemic awareness with the letters, it’s much more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And what was the connection you found or maybe the advice around how much time to spend on phonemic awareness?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Well, that was the study that really caught my attention. Just earlier this year, a group of researchers from Texas A&M University, they were really trying to like nail down the dosage.\u003cbr>\nLike how many minutes of this stuff do the kids really need? Is it two? Is it five, is it 10?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they collected all the studies that they could find that measured the minutes and they were so frustrated because none of the classroom studies documented the minutes well. And instead they were just left with 16 studies that looked at the amount of time that struggling kids were spending on phonemic awareness in extra sessions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So these might be like a special small group session for a child who’s at risk of dyslexia or a 1 to 1 tutoring session and there they measured the minutes and what they noticed was after 10 hours, phonemic awareness, the auditory only phonemic awareness topped out. Kids weren’t benefiting at all anymore after 10 hours of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the tutors or the small group teachers, if they combined it with letters, the kids kept getting better and better and better. And so it showed the researchers that if you combine phonemic awareness with the display of the letters, it’s so much more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> So it sounds like just the auditory lessons for this sample, 10 hours was fine, though like even just settling on that number is questionable because of the data the researchers have to work with.\u003cbr>\nOverall, the takeaway is connect the sound with the visual letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Right. What they found is phonemic awareness, oral only can be effective in say a small dose or a medium dose of it, 10 hours, right? But if you want to keep children learning and if you want them to keep improving, that it needs to be connected with the letters after a certain amount of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> You’ve explained a lot about phonemic awareness and we’ve talked about 4 to 6 year olds. But what, I guess there are also advanced phonemic awareness techniques that we should also be aware of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> This is where I thought I had went really deep down the rabbit hole. I couldn’t believe advanced phonemic awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So in addition to the segmenting cuh aa tuh and blending cat that I discussed before, there are all these other manipulations like you could subtract a sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So instead of plant, you get pant and then you can add a sound. Let’s say you can add L back into pant and make it plant. Then there are substitutions. So you can take mat and, and substitute the M with a P and make it pat. And can you imagine doing all these in your head? They’re really hard. And so it, it actually takes many…That’s one of the reasons that so much class time is being spent on these advanced phonemic awareness skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what the research literature shows is that the two very simple ones of segmenting and blending, they give you the biggest benefits and some experts say just focus on those and just do them as a quick warm up exercise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> But there are other people, particularly experts in helping children with dyslexia that say no, these really, these advanced phonemic awareness skills can be really helpful in building long term memories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And others have said to me, you know, it can really heighten awareness of a consonant cluster like the difference between Puh and Pula. But they say really these are very complicated exercises, they should only be done with letters, not as oral, only exercises and probably best for struggling students in you know, maybe a pull out session or a tutoring session.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> I hear a lot about the term phonological awareness. I know we’re adding a lot of we’re adding another term to our glossary list. But can you explain what phonological awareness is and its role in learning how to read?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I was really confused about this. And I personally used to use phonological awareness and phonemic awareness interchangeably. And in researching this story, I learned that they’re separate and that phonemic awareness is really the important ingredient in learning to read. And that this phonological awareness is not as important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phonological awareness is a much broader category that includes not just the sounds that letters and clusters of letters make, but also syllables like pantry that you would clap [claps] pan-try 1, 2 or rhymes like flight, night, sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there are probably zillions, more of these various sound exercises that are really disconnected from the letters and the sounds that they make. And the researchers are very concerned that teachers who have embraced the science of reading have been told to do too much of these broader phonological awareness exercises that are, you know, great for a poetry unit but not essential building blocks to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> I want to ask you about curriculum because at the root of a lot of these issues, you know, you can maybe even call them mistakes, is curriculum. And ultimately teachers have to go along with the curriculum, the district purchases and sometimes it’s not up to date or not correct or not caught up with the latest research. So what can teachers do when they come across curriculum that goes against what they know works with students?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I am not an expert in teaching and I don’t feel like my role is to give advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what I can say is that the leading purveyor of phonemic awareness lessons and curriculum, if you, you can call it, it’s called Haggerty and they themselves responded to the science and in 2022 they added letters to their phonemic awareness lessons. And then in 2023 they added a a phonics approach to show how to combine phonemic awareness and phonics together in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, there’s a misunderstanding, that a lot of teachers have, that you need to teach phonemic awareness first and students need to master it first before you move on to phonics. And the reading researchers, I talked to say, no, you kind of do them in tandem, like you can have a group of letters and simultaneously be teaching the phonemic awareness with them and the phonics with them and then move on to another group of letters. And you just, you keep teaching both together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> And so I was impressed that this leading seller of phonemic awareness programs has, has moved on and is now combining it with letters and also with phonics and it says for, it knows that many teachers in many schools cannot afford to buy brand new lesson plans and curriculum. And it says that it offers ideas on how teachers can modify their old books and their old printed lessons, and to do things better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know if that’s a good answer.I mean, it’s probably hard to do these modifications on the fly. And as a journalist from the outside it seems like if, like, when a company says our products not working well and they recall it and they, they put out a new product, they should probably, like, just give you the new product, I’m thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And what have you heard from people, you know, especially on social media or maybe they’re reaching out to you by email, like what have people been telling you about your reporting?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> I’ve seen two reactions to it. One is people are grateful that the science of reading isn’t a cult and that just because someone says you need a lot of phonemic awareness in order to do the science of reading, right, that isn’t necessarily correct. You have to look at what the studies actually say and also the science evolved. So we, we have more meta analysis now, more syntheses of the research confirming that auditory alone is not as effective today. Whereas in the seventies, it seemed like it was the best way to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we, I think people who are you know, hold up signs, science of reading, science of reading need to understand that the science of reading, like any science evolves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other reaction I’ve seen are for people who have been critics of the science of reading and say, “see the, the researchers are arguing. Who knows what’s right? This shows we should go back to something called balanced literacy.”\u003cbr>\nAnd so I’ve also, I’ve also seen people taking this as ammunition that,, the whole science of reading is perhaps misguided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> And where’s the truth?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jill Barshay:\u003c/strong> Well, I think I tried to just express that, that science evolves. I mean, it, it, I think about it like, oh, masking and COVID, remember how first when COVID broke out, the federal authorities were saying, “well, you don’t need to wear masks. It’s not so important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then later, more studies came out and said, you know what, “we should really wear masks,” and I think we need to be comfortable with science evolving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so so maybe there was a time almost 50 years ago that oral only phonemic awareness was the way to go. And now we have a ton of confirmation that we need to combine it with letters and there are still questions out there. We still don’t know the exact right dosage in the classroom for example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Jill, thank you for taking the time to talk through this complex issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, thanks for talking this through. It’s a complicated area and I appreciate another chance to talk about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Jill Barshay is a journalist with the Hechinger report. She has a weekly column about education research called Proof Points. Her latest piece is about phonemic awareness research. We’ll bring you ideas and innovations from experts in education and beyond. Hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> The MindShift team includes me, Ki Sung, Nimah Gobir, Kara Newhouse, Marlena Jackson-Retondo and Jennifer Ng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our editor is Chris Hambrick, Chris Hoff is our sound designer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additional support from Jen Chien and Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldaña and Holly Kernan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MindShift is supported in part by the generosity of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and members of KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"title": "Politicians love to talk about race and LGBTQ issues in school. Teachers and teens, not so much.",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/02/23/teachers-teens-not-at-ease-discussing-lgbtq-issues-in-school-survey-finds/\" rel=\"canonical\">originally published\u003c/a> by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at \u003ca href=\"https://ckbe.at/newsletters\">ckbe.at/newsletters.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Should elementary schoolers learn that people of the same gender can love each other? Do teens want to learn about how slavery’s legacy matters today? Should parents be able to opt their kids out of lessons they disagree with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Republican-dominated state legislatures \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/12/17/22840317/crt-laws-classroom-discussion-racism/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">limit how teachers talk about race\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/8/10/23298986/transgender-children-kids-students-rights-biden-lgbtq-title-ix/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">restrict transgender children’s access\u003c/a> to bathrooms and sports, and as school board elections turn on book bans and parents’ rights, three new national studies from the Pew Research Center, the research corporation RAND, and the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education shed light on how teachers, parents, and students themselves think about these questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For all the attention LGBTQ issues receive in national politics, teachers said topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation rarely come up. And many said they don’t believe these topics should be taught in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, large swaths of the public also don’t think gender and sexuality should be discussed in school, the studies found. However, there were wide partisan divides, as well as differences along racial and ethnic lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adults and teens felt more comfortable with teachers teaching about racism than LGBTQ issues. They were also more comfortable with teachers talking about past injustices than present-day inequality, and more comfortable with gay rights than trans rights. And they were more comfortable with any of these topics coming up at the high school level — though many teens reported their own discomfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it is perhaps unsurprising that two-thirds of teachers in one study said they decided on their own to limit how they talked about potentially contentious issues. One reason: They feared confrontations with upset parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The topics of race and LGBTQ issues are often lumped together in discussions about these so-called ‘culture wars’ and how that’s playing out in K-12 education,” said Luona Lin, a research associate at Pew. But teachers and students actually “feel very different about these two topics.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the major takeaways of the three new reports:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Many teachers are censoring themselves\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>More than a third of American teachers work in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-attack/2021/06\">states with laws restricting\u003c/a> how teachers talk about issues that are considered divisive or controversial. But a \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-10.html\">study released this month by the research organization RAND\u003c/a> found local restrictions and teachers’ own fears are having an effect as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a survey of 1,500 teachers taken last year, two-thirds reported deciding on their own to limit how they talked about social and political issues in the classroom. Meanwhile, about half of teachers told RAND they were subject to either a state or local restriction. These limits could be formal, such as a school board policy, or informal, such as a principal’s comments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 80% of those who were subject to a local restriction said they had made changes to their teaching, regardless of state law. That should not be surprising, said Ashley Woo, an assistant policy researcher at RAND.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If your principal is telling you to do something, that is the person who is there with you at the school and can see what is happening in your classroom,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, more than half of teachers who were not subject to any restrictions said they had limited how they talked about certain topics, with self-censoring more common in conservative communities but still widespread in liberal ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A major reason teachers cited for limiting instruction, especially in communities with local restrictions, was a fear of confrontation with upset parents and that their administration would not support them if they faced a challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>LGBTQ issues raised less often than racism in classrooms\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though LGBTQ issues are prominent in local and national politics, \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/02/22/race-and-lgbtq-issues-in-k-12-schools/\">a report released this week\u003c/a> reveals a striking finding: Most teachers say gender identity and sexual orientation hardly get discussed in class — and many teachers say they shouldn’t be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a nationally representative survey conducted last fall by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity rarely or never came up in their classroom last school year. Around 3 in 10 said the topics came up sometimes or often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Half of teachers, meanwhile, said they thought students shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school, with an even higher share of elementary school teachers agreeing with that view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings come as \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/7/8/23198792/lgbtq-students-law-florida-dont-say-gay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">anti-trans legislation\u003c/a> creates a \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/10/25/23421548/lgbtq-students-mental-health-school-safety-survey/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">more hostile environment\u003c/a> for \u003ca href=\"https://19thnews.org/2024/02/nex-benedict-oklahoma-lgbtq-community-resilience/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gender non-conforming youth\u003c/a> in many states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, more than half of teachers said they discussed topics related to racism or racial inequality at least sometimes. Around 4 in 10 teachers said the issues rarely or never came up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly two-thirds of teachers said students should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while just under a quarter said slavery should be taught only as a component of history — without any bearing on the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lin, the Pew report’s lead author, says it’s likely that school board policies, local politics, and state laws are influencing what teachers discuss, though the survey doesn’t measure those factors.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What should young kids learn about gender and sexuality?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In Searching for Common Ground, a \u003ca href=\"https://today.usc.edu/controversial-school-topics-how-americans-really-feel/\">study released this week by a team\u003c/a> at the University of Southern California, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,900 adults, about half of them parents of school-aged children, and asked them about dozens of scenarios related to race, sexuality, and gender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Democrats were more comfortable than Republicans with almost every scenario, with independents and others roughly in the middle. But even Democrats were less supportive of discussing gender identity or asking students’ pronouns in elementary school than discussing racism or different family structures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly half of all respondents thought it was appropriate for an elementary teacher to have a picture of their same-sex spouse on their desk. And almost as many were OK with elementary students \u003ca href=\"https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/And-Tango-Makes-Three/Justin-Richardson/9781481446952\">reading a book\u003c/a> about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But just 30% of respondents and only half of Democrats thought it was appropriate for an elementary classroom to display LGBTQ-friendly decorations, such as a Pride flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Democrats were far more likely to want gay or trans children to see themselves reflected at school, while Republicans were far more likely to fear discussing these topics would change children, leading to them thinking they are gay or trans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The largest partisan examples seem to have to do with LGBTQ and family issues in elementary school,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor and one of the study’s lead authors. “Democrats think that kids can handle that and Republicans do not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>More students feel comfortable discussing racism than LGBTQ issues\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Students in grades 8-12 also tend to feel less comfortable discussing LGBTQ issues than issues of race and racism at school, and are more likely to say they shouldn’t be learning about them, the Pew report found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a nationally representative survey of 13- to 17-year-olds conducted last fall, around 4 in 10 teens said they felt comfortable when topics related to racism or racial inequality came up in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But only around 3 in 10 said the same about topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. And just under half of teens said they shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school. That rate was somewhat higher for teens who identified as Republicans than Democrats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only 11% of teens, meanwhile, said they shouldn’t learn about slavery. Around half said they should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while 40% said they should learn about slavery only in a historical context.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Black teens and teens who identify as Democrats were much more likely than white, Hispanic, or Republican teens to say they want to learn about how the legacy of slavery affects Black people today — a finding echoed among Black parents and Black teachers in other surveys.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bridging these divides is tricky\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The University of Southern California study found strong support for public education across the political spectrum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a gap of nearly 39 percentage points between Democrats and Republicans on whether public schools should teach children to embrace differences. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats said yes, compared with just over a third of Republicans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This underlying belief was a strong predictor of responses to specific scenarios. Those who said kids shouldn’t be taught to embrace differences also expressed more discomfort with race, gender, and sexuality being discussed in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Democrats on average think schools are exactly the place to do this — it’s one of the last places where everyone comes together regardless of their differences,” Polikoff said. “And Republicans don’t think that is an appropriate role for schools. And they think that because they perceive, in part correctly, that schools are a liberalizing force.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was broad support for parents having the right to opt their child out of certain lessons, but when researchers prompted respondents to consider downsides, such as their child missing out on the opportunity to learn critical thinking skills, support fell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understanding the values that drive differences and building on common ground, such as agreement that children should read books by authors of color and learn about historic injustices, could lead to a healthier conversation than what’s happening now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to have this conversation,” he said. “Instead we have Ron DeSantis saying we’ll ban everything, and Democrats sticking their fingers in their ears and saying you’re all bigots.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"mailto:emeltzer@chalkbeat.org\">\u003ci>emeltzer@chalkbeat.org\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. \u003c/i>\u003ci>Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"mailto:kbelsha@chalkbeat.org\">\u003ci>kbelsha@chalkbeat.org\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/02/23/teachers-teens-not-at-ease-discussing-lgbtq-issues-in-school-survey-finds/\" rel=\"canonical\">Chalkbeat\u003c/a> is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/02/23/teachers-teens-not-at-ease-discussing-lgbtq-issues-in-school-survey-finds/\" rel=\"canonical\">originally published\u003c/a> by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at \u003ca href=\"https://ckbe.at/newsletters\">ckbe.at/newsletters.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Should elementary schoolers learn that people of the same gender can love each other? Do teens want to learn about how slavery’s legacy matters today? Should parents be able to opt their kids out of lessons they disagree with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Republican-dominated state legislatures \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/12/17/22840317/crt-laws-classroom-discussion-racism/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">limit how teachers talk about race\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/8/10/23298986/transgender-children-kids-students-rights-biden-lgbtq-title-ix/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">restrict transgender children’s access\u003c/a> to bathrooms and sports, and as school board elections turn on book bans and parents’ rights, three new national studies from the Pew Research Center, the research corporation RAND, and the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education shed light on how teachers, parents, and students themselves think about these questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For all the attention LGBTQ issues receive in national politics, teachers said topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation rarely come up. And many said they don’t believe these topics should be taught in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, large swaths of the public also don’t think gender and sexuality should be discussed in school, the studies found. However, there were wide partisan divides, as well as differences along racial and ethnic lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adults and teens felt more comfortable with teachers teaching about racism than LGBTQ issues. They were also more comfortable with teachers talking about past injustices than present-day inequality, and more comfortable with gay rights than trans rights. And they were more comfortable with any of these topics coming up at the high school level — though many teens reported their own discomfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it is perhaps unsurprising that two-thirds of teachers in one study said they decided on their own to limit how they talked about potentially contentious issues. One reason: They feared confrontations with upset parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The topics of race and LGBTQ issues are often lumped together in discussions about these so-called ‘culture wars’ and how that’s playing out in K-12 education,” said Luona Lin, a research associate at Pew. But teachers and students actually “feel very different about these two topics.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the major takeaways of the three new reports:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Many teachers are censoring themselves\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>More than a third of American teachers work in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-attack/2021/06\">states with laws restricting\u003c/a> how teachers talk about issues that are considered divisive or controversial. But a \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-10.html\">study released this month by the research organization RAND\u003c/a> found local restrictions and teachers’ own fears are having an effect as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a survey of 1,500 teachers taken last year, two-thirds reported deciding on their own to limit how they talked about social and political issues in the classroom. Meanwhile, about half of teachers told RAND they were subject to either a state or local restriction. These limits could be formal, such as a school board policy, or informal, such as a principal’s comments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 80% of those who were subject to a local restriction said they had made changes to their teaching, regardless of state law. That should not be surprising, said Ashley Woo, an assistant policy researcher at RAND.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If your principal is telling you to do something, that is the person who is there with you at the school and can see what is happening in your classroom,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, more than half of teachers who were not subject to any restrictions said they had limited how they talked about certain topics, with self-censoring more common in conservative communities but still widespread in liberal ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A major reason teachers cited for limiting instruction, especially in communities with local restrictions, was a fear of confrontation with upset parents and that their administration would not support them if they faced a challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>LGBTQ issues raised less often than racism in classrooms\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though LGBTQ issues are prominent in local and national politics, \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/02/22/race-and-lgbtq-issues-in-k-12-schools/\">a report released this week\u003c/a> reveals a striking finding: Most teachers say gender identity and sexual orientation hardly get discussed in class — and many teachers say they shouldn’t be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a nationally representative survey conducted last fall by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity rarely or never came up in their classroom last school year. Around 3 in 10 said the topics came up sometimes or often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Half of teachers, meanwhile, said they thought students shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school, with an even higher share of elementary school teachers agreeing with that view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings come as \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/7/8/23198792/lgbtq-students-law-florida-dont-say-gay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">anti-trans legislation\u003c/a> creates a \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/10/25/23421548/lgbtq-students-mental-health-school-safety-survey/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">more hostile environment\u003c/a> for \u003ca href=\"https://19thnews.org/2024/02/nex-benedict-oklahoma-lgbtq-community-resilience/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gender non-conforming youth\u003c/a> in many states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, more than half of teachers said they discussed topics related to racism or racial inequality at least sometimes. Around 4 in 10 teachers said the issues rarely or never came up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly two-thirds of teachers said students should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while just under a quarter said slavery should be taught only as a component of history — without any bearing on the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lin, the Pew report’s lead author, says it’s likely that school board policies, local politics, and state laws are influencing what teachers discuss, though the survey doesn’t measure those factors.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What should young kids learn about gender and sexuality?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In Searching for Common Ground, a \u003ca href=\"https://today.usc.edu/controversial-school-topics-how-americans-really-feel/\">study released this week by a team\u003c/a> at the University of Southern California, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,900 adults, about half of them parents of school-aged children, and asked them about dozens of scenarios related to race, sexuality, and gender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Democrats were more comfortable than Republicans with almost every scenario, with independents and others roughly in the middle. But even Democrats were less supportive of discussing gender identity or asking students’ pronouns in elementary school than discussing racism or different family structures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly half of all respondents thought it was appropriate for an elementary teacher to have a picture of their same-sex spouse on their desk. And almost as many were OK with elementary students \u003ca href=\"https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/And-Tango-Makes-Three/Justin-Richardson/9781481446952\">reading a book\u003c/a> about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But just 30% of respondents and only half of Democrats thought it was appropriate for an elementary classroom to display LGBTQ-friendly decorations, such as a Pride flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Democrats were far more likely to want gay or trans children to see themselves reflected at school, while Republicans were far more likely to fear discussing these topics would change children, leading to them thinking they are gay or trans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The largest partisan examples seem to have to do with LGBTQ and family issues in elementary school,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor and one of the study’s lead authors. “Democrats think that kids can handle that and Republicans do not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>More students feel comfortable discussing racism than LGBTQ issues\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Students in grades 8-12 also tend to feel less comfortable discussing LGBTQ issues than issues of race and racism at school, and are more likely to say they shouldn’t be learning about them, the Pew report found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a nationally representative survey of 13- to 17-year-olds conducted last fall, around 4 in 10 teens said they felt comfortable when topics related to racism or racial inequality came up in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But only around 3 in 10 said the same about topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. And just under half of teens said they shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school. That rate was somewhat higher for teens who identified as Republicans than Democrats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only 11% of teens, meanwhile, said they shouldn’t learn about slavery. Around half said they should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while 40% said they should learn about slavery only in a historical context.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Black teens and teens who identify as Democrats were much more likely than white, Hispanic, or Republican teens to say they want to learn about how the legacy of slavery affects Black people today — a finding echoed among Black parents and Black teachers in other surveys.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bridging these divides is tricky\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The University of Southern California study found strong support for public education across the political spectrum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a gap of nearly 39 percentage points between Democrats and Republicans on whether public schools should teach children to embrace differences. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats said yes, compared with just over a third of Republicans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This underlying belief was a strong predictor of responses to specific scenarios. Those who said kids shouldn’t be taught to embrace differences also expressed more discomfort with race, gender, and sexuality being discussed in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Democrats on average think schools are exactly the place to do this — it’s one of the last places where everyone comes together regardless of their differences,” Polikoff said. “And Republicans don’t think that is an appropriate role for schools. And they think that because they perceive, in part correctly, that schools are a liberalizing force.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was broad support for parents having the right to opt their child out of certain lessons, but when researchers prompted respondents to consider downsides, such as their child missing out on the opportunity to learn critical thinking skills, support fell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understanding the values that drive differences and building on common ground, such as agreement that children should read books by authors of color and learn about historic injustices, could lead to a healthier conversation than what’s happening now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to have this conversation,” he said. “Instead we have Ron DeSantis saying we’ll ban everything, and Democrats sticking their fingers in their ears and saying you’re all bigots.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"mailto:emeltzer@chalkbeat.org\">\u003ci>emeltzer@chalkbeat.org\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. \u003c/i>\u003ci>Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"mailto:kbelsha@chalkbeat.org\">\u003ci>kbelsha@chalkbeat.org\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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},
"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
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"onourwatch": {
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"on-the-media": {
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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