This week, I wanted to highlight our continuing early ed math coverage by talking to Joe Hong, who wrote a story about a Milwaukee school district trying to revive methods it used for math instruction a decade ago. Our conversation below has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

A small group of teachers in Milwaukee are trying to return to math strategies the district used from 2004-2014. Teachers in the district call this “the golden years of math instruction.” Could you explain what made math during those years different?

It came down to a two-pronged accountability structure. First, there was a hierarchy of university professors, district administrators, teacher leaders and classroom teachers that bridged the needs of educators in the field and the latest research surrounding math pedagogy. Second, it was the university professors who oversaw the funding — a substantial amount of $20 million — and made sure it was spent just on improving math instruction and not redirected toward competing priorities in the school district.

Part of the glue that seemed to hold this instruction model together was the school district’s partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. When that partnership ended a decade ago, the district went back to using its own in-house math curriculum. My understanding is that partnership is still gone. How are educators in the district trying to keep the “golden years of math instruction” alive?

DeAnn Huinker, the University of Wisconsin professor who oversaw the partnership, is still running teacher trainings. Some of the teachers who were in the classroom in the early 2000s are now holding leadership positions in the district. Having these folks around makes it easier to continue the work, although at a smaller scale.

There’s a moment in your story where a first grade teacher is surprised she’s enjoying math. Do you get the sense proponents of this instruction model see the Milwaukee teachers benefiting as much as the students?

Yes, in fact I think so many teachers struggle with teaching math because they themselves aren’t comfortable with it. Milwaukee’s approach has always been centered around making sure teachers know the math. More than one person involved in Milwaukee’s math instruction told me, “When teachers are learning, students are learning.”

Was there any pushback to teaching math in this way?

There was some resistance. Part of it isn’t unique to math. Principals and teachers are wary of change because it can often mean more work for them, which often means allocating funds and time that they don’t have. And then there are also the ongoing debates in math education. Milwaukee’s approach really emphasizes the concepts behind math over the procedures, and while I don’t know whether the more procedurally-minded educators pushed back against the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnerships in the early 2000s, I’ve already gotten emails since the story published from educators criticizing the conceptual approach.

You touch on a trend in this story that I’ve noticed in my own reporting — early childhood teachers gravitating to younger grades to avoid having to teach difficult math. Do you get the sense the training intentionally targets the district’s early elementary educators to re-teach them how to think about math?

Milwaukee Public Schools has definitely focused on early childhood educators in recent years. Many of these teachers admit that they got into elementary teaching because they weren’t “math people.” But they’re starting to rethink their identities with these trainings and learning how to leverage their own expertises in child development and classroom management to engage with the youngest learners.

This story about math curricula was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Reviving a successful math strategy for the early grades appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

VESTAVIA HILLS, Ala. — Principal Lauren Dressback didn’t think about it after it happened. After all, she was workplace-close with Wesley Smith, the custodian at Cahaba Heights Elementary School, in this affluent suburb of Birmingham. She called him “the mayor.” She said that he knew her two children, asked about her family almost daily and made a point of interacting. “Every day, a huge bear hug,” she recalled.  

So, when Dressback, just after last Valentine’s Day, asked Smith to come into the nurse’s office and shut the door, and then shared three photos on her phone of who she had just started dating, it felt ordinary. Afterward, she said, “I just moved right on about my day.” 

But the 2 minute, 13 second-exchange — captured on video by the nurse — would prove fateful.  

In a few short months, after a two-decade career, Dressback, a popular educator, would go from Vestavia Hills City school district darling to controversial figure after she came out as gay, divorced her husband, and began dating a Black woman.  

Within days of showing the custodian the photos, she was ordered to leave the building and was barred from district property. Soon, she found herself facing a litany of questions from district leaders about a seemingly minor issue: employee timesheets. In April, she was officially placed on administrative leave. On May 2, during a packed school board meeting, she was demoted, replaced as principal, and sent to run the district’s alternative high school. 

At that school board meeting, as he had for weeks, Todd Freeman, the superintendent, refused to offer an explanation, even to Dressback. Rather, at the beginning of the meeting, he read a statement that “we have not, cannot, and will not make personnel decisions based on an individual’s race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin or disability.” (When contacted, Vestavia Hills City Schools spokesperson Whit McGhee said the district would not discuss confidential personnel matters and declined to make Freeman available for an interview. He provided links to school board meeting minutes, district policies and Alabama educator codes without explaining how they applied in Dressback’s case. Freeman and two other district officials involved in the situation did not respond to emails requesting interviews or a list of detailed questions.) 

Despite Freeman’s assertion regarding personnel decisions, many people in the community believe differently. So many, in fact, that “the Dressback situation” has lit up social media (one TikTok post has more than 313,000 views), spurred supermarket conversations and online chatter — and challenged allegiances.  

“The entire situation has divided the community,” said Abbey Skipper, a parent at Cahaba Heights Elementary. Some people, she said, are “trying to label everyone who is on the side of Dressback as leftists or Democrats or radicals” and assuming “everyone who supports the superintendent and the board is a Republican — which isn’t true.”  

A private Facebook group, “We Stand With Lauren” quickly gathered 983 members, while a public Facebook post by a fifth grade teacher at Cahaba Heights complained of the “news frenzy and whirlwind of social media misinformation” and stated that, “We Stand for Our Superintendent, Our District Office, Our Board, and our new principal, Kim Polson.” The May 8 teacher post, which got 287 likes and 135 comments, both in support and challenging the post, went on to say, “To do our jobs to the best of our ability, we trust the people who have been charged to lead us.”  

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

Alabama has among the strictest anti-gay policies in the nation. This past legislative session, the House passed a bill to ban LGBTQ+ flags and symbols from schools. It also expands to middle schools the current “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits instruction or discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in elementary schools. Its sponsor, Rep. Mack Butler, who represents a suburban community in northeast Alabama, stated that it could “purify the schools just a little bit.” He later walked back the comment. The bill died in the Senate, but Butler has vowed to reintroduce it next session. 

The bill was one of dozens introduced or passed in states around the country restricting classroom discussion of gender identity, books with LGBTQ+ characters and displays of pride symbols. The laws have contributed to a climate in which “every classroom has been turned into a front” in a battle, said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, which advocates for LGBTQ+ individuals in K-12 education. “Every educator, every administrator now has to be on that front line every single day,” she said. “We’re seeing educators leave because of the strain of the job made worse by the political moment we’re in and we’re also seeing because of the political moment we’re in, educators being targeted for their personal identity.” 

Tiffany Wright, a professor at Millersville University in Pennsylvania who studies the experience of LGBTQ+ educators, said right now many “are very on edge.”* Wright and her colleagues have surveyed LGBTQ+ educators four times since 2007, with new 2024 data to be released in November. While the past decade has seen strides toward acceptance, “the regional differences are huge,” she said. “Folks in the South definitely felt less safe being out to their communities and students.” November’s presidential and statewide elections could yield even sharper differences in LGBTQ+ protections between red and blue states.  

While quite a few states long had laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, it took a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, to bring such protections to Alabama. That changed landscape spurred Dressback to engage lawyer Jon Goldfarb, who filed a complaint alleging work-based discrimination with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is investigating. This fall, he expects to file a separate federal civil rights complaint. In 30 years of practice in Alabama, Goldfarb said, “I’ve had a lot of people that have come to me and complain about being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.” Until Bostock, he would tell them, “There is nothing we can do.” 

A review of Dressback’s personnel file shows no reprimands until June, when she received an evaluation questioning her professional conduct that followed her filing the EEOC complaint. This raises a question: Why was she removed?  

Dressback’s situation, however, is about more than the law. It also challenges her place in the white Christian, predominantly conservative community she grew up in, belongs to and loves. And it offers a test case in a divided political time: Will her removal and the outcry that followed harden partisan alignments — or shake them? Even in Alabama, a Pew Research Center survey shows, more than one-third of those who lean Republican say homosexuality should be accepted. 

Brian DeMarco, a local attorney and high school classmate of Dressback’s, was sporting bright print swim trunks, a T-shirt and a Vestavia Hills baseball cap when we met at the public swimming pool where he’d brought his kids. We sat at a picnic table; the squeals of children released to the joys of summer carried in the warm Alabama air. He said he understands why some people may not be comfortable with a gay elementary school principal. 

“Her coming out as an educator, being around children, I think that frightens people, certain people all over the country,” he said. And in the South, in a conservative town, “it does become a bigger issue to people.” Politically, DeMarco tends “to swing right,” but sent Dressback a message of support on Facebook. “Everybody that knows Lauren  knows she is a good person,” he said. 

In fact, Dressback’s case has spurred public outrage because so many people do  know her. She attended Vestavia Hills Public Schools — Class of 1997 — and her mother, now retired, was a popular high school English teacher and yearbook adviser. She followed her parents into education (her father was a geography professor) and returned to teach social studies at the high school.  

In 2015, she was named secondary teacher of the year; in 2017, the graduating class dedicated the yearbook to her. She moved into administration and advanced; in 2022 she was appointed principal of Cahaba Heights Elementary School. She was awarded a three-year contract, effective July 2023, following a probationary year. In December — weeks before she was told to gather her things and was escorted off school grounds — she was given a positive write-up by an assistant superintendent who observed her running a meeting of teachers about the school’s “core values.” 

It also matters that this story is unfolding in Vestavia Hills. The city’s motto is “A Life Above,” and the municipal website declares that it “exemplifies the ideals of fine southern hospitality.” The community was born as a post-World War II subdivision and incorporated in 1950 with 3,000 residents (it now has 38,000). It is an effortfully attractive place with well-kept painted brick homes and clipped lawns. It is named for Vestavia, the exotic estate of former Birmingham Mayor George C. Ward whose Roman-inspired home was here. The 1930s-era news accounts describe lavish parties with male servers draped in togas. 

Vestavia Hills is also one of the “over the mountain” suburbs of Birmingham. When you drive over Red Mountain out of the urban core with its reminders of steelmaking and jazz, of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Negro Leagues, away from streets where shabbily dressed men push wheeled contrivances, where pride flags fly and breweries sprout, where drag queens coexist with affirming churches, you enter a different world. Birmingham is a Black city; Vestavia Hills is 86 percent white.  

Related: A superintendent made big gains with English learners. His success may have been his downfall 

And like surrounding white suburbs of Mountain Brook, Homewood and Hoover, Vestavia Hills competes on lifestyle, including its public schools. Alabama is hardly an education leader, yet the four districts earn mention in U.S. News rankings. Church is also central to life here; biographies for public officials name which they attend.  

“You move a child into the school system, there’s two questions they’re asked,” Julianne Julian, a resident and another Dressback high school classmate, said when we met at a coveted rear table inside the Diplomat Deli, a popular Vestavia Hills lunch spot. “Who are you for as far as football — Alabama? Auburn? — and what church do you go to?” 

Teams matter in Vestavia Hills — the high school’s in particular. The district itself was founded in 1970 amid federal desegregation orders, when residents broke away from the Jefferson County Schools and agreed to pay an extra tax. They adopted the Rebel Man in Civil War military uniform as the district’s mascot. Dressback’s 1996 junior year high school yearbook includes a photo of students at a rally waving massive Confederate flags. “It was just kind of the way we were growing up,” said DeMarco, who in high school displayed a Confederate flag on his Nissan pickup. “It was just kind of cool.” 

It wasn’t until 2015 that the district considered changing the mascot. After contentious public meetings in which some argued that the mascot and flag were not racist — a point ridiculed by John Oliver on national television — the district chose to adopt the 1Rebel rebrand. (Mess with one Rebel and you mess with us all, is the concept. They are still called “The Rebels,” but simply use the letters “VH.”) 

When I met with Dressback, days after school let out, she answered the door to her apartment wearing a T-shirt that read “love. empathy. compassion. inclusion. justice. kindness.” She looked like she could use every one of those things.  

She was welcoming, but said she was nervous about talking. She had not spoken publicly since she was escorted out of Cahaba Heights Elementary in February. We sat at her dining table — I brought an Italian sub, no onions or peppers, hot, from Diplomat Deli, Dressback’s regular order — and in our conversations then and later, she appeared to believe the best about people. 

Others in Vestavia clearly believe the best about her: Since things erupted, her phone has pinged with messages, including from former students. “Thank you for making an impact on my life,” said one of the many that she shared with me. “You stood up for me in class when someone made fun of me for having depression and I’ll never forget that,” wrote another. And, “you may not remember me, but I had you as a teacher during my time at VHHS and even when I was not your student, I still saw you as a person who cared for all students, not just the ones on your roster.” (Dressback said she has “not received any negative messages. Not one.”) 

At Cahaba Heights, parents noticed her gift for calming children with behavior issues. A mother of twins who got tripped up by transitions (drop-off is “the hardest part of our morning”) said that, with Dressback greeting them at the curb, “We didn’t have that struggle this year at all.” Sometimes Dressback would slip on a wig or costume — Santa, Minion, astronaut, among others; before winter breaks she donned an elf outfit and climbed atop the brick marquee in front of the school to the delight of arriving children and passing cars. She wanted to remind everyone that school is fun. 

“Her love for the children just reached every square inch of the school,” said Skipper, the Cahaba Heights parent of a second grader who moved to the neighborhood specifically for the school. Her removal “plunged me into grief. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I lost weight. The amount of upset was palpable. I loved her. She loved my child.” 

As we sat at her dining table, Dressback shared that she sensed she was gay in high school but said that “it sort of felt clear to me that I couldn’t have that life here.” The only gay people she knew well were two family members. When her Uncle Dennis died of complications from HIV and her cousin Robyn died by suicide, as upset as she was, being out was tough to imagine.  

The tragedies coincided with her time at Samford University, the private Baptist college where her father taught. “It’s one of the most religiously conservative schools in the nation,” she said. “You go to Samford to not be different.” And it was there in a geography class that she met Shane Dressback, when the two arrived early one day and “started chit-chatting.” They were engaged the next year, and married in January 2001, just after her December graduation. 

“I met Shane and did very genuinely fall in love with him,” she said. “He is a wonderful man.” They had two children —  Kaylee graduated from college in May and is playing semi-pro soccer, and Tyler is a senior in high school — and were consumed with family life. But then, as she approached becoming an empty nester, Dressback began having panic attacks around being gay, she said, feeling that “I’ve pushed this down for a really long time.”  

Related: School clubs for gay students move underground after Kentucky’s anti-LGBTQ law goes into effect  

This past December, she came out to Shane. They didn’t speak for more than 24 hours. Then, she texted him to say she was going to church. Minutes after the service began, she told me, “He texted me and said, ‘I’m here. May I come sit by you?’ So, we sat together at this church service. Both of us cried the whole way through it.” 

Shane Dressback told me that he struggled with the news. On one of his worst days, however, he said that God told him to love her “no matter what.” The next day, he told Lauren, “I was going to love her unconditionally and unconventionally.” The marriage ending was painful, but they remain close. “I know she loved me for 23 years,” he said. “There was nothing fake there.”  

The two held hands as they told their children and parents. They divorced, sold their home and rented apartments near one another. They still have family dinners and Shane cooks; leftovers of “Daddy’s Jambalaya” were in the refrigerator of Lauren Dressback’s apartment when I visited. Kaylee came by with her goldendoodle, Dixie, to grab a helping for lunch. 

Throughout Dressback’s ordeal with the school district, Shane has been her defender. “Lauren is a child of God and should be treated as such,” he said, as we sat at a friend’s brewery during off-hours. He knows her to be professionally excellent; her personal life should not matter. “It was no one’s business what was going on in our bedroom beforehand and I don’t think that’s anybody’s business now,” he said. “People have drawn a line in the sand where I think it needs to be more about, you know, loving people as Jesus did.” 

Shane was the one who urged Dressback to attend a brunch in early February organized by members of a LILLES Facebook group, which connects later-in-life lesbians. There she met her girlfriend, Angela Whitlock, a former medical operations officer in the U.S. Army and law student (she graduated in May). The two began a relationship that appears to charm and steady Dressback. At a dinner during my visit, they held hands under the table.  

Dressback says she came out to Freeman, the superintendent, at the end of a one-on-one meeting in January in the spirit of transparency. But the incident that appears central to Dressback’s removal unfolded just after Valentine’s Day, when Dressback asked Smith, the custodian, to come into the office of nurse Julie Corley, whom she described as a close friend at the time, and “close the door.”  

Dressback said it was Corley’s idea to show Smith the photos to see his reaction. He was in the lunchroom near Corley’s office. The brief exchange between Dressback and Smith was captured on video. (Dressback said she did not initially notice Corley filming, but did not stop her when she did, something she now regrets.) Corley did not respond to several interview requests by email and text, and, when reached by phone, said she was not interested in speaking and hung up. Dressback said she has not had any communication with Corley since being removed. 

“You shared something about your past, I was going to share something with you,” Dressback says to Smith in the video. “Do you want to see a picture of who I’m dating?” She and Whitlock had had their third date on Feb. 14. He says reflexively, “Shane?” She responds, “He’s my ex-husband.” Smith appears surprised. “April Fool?” and asks how long they were married. She says, “23 years.” He expresses disbelief. “You and him broke up?” Dressback holds out her phone to show a photo of her and Whitlock. 

“Who the hell is this? I mean, Who is this?” he asks. Several times Smith states that he doesn’t believe it. She hands him her phone. “Bullshit!” he exclaims as he looks at the three photos. “Stop lyin’!” There is one of Whitlock kissing Dressback on the cheek, one with their faces cheek to cheek and one in which they are sitting at a bar with Dressback’s arms around Whitlock, their noses touching. Smith then says, “Wow, I’m sorry,” and pulls her into a hug. “Once you go Black, baby, you don’t go back,” he quips. She groans at his attempt at humor.  

Dressback’s lawyer said that an affidavit the district obtained from Smith “appears to be in conflict on several points with what the video shows,” including a claim that he was made uncomfortable by the encounter. When reached by phone, Smith insisted, “I made no type of statement” even as district officials were “coming at me” seeking to query him, he said. “I hadn’t talked to nobody about the incident.”  

(McGhee, the school district spokesperson, declined to provide answers to specific questions, including regarding the apparent affidavit from Smith.)  

Days after Dressback shared the photos, on the morning of Feb. 23, Meredith Hanson, the district’s director of personnel, and Aimee Rainey, the assistant superintendent who had given Dressback the positive write-up in December, arrived at Cahaba Heights for a surprise meeting. Dressback said they told her that someone had complained that she shared “explicit” details of her relationship at a meeting with teachers. Dressback knew that to be untrue. “I kind of relaxed because I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that absolutely did not happen,’” she recalled. 

They questioned her in a way she found confusing. She asked for details of the complaint, but was told, “You know, ‘explicit.’ And I’m like, I know what ‘explicit’ means. Like are you going to tell me what they said I said or what?” They asked if she showed Smith photos of her and her girlfriend. She said she did. Meanwhile, she observed to me later, “There is a picture of Shane and me kissing on our lips at our wedding on the bookshelf right behind them.” (Hanson and Rainey did not respond to interview requests or to a list of detailed questions for this story.) 

Dressback says she was then told to gather her belongings, and that she was being placed on “detached duty,” requiring that she work from home. She was barred from school property. She was escorted from the building, which she said made her feel “like a criminal.” She expected to be gone for a few days.  

But several days later, Dressback was informed of a new problem: timesheets. In January, she had met with staff to remind them about clocking in and out (everyone must clock in, and paraprofessionals must clock out during lunch).  

On March 4, while still barred from the Cahaba Heights campus, Dressback met with Freeman, Rainey and Hanson in the conference room at the central office to discuss timesheets. Two days later, she was told that the following morning, March 7, she was to fire two employees for irregularities on their timesheets. One, she knew, had an attendance problem. She said that she had already discussed with Hanson not renewing him at the end of the school year.  

The other was a close friend, Stefanie Robinson, a paraprofessional who worked with students with severe disabilities, including those requiring help with feeding and diapering. Robinson often stayed in the classroom during her lunch breaks to aid the special education teacher because one student had as many as 30 seizures a day. When I met Robinson at her home, she acknowledged to sometimes forgetting to clock out or in, or not being able to do so if she was attending to a child’s needs. “If I’m in a massive diaper situation, I’m not going to remember to clock out, or if I’m helping a kid that’s having a seizure or, you know, one that’s in crisis,” Robinson told me.  

What most upset Robinson, however, was that shortly after Dressback was escorted out of the school and placed on “detached duty,” requiring she work from home, Robinson faced 45 minutes of questioning by Hanson and Rainey about Dressback’s dating life that she says “felt like an interrogation.” After confirming that she and Dressback were close, Robinson says she was asked questions such as, “When Lauren goes on a date, what does she say happens? And I was like, ‘What do you mean? What do you want to know?” They pressed: “Well, when she goes on a date and the date ends, what does she say happens after that?” Robinson insisted, “I don’t ask her how her date ended.”  

Related: Rural principals have complex jobs – and some of the highest turnover 

On March 7 at 5:58 a.m., Robinson received a text from Hanson asking her “to start your day at the Board of Education” instead of Cahaba Heights. As soon as she arrived at the central office, she saw Dressback in the room; Dressback said Freeman had told her to fire Robinson. “I could tell she’d been crying,” said Robinson. “And I just smiled at her, I was like, ‘It’s OK.’” Robinson recalled Dressback saying, “in the most robotic tone, ‘It’s my recommendation to the board that your contract be terminated immediately.’” 

She hugged Dressback, told her she loved her, and left. Robinson texted the parent of one of her students, a second grade girl who is nonverbal, uses a wheelchair and has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. The girl’s mom, Payton Smith, no relation to Wesley, told me that she’d appreciated how Dressback had welcomed her child to the school a few years earlier. The principal had asked, “‘What do we need to do to make your kid feel comfortable?’ and recognized her as a child,” and not a set of legal educational requirements to meet, Smith recalled. Despite Robinson’s key role in her daughter’s education, Smith said she was not officially notified until March 19 — nearly two weeks later — via email that “Mrs. Robinson is no longer working at VHECH,” district shorthand for Cahaba Heights. 

Yet an email of district documentation shared with me states the date of Robinson’s leaving as April 5, and said that she had resigned. Nonetheless, the district continued to pay her for the rest of the school year, which she said felt “like I was being paid off because they knew what they did was wrong.” She is now a clinical research data coordinator for University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. (Neither McGhee, the district spokesperson, nor Hanson, in charge of HR, responded to email requests seeking comment on why Robinson was fired, the claim that she had resigned, or the discrepancy in her pay.)  

Meanwhile, on March 13, Dressback emailed Freeman asking to be reinstated to her position at Cahaba Heights, immediately. “I believe the action the system has taken against me is discrimination because of my sexual orientation, my interracial relationship, and my gender,” she wrote. The next day, Goldfarb, her lawyer, filed the EEOC complaint. (He later amended it to allege additional discrimination and that the district had retaliated against her for the filing.)  

On April 18, Dressback received a letter signed by Freeman officially placing her on administrative leave. It states that she is “not to contact any employees of the Vestavia Hills Board of Education related to your or their employment or relationship with the Vestavia Hills City Schools.” The letter does not state a reason for the action. 

As a result, to parents and some educators, Dressback seemed to have vanished. “I thought like, ‘Oh, I bet she’s sick. That’s really sad,’” said Lindsay Morton, a Cahaba Heights parent, a reaction echoed by others. Then, on April 27, two of Dressback’s classmates from high school posted videos on social media.  

“Where is Principal Dressback???” a schoolmate and friend, Karl Julian, titled a video on his YouTube channel. It has been viewed more than 11,000 times. Lauren Pilleteri Reece, who as laurenpcrna has 228.7K followers on TikTok, posted several videos narrating Dressback’s battle; the first has more than 313,000 views and 3,400 comments. Reece has known Dressback since high school. 

When the Vestavia Hills School Board called a meeting five days later, on May 2, to take up Dressback’s employment, everyone seemed to know about it. People rallied outside the district headquarters holding posters with messages such as “We Stand with Principal Dressback” and “Love is Love.” Many people wore green, Dressback’s favorite color, to signal support. Local TV and news reporters showed up.  

The room thrummed with emotion. There were angry, even tearful Cahaba Heights Elementary parents, teachers and retired teachers, students, former classmates and others who knew Dressback, plus some who didn’t know her. “I’ve never met her, I just know she had been wronged,” said Jim Whisenhunt, an advertising executive whose children, now grown, attended Vestavia Hills public schools.  

Dressback, fearing that she could not keep her composure, did not attend. Those who did attend had a lot to share. But before public comments were permitted or a vote was taken, Freeman read the prepared statement in which he said he wanted “to address, in general, personnel decisions made by the board.” He went on to say that they “have not, cannot, and will not make personnel decisions based on an individual’s race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, or disability” and that “all of our decisions are vetted thoroughly and thoughtfully.” He added that “district employees contribute to academic excellence and are committed to our mission to provide every child in our schools the opportunity to learn without limits.” Then, over the objections of many in the audience who demanded a chance to comment before a vote was taken, the board officially transferred Dressback from Cahaba Heights Elementary to the alternative school.  

When public comments began, the outrage was obvious. “We may color outside of your lines a little bit, but coloring outside of your lines at no point does that ever mean that we are unprofessional. Lauren did not become unprofessional overnight,” said a charged-up Reece, who also came out as an adult. “You started looking at her as unprofessional overnight.”  

Rep. Neil Rafferty, a Democrat who represents Birmingham, stated that he “felt compelled to drive straight here” after “a long week in Montgomery” even though it is not his district. “We are all watching this. It is not just a Vestavia Hills issue anymore,” said Rafferty, the only openly gay member of the Alabama Legislature. The action, he said, signals “to your students who might be LGBTQ that they don’t matter.” 

Rev. Julie Conrady, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Churches of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, and president of a local interfaith group, stood up to speak. “You are sending her a message that in Vestavia Hills it is not OK to be LGBTQ,” she told the board and superintendent. “You should not be punished in your job in 2024 because of who you love.” Conrady, in black liturgical robe and green stole, told the crowd “that there are consequences here for all these people. I want you to get pictures of every single name and vote them the hell out!” (The school board is appointed by the City Council, not elected.) 

Another speaker, Allison Black Cornelius, who said she was “a conservative Republican,” focused on what seemed to make this issue explode: the silence. The superintendent and board had given no explanation, even to Dressback, as to why she was removed and now demoted, she said. “When you wait this long,” said Cornelius, “it puts this person in this black cloud.” 

Her point underscored a question others raised at the meeting to a board that largely remained silent: If Dressback did something so egregious as to require she be escorted from school and barred from district property, why was she suitable to lead the alternative school? The district declined to answer this question. 

The division, so apparent at that meeting, seemed to only harden a few weeks later during the board’s annual meeting on May 28. A group supporting the board and superintendent appeared in blue T-shirts and applauded after the board gave Freeman a new four-year contract that included a raise to $239,500 (he was paid $190,000 when he was hired in 2018) plus perks. Dressback supporters in green again spoke, sharing their frustration.  

Related: Who wants to lead America’s school districts? Anyone? Anyone?  

This is not the first time Vestavia Hills City Schools have made unpopular personnel moves. In August 2020, Tyler Burgess, a well-loved bow-tied principal, was removed as head of the high school and assigned to oversee remote learning during Covid, when many classes were online; the board voted not to renew his contract in March 2021. Students organized a protest; 3,134 people signed a petition calling for his reinstatement. The board and superintendent did not provide an explanation for their decision. Burgess, who has a doctorate in education, is now director of learning and development at a large construction firm. He did not respond to multiple interview requests. 

Danielle Tinker came to Vestavia Hills after more than a dozen years in Birmingham and Jefferson County schools, first as assistant principal at Liberty Park Elementary. In spring 2021, she was selected as principal of Cahaba Heights. From the start, Tinker, who is Black, felt unwelcome at the school where the teaching staff was nearly all white, she told me when we met for lunch. The day she was introduced as the new principal, a staff member emailed her, saying that “Cahaba Heights is a family” and that “today was hard on this family,” according to a copy of the email that she shared with me. Tinker said she was told by staff that the faculty had wanted a different principal; a later inquiry confirmed that staff felt “blindsided” when she was selected over that individual. 

As principal, Tinker raised questions with Rainey, the assistant superintendent, over student articles in a fall 2021 newsletter, including two about race. They were titled “Anti-Racist Kids: Leading the Way to New Beginnings” and “Learning About Racism: How It Can Change Lives.” Tinker told me she feared those articles would be “more fluff than addressing the actual challenge” with claims such as “Racism is part of our lives, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing if we are the ones ending it.” Rainey agreed to pause publication of the newsletter, which she said upset several teachers who wanted it published.  

On Dec. 16, 2021, several hours after Tinker told teachers that publication was being paused, Tinker emailed Hanson raising an “employee concern” after one of the teachers “stormed down the hallway” and was “pointing at me and yelling,” according to a copy of Tinker’s email exchanges that she shared with me. The next day, Tinker received a letter from Freeman stating that he was recommending she be transferred to the alternative school, effective Jan. 3. In March, Tinker filed a complaint of racial discrimination with the EEOC and resigned, using her remaining personal time to cover her pay for the remainder of the school year. In February 2023, she and the district reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount. She is using the money to attend law school. (McGhee, the district spokesperson, did not answer questions about Tinker or Burgess; Rainey and Hanson also did not respond.) 

On my last day in town in early June, Dressback gave me a guided tour of Vestavia Hills. We met inside the Diplomat Deli; Reece, Dressback’s high school classmate with the large TikTok following, joined us. As we walked out, Dressback, wearing a Care Bears T-shirt, showed off a new tattoo on her left forearm. In typewriter font it reads, “Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.” 

I slid into the passenger seat of her car, a red Buick Encore whose license plate reads “DBACK.” Reece hopped in back. An order of fries from Milo’s, a favorite Dressback fast-food spot since high school, leaned in a cup holder. Soon, we passed places they hung out as kids, schools they attended, new neighborhoods and old, the spot at Vestavia Country Club with a panoramic view where kids still take prom photos.  

The discussion jumbled together past and present, reminding these childhood friends — both of whom came out as adults — how much has changed. And how much has not. When we reached Vestavia Hills High School, Dressback stopped near a small sign at sidewalk level that reads “Alternative Placement” with an arrow. I descended metal stairs that span a rocky embankment; the alternative school, Dressback’s new assignment, is subterranean, its entrance nearly hidden from view. If architecture can relay shame, it might look like this. 

Yet when I returned to the car, Dressback told me she saw the alternative school as an opportunity rather than an exit. The school has often operated without a principal (Tinker never stepped inside or interacted with students, partly because of the Covid pandemic). At that late May school board meeting, Freeman could not say how many pupils attend the school. But Dressback was struck by what DeMarco, her classmate, told her. As a student, he spent time at the alternative school; he could have used someone like her. 

“I’m not gonna just go and sit and read a book. I can’t do that,” Dressback said, as she pulled out of the high school driveway. She wanted to make it a place less about punishment and more about connecting with kids for whom the traditional school is not a fit. It should not be a dumping ground for educators or for kids, she said. “My mindset is I’m gonna go and I’m gonna make this the best damn alternative school in the state.” 

In other words, Dressback is not willing to let go or to disappear. Yet “the Dressback situation” is hardly resolved. A few days after my visit, in early June, Dressback met with Freeman to receive an official performance review for the 2023-24 academic year, a copy of which she shared with me. It was the first official yearly evaluation she had been given in her career in the district despite a stipulation in her contract that this occur annually, she said. It is searing. It finds that her “job performance is unsatisfactory.” The report was sent to the state Department of Education, per Alabama code requiring that personnel records and “investigative information” of employees placed on administrative leave for cause be reviewed by the department. 

Most damning are six bullet points of claims. One alludes to Robinson’s employment and the timesheet matter. The most explosive is cast as “failure to demonstrate moderation, restraint, and civility in dealing with employees” and includes salacious assertions, including “public displays of affection and of photographs which would not, for example, be tolerated even among high school students” — presumably a reference to the photos shown to Smith, the custodian. It includes a charge Dressback had never heard before: a claim of “remote activation by your husband of a sexual toy on your person while you were in a school meeting.”  

Related: Investigating why a high-performing superintendent left his job 

Dressback was floored by the charges, and countered each in her rebuttal, which she asked to have filed with the state Department of Education in response to Freeman’s report. Regarding the sex toy claim, Dressback wrote that it is “false. I have never done that, and I would never do that.” The very idea of “remote activation” of a sex toy by her husband was absurd, she said. “I wouldn’t think that I would need to remind you that my ex-husband and I are divorced, that I have recently come out as gay, and that I am now in a committed relationship with a woman,” she wrote. 

Such a thing never happened then, or in any school year, her rebuttal continued. She wrote that she “cannot imagine why you would credit this slanderous and irresponsible allegation” and include it in her personnel record, “other than to retaliate against me” for the EEOC filing.  

Her lawyer said in an email that the performance review “is further retaliation and an attempt to create further pretexts for the adverse employment actions the Board has already taken against her.”  

On Aug. 15, after the state Department of Education had reviewed the evaluation submitted by Freeman, the agency stated in a letter addressed to Dressback, cc’ing Freeman, that it had “examined information regarding an investigation in the Vestavia Hills City School System” and “decided to not take action against your Alabama Educator Certificate.” The same day, Freeman said in a letter to Dressback that she would “no longer be on administrative leave and may return to work” at the alternative school. 

It has been baffling and infuriating to some in the community as to how such charges surfaced so soon after Dressback was given a three-year contract extension last year.  The mystery that remains is why some people — people who were eager for her to continue leading the elementary school — now want her gone. The battle has been drawn up and is now readying to be fought. Dressback told me that beyond feeling driven to “defend my name and my integrity,” she wants to speak up for others who come after — or who are now silent.  

Of course, Dressback had hoped this could all be avoided. “I tried to just be the good employee,” she told me. “I thought if I just do what they ask me to do, this is gonna get wrapped up and I’ll go back to work” at Cahaba Heights.  

Notably, she still feels loyalty, even love, for Vestavia Hills and its school system.  

“Maybe I shouldn’t feel the allegiance I feel,” she said when we spoke over Zoom several weeks ago. “But I can’t just turn it off. It’s not like a water faucet. You know, it’s my home. It’s where I grew up and it’s where I chose to plant my career. As betrayed as I have felt, I just can’t turn my back on the system.” Rather, she wants to nudge it forward. 

*Correction: This story has been updated with the correct name of Millersville University.

This story about Vestavia Hills was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.  

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Young people experiencing family instability and trauma are at increased risk for precarious living situations and interrupted educational experiences. And students who leave school before graduation are considerably more likely to experience homelessness and less likely to enroll in college. 

By failing to systematically and preemptively address youth homelessness through our schools, we are increasing the chances of hundreds of thousands of young people becoming and remaining homeless. 

We can change this. 

Schools are key to intervention. Schools can and should serve as indispensable resources for students who are experiencing unstable housing or outright homelessness. Lamentably, too often, there aren’t enough staff members to carry out existing support programs, much less manage additional programs designed for youth who are at risk for or are already experiencing homelessness.

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

I saw these issues firsthand when I worked as the chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, but they are prevalent at schools nationwide. For roughly 700,000 youth ages 13 to 17, not having stable or any housing is top of mind, a recent study found. 

Here are some suggestions for identifying youth at risk and tackling youth homelessness systemically. 

Paying more attention to risk factors will increase the chance that at-risk students will be identified earlier and interventions enacted. 

We’ve learned a lot about risk factors at the independent, nonpartisan policy research center I lead. For example, a family’s income is a strong indicator of risk, so school officials and staff should be hypersensitive in districts where families are struggling financially.

Yet appearances alone won’t necessarily indicate which students are struggling. Many schools rely on student self-reporting, which students are less likely to do if they don’t know there are resources available or if they are too ashamed to reveal their status. 

Schools should initiate a universal screening at the beginning of the school year to gauge if students are vulnerable to homelessness. All staff should routinely be trained to look for signs of homelessness and risk factors. 

Not everyone at a school needs to deeply engage with each student, but they should be aware of signs so they can make referrals to a social worker or the school’s McKinney-Vento liaison if needed.

The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act includes a requirement for schools to provide “comparable” transportation for homeless students to get to and from school. And while every school has a McKinney-Vento liaison who administers programs funded by federal dollars, at many schools that assistance boils down to just providing a bus pass for homeless students, nothing more. 

If their school is only able to provide a bus pass, students’ many other needs — like clothing and mental health care — will not be met. 

Having more school social workers would also help identify students struggling with housing stability and match them to programs and services that could meet their needs. 

Another significant risk factor for homelessness is dropping out of school. A truancy officer’s role is critical when students drop out. Administrators should be asking themselves what it takes to get kids back in school to stay. The goal of that position should not be to identify and punish students but to figure out what resources they need to get them back to school and keep them there. 

Related: Couch surfing, living in cars: Housing insecurity derails foster kids’ college dreams

One way to ensure that interventions are available and applied would be to mirror the work of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, the place where evidence-based interventions for child welfare are vetted, rated and made eligible for federal reimbursement. 

The inclusion of an evidence-based clearinghouse in a federal program is a legislative component that has historically enabled bipartisan buy-in. Since schools are already burdened by tight budgets and overworked staff, adding a clearinghouse for homelessness prevention efforts would allow qualified outside agencies to provide — and be reimbursed for — evidence-based intervention services. 

Two other points not to be overlooked are that youth homelessness is experienced disproportionately by Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ youth, and youth homelessness is a leading pathway into adult homelessness. That’s why supporting young people at risk for or experiencing homelessness — through substantial investments and increased services — is a significant way to address racial inequity and break these cycles. 

The point of school is to educate and nurture our youth so they can successfully pass on to the next phase of life. If we work together, we can disrupt the brutal cycle of homelessness and give more young people the future they deserve. 

Bryan Samuels is executive director of Chapin Hall. He previously served as chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, director of Illinois DCFS, and commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first Obama administration.

This story about homeless students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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In the United States today, 9 out of 10 school superintendents are white and two-thirds are white men. When you think of a typical superintendent, the person you imagine probably doesn’t look like me. 

As a Latina, my leadership isn’t often expected, nor is it always welcome. 

Institutional biases block career advancement for educators of color, who constitute only 1 in 5 U.S. teachers and principals. We are promoted less often and experience higher turnover than our white colleagues. 

This is a serious problem: The caliber and stability of our educator workforce affects our education system’s quality and capacity for improvement. We must address these barriers: Educators of color enhance student learning and are key to closing educational gaps. 

Much has been written about why we need to break down barriers in order to diversify the educator workforce. Much less covered has been the formidable task of how to launch and sustain transformative solutions. I urge fellow superintendents from all racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to act now.

That’s what we are doing inWaukegan public schools in Illinois, which serve a diverse population of about 14,000 students from preschool through high school, near Lake Michigan, about 10 miles south of the Wisconsin border. I am using my leadership position to take strong, unapologetic action so that every student can graduate from high school prepared and supported to pursue their dreams. 

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

Since taking on the superintendent role, I’ve found that when it comes to the young men in our district, we’ve got serious work to do. 

After analyzing a wide range of data and engaging in deep reflection last year, we realized that our Black male students often lack the necessary resources and support to reach their full potential. This aligns with national trends through which these students typically face low expectations, inequitable discipline that fuels the school-to-prison pipeline and a shortage of effective, culturally responsive teaching.

We launched an ambitious, systemwide, data-driven initiative aimed at creating equitable opportunities to help our Black male students and educators. I believe our efforts can provide an example for any school system dedicated to closing opportunity and achievement gaps for all students. 

Research confirms the intertwined success of Black students and educators. Studies show that low-income Black male students are 39 percent less likely to drop out of high school if they had at least one Black male teacher in elementary school. Our goal is to convince more Black male educators to build a career in our district because we know that hiring and retaining Black teachers and leaders can measurably improve math scores for Black students.

Related: White men have the edge in the school principal pipeline, researchers say

Some key insights from our work stand out as essential tools for continued success. First is the indispensable role of broad support from executive leadership. My commitment to addressing education inequities is deeply personal. I relate to many of the challenges our Black male educators face and, as a mother to a Black teenage boy, the urgency of this effort pulses through my veins.

Our board of education’s steadfast support has been equally key to launching our initiative, with board members helping drive us toward significant, measurable achievements.

Community engagement and leadership are our foundational principles. I know that the solutions we need won’t come from me alone. This acknowledgment led us to launch a task force that includes Black male students, teachers, principals, students’ fathers and other family members and community partners. 

We’ve also hosted planning sessions involving diverse stakeholders to try to foster buy-in and accountability as we move forward. And we’ve engaged national partners with unparalleled expertise to help us guide professional learning for district officials using an inclusive, equity-focused lens. 

We are also dedicating staff to oversee the work. We created a new position to catalyze our multiyear initiative and are investing in our teachers and leaders while we pursue systemic transformation. In particular, we launched a local leadership chapter for Men of Color in Educational Leadership, where our educators can share experiences, seek guidance and grow professionally within a community of practice.

We rely on a framework that highlights skills vital for the success of education leaders of color and contributes to the broader goal of systemic change in education. I often turn to these resources myself when reflecting on my own leadership as a woman of color. 

Acknowledging the extent of the challenge is just the start to fostering inclusive, equitable education. We have begun the critical process of setting goals so we can transparently track and communicate our progress. We are also trying to see how this focused initiative advances broader efforts to strengthen and diversify our entire educator workforce, including paraprofessionals, teachers and school leaders. 

Other superintendents can do this too. Find your champions, allies, community leaders and partners. The time for brave, visionary leadership is now.

Theresa Plascencia is superintendent of Waukegan Public Schools in Waukegan, Illinois. She sits on the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents Advisory Policy Committee and on the Men of Color in Educational Leadership National Advisory Council. 

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The pandemic disrupted education in previously unimaginable ways. It limited testing and pushed schools toward remote learning and easier assignments, along with softer grading and a more relaxed attitude around attendance.

These accommodations were supposed to be short-term, but most are still with us and are having a negative impact on students. This needs to change.

That’s why, as parents nationwide help their children settle into school this fall, they may want to ask questions about whether their kids are ready to dive into grade-level work — and, if not, find out what is being done to address that.

Four and a half years after the start of the pandemic, it’s time to raise the bar and stop making excuses for sagging achievement. Newly released data show that student growth in 2023-24 lagged behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in nearly every grade. That data follows the big declines in reading and math scores on the most recent Nation’s Report Card and the release of a study showing that high-needs districts have been recovering from the pandemic more slowly than their wealthier counterparts, worsening long-standing achievement gaps.

The pandemic also led to an explosion in chronic absenteeism, and we’ve seen only modest improvements. A recent study by USC researchers found a lack of concern about the issue among parents. School leaders also aren’t as worried as you’d expect, with only 15 percent saying they were “extremely concerned” about student absences in a survey released by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

At the same time, we can see clear evidence of grade inflation in rising GPAs coupled with falling or flat test scores. And while I know that teachers are trying to be supportive, lowering expectations is harmful; recent research shows that students learn more from teachers who have higher grading standards.

However, the need to raise standards doesn’t just rest on the shoulders of teachers. Education leaders and policymakers are also making things too easy. After decades of raising the bar for what’s considered grade-level performance, several states have lowered their “cut scores,” or what it means to be deemed proficient on end-of-year achievement tests.

Many states are also cutting back on K-12 assessments and graduation requirements, despite the fact that they are critical to holding education systems accountable.

Even students don’t like the go-easy-on-them approach. In an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun, recent high school graduate Benjamin Handelman notes that what is more helpful is for teachers to show enthusiasm for the subjects they teach and offer rigorous and engaging learning opportunities.

That’s important for all students, but especially for those from historically marginalized groups, who are least likely to get interesting, high-level learning opportunities.

Related: PROOF POINTS: Why are kids still struggling in school four years after the pandemic?

Keeping the bar low is going to make our kids less competitive when they leave school. It shocks me every time I hear people say, “Well, if everyone is behind, then no one is really behind.”

Eventually, young people will compete for jobs that aren’t going to have lower standards. In fact, employers will likely have higher expectations than a decade ago given advances in generative AI, the impact of technological advances on the world of work and a growing demand for employees with strong analytical, problem-solving and interpersonal skills.

Progress over time is central to our lives. When I was growing up, my competitive swimming coach was a former world record holder and Olympian. The time she had needed to be the fastest in the world in the 200-meter butterfly in 1963 was just barely fast enough for her daughter to qualify for the U.S. Olympic trials 30 years later.

We cannot be complacent about the fact that math achievement for 13-year-olds has fallen to levels not seen since the 1990s. That’s why I’m glad there are states and systems holding kids to high expectations. We can learn from them.

In Maryland, Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright has pledged to raise rigor, much like she did in Mississippi, which made major achievement gains under her stewardship. Her strategy, emulated by others, centers around raising standards and implementing evidence-based instructional strategies, most notably in reading. Mississippi is among three states, along with Illinois and Louisiana, where research shows that students have returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading. Additional strategies adopted by Illinois and Louisiana include tutoring and interventions for struggling learners and professional development for educators.

These states show us that all students can succeed when challenged and supported with high expectations and opportunities to learn. That must be what we strive for to help all kids finally put the pandemic behind them.

Lesley Muldoon is the executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card. She previously served as chief operating officer of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

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As the start of the school year approaches, high schools, colleges and universities across the country are figuring out how to help young people navigate the 2024 elections during these highly polarized and contentious times.

Here’s a way we can help students become informed and active participants in our democracy, while potentially avoiding fights in classrooms and on playing fields: Provide them with free, digital access to their community’s local newspaper so they can read it on their phones.

Engaging young people in democracy — getting them to follow the news and to vote — has always been a concern for educators and has always been a challenge. Young people pay less attention to the news and participate less than older people. This was the case fifty years ago and remains the case today.

That’s why in Oneonta, New York, Hartwick College’s newly launched Institute of Public Service is offering students a free digital subscription to the local paper, The Daily Star. This new initiative has emerged from the institute’s mission to help young people become more informed about and engaged with local government and the issues affecting the community where they go to school.

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It’s no surprise that the vast majority of teens report spending a lot of time on social media, especially YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram; a growing share say that they are on social media “almost constantly,” a recent report by the Pew Research Center shows.

Young people also say that social media is the most common way that they get news; many add that they do not actively seek out news, but are only exposed to it incidentally as part of their curated social media feeds.

Reliance on social media for information about candidates, policies and the actions of our government is a serious problem since much of the news content on social media is not the product of authentic, verified journalism. Inaccurate, misleading and conspiratorial information is common.

Moreover, the way social media algorithms work, readers with certain political leanings will increasingly be exposed only to content reflecting those leanings. This dynamic makes it hard for young people to find any common ground across partisan divides.

Providing young people with barrier-free access to a local newspaper is a concrete way for educational institutions to counter that trend and foster engaged citizenship.

This works because local politics is much less partisan than national politics, as New York Timescolumnist Ezra Klein pointed out in “Why We’re Polarized.” In most localities, we still see Democrats and Republicans working together to solve problems. The work of local government directly affects the lives of those in their communities.

Furthermore, Pew Research shows that Americans of both parties see value in local newspapers. Views about local news are not as starkly divided as opinions about the national media. As a result, local government and local news provide a good entry point to democracy for young people.

I’m heartened by new partnerships between local news outlets and academic institutions across the country, such as the one at the University of Vermont, through which the school is providing journalism students with the opportunity to write for local newspapers and get hands-on civic experience while also helping provide professional news coverage for their communities.

Related: Could colleges make voting as popular as going to football games?

By investing in local news, schools and colleges can invest both in their communities and in democracy. Due to the changing news media environment, local newspapers have been in serious decline. Over the past several decades, we have seen hundreds close down. Currently, the majority of counties in America have only one local newspaper or, even more problematically, none at all.

Without local news, it is very difficult for people and communities to know what their local elected officials are doing and to hold power to account.

Many high school and college libraries have databases that allow students to search and access stories from a range of newspapers, and these are wonderful services. But they also take time and work to access, requiring students to log in and wade through multiple portals to get to news stories. And often the content in these databases is not updated throughout the day.

Giving students subscriptions to their local newspapers enables them to simply click the app on their phones and start reading.

Moreover, research shows that, like many other democratic behaviors, including voting, reading a newspaper and following the news is a habit: Once you start doing it, you are likely to continue.

At Hartwick, we hope that providing free, easy access to our local newspaper will result in more students consuming verified, objective news and lead to more informed and thoughtful discussions on campus and in our classrooms.

We encourage other schools to do the same. Nudging even a handful of students to become lifelong newspaper readers is a way for educational institutions to transform the lives of those students while strengthening our democracy — and our local newspapers.

Laurel Elder is professor and chair of political science at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and is co-director of the Hartwick Institute of Public Service.

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MILWAUKEE — On a muggy afternoon in late June, about 20 kindergarten through second-grade teachers sat in a classroom on the third floor of Milwaukee’s North Division High School. The air conditioning wasn’t working properly, but the heat didn’t seem to bother the teachers, who were absorbed in a math lesson.

Danielle Robinson and Alicia Socha, two teachers in the district, led the lesson.

“I went to the store to buy some fruit. I bought five apples and four bananas. How many pieces of fruit did I buy?” Socha asked.

The elementary teachers in the room solved the problem quickly. But the solution wasn’t the point. The teachers spent more time discussing what type of problem this was. Describing and deconstructing it helped the teachers reach a deeper understanding of not only how it works but how to explain it to their youngest learners.

“Put yourself into the mind of a child,” Robinson said.

Teaching counting and basic arithmetic sounds like a simple task. But early-childhood and elementary teachers have the daunting task of introducing abstraction to their students: What is a number? What does it mean for a number to be bigger? What does it mean to be a part of a whole?

Across the hall, Beth Schefelker and Claire Madden, two other math education specialists, led a group of teachers and principals in adding fractions. Since 2022, the district has spent close to a million dollars in Covid-19 relief funds to pay the coaches, principals and teachers to attend these sessions.

Many of these teachers never saw themselves as “math people.” Today, they were surprising themselves. Kayla Thuemler, a first grade teacher, added some fractions using a number line, where fractions are visually arranged along a horizontal line, similar to using a ruler. Thuemler had never seen fractions taught using a number line. But seeing fractions with different denominators on the same number line helped her see fractions as a more coherent system.

“Why am I enjoying myself right now?” she asked colleagues. “I hate math.”

Melissa Hedges and DeAnn Huinker strolled back and forth between the two classrooms. They shared giddy glances when they saw the teachers get excited about math. Hedges oversees all things math for the Milwaukee district’s elementary and middle schools. Huinker, a professor who advised Hedges’ doctorate in math education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is a legend among Milwaukee’s math teachers.

Huinker led a math education revolution in the district when, between 2004 and 2014, almost every teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools received this type of training. Veteran teachers refer to this era as the golden years of math instruction. New district leaders abruptly ended that work. Ten years later, the teachers gathered on this balmy afternoon are the inheritors of Huinker’s legacy, tasked with preserving a vibrant culture of collaboration and a commitment to helping teachers master math.

“Every teacher wants to learn and do a better job teaching,” Huinker said. “When teachers are learning, students are learning.”

Related: Sign up for a limited-run newsletter that walks you through some of the most promising solutions for helping students conquer math.

Early in her career, Huinker dedicated herself to solving the problem of inequitable achievement in math, whether measured by test scores, grades or more qualitative surveys about students’ attitudes toward the subject. In the early 2000s, she saw a grant from the National Science Foundation as a possible solution for Milwaukee’s public schools.

The NSF, an independent federal agency, offers funding for math, science and engineering education in all 50 states. In 2003, the NSF awarded Huinker $20 million, the largest amount ever awarded to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to establish a partnership between the university and the local school district.

 Huinker’s proposal was to have math education experts teach teachers more math while getting constant feedback from teachers on obstacles in the classroom. In 2002, a coalition of teachers, professors and administrators led by Huinker announced the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnership.

“It’s like all the stars aligned,” she said. “You had the university professors from education and mathematics, as well as the Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent, who was very supportive.”

The $20 million allowed the district to hire 120 math teacher leaders who would serve as a crucial piece to the system Huinker had imagined. Each of the 120 schools had a teacher leader, who would serve as the liaison between Huinker and her university colleagues and the classroom teachers across the district.

Beth Schefelker was one of those teacher leaders. She was “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” about the partnership when it started, but she said she quickly ran into roadblocks. While some district administrators were on board, others were less enthused.

Schefelker recalled one meeting with a principal who leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and said, “Convince me why I need to be a part of this.” Another principal told her, “You’re just another woman asking me to take a leap of faith.”

Schefelker responded, “What we’re doing is not working.”

Before the partnership, the district’s approach to math resembled what math instruction looks like today in many schools across the nation — a patchwork of different methods and approaches. The partnership sought to bring more consistency among educators in a way that reflected the conceptual cohesion of mathematics as a discipline. But none of this would be possible if teachers themselves didn’t understand the math.

While teacher leaders like Schefelker worked in individual schools and Huinker managed the partnership from the university, Henry Kranendonk mediated from the district office. He helped develop a “spectrum” that became the centerpiece of the program.

First, the district’s teachers agreed what students in each grade should learn in math and made sure these learning goals met state standards. Second, teachers and university professors helped develop standardized assessments for each grade level. Teachers within individual schools would then meet to discuss where students were weak and report these findings to Huinker and her colleagues, who would then develop teacher training sessions.

“At the end of the day, it was gratifying,” Kranendonk said. “We weren’t giving them orders. We were collectively trying to figure out the best form of instruction.”

In the classroom, teachers pushed students to reach a conceptual understanding of mathematics, a departure from the “drill and kill” methods of timed tests and memorizing procedures. The goal was to help students understand how different topics within math, everything from whole numbers and fractions to algebraic functions and areas of shapes, are interconnected. Students could then confidently solve unfamiliar problems without relying on formulas or by following the same step-by-step procedures. They would understand that individual problems are just expressions of concepts.

Related: Kindergarten math is often too basic. Here’s why that’s a problem

The partnership also gave teachers a say in how the district taught math. The training sessions went over state standards in detail and helped teachers unlearn their own bad math habits, while dispelling any false ideas a teacher might have about not being a “math person.” The training sessions were designed and improved based on the feedback classroom teachers gave to Kranendonk.

Through this ecosystem, teachers discovered just how fragmented math instruction had been in the district. For example, they realized early on that some students didn’t understand the “equals” sign. Schefelker recalled how some students thought the symbol stood for “the answer is” rather than a symbol that represents balance. They had seen the equal sign only in the context of solving problems, and not as one critical component of the language of math.

“The kids didn’t understand equality,” Schefelker said. “All they were doing was going through the process and not really understanding what they were doing.”

Once Huinker and her colleagues intervened through training sessions, teachers started to teach the equal sign differently, using problems like “5+7=__+6” to show how both sides of the equation need to be the same value.

Once the partnership gained momentum, the benefits became obvious, especially in test score data. According to one University of Wisconsin report, test scores rose by 10 percentage points for some groups. According to a report by Huinker’s team in 2011, one school in the district, 98 percent of whose students lived in low-income households, increased its mathematics proficiency by 40 percentage points. Milwaukee Public Schools became a beacon for math instruction across the country.

A long-term look at the data, however, paints a more complicated picture. In 2004, when the partnership fully launched, about 30 percent of the district’s eighth graders were either proficient or advanced in math, according to Wisconsin standardized test score data. But in the 2005-06 school year, the state created a new standardized test, and scores plummeted for students: That year, only about 10 percent of eighth graders in Milwaukee were either proficient or advanced. That rate for eighth graders peaked in 2012, with about 16 percent reaching proficiency or advanced status. During the partnership, fourth graders saw about an 8 percentage point gain in the rate of students who scored proficient or advanced.

According to Huinker and Schefelker, however, test scores were only the most public-facing sign of improvement. Grades, student interest and teacher satisfaction skyrocketed during those years.

Buy-in from teachers was one reason the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnership worked, Huinker said. The second reason for the partnership’s success was more bureaucratic. Huinker, not the district, controlled the purse strings. Leaders at financially strapped districts like Milwaukee Public Schools constantly juggle competing priorities, and, according to Huinker and Kranendonk, district leaders were tempted to allocate some of the money to other areas of need. Huinker ensured that the money would be spent only on math instruction.

“The external funding really gave us a leverage point,” Huinker said. “We were accountable to the National Science Foundation for keeping track of how the money was spent towards the clear goals of the project.”

All this created a tight accountability structure that allowed everyone involved to stay focused on the goal of improving math achievement in Milwaukee.

The NSF money lasted nearly a decade, and the successes continued. When the federal money ran out, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction funded the partnership for two years.

Despite receiving national and statewide praise, the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnership ended in 2014, when a new superintendent and curriculum director decided to terminate the district’s relationship with the University of Wisconsin.

Huinker, Kranendonk and Schefelker recalled that the new district officials wanted to have complete district control over math instruction. The end was sudden, a contrast to the amount of time that had been invested into making the partnership work.

“They broke it,” Schefelker said. “It took years of work to thread that needle. It took months to unravel.”

Related: Teachers conquering their math anxiety

Today, about 12 percent of students in the district, compared to 41 percent statewide, are proficient in math, according to standardized test score data. Wisconsin administers its state tests to students in grades three to eight and grade 10. Hedges, the current math curriculum director for the district who held several positions during the partnership, recalled a colleague who had once called math the “crown jewel” of Milwaukee Public Schools. “If you look at our test scores now, we might not be able to say that,” Hedges said.

After the partnership ended in 2014, standardized test scores in math continued to rise incrementally. From 2016 to 2019, overall math proficiency in Milwaukee rose about 1 percentage point, to reach 16.2 percent. Hedges said some teachers remained committed to the partnership’s methods.

“We had such a strong leadership base,” she said. When the partnership ended, “there were 120 math teacher leaders out in the district, and some of them went back into classrooms.”

Huinker continues to train teachers for the district. Since the partnership ended in 2014, district leadership changed again, and there’s been more openness to collaborating with the university. The sessions for early-childhood educators, which meet for four hours a day for about two weeks, include both lessons in math and open forums for teachers to air grievances. The format of these meetings reflect the structure of the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnership, with its focus on math content and fostering collaboration between teachers who need more help teaching math.

Today, Milwaukee Public Schools is reckoning with fiscal mismanagement, changes to leadership, clashes with the state and tension between administrators and teachers. On top of all that, the district will implement a new math curriculum across its schools this fall. Teachers feel unprepared and lament that they’ll only see it a week before the school year starts.

Although another systemic overhaul is unlikely in the near future, the people who were around during the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnership are trying to pass down everything they’ve learned to the next generation of educators. The focus on the youngest learners is encouraging for newer teachers who got into the profession partly to avoid math.

Danielle Robinson was one of the teachers in the district who helped lead the sessions for early-childhood teachers. She wasn’t around during the partnership, but she adheres to the same goals and methods. Her job, she said, is to translate research in education and childhood development for teachers.

“I felt like I never really learned math, until I was able to learn” from Huinker and Hedges, Robinson said. “I always thought that social studies and literacy were more of my thing. These ladies really did change my life.”

Phoebe Goebels contributed reporting for this story.

This story about teaching math was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Apparently, there is not enough joy to go around, and some “joyful warriors” are upset about, among other things, what they see as their nickname being ripped off.

Joy has become a theme of the Democratic ticket — Vice President Kamala Harris proclaimed herself and running mate Tim Walz “joyful warriors” against their Republican opponents. The conservative parent group Moms for Liberty made a point of attacking the Democrats’ use of the phrase during its four-day annual summit over Labor Day weekend in Washington D.C.

“I want to remind people who are the OG Joyful Warriors,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich said Friday evening, ahead of an appearance by Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.    

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As a whole, the summit sent dual messages. One cast Moms for Liberty and the broader Republican party as working to appeal across party lines. The other unleashed strikingly vitriolic language about claimed dangers of the Harris-Walz ticket — especially to parents. Leaders made one particular issue — transgender students — the focus of their messaging. Staple concerns of past years, including social emotional learning, DEI initiatives and “inappropriate” books, took a backseat. There was little talk of academics or learning.

Instead, co-founder Tiffany Justice painted schools as predatory, seeking to infect children with ideas about gender that lead them to declare they are nonbinary. And Walz, whose policies as governor of Minnesota are considered LGBTQ+-friendly, was a special target of attack. 

“Tim Walz is, I mean, what a radical, radical bad guy,” Justice said in an interview with The Hechinger Report, calling him “anti-parent” and repeating inaccurate portrayals of  Minnesota law as allowing minor children to come to the state for gender-affirming care without their parents’ consent and saying that children can be removed from their parents’ custody if they disagree with their kids’ desire for gender-affirming care. (A Minnesota law gives courts there the ability to intervene temporarily in a custody dispute across state lines when a child cannot obtain care.)

She also raised concerns about what she called “a social contagion that has taken over in our country. It’s called rapid onset gender dysphoria,” Justice said, referring to a disorder described in a paper published last year in the scientific journal Archives of Sexual Behavior that has since been retracted. 

“There’s no such thing as a transgender child. Please quote me on that,” she continued. “There are children who are experiencing mental distress and they need kindness and compassion and help to feel comfortable in their own bodies, because no child is born in the wrong body.”

Aside from a playful interlude featuring covers of John Mellencamp and Lynyrd Skynyrd that brought attendees clad in sequined MAGA wear and American Flag-inspired fashion to their feet, the event felt less organized — and less joyful — than past years.

Related: Title IX regulations on sex discrimination can be Trump-era or Biden-era, depending on your state or school

Instead, the prevailing tone was one of aggression. The us-versus-them framing is not new. At the first Moms for Liberty summit, in Tampa in 2022, attendees were invited to a well-choreographed unveiling of the alleged dangers facing children in public school — and an urgent call to get involved. The second, in Philadelphia, schooled them in real-time opposition as the extent of protests seemed to surprise attendees doing what they saw as the noble work of moms. This year, many got that this was less about gathering information or learning than rallying around your team. On the cusp of a big election, what could they do to help? How could they recruit more people to defeat a Democratic ticket cast as lethal to their children’s well-being — even as they look to be having lots of fun and supporting lunchbox issues like school meals?

“It’s crazy what’s going on,” said one Maryland mom, a first-time attendee who said she has become more active “because I can” since her youngest graduated from high school. “Moms with 5- and 6-year-olds don’t have time to fight.”

The summit gathered some 600 moms, grandmothers — and a fair number of dads, for whom an in-person appearance from Trump was perhaps the biggest draw. Even though the former president was on stage for nearly an hour, he said little about education, instead repeatedly veering to the subject of immigration regardless of what question Justice asked him. In some of his few comments on schools, he charged without evidence that public schools are aggressively involved in providing gender-affirming care.  

“The transgender thing is incredible,” Trump said. “Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

Some of Trump’s remarks on immigration, meanwhile, focused on the dangers of newcomers to public education. At one point, he alleged that new arrivals bring gangs and disease into schools, and are welcomed warmly while current students are shut out. “They don’t even speak English,” he said. “It’s crazy. And we have our people that aren’t going into a classroom. We have students that were there last year that aren’t allowed into the school.”

Trump also spent time reflecting on the difficulties of being a candidate. When Justice asked Trump for his advice to busy moms considering a run for school board — some of the core work of Moms for Liberty is to encourage members to seek office — his answer was, “Don’t do it.” 

While Justice noted to the crowd that Moms for Liberty endorses candidates only in school board races, she personally endorsed Trump as she concluded her interview. 

Related: Moms For Liberty flexes its muscles — and faces pushback

Despite the clearly partisan tone of the summit, there was an effort to cross ideological lines to expand support for the Republican ticket ahead of the election. A Friday morning keynote panel featured four women whom Justice said had “chosen to walk away from the Democratic party”: Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii; Texas state Rep. Shawn Thierry, who left the Democratic party in late August; athletic clothing maker and former gymnast Jennifer Sey who has written about how she regrets voting for President Joe Biden; and New York City parent advocate and former Democratic congressional candidate Maud Maron.

Gabbard, who was recently named to be part of Trump’s transition team, said the Democratic Party “is no longer the big tent party that welcomes people from all walks of life.” She coached attendees on how to approach a person in their circle “who doesn’t quite see the truth,” and urged them to do so. “Scroll through your phone. Think about the people who may need a little bit of a nudge,” she said.

“Who’s gonna unite our country?” Gabbard called to the crowd. “We are!”  

This year’s summit lacked the hundreds of protesters who were a constant presence at the 2023 event in Philadelphia, spurring a large and visible security detail and barricades at the hotel entrance. By contrast, the streets outside of the JW Marriott in Washington, less than half a mile from the White House, were quiet.

Yet many of the same groups that had gathered to protest Moms for Liberty last year  staged a separate counter-event, “Celebration of Reading,” on Saturday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington. Participants read aloud banned books and gave away nearly 1,000 of them to children and families who arrived in strollers and on foot.

At the same time, several dozen conservative groups, including Moms for Liberty, organized what they said would be the first annual “March for Kids” to “bring awareness to the decline of our educational system and the erosion of parental rights.” Originally planned for the National Mall, it was moved at the last minute indoors to the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall; organizers cited safety concerns. As it got underway, some 300 people populated a hall with a capacity of 3,702.

Meg Simons, digital strategy manager at the progressive advocacy group People for the American Way, said that the strong showing of protestors in Philadelphia so motivated many older members of her 40-year-old organization that they started Grandparents For Truth to counter Moms for Liberty.

Marge Baker, a founding member of the grandparent group, said it bothered her to see Moms for Liberty “out there organizing and trying to claim this mantle of freedom when what they want is the freedom to decide what all parents and children can read.” Baker spoke moments before her husband, Robert Banks, was to read aloud “The Lorax,” which has been banned in some places for promoting an environmentalist agenda and negatively depicting the logging industry.

Heidi Ross, another grandmother, traveled from Buckeye, Arizona, to help out at the event. “This is my world,” she said, holding up a screen shot of her 2-year-old granddaughter, Lili. Ross said she has been upset by the rise of school vouchers in her state and the attacks on books. “Children should know about everybody, every family,” she said, adding that, “there are different families, even in my Republican neighborhood.”

During the Moms for Liberty summit, attendees chatted at booths staffed by representatives of organizations such as Lifewise Academy, which touts a Bible education program for public school students that can be offered during the school day. Other booths plus a strategy session run by lawyers with The Heritage Foundation and Institute for Free Speech offered guidance to parents for fighting the new Biden administration Title IX regulation, which extends protection against sex discrimination to students based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Moms for Liberty helped derail the regulation, at least for now, in 26 states and thousands of schools in other states, a list that is growing by the week.

Julie Womack, head of organizing for Red, Wine & Blue, a national progressive group that helps suburban women organize, hosted an online information event about the new Title IX rules, a panel with parents of trans kids, and is planning a “Troublemaker Training” on Oct. 16 to counter disinformation about transgender individuals. “Many people in real life have very little experience,” with transgender individuals, said Womack.  Even parents of transgender youth, she said, admit “they didn’t know how to handle it. Well, we are all learning. It is OK to learn. But it is not OK to exclude.”

Liz King, who leads the education program for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the counter-event’s sponsors, said Moms for Liberty is boxing people out rather than being inclusive. As the group’s language escalates, she said, “they have resorted to the old canard of fear-mongering.”

This all comes at a critical time.“One of the questions right now is, ‘What does it mean to be a parent?’” said King. “What we see with this organization of Moms for Liberty is a betrayal of the responsibility of parents and an anti-liberty agenda.”

This story about Moms for Liberty was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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It’s guys night out, and dinner is coming to an end. We’ve given our credit cards to the server, who returns and drops the stack of bills in the center of the table. As per usual, one of my oldest friends scoops them up and thrusts them to my side of the table.

“Lance can calculate the tips, he’s a math guy.”

The line elicits a huge laugh, as if my title as the group’s “math guy” is a comical one. We have our “movie guy,” our “soccer guy” and of course me, the one who can quickly compute reasonable tips because I’m “good at math.”

I’ve taught high school math in Texas for the last 16 years, and I wear the epithet of “math guy” proudly. What troubles me is the notion that being “good at math” is unique to those in my vocation. Often, when people find out that I teach Algebra, they quickly recite a plethora of bad experiences with math in all forms, without indicating that they could (or should) have gone down differently.

Equally troubling is the fixed idea among many of my friends that they are the opposite of me: inherently or irrevocably “bad at math,” and they believe that is totally OK.

In fact, my friends are more loath to admit that they’re bad at cooking than math. By contrast, when was the last time you heard an adult declare at a dinner table that they are bad at reading?

Illiteracy carries a large amount of stigma for many adults, whereas most seem to be far less self-conscious about having deficiencies in math. And that’s a problem we must solve as a society.

The solution to creating the next generation of strong “math people” starts early, and it involves families and schools working together to change mindsets.

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

Math, along with reading, is one of the fundamental skills we work to teach kids from a very young age. As educators, we focus on math and reading as the twin flames of childhood development, as the two progress in tandem and pave the path to academic success.

Math and reading are frequently linked when we devise legislation, whether it comes from the right or the left. Last year the Texas Legislature passed a popular bill, which put in place a plan to help more students attain access to advanced math instruction. Research shows a clear link between students’ postsecondary success and the highest level of math they took in high school. The bill gets the ball rolling by requiring school districts to automatically enroll sixth graders in an advanced math course if they performed in the 60th percentile or better on their fifth-grade state assessment or a similar local measure.

This is because students tend to find success via a cascading effect. To achieve at the postsecondary level, they need to take advanced high school math courses. To be prepared for those courses, they need access to Algebra I in eighth grade, and to be prepared for that, they need to be enrolled in advanced math in sixth grade.

Putting this bill to work will expose many students to the satisfaction of higher math just before middle school.

I was lucky to have had tangible experiences with problem-solving even younger. My mother taught me how to calculate a 20 percent tip as a child, by showing me how to move the decimal over one place to the left and double the result. I delighted in this shared family activity any time we went out to eat. My joy was only further enhanced in the elementary school classroom, where I learned the formal arithmetic that guides this technique of calculating percentages.

Sadly, few students cite a positive formative memory like mine when it comes to their own history with math, especially outside the classroom. In fact, many experience the opposite.

Related: PROOF POINTS: How a debate over the science of math could reignite the math wars

We must focus on developing an excited “growth mindset” for the learning of math, no matter how old we are, so that our children will view the subject with pleasure rather than fear.

And we need to start now. By 2030, it is estimated that over 60 percent of jobs in Texas will require at least some level of post-high school education. To get students there, we will need even more than innovative legislation.

We can lay a foundation for success in higher levels of math by showing kids the fun of math problem-solving early and often. Some examples: Have your kids sort their Halloween candy into different shapes, count the beats in their favorite songs or guess how many total Legos are in the closet.

Let’s emphasize the ability to develop numeracy with the same fervor and positivity that we emphasize literacy. Let’s stop instilling in our kids that they are either “good” or “bad” at math when they are still in single digits.

Let’s continually promote the narrative that we can all be “math people,” from grade school all the way to adulthood. That way, the next time you need to calculate a tip, or double a recipe or take measurements for a house project, you won’t have to call on the local “math guy.”

You might even take delight in solving the problem yourself.

Lance Barasch is a high school math teacher at the School of Science and Engineering in Dallas ISD. He is a Teach Plus senior writing fellow.

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The other day, one of my students told me that she’d been assigned the lyrics of Kendrick Lamar for her high school English class. It was the first time I had encountered a high school English assignment involving an author with whom I was wholly unfamiliar.

But can we even call rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar an author, his lyrics literature? Call me a snob, but I would argue that we cannot and should not, especially at a level so introductory to the English literary canon as high school. High school curricula are meant to present a broad and foundational overview of the important tenets of each core field of knowledge: mathematics, science, literature, history and language.

Related: TEACHER VOICE: How the sad shadow of book banning shuts down conversations and lacerates librarians

Many high school students are already consuming Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift on a daily basis without the intervention of the education system. In my view, using course time to analyze the lyrics of these popular artists not only precludes students from uncovering new knowledge but also encourages them to consider the fleeting music of our time — most of which, I predict, will be forgotten in the span of a generation — as great literature.

So why have we swapped out Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens for figures who are — at best — ancillary to literary study? Shouldn’t we teach students about the works of the Shakespeares and the Chaucers that English literature is based on — rather than present them with the words of contemporary songwriters such as Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift, whose works might belong entirely to a different category?

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

As educators, the fate of tomorrow’s change-makers rests in our hands, and it is our goal to rear the next generation of successful thinkers. There is no better way to teach students to think than to encourage them to wrestle with the sort of complex ideas that we find in time-tested literature. We must not, therefore, alter our intellectual standards or deem literature unimportant and pretentious, especially for students who are at such a crucial period of their intellectual development. It is our job to guide students to aspire to intellectual mountaintops rather than confining them to more familiar valleys.

At a certain point, we do need to start distinguishing between foundational literature and the musical byproducts of our contemporary culture. New York University can offer as many Taylor Swift courses as it wants, and there might be nothing wrong with studying Taylor Swift as literature — but that should not happen until students have attained a robust understanding of the literary tradition.

At the high school level, we should challenge younger generations to understand the core facets of the humanistic tradition by presenting them with an accurate picture of what the field of literary study has always been: a profound exploration of the human condition through words and stories. These stories, expressed through vivid works of literature, will, in turn, compel them to think critically.

I teach writing to high schoolers through my college consulting firm. When preparing students to write their college essays, I always lead with literature — Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Fitzgerald, for instance — for I believe that developing strong communication skills lies in understanding the writing styles and messages of these great thinkers and writers.

Many of my students, who will soon be sending in applications to America’s elite educational institutions, can no longer string a coherent sentence together without using AI tools such as ChatGPT or Grammarly. While there might be nothing wrong with using these tools as guidebooks and coaches, doing so must not come at the expense of developing strong writing skills, which are the cornerstone of strong communication. A generation that has lost the ability to write will lose the ability to effect meaningful societal change, for great change lies in effectively sharing ideas with others.

The students I work with are our future doctors, engineers and lawyers, among many other professions. In diluting their high school English curricula, we are collectively abandoning humanistic study as a society, letting go of our dedication to creating strong thinkers and visionaries. While not all teachers have swapped out Shakespeare for Swift, the presence of rappers and songwriters on an English syllabus is a telling sign that we have begun to change the standards of critical thinking and no longer emphasize the value of enduring communication.

I always prompt my college-bound students to challenge themselves intellectually. Instead of endlessly scrolling through Taylor-Swift TikToks, why not pick up a copy of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”? As I send my students off to college every year, many of them look back and thank me for encouraging them to make it through this literary behemoth, for there is a certain ineffable satisfaction to challenging yourself to engage critically with ideas: It makes us all stronger thinkers and communicators.

And I guarantee you that any 15-year-old can comprehend serious literature with the right mindset and the right mentorship.

As English teachers, our goal is to challenge our students to think critically in order to create the strong communicators of tomorrow — and hope that in the process, they will view literature not as pretentious but as beautiful and profound.

Liza Libes founded her college consulting startup, Invictus Prep, in New York City. Her writing has appeared in The American Spectator, Kveller, Jewish Women of Words and elsewhere.

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