Education vaulted to the forefront of conversations about the presidential race when Democratic nominee Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz, the governor of Minnesota, worked for roughly two decades in public schools, as a geography teacher and football coach. He has championed investments in public education: For example, in March 2023, he signed a bill to make school meals free to all students in public schools.

Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general in California, has less experience in education than her running mate. But her record suggests that she would back policies to make child care more affordable, protect immigrant and LGBTQ+ students and promote broader access to higher education through free community college and loan forgiveness. Like Walz, she has defended schools and teachers against Republican charges that they are “indoctrinating” young people; she has also spoken about her own experience of being bused in Berkeley, California, as part of a program to desegregate the city’s schools.

Harris and Walz have been endorsed by the country’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which tend to support Democratic candidates.

We will update this guide as the candidates reveal more information about their education plans. You can also read about the Republican ticket’s education ideas.

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

Early childhood

Child care

Harris has been a vocal supporter of child care legislation during her time in the Biden administration, though the proposals have had a mixed record of success.

During the pandemic, the Biden administration provided $39 billion in child care aid to help keep programs afloat.

The administration lowered the cost of child care for some military families and supported raising pay for federally funded Head Start teachers to create parity with public school teachers.

Earlier this year, Harris announced a new federal rule that would reduce lower child care costs for low-income families that receive child care assistance through a federally funded program. That same rule also requires states to pay child care providers on a more reliable basis. In September, Harris highlighted affordable child care as a key issue on her campaign website and said she would ensure “that care workers are paid a living wage.” Harris also said she plans to cap child care costs at no more than 7 percent of a working family’s income, but did not elaborate on how that would be funded.

Walz has also supported child care programs as governor of Minnesota. Earlier this year, he announced a new $6 million child care grant program aimed at expanding child care capacity, which followed a 2023 grant program that cemented pandemic-era support so programs could increase wages for child care workers. — Jackie Mader

Family leave and tax benefits

As soon as she became the presumptive Democratic nominee in July, Harris reaffirmed her support for paid family leave, which also was part of the platform she proposed as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential contest. Harris provided the tie-breaking Senate vote that temporarily increased the child tax credit during the pandemic and has proposed making that tax credit permanent.

In mid-August, Harris unveiled an economic policy agenda that proposes giving a $6,000 child tax credit for a year to families with newborns. She also wants to bring back and expand a pandemic-era child tax credit that lapsed in 2021. Harris’ proposal would provide up to $3,600 a year per child. 

Walz also was behind Minnesota’s child tax credit increase in 2023, and successfully pushed forward a statewide paid family and medical leave law that takes effect in 2026. — J.M.

Pre-K

In 2021, the Biden administration proposed a universal preschool program as part of a multi-trillion-dollar social spending plan called Build Back Better. The plan ultimately failed to win backing from the Senate.

Earlier this year, Walz signed a package of child-focused bills into law. one of which expands the state’s public pre-K program by 9,000 seats and provides pay for teachers who attend structured literacy training. — J.M.

K-12

Artificial intelligence, education technology, cybersecurity

Harris has played a key role in leading the Biden administration’s AI initiatives, particularly since the launch of ChatGPT. Biden signed an executive order on AI in October 2023, which directed the Education Department to develop within a year resources, policies and guidance on AI and to create an “AI toolkit” for schools.

While Harris hasn’t specifically addressed education technology, in the Biden administration, the Education Department earlier this year released the National Education Technology Plan to serve as a blueprint for schools on how to implement technology in education, how to address inequities in the use and design of ed tech and how to offer ways to bridge the country’s digital divide.

In 2023, the current administration announced several new initiatives to tackle cybersecurity threats in K-12 schools, including a three-year pilot program through the Federal Communications Commission that will provide up to $200 million to help school districts that are eligible for FCC’s E-Rate program cover the cost of cybersecurity services and equipment. — Javeria Salman

Immigrant students

Harris has vowed to protect those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which delays deportation for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. The Biden administration has also used its bully pulpit to remind states and school districts that all children regardless of immigration status have a constitutional right to a free public education. As a senator in 2018, Harris sponsored legislation designed to reunite migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, although family separation has continued on a much smaller scale in the Biden administration. In Minnesota, Walz signed legislation that starting next year will provide free public college tuition to undocumented students from low-income families. — Neal Morton

LGBTQ+ students and Title IX

Harris and Walz have both expressed support for LGBTQ+ students and teachers. As a senator, Harris supported the Equality Act in 2019, which would have expanded protections in the Civil Rights Act on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in education, among other areas. In a speech to the American Federation of Teachers, Harris decried the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws passed by Florida and other states in recent years. Walz has a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ students in Minnesota, where he was the faculty adviser of Mankato West High School’s first Gay-Straight Alliance club in the 1990s. In 2021, Walz signed an executive order restricting insurance coverage for so-called conversion therapy for minors and directing a state agency to investigate potential “discriminatory practice related to conversion therapy.” Walz signed an executive order in 2023 protecting gender-affirming health care. Earlier this year, he signed a law barring libraries from banning books based on ideology; book bans nationwide have largely targeted LGTBQ+-themed books.

The Biden administration announced significant rule changes to Title IX in 2024 that undid some of the changes the Trump administration made, including removing a mandate for colleges to have live hearings and cross-examinations when investigating sexual assaults on campus. The current administration also expanded protections for students based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which had been temporarily blocked in more than two dozen states and in schools attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United. — Ariel Gilreath

Native students

As vice president, Harris worked in an administration that promised to improve education for Native Americans, including a 10-year plan to revitalize Native languages. The president’s infrastructure bill, passed in 2021, created a $3 billion program to broaden access to high-speed internet on tribal lands — a major barrier for students trying to learn at home during the pandemic. During his time as governor, Walz signed legislation last year to make college tuition-free for Native American students in Minnesota and required K-12 teachers to complete training on Native American history. Walz also required every state agency, including the department of education, to appoint tribal-state liaisons and formally consult with tribal governments.

Walz spent part of his early career teaching in small rural schools, including on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. — N.M.

School choice

Harris, who was endorsed by the nation’s largest public school teachers unions, has voiced support for public schools, but has said little about school vouchers or school choice. Walz does not support private-school vouchers, opposing statewide private-school voucher legislation introduced in 2021 by Republicans in Minnesota. — A.G.

School meals

One of Walz’s signature legislative achievements was supporting a bill that provides free school breakfasts and lunches to public and charter school students in Minnesota, regardless of household income. Walz, who signed the law in 2023, made Minnesota one of only eight states to have a universal school meal policy. The new law is expected to cost about $480 million over the next two years.

The Biden administration also expanded access to free school lunch by making it easier for schools to provide food without collecting eligibility information on every child’s family. — Christina A. Samuels

School prayer

The Biden administration has sought to protect students from feeling pressured into praying in schools. Following the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the federal Education Department published updated guidance saying that while the Constitution permits school employees to pray during the workday, they may not “compel, coerce, persuade, or encourage students to join in the employee’s prayer or other religious activity.” — Caroline Preston

Special education

As a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris released a “children’s agenda” in 2019 that, among other provisions, called for a large boost in special education spending.

When Congress first passed the federal law that is now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it authorized spending to cover up to 40 percent of the “excess costs” of educating students with disabilities compared to their peers. But Congress has never come close to meeting that goal, and today the federal government distributes only about 15 percent of the total cost of educating students with disabilities. The shortfall is “immoral,” Harris told members of the National Education Association at a 2019 candidates forum.

The Biden administration also has proposed large increases in special education spending, but proposals for full funding of special education have not made it through Congress.

In 2023, the Minnesota Department of Education created a grant program to help school districts “grow their own” special education teachers. The first round of funding awarded $20 million to 25 grantees. In August, a second round of funding provided nearly $10 million to benefit more than 35 districts and charter schools. — C.A.S.

Student mental health, school safety

As California attorney general, Harris created a Bureau of Children’s Justice to address childhood trauma, among other issues. She has spoken out about the mental health toll of trauma, including from poverty, and the need for more resources and “culturally competent” mental health providers. But a 2011 law she pushed for as attorney general allowing parents of chronically absent students to be criminally charged later drew criticism for its toll on families, particularly those who are Black or Hispanic. Harris has said she regrets the law’s “unintended consequences.”

The Biden administration’s actions on student mental health includes expanding the pipeline of school psychologists, streamlining payment and delivery of school mental health services and directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop new ways of assessing social media’s impact on youth mental health.

As vice president, Harris leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was created after lobbying by survivors of school shootings to support gun safety regulations. She has touted the administration’s efforts to prevent school shootings, including a grant program that has awarded roughly $500 million to schools for “evidence-based solutions,” including anonymous reporting systems for threats and training for school employees on preventing school violence. 

In Minnesota, Walz’s 2022 budget called for $210 million in spending to help schools support students experiencing mental health challenges. “As a former classroom teacher, I know that students carry everything that happens outside the classroom into the classroom every day, and this is why it is imperative that our students get the resources they deserve,” he said. — C.P.

Teachers unions, pandemic recovery

The Biden administration has close ties to the nations’ largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the latter of which is the largest labor union of any kind in the country. First lady Jill Biden, who teaches community college courses, is a member of the NEA. Walz, a former teacher, is also an NEA member.

The administration was criticized for discussing with the AFT what kinds of safety measures should accompany the reopening of public schools after the pandemic.

Since 2021, the Biden administration has poured billions into helping public schools recover from the pandemic in various ways: to pay for more staff and tutors and upgrade facilities to improve air conditioning and ventilation, among other things. However, academic performance has yet to rebound, and the recovery has been uneven, with wealthier white students more likely to have made up ground lost during remote classes and Black and Latino students less likely to have done so.

The two unions, which had supported reelecting Biden, quickly threw their support to Harris and Walz. “Educators are fired up and united to get out and elect the Harris-Walz ticket,” NEA President Becky Pringle said after Harris named Walz as her running mate. “We know we can count on a continued and real partnership to expand access to free school meals for students, invest in student mental health, ensure no educator has to carry the weight of crushing student debt and do everything possible to keep our communities and schools safe.” — Nirvi Shah

Teaching about U.S. history and race

Both Harris and Walz have pushed back against Republican-led attacks on K-12 history instruction and efforts to minimize classroom conversations around slavery and race. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration dissolved President Donald Trump’s 1776 commission. In July 2023, Harris criticized a new history standard in Florida that said the experience of being enslaved had given people skills “for their personal benefit.”

As governor, Walz released an education plan calling for more “inclusive” instruction that is “reflective of students of color and Indigenous students.” It also called for anti-bias training for school staff, the establishment of an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion center at the Minnesota Department of Education, and the expansion of efforts to recruit Indigenous teachers and teachers of color. Walz also has advocated for educating students about the Holocaust and other genocides; state bans on teaching about “divisive concepts” in some Republican-led states have chilled such instruction. — C.P.

Title I

Harris’ 2019 “children’s agenda,” from when she was angling to be the Democratic nominee for president, proposed “significantly increasing” Title I, the federal program aimed at educating children from low-income families. The Biden administration also has proposed major increases to Title I spending, but Congress has not enacted those proposals. — C.A.S.

Higher Education

Accreditation

As California attorney general, Harris urged the federal government in 2016 to revoke federal recognition for the accrediting agency of the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges, which she had successfully sued for misleading students and using predatory recruiting practices. The accreditor’s recognition ultimately was removed in 2022. 

As vice president, Harris has said little about the accreditation system, which is independently run and federally regulated and acts as a gatekeeper to billions of dollars in federal student aid. But the Biden administration has sought to require accreditors to create minimum standards on student outcomes such as graduation rates and licensure-exam pass rates. — Sarah Butrymowicz

Affirmative action

Harris has long supported affirmative action in college admissions. As California attorney general, she criticized the impact of the state’s 1996 ban at its public colleges. She also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the University of Texas’ race-conscious admissions policy when the Supreme Court heard challenges to it in 2012 and 2015.

Last June, Harris criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action the same day it was handed down, calling the decision a “denial of opportunity.” Walz, referring to the decision, wrote on X, “In Minnesota, we know that diversity in our schools and businesses reflects a strong and diverse state.” — Meredith Kolodner

DEI

Harris has not shied away from supporting DEI initiatives, even as they became a focus of attack for Republicans. “Extremist so-called leaders are trying to erase America’s history and dare suggest that studying and prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion is a bad thing. They’re wrong,” she wrote on X.

As governor, Walz has taken steps to increase access to higher education across racial groups, including offering tuition-free enrollment at state colleges for residents who are members of a tribal nation. This spring, Walz signed a budget that increased funding for scholarships for students from underrepresented racial groups to teach in Minnesota schools. — M.K.

For-profit colleges

Harris has long been a critic of for-profit colleges. In 2013, as California state attorney general, she sued Corinthian Colleges, Inc., eventually obtaining a more than $1.1 billion settlement against the defunct company. “For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people — now they have to pay,” she said in a press release. As senator, she signed a letter in the summer of 2020 calling for the exclusion of for-profit colleges from Covid-era emergency funding. — M.K.

Free college

The Biden administration repeatedly has proposed making community college free for students regardless of family income. The administration also proposed making college free for students whose families make less than $125,000 per year if the students attend a historically Black college, tribal college or another minority-serving institution.

In 2023, Walz signed a bill that made two- and four-year public colleges in Minnesota free for students whose families make less than $80,000 per year. The North Star Promise Program works by paying the remaining tuition after scholarships and grants have been applied, so that students don’t have to take out loans to pay for school. — Olivia Sanchez

Free/hate speech

Following nationwide campus protests against the war in Gaza, Biden said, “There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, where it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.” His Education Department is investigating dozens of complaints about antisemitism and Islamophobia on K-12 and college campuses, a number that has spiraled since the start of the war. — O.S.

Pell grants

The Pell grant individual maximum award has increased by $900 to $7,395 since the beginning of the Biden administration, part of its goal to double the maximum award by 2029. Education experts say that when the Pell grant program began in the 1970s, it covered roughly 75 percent of the average tuition bill but today covers only about one-third. They say doubling the Pell grant would make it easier for low-income students to earn a degree. The administration tried several times to make Pell grants available to undocumented students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but has been unsuccessful. — O.S.

Student loan forgiveness

In 2019, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris proposed forgiving loans for Pell grant recipients who operated businesses in disadvantaged communities for a minimum of three years. As vice president, she was reportedly instrumental in pushing Biden to announce a sweeping debt cancelation policy.

The policy, which would have eliminated up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers under a certain income level, ultimately was blocked by the Supreme Court. Since then, the Biden administration has used other existing programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness, to cancel more than $168 billion in federal student debt.

Harris has regularly championed these moves. In April, for instance, she participated in a round-table discussion on debt relief, touting what the administration had done. “That’s more money in their pocket to pay for things like child care, more money in their pocket to get through the month in terms of rent or a mortgage,” she said of those who had loans forgiven.

But challenges remain. In August, a federal appeals court issued a stay on a Biden plan, known as the SAVE plan, which aimed to allow enrolled borrowers to cut their monthly payments and have their debts forgiven more quickly than they currently can. — S.B.

Workforce development

Last fall, the Biden administration sent nearly $94 million in grant funding to job training programs, including community colleges and programs that partner with high schools. Earlier this year, the administration also announced $25 million for a new Career Connected High Schools grants program to help establish pathways to careers. In addition, the administration invested billions in nine workforce training hubs across the country. 

The Democratic Party platform unveiled at the national convention in Chicago also mentions expanding career and technical education. “Four year college is not the only pathway to a good career, so Democrats are investing in other forms of education as well,” the platform says.

Walz’s education plan as governor of Minnesota also set a goal of increasing career and technical education pathways. In October 2023, he signed an executive order eliminating college degree requirements for most government jobs in the state, a growing trend in states looking to expand alternative pathways to careers. — A.G.

This story about Democrats in education 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 What education could look like under Harris and Walz appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, are persistent critics of public K-12 schools and higher education and want to overhaul many aspects of how the institutions operate. On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly called for the elimination of the federal Education Department, arguing that states should have full authority for educating children. (Abolishing the department has been a long-standing goal of many Republicans, but it’s highly unlikely to win enough support in Congress to happen.)

Trump also supports efforts to privatize the K-12 school system, including through vouchers for private schools. Both he and Vance have launched repeated attacks on both K-12 and higher education institutions over practices that seek to advance racial diversity and tolerance and policies that provide protections to transgender students, among other issues. The candidates have also argued that higher ed institutions suppress the free speech of conservative students; as president, Trump took at least one action to tie funding to free speech protections. 

“Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we’re doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work,” Trump said in a September 2023 video describing his education proposals.

We will update this guide as the candidates reveal more information about their education plans. You can also read about the Democratic ticket’s education ideas.

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

Early childhood

Child care

Even though Trump launched his first campaign for president with a child care policy proposal to expand access to care through tax code changes, child care largely took a back seat during his presidency. That said, there were some notable actions: Before the pandemic, Trump signed a tax law that increased the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child, although research found higher-income families benefited significantly more from the change than low-income families. In 2018 he proposed cuts to the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a federal program that helps low-income families pay for child care, but ultimately approved funding increases passed by Congress in both 2018 and 2020.

In 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act, which allotted an additional $3.5 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. The supplemental fund was also meant to support the child care needs of essential workers. The CARES Act also provided supplemental funding to Head Start. —Jackie Mader

Family leave and tax credits

Also in 2020, Trump supported a bipartisan paid family leave bill, although it was more limited in scope and benefits than other paid leave proposals. Trump’s 2021 budget proposal called for eliminating the federal Preschool Development Grant program and decreased funding for a federal program that helps low-income college students pay for child care.

Vance has focused on legislation that encourages and supports parents to stay at home with their young children. In 2023, he co-sponsored a bill that would prevent employers from clawing back health care premiums the employers paid during a parent’s time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act if the parent chose not to return to work. He has been a vocal opponent of universal child care and instead has expressed support for more tax credits for parents. In mid-August, Vance expressed support for a $5,000 per child tax credit, an increase from the current maximum of $2,000 per child.— J.M.— J.M.

K-12

Artificial intelligence

In 2019, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to focus on research and development around AI, and a year later his administration announced that $140 million would be awarded to several National Science Foundation-led programs to conduct research on AI at universities nationwide.

On the campaign trail this year, however, Trump said he will reverse the executive order on artificial intelligence signed by Biden last October, calling it a hindrance to AI innovation. Both Trump and his running mate, Vance, have disagreed with the Biden administration on what AI regulations should look like. While education leaders have called for regulations and guardrails around AI use and development, Vance has called for less regulation. — Javeria Salman

Immigrant, Native and rural students

The Republican presidential ticket and official party platform espouse anti-immigrant positions, advocating for mass deportations of anyone who entered the country without legal documentation. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank behind Project 2025, earlier this year released a set of policy recommendations on undocumented immigrants in U.S. public schools that would directly challenge a long-standing Supreme Court decision requiring states to provide a free education to all students regardless of their immigration status. While Trump has tried to distance himself from Heritage and its policy proposals, his running mate wrote the forward to an upcoming book from Project 2025’s former leader and many former Trump administration officials were involved in crafting the plan.

With respect to Native students, Trump as president released a “Putting America’s First Peoples First” brief outlining his promises to Indian Country, including access to college scholarships for Native American students, creating new tribally operated charter schools and improving the beleaguered agency that oversees K-12 education on reservations. Trump also pitched a 25 percent boost in funding for Native language instruction.

Vance, in an interview before Trump took office in 2017, encouraged the new administration to focus on education as a tool to help struggling rural communities. He said increasing options for students after high school would prepare them for jobs in a “knowledge economy” and give them more choices beyond pursuing a minimum-wage service sector job or going to a four-year college. “There’s no options in between and consequently people don’t see much opportunity,” Vance said. — Neal Morton

LGBTQ+ students and Title IX

In 2017, Trump rolled back Obama-era guidance that offered protections for transgender students to use school bathrooms based on their gender identity. His campaign website says he plans to reverse any gender-affirming care policies implemented by President Joe Biden, who  signed an executive order in 2022 encouraging the Departments of Education and of Health and Human Services to expand access to health care and gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ students. He has also warned schools that, if reelected, he would cut or eliminate federal funding if teachers or school employees suggest “to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.” Vance sponsored a Senate bill last year that would ban medical gender-affirming care for minors, but it has not advanced.

The Trump administration significantly changed how colleges handle sexual assault allegations through Title IX during his time in office, adding a requirement for colleges to conduct live disciplinary hearings and allow cross-examinations in sexual assault cases; this was largely undone by the Biden administration. Trump said he plans to roll back Title IX rules the Biden administration implemented that expanded protections against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Trump has also said he would prevent transgender athletes from participating in sports teams based on their gender identity; school rules on this issue are now decided at the state- or school-level with a Biden administration proposal stalled. — Ariel Gilreath

School choice

Expanding school choice through private-school vouchers has been a key part of Trump’s education policy, but he had little success in getting his most ambitious efforts passed by Congress. One early accomplishment came via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. His administration made it possible for parents to use their children’s 529 college savings plan to pay for up to $10,000 annually in private school tuition.

His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a longtime school-choice supporter in her home state of Michigan, made several high-profile attempts to support charter schools and expand private- school voucher expansion. DeVos attempted to set aside $400 million for charter schools and private-school vouchers in the 2018 federal budget, and in 2019, she promoted a $5 billion tax credit program for private-school vouchers, but neither proposal cleared Congress. During a speech in June 2020, Trump called school choice the “civil rights statement of the year.” Later that year, after widespread school closures, Trump issued an executive order allowing states to use money from a federal poverty program to help low-income families pay for private schooling, homeschooling, special education services or tutoring. His campaign website says he supports state and federal level universal school choice, and it highlights programs in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. — A.G.

School meals

The Trump administration made several attempts to roll back lunch nutrition standards that had been championed by Michelle Obama, arguing that schools needed more flexibility and the standards were leading to wasted food.

However, in 2020, a federal judge ended the Trump administration’s efforts to ease requirements for whole grains and to allow more sodium in school meals, among other changes. The administration did not follow proper procedures in easing those nutrition mandates, the court ruled. — Christina A. Samuels

School prayer

Trump has been an advocate for what his campaign calls “the fundamental right to pray in school.” As president, he issued guidance intended to protect students who want to pray or worship in school. The outcome of Kennedy v. Bremerton, the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that a football coach had a constitutional right to pray on the field after games, was shaped by the three justices that Trump appointed to the court. Some nonprofit and legal groups have criticized Trump’s positions, arguing that he muddies the separation of church and state and that the real problem is not suppression of religious freedom in schools but children who feel pressured into religious expression. — Caroline Preston

School safety, student mental health

When it comes to school safety, Trump has supported policies that prioritize the “hardening” of schools and strict disciplinary approaches. According to his 2024 campaign website, if reelected, Trump would “completely overhaul federal standards on school discipline to get out-of-control troublemakers OUT of the classroom and INTO reform schools and corrections facilities.” He would also support schools that allow “highly trained teachers” to carry concealed weapons in classrooms and hire veterans and others as armed guards at schools. Regarding youth mental health, his campaign says he would direct the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate the effects of “common psychiatric drugs” and gender-affirming hormone therapy on young people.  

Vance has taken similar positions. During his 2022 Senate run, he said he supported Ohio’s new law that lowered the amount of training required for teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms. In Congress, he raised concerns about elements of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the gun safety law passed in 2022 after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and co-sponsored two bills that would have altered language in the bill to permit schools to buy weapons for use in archery, hunting and sharp-shooting programs. (A similar bill introduced in the House ultimately passed.) Vance also sponsored a bill that would direct the education secretary to study the use of mobile devices in K-12 schools — a mental health concern — and establish a pilot program to support schools’ efforts to become device-free. — C.P.

Special education

The Trump administration attempted to roll back a rule that requires districts to track students in special education by race and ethnicity in order to determine if minority students are more likely to be identified for special education, face harsher discipline, or be placed in classrooms separate from their general-education peers. A judge dismissed the administration’s efforts to eliminate this policy on procedural grounds. — C.A.S.

Teachers unions, pandemic recovery

Teachers unions, unlike some other labor groups, did not work well with the Trump administration and do not back the Trump/Vance ticket. Trump’s 2024 platform advocates undercutting some of the protections teachers unions support. It says, “Republicans will support schools that focus on Excellence and Parental Rights. We will support ending Teacher Tenure, adopting Merit pay, and allowing various publicly supported Educational models.”

His administration pushed schools to reopen ahead of the 2020-21 school year but without the kinds of safeguards Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said were essential to get teachers and kids back together, in person. Trump signed two broad relief packages passed by Congress in 2020 that included more than $100 billion in aid for K-12 schools to recover from the pandemic. — Nirvi Shah

Teaching about U.S. history and race

Both Trump and Vance have attacked critical race theory and advanced concerns that K-12 teachers are stirring anti-white bias among students. As president, Trump criticized the 1619 Project, a New York Times history document arguing that the enslavement of Black Americans was central to U.S. history. He established the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission as a rebuke to the project; its January 2021 report called for “restoring patriotic education” and railed against “identity politics.” The Biden administration rescinded the commission, but Trump has pledged to reinstate it if reelected.

Vance, meanwhile, made education culture war issues central to his 2022 run for Senate. On his campaign website, he pledged to cut funding for state universities in Ohio that teach critical race theory and “to force our schools to give an honest, patriotic account of American history.” — C.P.

Title I

During each of his four years in office, Trump submitted budget proposals that would have consolidated more than two dozen programs, including Title I, the largest source of federal funding for schools. The program is intended to support services at schools that educate children from low-income families. Congress rejected the administration’s efforts to consolidate the programs — C.A.S.

Higher education

Accreditation

The Trump campaign has gone after college accrediting agencies, which serve as the gatekeepers for billions of dollars in federal student aid, claiming that the entities are part of the “radical Left” and have “allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” (The fact that some accrediting agencies have added or considered standards related to diversity, equity and inclusion also has drawn ire from many on the right.)

In a video posted to his campaign site, Trump pledges to “fire” existing accrediting agencies. The government does have regulations that these entities must follow, but revoking their recognition would require a lengthy Education Department review.

Trump goes on to say that he would open applications for new accreditors to impose standards that include “defending the American tradition and Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly,” and “implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money’s worth.” — Sarah Butrymowicz

Affirmative action

Both Trump and Vance have taken a hard stance against affirmative action and diversity initiatives. Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning affirmative action in college admissions, calling it a “great day for America.” “We’re going back to all merit-based — and that’s the way it should be,” he wrote on TruthSocial.

Following that decision, Vance wrote a letter to college presidents warning, “The United States Senate is prepared to use its full investigative powers to uncover circumvention, covert or otherwise, of the Supreme Court’s ruling.” Last December, he introduced a bill to create an inspector general’s office to investigate discrimination in college admissions and financial aid, which would take federal aid away from colleges found in violation. — Meredith Kolodner

Community college

Trump has said people don’t understand what community colleges are and suggested they be renamed vocational or technical colleges (though they are not the same thing). He has not supported tuition-free community college, but last year, he pitched the idea of a free online college he called American Academy, be paid for by taxes on private universities. Experts have said this plan is unlikely to take hold. — Olivia Sanchez

DEI

As the agitation about DEI initiatives intensified in 2020, Trump issued an executive order that banned diversity training that was “divisive,” which applied to federal agencies and recipients of federal grants, including universities.

Vance has also criticized DEI initiatives, calling them “racism, plain and simple.” Last December, he wrote a letter to the president of Ohio State University, probing its hiring practices and its curriculum. “If universities keep pushing racial hatred, euphemistically called DEI, we need to look at their funding,” he wrote on X. — M.K.

For-profit colleges and universities

Trump has long been seen as a friend of the for-profit college sector. Before he became president, he ran the for-profit Trump University, which trained students for careers in real estate. He was subsequently sued by former students who claimed the college had misled them; the case was settled with a $25 million payout. While in office, he took several steps to make it easier for for-profit colleges to thrive, and enrollment at those institutions began to rise in 2020. His administration rolled back the Obama-era gainful employment rule, which required for-profit colleges to meet certain benchmarks to ensure that a majority of graduates were making enough to pay back their loans. As president, Trump vetoed a bill that would have provided debt forgiveness to veterans defrauded by for-profit colleges.— M.K.

Free/hate speech

Trump considers himself an advocate of free speech, but he has attacked the speech of others and drawn criticism for comments about immigrants and other groups that some argue amount to hate speech.

In 2019, Trump signed an executive order requiring that colleges and universities commit to promoting free speech and free inquiry to continue receiving research funding from 12 federal agencies. He said this was to protect conservative students from being silenced and discriminated against. “Under the guise of ‘speech codes’ and ‘safe spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings,’ these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity, and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today,” he said when signing the order.

Vance also has argued that conservative students are being silenced on college campuses. When he was running for Senate, Vance gave a speech entitled “Universities are the enemy” in 2021, calling the institutions corrupt and arguing they disseminate lies rather than truth and knowledge.

In the same speech, he called his alma mater, Yale University Law School, “clearly a liberal-biased place” at the time he graduated in 2013, adding that when he returned five years later to promote his book, “it felt totally totalitarian.” “It felt like the sort of place where if you were a conservative student who had conservative ideas you were terrified to utter them,” Vance said. — O.S.

Pell grants

The Trump administration proposed cutting the Pell grant surplus fund twice, including a proposed $3.9 billion diversion that would have funded several unrelated initiatives, including a NASA plan to take astronauts back to the moon. Though dipping into the Pell reserves wouldn’t have affected students already awarded Pell grants, education advocates argued that it would have imperiled funding for future students. None of these proposals were approved by Congress. A Trump plan to allow students to use Pell grants on short-term programs was unsuccessful.

Trump proposed formalizing an Obama-era pilot program that made incarcerated people eligible for Pell grants. Congress approved this expansion in the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in December 2020. — O.S.

Student loan forgiveness

As president, Trump proposed eliminating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which wipes out loan debt for people who work in the public sector or nonprofits. During his tenure, the Department of Education also stopped enforcing a regulation that provided an avenue for debt relief to students who had been defrauded by their colleges.

Trump praised the three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court for their votes to strike down Biden’s broad debt forgiveness plan. He has attacked the Biden administration’s continued efforts to cancel debt as “vile” and “not even legal.”

Vance has taken a similar stance on large-scale loan forgiveness, saying on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America.” But he did co-sponsor a bipartisan bill earlier this year that would allow parents to get loans discharged if their child became permanently disabled. — S.B.

Workforce development

Federal funding for career and technical education, which had been stagnant for more than a decade before Trump came into office, rose significantly during his administration. In 2018, Trump renewed the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act — one of states’ primary sources of federal funding for CTE programs – and reduced regulations on how states are required to spend the money. In 2020, he proposed one of the largest-ever increases in funding for career and technical education, even as he sought to cut the overall budget for the Department of Education. 

Trump also established an advisory council tasked with developing a national strategy to train people for high-demand jobs. His campaign website says he plans to provide “funding preferences” for schools that help students find internships and jobs and for schools that have career counselors for students. His website also highlights the Cristo Rey Network — a group of Catholic schools across the country where students are required to work at part-time, entry-level jobs one day a week during the school year throughout high school. — A.G.

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The bottom line is troubling.

Scores on an international math test fell a record 15 points between 2018 and 2022 — the equivalent of students losing three-quarters of a school year of learning.

That finding may not be surprising considering the timing of the test. The world was still recovering from the disruptive effects of the global pandemic when the test, called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, was administered.

But in many countries, the slide in math scores began years before Covid-19 and was even steeper than the international average. That includes some of the world’s largest and wealthiest countries, and others acclaimed for their education systems, such as Canada, France, Germany and Finland. Only a few school systems — Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong — have been able to maintain their top results for the long haul.

Some of the scores set off another “PISA shock” — a term first used in Germany in 2000 when scores there were much lower than expected — that may change how mathematics is taught around the world.

Although there’s no single culprit behind the decline, PISA is more than a math test: It also includes a wide-ranging survey of the students who take the test, most of whom are around 15 years old and coming to the end of compulsory schooling in their countries. From their responses, and analysis by PISA researchers, several themes stand out, including disconnection from school and teachers, a lack of motivation and a sense that math does not clearly connect to their real lives.

Why motivation matters

PISA uses a series of word problems that assess how well students can use the math they’ve learned throughout their lives to solve problems they might face in the real world. For example, one question in the most recent test gives students the dimensions of a moving truck and then asks them to figure out how many boxes of a certain size can fit.

 Other problems require students to extract information from different types of data, such as a question that asks students to calculate which brand of car has the best value, taking into its price, fuel consumption, and resale value.

“Students need to have the confidence to try different things, and a level of persistence to do these kinds of problems,” said Joan Ferrini-Mundy, a mathematics educator and the president of the University of Maine. Ferrini-Mundy is also the co-chair of the PISA’s Mathematics Expert Group.

But nearly 1 in 4 students reported on the PISA survey that they gave up more than half the time when they were confronted with math that they didn’t understand. A little more than 40 percent said they never, or almost never, actively participated in group discussions in math class. And about 31 percent said they never or almost never asked questions when they didn’t understand the math they were being taught.

In Germany, where scores have dropped faster than those of many other PISA nations, researchers pointed to a collapsing interest in math as a subject that started around 2012, among other factors. Students reported less enjoyment, less interest and more anxiety around the topic, said Doris Lewalter, an educational researcher at the Technical University of Munich. They also were more likely to report that they saw fewer potential benefits from studying math.

The effects of screen time

Students who reported spending up to an hour on devices for learning purposes scored 14 points higher than students who said they spent no time on digital devices for learning. But too much use of digital devices was a distraction, even indirectly. Students who said they were distracted at least some of the time in school by their peers using devices scored 15 points lower than students who reported that they never, or almost never, were distracted.

Outside the classroom, digital device use also matters when it comes to math scores. Students who spent more than an hour on weekdays surfing the web or on social networks scored between 5 and 20 points lower than peers who spent less than an hour on devices.

Lack of real-world connection

On student surveys, only about a quarter of PISA-takers said they were asked “to think of problems from everyday life that could be solved with new mathematics knowledge we learned” for more than half or almost every lesson.

William Schmidt, a professor at Michigan State University and the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Curriculum Policy, has studied the seeming disconnect between math as it is taught, and math as it is used outside of school.

Schmidt examined the math textbooks of 19 countries, and said that about 15 percent of the computational problems in those books are word problems. But of those, only a tiny percentage — just over one-quarter of 1 percent — ask students to use math reasoning to solve a problem, in his view. An example might be determining how many items you can buy at a store for $52, given certain discounts and taking into account sales tax, he said.

Schmidt, also a member of the PISA math experts group, believes students should grapple with problems like this, which have the benefit of being more interesting as well.

“What we should be doing is exposing our children to real exercises that are real in their world and that have applications they would care about,” Schmidt said.

Good teachers are irreplaceable

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees PISA for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, said the student surveys also showed the importance of teachers’ connection to their students. Math scores were 15 percentage points higher, on average, in places where students said they had good access to teacher help. Those students also felt more confident in their ability to learn on their own, and remotely.

On the 2022 survey, about 70 percent of students reported regularly receiving extra help from teachers, but that figure represents a drop of 3 percentage points from 2012.

“That was actually a surprise to me, that we see fewer students growing up with the notion that my teacher knows who I am, my teacher knows who I want to become, my teacher supports me,” Schleicher said. “Many students perceive education to be more transactional.”

A call to action

Finland’s fall, from a top performer in 2006 to just slightly above the OECD average in 2022, has been the most dramatic among previous high achievers. In math, the proportion of low achievers rose to 25 percent in 2022, from about 7 percent in 2000.

Finnish students’ achievements have been dropping gradually for two decades, and the trend is reflected in national evaluations, said Jenna Hiltunen, a researcher in mathematical pedagogy at the University of Jyvaskyla, who was part of the team that implemented PISA in Finland. “I wouldn’t say that we were surprised by the decline, but we were a little bit surprised by how large the decline was.”

Finnish math education experts cited reduced motivation in students and a disconnect between their life goals and how young people feel about school. It plans to invest 146 million euros — about $158 million in U.S. dollars — over the next three years in schools in disadvantaged areas, and it is adding one hour per week of math lessons for students in grades three to six, which is planned to begin in August 2025. Local authorities will decide which of those grades will get the extra hour.

“We think it’s important to highlight the importance of basic skills, and learning the fundamentals,” said Tommi Karjalainen, a senior ministerial adviser to the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and a former education researcher at the University of Helsinki.

In New Zealand, where math scores on international tests in the past decade have fallen steeply, a new government campaigned on bringing a “back to basics” approach to education. The government has mandated an hour of reading, writing and mathematics in school each day and has banned cellphones. A government-created advisory group has also suggested that the country move to a more traditional, explicit form of mathematics instruction, as opposed to inquiry methods that focus more on having students create their own mathematics learning, with teachers serving as guides.

In Bavaria, one of Germany’s 16 states, leaders announced in February a plan to add additional math and German lessons in the primary years, part of a “PISA Initiative.”

France is responding to its sliding scores by introducing more tracking. Starting in September, France will start testing middle school students to track them into different mathematics and French classes, based on their scores.

And educators are looking to different countries to learn the keys to their success. The former Soviet republic of Estonia, as one example, achieved the highest mathematics scores on the PISA of any other country in Europe.

The country of 1.4 million people has not focused on international math scores as a goal in itself, said Peeter Mehisto, co-author of “Lessons from Estonia’s Education Success Story: Exploring Equity and High Performance Through PISA.”

Instead, it has stopped separating students into groups based on their academic performance, a practice called “streaming” or “tracking.” Mehisto, an honorary research associate at the University of London Institute of Education, said that research shows that “low-track” students often end up alienated from school.

In the United States, in comparison to other countries, no one is talking about widespread changes because of these math scores. No centralized government agency controls curriculum, and the U.S. actually moved up in comparison to other nations because those other nations did so poorly.

Unlike the belief in some other countries, the U.S. scores “are not cause for huge alarm,” said Ferrini-Mundy, one of the PISA experts. “We have to pay attention to this, but it’s not a catastrophe.”

Frieda Klotz contributed reporting and Sarah Butrymowicz contributed research to this story.

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

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The proposals in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project — known as Project 2025 and designed for Donald Trump — would reshape the American education system, early education through college, from start to finish. 

The conservative Heritage Foundation is the primary force behind the sprawling blueprint, which is separate from the much less detailed Republican National Committee 2024 platform, though they share some common themes.

Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage and its lobbying arm, Heritage Action, said in an interview with USA TODAY that Project 2025 should be seen “like a menu from the Cheesecake Factory.” No one president could take on all these changes, he said. “It’s a manual for conservative policy thought.”

The fast-changing political landscape makes it difficult to say which of these proposals might be taken up by Trump if he wins reelection. He has claimed to know nothing about it, though many of his allies were involved in drafting it. The exit of President Joe Biden from the presidential race may have an impact on Project 2025 that is still unknown. Finally, many of the broadest proposals in the document, such as changes to Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, would require congressional action, not just an order from the White House.

However, it remains a useful document for outlining the priorities of those who would likely play a part in a new Trump administration. The Hechinger Report created this reference guide that digs into the Project 2025 wishlist for education.

Early childhood

Child care for military families

Project 2025 calls for expanding child care for military families, who have access to programs that are often upheld as premier examples of high-quality care in America. – Jackie Mader

Head Start and child care 

Project 2025 calls for eliminating the Office of Head Start, which would lead to the closure of Head Start child care programs that serve about 833,000 low-income children each year. Most Head Start children are served in center-based programs, which have an outsized role in rural areas and prioritize enrolling a certain percentage of young children with disabilities who often struggle to find child care elsewhere. Head Start also provides a critical funding and resource stream to other private child care programs that meet Head Start standards, including home-based programs. – J. M.

Home-based child care

A conservative administration should also prioritize funding for home-based child care rather than “universal day care” in programs outside the home, Project 2025 says. That funding would include money for parents to stay home with a child or to pay for “familial, in-home” care, proposals that could be appealing to some early childhood advocates who have long called for more resources for informal care and stay-at-home parents. – J. M.

On-site child care

If out-of-home child care is necessary, Congress should offer incentives for on-site child care, Project 2025 says, because it “puts the least stress on the parent-child bond.” Early childhood advocates have been wary of such proposals because they tie child care access to a specific job. It also calls on Congress to clarify within the Fair Labor Standards Act that an employer’s expenses for providing such care are not part of the employee’s pay.– J. M.

K-12 education

Data collection  

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” should release student performance data based on “family structure” — in addition to existing categories such as race and socioeconomic status — Project 2025 argues. Family structure, the document says, is “one of the most important — if not the most important — factor influencing student educational achievement and attainment.” The document goes on to endorse “natural family structure” of a heterosexual, two-parent household, “because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.” — Sarah Butrymowicz 

LGBTQ students 

Project 2025 advocates a rollback of regulations that protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It calls for agencies to “focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of ‘sex.’” 

The plan also calls on Congress and state lawmakers to require schools to refer to students by the names on their birth certificates and the pronouns associated with their biological sex, unless they have written permission from parents to refer to them otherwise.

The plan also equates transgender issues with child abuse and pornography, and proposes that school libraries with books deemed offensive be punished. — Ariel Gilreath

Privatization 

In place of a federal Education Department, the blueprint calls for widespread public education funding that goes directly to families, as part of its overarching goal of “advancing education freedom.”

The document specifically highlights the education savings account program in Arizona, the first state to open school vouchers up to all families. Programs like Arizona’s have few, if any, restrictions on who can access the funding. Project 2025 also calls for education savings accounts for schools under federal jurisdiction, such as those run by the Department of Defense or the Bureau of Indian Education. 

In addition, Project 2025 calls on Congress to look into creating a federal scholarship tax credit to “incentivize donors to contribute” to nonprofit groups that grant scholarships for private school tuition or education materials. — Ariel Gilreath and Neal Morton

School meals 

The federal school meals program should be scaled back to ensure that only children from low-income families are receiving the benefit, the document says. Policy changes under the Obama administration have made it easier for entire schools or districts to provide free meals to students without families needing to submit individual eligibility paperwork. — Christina A. Samuels

Special education 

Project 2025 says that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides $14.2 billion in federal money for the education of school-aged children with disabilities, should be mostly converted to “no-strings” block grants to individual states. Lawmakers should also consider making a portion of the federal money payable directly to parents of children with disabilities, it says, so they can use it for tutoring, therapies or other educational materials. This would be similar to education savings accounts in place in Arizona and Florida. 

The blueprint also calls for rescinding a policy called “Equity in IDEA.” Under that policy, districts are required to evaluate if schools are disproportionately enrolling Black, Native American and other ethnic minority students in special education. Districts must also track how these students are disciplined, and if they are more likely than other students in special education to be placed in classrooms separate from their general education peers. Current rules, which Project 2025 would eliminate, require that districts that have significant disparities in this area must use 15 percent of their federal funding to address those problems. — C.A.S.

Teaching about race 

Project 2025 elevates concerns among members of the political right that educating students about race and racism risks promoting bias against white people. The document discusses the legal concept of critical race theory, and argues that when it is used in teacher training and school activities such as “mandatory affinity groups,” it disrupts “the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness.” 

The document calls for legislation requiring schools to adopt proposals “that say no individual should receive punishment or benefits based on the color of their skin,” among other recommendations. It also calls for a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights that would give families a “fair hearing in court” if they believed the federal government had enforced policies undermining their right to raise their children. — Caroline Preston

Title I

This program, funded at a little over $18 billion for fiscal 2024, is the largest federal program for K-12 schools and is designed to help children from low-income families. The conservative blueprint would encourage lawmakers to make the program a block grant to states, with few restrictions on how it can be used — and, over 10 years, to phase it out entirely. Additionally, it says, lawmakers should allow parents in Title I schools to use part of that funding for educational savings accounts that could be spent on private tutoring or other services. — C.A.S.

Higher education

Affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion 

The document calls for prosecuting “all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers” that maintain affirmative action or DEI policies. That position matches the views expressed by Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, about the use of race in college admissions and beyond. — Liz Willen 

Data collection 

In higher education, the proposal argues that college graduation and earnings data need a “risk adjustment” that factors in the types of students served by a particular institution. While selective colleges tend to post the highest graduation rates and student earnings, they also tend to enroll the least-“risky” students. A risk adjustment methodology could benefit community colleges, which often have low graduation rates but enroll many nontraditional students who face obstacles to earning a degree. It would also likely benefit for-profit colleges, which similarly tend to accept most applicants. Historically, for-profit schools have received scrutiny under Democratic administrations for poor outcomes and for allegedly misleading students about the value of the education they provide. Republican administrations typically have supported less regulation of for-profit institutions. — S.B. 

Parent PLUS loans and Pell grants 

The blueprint calls for the elimination of the Parent PLUS loan program, arguing that it is redundant “because there are many privately provided alternatives available.” Originally created for relatively affluent families, the PLUS loan program has become a crucial way for lower- and middle-income families to pay for college. In recent years, it has sparked criticism due to rising default rates and fewer protections than are afforded to other student loan borrowers.  

At present, interest rates for private loans are significantly lower than Parent PLUS rates, but they come with fewer protections, and it is more difficult to get approved for a private-bank loan. Project 2025 would also get rid of PLUS loans for graduate students.

If the federal PLUS programs were eliminated, it could stem one portion of the rising tide of families’ education debt, but it would also make the path to paying for college more difficult for some families. 

Project 2025 does not call for a change to the Pell grant program, which provides federal funding for students from low-income families to attend college. Some advocates have called for doubling the annual maximum allotment, which is $7,395 for the 2024-25 school year, far below the cost to attend many colleges. — Meredith Kolodner and Olivia Sanchez

Student loan forgiveness 

Project 2025 would end the prospect of student loan forgiveness, which has already been largely blocked by federal courts; the Biden administration, in a sort of game of Whac-a-Mole, has proposed still more forgiveness programs that are being fought by Republican state attorneys general and others. Project 2025 would also dramatically restrict what’s known as “borrower defense to repayment,” which forgives loans borrowed to pay for colleges that closed or have been found to use illegal or deceptive marketing. Largely restricting the Education Department to collecting statistics, Project 2025 would shift responsibility for student loans to the Treasury Department. — Jon Marcus

This story about Project 2025 was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. 

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By traditional measures of well-being, America’s children and teens should be doing well. Consider that:

• Over the past two decades, high school graduation rates have gone up.
• Fewer teens are taking up smoking.
• The birth rate among 15-to-19 year olds is at a record low.
• Arrest rates among teens are dropping. Youth drug use is trending down.

Nevertheless, teens report that their own mental health is spiraling: Increasingly, they are anxious, depressed and wrestling with thoughts of suicide. The measures that researchers have traditionally used to gauge adolescent well-being have become sharply out of step with the reality of adolescent life.

“I don’t think my research is saying [other measures] don’t matter, but I don’t think they capture the whole picture,” said Nathaniel Anderson, who explored the disconnect between measures of child well-being and young people’s views on their mental health as part of his doctoral studies in public health at the University of California, Los Angeles. He wrote about his findings for the organization Child Trends.

For decades, researchers have tried to capture a national picture of youth well-being by combining a number of social indicators, such as obesity rates, rates of tobacco use, family access to health insurance, academic proficiency on state tests, graduation rates, drug use and teen birth rates.

Until recent years, those measures and youth reports of their depressive symptoms, captured in a long-running national research project called Monitoring the Future, have mostly moved in tandem. As other measures improved, youth also reported feeling less anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Somewhere in the 2010-12 time frame, that abruptly changed. Many of the other measures continued on an upward trajectory, but teens started reporting that they were growing increasingly anxious and depressed.

What happened then? Researchers have pointed to the introduction of smartphones — the iPhone was introduced in 2007 — and the rise of social media as the culprit. But teasing apart what’s actually happening is difficult. Are teens struggling because smartphone time is leading to less sleep? Or are they exposed to information via social media that is leading to a greater sense of anxiety and depression?

And then there are other social factors, such as economic precarity, a greater societal willingness to talk about mental health, so-called helicopter parenting, and the opioid epidemic, among many others.

“I certainly agree with the emerging evidence that social media and cellphones are playing some sort of role here, and given its predominance in young peoples’ lives it’s potentially a huge one,” Anderson said. “But at the same time, for it to have had this sort of dramatic effect, it probably required other conditions to be in place.”

Unfortunately, researchers don’t have good, long-term, national data on other elements that play a role in helping youth thrive: measures such as a young person’s access to green space, their relationship to their friends and family, or their sense of optimism and hope. More focused, community-based assessments may do a better job at capturing some of these more subjective measures than the large-scale national models currently in use, Anderson said.

NOW WHAT?

There are still plenty of steps schools, educators and parents can take to address the clear problems facing young people.

Schools should support student mental health by building in time to teach skills such as coping with stress, said Ava Havidic, a 17-year-old senior in Broward County, Florida, and a facilitator for the Student Leadership Network on Mental Health and Well-Being, organized by the National Association for Secondary School Principals.

“There’s so many hours in the school day,” said Havidic, who is also the student representative on the Broward County school board, that young people “can’t find another time in the day to practice mindfulness and find these positive outlets to build on mental health.” 

And clamping down on smartphones won’t help youth when they are on their own and out of the direct control of their parents, she said. “It’s always easy to blame some certain outlet, or something students are doing. But the easy way to deal with this is making sure that we have these prevention tools, so it doesn’t matter if they are using their phones — they know how to deal with their stress,” Havidic said. 

Samantha Lott, a mental health coordinator for Communities in Schools North Texas, works in Lewisville — about 30 miles northwest of Dallas — and surrounding communities. Anxiety and depression are present even with younger students, she said, and smartphone use does play a role; students can be bullied via social media, or inappropriate material wirelessly “airdropped” to their phones.

But the adults around them may also be making things worse, unwittingly, she said. Some parents insist their children are doing fine regardless of evidence to the contrary. Educators sometimes increase students’ academic workload and don’t leave time for mental health support. Schools may use isolation as punishment, like forcing children to eat alone in the cafeteria — “lonely lunch” — as a consequence for misbehavior, she said.

“That’s not setting our students up for success. They’re not teaching their children how to interact with each other,” Lott said. “And you can see that with older kids. A lot of the students are so scared to reach out, because they’ve had a bad experience with school.”

Adults taking more time to reach out to the students — and model healthy practices themselves — can help, Lott said. Youth “all could use more support relationships. Take the time to be open and ask them questions, instead of assuming we know the answers.”

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Mississippi child care workers are strained by low pay and lack of training — but an additional $5 an hour in salary would prompt around half of those workers to stay in their jobs and to seek additional education, according to a new survey by state child care advocates.

The coalition Mississippi Forum for the Future surveyed nearly 700 child care workers, most of whom provide care in centers, to draw attention to the precariousness of the child care sector in the state. Early childhood educators are facing strain across the nation, but Mississippi is in a particularly difficult position: Workers reported an average hourly wage of $10.93 and typically have no benefits. In contrast, a “survival wage” in the state for a single adult is $12.28 an hour, according to the report.

Nationally, child care workers earn $14.22 on average, according to federal labor statistics.

Additional information gathered from the survey:

• Just under 70 percent of child care workers said they worked 40 or more hours a week.

• More highly educated workers earned more, but the differences were not large: Child care employees with a high school diploma reported earning $10.22 an hour on average, but those with a bachelor’s degree or higher said their salary averaged $12.79 an hour.

• Close to half, or 48 percent of the workers surveyed, said they did not have training beyond high school. A similar percentage of child care workers — 47 percent — reported that they are working with children who have mental, physical, or emotional disabilities.

• About 36 percent said they relied on public support programs such as Medicaid or the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.

• A little more than a third reported they had looked for a new job, and of that group, most of them were looking for jobs out of the child care sector.

In the midst of these stresses, demand for child care in the state is still quite high.

Lesia Daniel-Hollingshead has provided child care services in her community of Clinton, Mississippi, a suburb west of Jackson, for nearly 25 years. After she taught children in public schools, her passion prompted her to open several child care centers. Since the inception of her child care ventures in 2000, more than 7,000 children have received child care at My First Funtime, Funtime Pre-School and Funtime After-School.

During the pandemic, Hollingshead’s facilities suffered a 50 percent decline in enrollment. But by 2021, an overwhelming number of families with infants sought her child care services. In October 2021, to meet demand, she opened My First Funtime, a center for infants and toddlers 6 weeks to 18 months old.

“We opened My First Funtime in October of 2021, by December we had enrolled 66 infants,” Hollingshead said. “My program is currently full — and not because of the number of enrollments but because I have the number of children for the staff that I can maintain.”

The survey findings did not surprise Daniel-Hollingshead, who said she pays her lead teachers $14 to $20 an hour, based on education and experience. Her less-experienced employees are paid $9 to $10 an hour. Families of infants up through 5 year olds pay $184 a week for her center; the rate is among the most expensive in her area, she said.

Biz Harris, the executive director of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance, said that the state has recently launched an initiative meant to provide extra money to teachers and to provide scholarships for those who engage in additional training.

However, that program is funded through emergency funds that came from the federal government during the pandemic, and thus will sunset when the money is exhausted.

“We would love to see a program like this have the funds to continue, and worry about what will happen to the already struggling child care workforce when it ends,” Harris said. “Other states do provide these kinds of programs for their child care teachers as a workforce investment.”

Daniel-Hollingshead said while that money is appreciated, she still struggles to hold on to employees and has waiting lists at every age level.

“Currently it is extremely difficult to retain staff,” she said. “Due to the pay rates that I have had to increase to keep my best people, we are operating over budget about $25,000 a month which obviously is not sustainable long-term.”

This story about child care wages 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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Cardi B, the brash and bold New York hip-hop artist, has a rainbow collection of Hermès Birkin handbags that fills a wall in her house — estimated value, half a million dollars.

Would you call that extravagant?

For educators at Clayton County Public Schools in suburban Atlanta, the question is a crafty way to entice middle schoolers — many Cardi B and hip-hop fans among them — into a math lesson about ratios and proportions.

For example, $500,000 in handbags is less than 1 percent of Cardi B’s estimated $80 million net worth. So, how much do students think they need to earn to be comfortable collecting just one six-figure handbag? How could they determine that, mathematically? How would the calculations change if they wanted to buy a $45,000 “iced-out” Rolex? Or, in a more down-to-earth daydream, what salary would be needed to comfortably afford a $7,500 trip to Walt Disney World for a family of four?

Tonya Clarke, the coordinator of secondary mathematics for Clayton County schools, and her colleagues shared the Cardi B lesson at a math convention earlier this fall as an example of a culturally relevant lesson that can lure students into thinking about math in a way that is engaging and exciting.*

“The initial idea draws them in,” Clarke said. “They’re not just calculating finding a ratio for no reason.” Then, after whetting their appetites, she said, “we may hone in on those skills a little closer.”

The Cardi B lesson is still in the development phase at the district, Clarke said; before sharing it with teachers, her staff will add more detailed notes and guidance on how to incorporate it into instruction.

Clayton County educators spoke about their approach to math instruction at the annual National Council of Teachers of Mathematics convention, at a time when the field is deeply concerned about math attainment, particular for students who are Black, Hispanic, or who come from low-income backgrounds. About 70 percent of the district’s students are Black and 13 percent are Hispanic. Twenty percent are from families who live below the poverty line. In 2022-23, 17 percent of the district’s third through eighth graders, on average, scored proficient or above on the state’s math tests, an increase of about 3 percentage points from the year before.

Bringing a “culturally responsive” framework to math instruction was a major focus of the educators’ convention. Such efforts are meant to “position students as owners of their learning” and create a culture of belonging within the classroom, said Shakiyya Bland, math educator in residence at the nonprofit Just Equations, which advocates for educational equity in math instruction.

“At its core, it needs to really help students critically think and accelerate learning. That’s what I look at when I look at lessons. Do the word problems pose questions that help students think critically about themselves or the data that they’re using?” said Bland, who recently published an article on the brain science behind culturally responsive teaching.

The Clayton district’s efforts to develop more engaging and relatable lessons for math instruction began in 2017, Clarke said. Students have used data on New York’s stop-and-frisk policy and the spread of Covid-19 as foundations for project-based math lessons that are part of the “I’m W.O.K.E. Project” Clarke developed. (The acronym stands for Widens Options through Knowledge and Empowerment.)*

The district’s efforts are  in harmony with Georgia’s 2021 revision of its math standards. In those standards, state officials said that students at every grade level should be engaged in “mathematical modeling” — using math to explore the world around them.

Catherine Lawrence, an instructional support teacher in math and science for the district, said middle school students often come into math classes afraid. It’s the “fear of being wrong, fear of not getting in the first time around, fear of not being able to communicate to the teacher that it doesn’t make sense,” she said.

Culturally relevant teaching, along with other teaching tools and techniques the district uses such as manipulatives — objects like counting blocks or fraction tiles — can help break through that apprehension, she said.

But it does take work, and ongoing training, to make sure that teachers can assist students to bridge that gap between something concrete and tangible — the price of a handbag, or data about arrests — to more abstract math knowledge.

“During collaborative planning we talk about implementation,” Lawrence said. “How do we make sure we get the meat and potatoes, and we don’t get stuck in the dessert.”

For Clarke, the Cardi B lesson helps demonstrate to teachers that infusing cultural relevance in math classes is achievable, with the right support system in place.

“We’re still struggling through the process of getting teachers to fully buy into it, because we’re still trying to get teachers to understand math is not just about the numbers — math is about the problem solving,” Clarke said. While some teachers find the lessons time-consuming and difficult, she said, overall, teachers are trying the new methods.

“The process is implementable. It’s not as heavy a lift as a lot of them think that it is,” she said.

*Correction: This story has been updated to correct Clarke’s title and to note that she is the developer of the I’m W.O.K.E. Project.

This story about culturally responsive math education 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 How many Cardi B Birkin bags does it take to improve math scores? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

One day this spring, Victoria Trice’s high school students in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, peered through virtual reality headsets as part of a lesson on Afrofuturism. 

In Philadelphia, Sharahn Santana encouraged her tenth graders to reflect on what might have happened if Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court ruling upholding racial segregation, had been decided differently.  

In Norfolk, Virginia, the juniors and seniors enrolled in an African American history class taught by Ed Allison were working on their capstone projects, using nearby Fort Monroe, the site where the first enslaved Africans landed in 1619, as a jumping off point to explore their family history.   

These teachers all have one thing in common: their devotion to deeply exploring the history of Black people in America — a topic that has often been downplayed, or simply left out of, general history lessons.  
 
Such classes are under a microscope after the political skirmish set off when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida rejected portions of an African American studies course piloted by the College Board, saying that the Advanced Placement class teaches concepts specifically forbidden by the state’s ban on teaching “critical race theory” and “divisive concepts.” At least five other states are examining the course to see if it is contrary to similar state laws. In July, DeSantis’s administration again stirred criticism when it released new state standards for Black history that critics say are incomplete and downplay the harms of slavery and racism. For example, the standards direct that students be taught that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”  

“When we think about the history curriculum, white people have been told that they’re the most historically important people in the world. So when they’re not centered in that narrative, or their ideas are not centered, then they tend to say this is not of educational value.”

LaGarrett King, founder and director of the Center for K–12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education at the University of Buffalo 

The controversies have had subtle reverberations for the classrooms in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia too. In Philadelphia and Norfolk, it has strengthened educators’ resolve to teach comprehensively about the subject and added to their sense of urgency. But in Kentucky, Trice, the only educator in the state to teach the pilot A.P. course targeted by Gov. DeSantis, has grown increasingly skeptical that the class will spread to other Kentucky schools, even as her politically liberal district doubles down on a commitment to African American history it made as part of a curriculum revamp in 2018.  

It’s important that school districts not shy away from offering Black history courses despite the recent attacks on the subject, says LaGarrett King, founder and director of the Center for K–12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education at the University of Buffalo. He adds that it’s not surprising that Black history classes make some people uncomfortable. 

“When we think about the history curriculum, white people have been told that they’re the most historically important people in the world. So when they’re not centered in that narrative, or their ideas are not centered, then they tend to say this is not of educational value,” said King. 

Related: Why students are ignorant about the Civil Rights Movement  

Adults who learned U.S. history through a particular lens may have a hard time comprehending that history classes are taught differently, or contain different perspectives, than when they were young, he said.  

King, who created a framework to teach Black history at the K-12 level that’s being used in Trice’s district, said the core of a good Black history course goes beyond surface-level instruction on slavery and Civil Rights to explore concepts of institutional racism and anti-Blackness. It gives students the knowledge and skills to draw connections to present-day events such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killings of George Floyd, Michael Brown and other Black Americans, he said. And it eschews what he calls “hero worship” — overly simplistic portrayals of Civil Rights leaders and others — for more critical, complex thinking and narratives. 

Different states, school systems and individual schools have taken wildly different approaches to incorporating Black history, with some making its study a graduation requirement and others deprioritizing it and relying on textbooks that haven’t been updated for years. This year, The Hechinger Report spent time in three different high school classrooms where teachers have prioritized Black history in this contentious political climate, to learn how African American history studies has changed over the years and what it might look like for students to receive a substantive, nuanced education on the topic.  

LOUISVILLE 

Just blocks from where hundreds of protestors gathered near the Ohio River waterfront after the death of Breonna Taylor in 2020 sits Central High School.  

The school is steeped in history: It was the first African American public school in Kentucky, and counts boxer Muhammad Ali among its alumni. Because of its history, it’s not surprising that Central High was the only school in the state selected by the College Board to pilot its new A.P. African American Studies course. Seventy percent of the school’s students are Black or African American, and a little over six percent are of Hispanic descent. 

There are just 25 students enrolled in the course at Central High, offered in two sections and taught by Trice, who once walked the halls of Central High herself, taking part in the school’s quiz bowl Black history team as a student in the mid-2000s. On the Wednesday following the A.P. exam, Trice promised her students that the lesson would be on a lighter note — “no more annotations,” she told the class.  

Before Trice introduced the topic of Afrofuturism, she asked her students to think about the dreams they have for the future. Then she asked them, “Where do you think we will be collectively as a Black community? Everybody included, whether your people have been here 300 years, or they’ve been here for three.” 

The students, all of whom are Black, grew serious. There were a few “hmmms” and murmurs as they pondered the question. 

Trices explained that Afrofuturism, one of the course’s final topics, is about “centering Black folks,” their identities and stories, in ways that blend the past and future. She cited the film Black Panther as one example, combining images of various African cultures with advanced technology. She then showed her students the music video for an early 1990’s song “Prototype,” by AfroFuturism Hip-Hop duo OutKast. 

Next she handed out VR headsets and asked her students to grab their cellphones and head to her Google classroom, where she had posted three different experiences that showcase Afrofuturism: an Afrofuturism art museum, a short VR film and a musical performance. Later, students were asked to create a piece of afro-futuristic art, using a photo of themselves, that reflected their past and their hopes for the future. 

“At the crux of Black Futures is this concept of dreaming and how can we turn those dreams into realities. And that’s a beautiful concept,” King said.  

Related: States were adding lessons about Native American history. Then came the anti-CRT movement 

Trice’s students have spent the better part of the year immersed in learning about early African societies, the great West African empires, the transatlantic slave trade, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement and more contemporary topics, such as reparations and Black Lives Matter.  

They’re also acutely aware that they are the only students in Kentucky taking a course that has become controversial nationally. “I’m not surprised,” said Jeremiah Taylor, a junior. He said while there’s still a lot of hostility toward Black history, being in this class gives them the opportunity “to do a deep dive into Black history,” which he says he wouldn’t get in another history class. 

According to Trice, last year the course attracted a limited number of students — all Black and Latino — because the College Board didn’t offer college credit during its pilot year of African American studies. While she’s glad that next year’s course has attracted more interest, the close-knit nature of her class has allowed for open discussions, she said.  

“We’ve been able to kind of create an environment where the kids feel safe to say what their opinion is. It’s not always the same, but we’ve been able to have some really good discussions just in general about racism, about issues of otherism, issues of financial differences,” Trice said. “We talked about the economic impact of slavery to go from being money to trying to catch up with everyone else, who was given that opportunity of reaching this ‘American dream,’ and having 300-400 years of being someone else’s money.” 

“We’ve been able to kind of create an environment where the kids feel safe to say what their opinion is.

Victoria Trice, who teaches the pilot A.P. African American history course in Jefferson Public Schools, Kentucky 

Those kinds of discussions also require a supportive school culture and administration, she said. Many of the students’ families are unlikely to complain about the history curriculum, Trice said, in part because of Central High School’s demographics. 

Given the political environment right now, she’s skeptical that other schools in the state will pick up the course once it becomes available in the fall of 2024.  

Trice said without support from school administrators, teachers may be scared or unprepared to teach the course for fear of parent and community backlash. “I don’t know how you really cherry-pick what you’d like to cover in an A.P. class. You can’t skip the slavery unit, or you can’t think to skip Harriet Jacobs’s primary source of her narratives of a slave girl, where she’s talking about being sexually harassed by slaveholder,” she said. “Those are tough topics; teachers may not want to cover the possibility of sexual assault, the history of that when it comes to Black women during enslavement.”   

Maeva Pozoko, a junior in the class, said everyone should have the option to take a comprehensive Black history course in high school. 

“It’s important to know how it happened, what is the effect of that because we still live with the effects of what happened,” she said.  

Pozoko said while the backlash to the course felt at times “like a slap in the face,” the experience has made her want to continue learning about the subject. She is signed up to take another Black history course in the fall, she said.  

PHILADELPHIA 

Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson was on the screen at the front of the classroom, laying out the judge’s then-losing argument that segregating people by race in rail coaches was unconstitutional.  

Standing before her students, Santana, their history teacher, wanted to know: What did it mean that the 1896 Plessy case had offered a chance for America “to move up the timeline for racial reform,” as public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson put it? How would our lives be different today?  

The tenth graders in Santana’s class lobbed answers. 

“Things would be better because it would have fast-forwarded rights for Black people,” said one student.  

“We would have more respect,” said another.    

“There wouldn’t be a large racial wealth gap,” said a third.  

In every high school in Philadelphia, there’s an African American history class like this one. That’s because, in 2005, Philadelphia began requiring that students take African American history to graduate, the first big city to do so. In this school system, in a politically liberal city in a swing state where more than half of students are Black and nearly a quarter are Hispanic, there’s been little of the pushback or controversy over African American history that has roiled other school districts and states.  

“In kindergarten and middle school, we only ever talked about Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King.”

Haajah Robinson, student, Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Justice, Philadelphia 

“We have a duty to expose our children to multiple ideas and perspectives and allow them to wrestle with ideas and be part of the larger dialogue,” said Ismael Jimenez, a former classroom teacher who now serves as the director of social studies in the district’s Office of Curriculum and Instruction. Black history, he said, “is arguably just a counternarrative to the larger mainstream story which we’ve been indoctrinated with.”  

That said, the district has had its struggles with the mandatory course. It’s difficult to find enough teachers with the subject-area knowledge to teach it, and over the years, many of the teachers who’d initially received professional development in the subject had left, Jimenez said.  

In 2021, when he joined the district’s central office, the Philadelphia school system committed to investing in training for teachers and revamping the curriculum to include more primary sources, among other changes. The district also began holding workshops on Black studies for all educators, featuring speakers such as scholars Hasan Jeffries and Bettina Love. 

Related: Inside Florida’s ‘underground lab’ for far-right education policies 

Santana has been teaching the course at Philadelphia’s Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice since 2019. Unlike many of the teachers who teach the course, she has a background in the topic, having taken African American history classes as an undergraduate history major at Fisk University. And, also unlike most teachers of the African American history course in Philadelphia, she’s Black, which she said helps some students at her majority-Black school feel more comfortable opening up.   

Until now, the students said, the African American history they’d been taught in school tended to be superficial.  

“In kindergarten and middle school, we only ever talked about Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King,” said Haajah Robinson, 15, speaking during an interview in the school library. “But Ms. Santana goes deep.” She had her students read David Walker’s Appeal, Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, stories from the abolitionist paper The Liberator and more.    

“It’s important that you know what I’m giving you is facts. I know Black history is challenged a lot and looked at as a controversial thing,” she said. “I don’t want you guys to think, ‘Oh, Ms. Santana is pro-Black. She’s just saying that.’ ”  

She added, “I want you all to know what our people went through because you guys have a torch to carry. … When you leave my class, I want you to feel proud.”  

By contrast, Santana, 43, said that as a K-12 student, “I learned about Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Thoreau, and just slaves. No names. Blacks were just slaves. And Lincoln freed you,” she said. “It never sat well with me, and it was the catalyst to want to research more and was why I went to study history in the first place.” 

“I want you all to know what our people went through because you guys have a torch to carry. … When you leave my class, I want you to feel proud.”

Sharahn Santana, who teaches African American history in Philadelphia public schools 

To Santana’s students, the recent controversy around teaching about racism was confounding. The idea that white children — who make up about 13 percent of students in this district — shouldn’t be exposed to conversations about America’s racist past lest it make them feel uncomfortable or guilty felt counterproductive.  

“A lot of these bad things happened, but it happened. This is really what went down,” said Zaniyah Roundree, 15. “You might have to sit there and feel bad for a little bit in order to come up with a solution about how we can improve our society based off the things that happened in the past.”  

Jimenez said the current controversies over African American history have deepened the Philadelphia district’s commitment to prioritize the subject. Topics that have drawn the most ire from conservatives, such as Black Lives Matter and intersectionality, aren’t part of required instruction, he said, but they are included in the course’s suggested learning experiences.  

For her part, Santana said she doesn’t flinch from exploring connections between historical events and contemporary realities such as housing and school segregation. But she also doesn’t tend to cover very recent topics such as Black Lives Matter. Her class begins around 2000 BC with lessons about ancient African kingdoms and extends through the Civil Rights era.  

“I try not to get too political,” she said. “I try to stick to the accomplishments, the work, the experience, the laws, the changes that were made, the watershed moments, and I let the kids make their own decisions.”  

NORFOLK 

Newspaper clippings and student assignments cover the walls of Ed Allison’s classroom at Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia — a testament to the years that he has spent at the school teaching history, including an African American history elective that he helped create. 

In 2008, a dark-haired Barack Obama, then a Democratic candidate for president, visited his class to tell students to set high expectations for themselves. Other articles commemorate the work he and his students did in 2021 with the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, which has worked to memorialize and shed light on the slave trade. About 12 miles away from the school is Fort Monroe, once known as Point Comfort, where the first documented enslaved Africans landed in 1619. Some of his students presented at a U.N.-sponsored Global Student Conference on Point Comfort’s history. 

To Allison, it is all much to be proud of — and all just a part of teaching a complete story of the United States, past and present.   

“We teach factual stuff that has been documented in history,” Allison said. “Is it a tough history? Yes. But is it critical for people to understand the history? Yes.” 

While African American history classes have faced recent controversy, in Norfolk, the electives have been in place for years. In 2019, then-Gov. Ralph Northam convened a panel that helped develop a Virginia African American history elective that is offered statewide and is one of the classes that Allison teaches. This coming school year, he’ll be teaching the A.P. African American history course. 

In Virginia, one of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s first acts after he was sworn in was signing an order banning the teaching of so-called “divisive concepts,” which his administration said “instruct students to only view life through the lens of race and presumes that some students are consciously or unconsciously racist, sexist, or oppressive, and that other students are victims.” Allison said the order has not yet affected his course, which was developed by teachers within the state. However, Virginia is among the states that says it is “reviewing” the advanced placement Black studies course that will be offered nationally. At least three districts in addition to Norfolk say they plan to offer the advanced placement course in the 2023-24 school year.   

Related: Inside the Christian legal campaign to get prayer back in public schools 

Virginia’s African American history elective spends time on enslavement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, race relations and other “heavy” topics. But there are also sections on music, art, entrepreneurship and other achievements, Allison said.   

Like many students, Alexander Bradshaw took field trips to Fort Monroe when he was a younger student. The historical site is a popular field trip destination, but it was only during Bradshaw’s time in Allison’s class that the significance of the location was clear to the 17-year-old junior. He is now digging into his own family tree — genetic testing shows the family has roots in modern-day Congo and Benin, he said.  

Bradshaw, like the other students, said he’s aware of the controversy around the course. But the class “helps you feel more comfortable in yourself — you feel confident knowing where you came from and the history behind it. I feel like everybody should be able to know that.”

“Often I go home and I always have something to tell. I’m telling my family what I’ve learned. I just feel like that’s a very crucial part for us.”

Carrington Smith, high school student, Norfolk, Virginia 

Carrington Smith, also a 17-year-old junior, ended up in the course by accident — “to be honest, when I first got my schedule, I didn’t know what it was,” she said. A guidance counselor had made the schedule. 

But now she appreciates the course, especially the section on Black artists. 

“I just feel like a lot of people should know about this class,” Smith said. “Often I go home and I always have something to tell. I’m telling my family what I’ve learned. I just feel like that’s a very crucial part for us.” 

Katrina Acheson, an 18-year-old senior, enrolled in the African American history course because she needed a history credit. As a white student, she started off feeling that she might be “intruding — that I was taking away space from other people and that I wasn’t supposed to be here because I’m white.” 

“We teach factual stuff that has been documented in history. Is it a tough history? Yes. But is it critical for people understand the history? Yes.”

Ed Allison, African American history teacher, Norfolk, Virginia 

During the year-long course, that feeling went away for her, she said. “I’ve been really welcomed. It is emotional to everyone in the room, but I think it’s very important that it is taught. Being uncomfortable is an emotion that everyone experiences.” 

Allison said he hopes “like-minded people” will embrace, as his students have, this broader view of the American story. 

“Just let me teach history. That’s all. That’s it,” Allison said. “And what they decide to do with it …  you’re making it political. You’re saying ‘critical race theory,’ you’re saying ‘woke’ — that’s  them. And I think fair-minded people have to understand that’s not what it is.” 

This story about Black history in schools 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 How do we teach Black history in polarized times? Here’s what it looks like in 3 cities appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

CHANTILLY, Va. – In Fairfax County, Virginia, thousands of middle school students experience what most of their peers leave behind in elementary school — recess.

The break is only 15 minutes long. But at Rocky Run Middle School, about 25 miles west of the nation’s capital, the seventh and eighth graders make the most of one of the few stretches of time in school that they can truly call their own. Fairfax County schools, a district of around 181,000 students, has taken an unusual step in mandating recess for all its middle school students.

On a day in early fall, a large group of students tossed their backpacks in a messy pile and made a beeline towards the school’s blacktop for pickup basketball and soccer games. A kickball game started up on the baseball field, with a teacher handling pitching duties to keep the action moving. Smaller groups of students headed to the school’s gym, while others peeled off towards the cafeteria to play board games, get in some extra study time with their Chromebooks, or just chat with their friends.

“It’s a break after all this other stuff you have to do,” said 12-year-old Colin Bigley, a seventh grader playing the board game Sorry! with three friends. “Playing outside is also nice. You have the option of what you’re going to do.” 

Aminah Naqvi, a 13-year-old eighth grader, loves the social time. She was hanging out with friends on the blacktop, shooting baskets. “You might not get to see your friends if you don’t have the same lunch,” she said.

Even the school’s principal, Amy Goodloe, agrees that play is important. “There’s really high value for students and, I will underscore, teachers to have that break in the day,” she said. “We underestimate how important that is as a partner to academic learning.”

“All of our students need some time to rejuvenate.”

Ricardy Anderson, Fairfax County, Virginia school board member. 

But Fairfax County is an exception. In most communities, opportunities for play and playful learning tend to recede in middle school, replaced by direct instruction, competitive sports and tightly structured academic time. Educators and researchers say students pay the price. Young adolescents go through profound physical, emotional and physiological changes; play inside and outside the classroom can provide one way for kids to develop healthy bonds with friends and become more self-confident.

“I teach at a K-8 school, and when I look at these seventh and eighth graders, they’re no different than the kindergarteners,” said Robert Lane, a STEM teacher at the Sierra Verde STEAM Academy in Glendale, Arizona. “They get excited when I bring out Play Doh and googly eyes.” 

Lane’s class is entirely built around playful learning. For example, the modeling clay and other crafts were used as part of a stop-motion animation project in his classroom. Other activities for the school’s older students included creating cardboard roller coasters to be judged by the school’s second graders and building a robot that can move without wheels.

“I break them into groups where they don’t know each other and they just go all in,” said Lane, who also hosts a podcast as “Mr. Lane the STEM Guy.” The activities also give his students a chance to learn how to cooperate, accept failure when it happens, and solve problems as a team, he said.

“I want these kids to have all these soft skills as they get ready to go to high school and to college,” Lane said. 

Related: Study: Boosting soft skills is better than raising test scores

In addition to developing soft skills, recess is a tool that can get adolescents moving more at a time of life when they become much more sedentary.

A 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association used accelerometers to capture the activity levels of youth from ages 9 to 15. Nine-year-olds, on average, engaged in three hours of moderate to vigorous activity on weekends and weekdays, well above the recommendation of 60 minutes a day from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers found that activity levels plunged as children reached adolescence. By age 15, they were getting an average of 49 minutes on weekdays and 35 minutes on weekends. 

With benefits that appear so clear, why does middle school seem to mark an end to both unstructured play time and playful learning? There are several competing challenges, both logistical and social.

Middle schools generally have more students than elementary schools, and the students themselves are taller and heavier. It’s challenging for school leaders to find enough space and teacher supervision to manage hundreds of children during a break time. The supervision is particularly important because, while middle schoolers crave time with their friends, unstructured time like recess, lunchtime and passing between classes often offers fertile opportunities for bullying. 

Fairfax County educators had to come up with new solutions. “The logistics were a little bit hard to figure out,” said Cynthia Conley, the principal of Washington Irving Middle School in Springfield, Virginia. Irving, with about 1,200 students, is one of the Fairfax County schools that has added recess to its schedule. 

“We have four lunch shifts, and we had to figure out how to have four breaks,” said Conley. To accommodate all the students on break at any given time, administrators have opened up several different recess areas for students, including the gym, the blacktop, and the library, which features chess sets, card games, and an exercise bike with a built-in bookstand.

“As soon as their feet hit the outside they are shooting, throwing, whatever they have in mind,” Conley said. “I’ve heard people say, why do they need a break. If you can, find me an adult who doesn’t need a 15-minute break during their work day. Everybody takes a break, to look away from the screen a little bit.” 

An additional challenge is that middle school students don’t think like younger students. Some athletic equipment won’t be enough to engage all, or even most of them. 

Rebecca London, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has studied what happens when educators add break or recess time for middle school students. In the middle schools she observed, the sports activities were often dominated by older boys. Younger boys and girls, even athletes, tended to spend break times walking and talking unless schools made an extra effort to set up activities that would attract them.

One powerful way to do that is for adults to play alongside students, even if adolescents sometimes act as if they want to get away from adults.

“As soon as the adults start playing, the kids want to play,” London said. “Kids inherently crave that. It’s an opportunity for kids to be seen as an expert or a leader.” A warm adult presence also makes the situation feel safer for students who may not be sports stars. 

“For all those reasons, it’s great to have adults out there leading games, connecting with students in different ways,” she said. 

Related:  Middle school’s moment: What the science tells us about improving the middle grades

Fairfax County piloted a middle school recess break for the 2021-22 school year. Last April, the school board voted to make the break mandatory for all the district’s middle schools, starting in 2022-23. District policy for elementary students requires at least 30 minutes of recess a day over two segments. There is no recess policy in the district for high school students. 

Advocates for the change say it filled a real need. “All of our students need some time to rejuvenate,” said Ricardy Anderson, one of the champions of the recess policy on the school board and a former middle school principal. “We have middle school students that get into the building at 7:15 in the morning and they don’t leave the building until 2:30.” 

Anderson said that’s why it’s essential for students “to have a little bit of freedom to do what they’d like to do — to be free of the noise of the cafeteria. just to get some fresh air, just to have a little break in the day. The outdoors component is even more critical.”

Research has found 9-year-olds engage in about three hours of moderate-to-vigorous exercise daily. By the time they are 15, that plunges to about 49 minutes on weekdays and just 35 minutes on weekends. 

Parents of elementary school children are often the driving force behind recess policies, but London, the sociology professor, hasn’t seen that same level of energy behind break times for older students. She thinks the isolation kids experienced during the first phase of the pandemic makes break time even more crucial. “It’s going to take a long time before these kids are fully recovered,” she said. “We may need even more play for older kids.”

Lane, at the Sierra STEAM Academy, said that another barrier may be parents and school administrators who may not see the importance of playful learning.

“Teachers are under so much pressure to get to a certain point,” he said, and they’re also under a microscope. Parents might not understand why class time is spent on playful learning as opposed to more clearly academic pursuits, for example. 

Seventh and eighth graders spend a quarter each year engaged in hands-on projects in his classroom, adding up to a semester of active learning. These activities allow students to explore their passions and also understand why failure is part of learning, Lane said. “That’s a K-8 thing, campus-wide. We don’t get frustrated. We come back, we play smarter. And the seventh and eighth graders, they crave it.”

Despite the difficulties that may come with figuring out how to squeeze play into upper grades, London said school leaders have the benefit of a set of opinionated experts — the students themselves.

“If you’re going to start a recess, you should ask your students what they want to do in that time,” he said. “You can even create a school climate task force; the students who volunteer to help think about that time can be tapped as leaders. They know what they need.” 

This story about playful learning 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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Our reporters have spent the last 10 months speaking with students, parents, teachers and school district leaders around the country about what this pandemic school year has been like.

Few are sad to see it end. This school year was a rocky one, marked by a tough transition back to buildings after months of virtual learning and Covid outbreaks that continued to disrupt learning.

But as spring arrived, some of the difficulties began to ease. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, field days and large, in-person graduation ceremonies returned. In Philadelphia, assessment tests showed that older students had more or less caught up to where they were pre-pandemic, although younger students still lagged behind, said William Hite, the outgoing superintendent of the city’s schools.

“We’re ready to have a really difficult year in the books,” said Eric Gordon, who leads the high-poverty Cleveland Metropolitan School District. “We’re closing the year with a combination of optimism that things are getting better but also an exhaustion of, Wow, this was a really tough year.”

While the educators, parents and students we spoke with predict next year will be easier, they also worry pandemic stresses will leave a lasting mark. Tensions are high, and rancor is spilling into school board meetings, classrooms and hallways. “The people who you thought were nice, normal people suddenly have all these nasty things to say,” said Betsy Bloodworth, a parent in Greenville, South Carolina.

Still, many people we talked to said the last two years had changed them for the better and brought some positives to the education system. More devices got into the hands of students. There was also a greater openness to moving away from outdated attendance rules and curriculum requirements that don’t necessarily engage students, school leaders told us. 

Here are some voices from our third round of interviews, in which we asked people involved with their local public schools for their reflections on how the past year had shaped them, and their predictions for the next school year, among other topics. The interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

Katina Harris, middle school English teacher and president of the local teachers’ union

Next year will be a better year, definitely. We had this year to support our students, and we’ll have summer to support our students academically.

Our district has realized some of our challenges. They have put extra support in place to support us. I wouldn’t say it’s easier, but maybe it’s more digestible for staff. … We have classroom tutors now. Every day there are more adults. Reading coaches hold small groups as well. If the district continues to advise safety precautions and provide mental health support to staff and students, next year will be a year of growth. 

A lot of the damage of Covid, though, you will see for the next 10 years. Some of our students lost both parents or they lost grandparents. The health problems, the inflammation in our children who are exposed to it. We’ve had staff who’ve had Covid, and now they have effects from long Covid. We are going to see the effects for a while. As we open everything back up and start to remove masks, we will still be impacted by it. It’s out there, it’s still present.     

Jason Kamras, superintendent

Honestly, students aren’t in a great place. The social and emotional toll of the pandemic and now of this horrific shooting in Texas, the massacre in Buffalo, we’ve seen rates of suicidal ideation go up, bullying go up, abuse, referrals to child protective services go up, shootings in our own community go up. It’s a very tough time.

Going into next year our focus is really about providing stability to our kids, some sense of routine, some sense of normalcy. … We’re spending about $3 million of our federal stimulus on that, and then of course we will continue to be extremely focused on our academic efforts, in particular early literacy. We feel that for really the next 10 years that’s very important.

I think there’s a funding cliff that comes with the federal money that’s going to be a massive problem for public education. … I’ve said previously that out of the pandemic our schools need a Marshall Plan-like investment, and I just don’t see it. I don’t see the political will. 

REDMOND, OREGON

Ben Lawson, band and choir director at Redmond High School

Things are back to normal. Like, we’re acting like things are normal. There’s no masks, there’s no restrictions. We can plan events like we always had before. But it’s just kind of weird trying to put the year back together. We’re trying to make up for lost time. And I think we’re kind of working ourselves to exhaustion trying to return to normalcy, and not really remembering: “Well, the first six months was just obscene.”

I’m definitely worried about mental health, and there’s a lot of kids that have depression and they joke about it a lot: “Oh, yeah. You know, my depression, my anxiety, my ADHD meds.” It almost becomes like a normal occurrence.

I’ve seen an improvement in the [students] that are around me, but there are definitely multiple kids that were in my program two years ago, and they kind of just trickled along and then they just disappeared. I have no idea where they’re at or what they’re doing. …

Those are the type of kids that really needed to be in high school and be in that community and have something like band to get them through. And I don’t know where they went. I can’t speak to the kids I don’t see. Those are the ones I’ve worried about.

Kami Karr, senior at Redmond High School

There are just so many weird things happening one after another. Even when we were in elementary school, like with the stock market crash, everyone moved. I moved. All my friends would have lost their houses. And then you get into middle school, and then, like, the internet starts becoming a thing. You have to start dealing with that as a young child. Kids are growing up really fast because of the internet, and then you get to high school and Covid happens.

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Sharahn Santana, African American history and English teacher at Parkway Northwest High School 

The students are adjusting. You can certainly see the growth that’s happening. … When we first came back, I was begging the students to say something, and now it feels more like a normal classroom again.

Next year, there are new variants, but I must say, I don’t think teachers, parents or stakeholders will address it the same way. It has kind of just become the new normal, living in the pandemic. We are trying to just get on with it. 

The pandemic made me take myself and my students not as seriously. It made me really put things in their place and prioritize things. It’s really difficult to get me upset, whereas prior to the pandemic I was a bit more rigid and strict. Now I am much more trusting of my students.

I’ve had such wonderful relationships with my students that I’ve never experienced before, and I think it’s because of me seeing them so vulnerable, me being so vulnerable. I care about my students first as people.

William Hite, superintendent

We are seeing young people settle in and settle back into school. For many of our young people, particularly in the city of Philadelphia, they feel like schools for them are the safest place. It doesn’t mean fights don’t happen or students don’t misbehave. It just means they don’t feel like someone is going to open fire on them from a moving vehicle, and they do worry about things like that on their way to and from school.

That’s sad, that’s a sad state of what many cities are dealing with right now. We are going to have to continue to provide those social-emotional supports for young people and adults alike.

Anna Phelan, kindergarten teacher at Overbrook Educational Center

I am really hoping that next year is as normal as possible and as close to three years ago as possible. Realistically probably it won’t be, in the winter, but I’m hoping next year is as normal as possible.

The pandemic made me realize the importance of preschool, of early learning. I wish the country could do preschool and it could be free for everybody.

It was easier for teachers to recover from early learning academic losses, but social-emotional losses were a lot harder for us to recover from. The academics can be made up for, but the social-emotional is much more difficult. I will now spend a lot more time than I already did on social-emotional and making sure they know how to read and emotional skills and conflict resolution.

GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

Betsy Bloodworth, parent of an eighth grade student and a college student

My general trust of people, I’m afraid, is lower. … Pandemic precautions and just general behaviors and attitudes — I think that it’s changed a lot of people. … The people who you thought were nice, normal people suddenly have all these nasty things to say.

My husband is an internist, and we were at a big internal medicine conference a couple of weeks ago in Chicago. The president of the internal medicine association said that the one greatest thing we have learned through the pandemic is that public health is no match for partisan politics, and I think that sums the whole thing up.

[Next year is] going to be another tough year for the schools. … The school has lost a bunch of teachers, but three of my son’s core subject teachers — English, social studies and science — have all left since Christmas. If every school has that much attrition of teachers, I don’t know how they’re going to have the staff to even staff the schools next year.

Anne Tromsness, drama teacher at the Fine Arts Center

I think the biggest change has been change, if that makes any sense at all. There’s just so much that’s been shaken up in our country, in our culture, in our education system. I think what’s changed about me is that I don’t want to go back without honoring what’s happened. I don’t want to return to normal … and now I don’t want to return without reflection.

CLEVELAND, OHIO

Jessica Boiner, home-based child care provider and parent of a preschool-age girl and a second grade son

Next year, I think, for my daughter, it will be good. I’m going to keep her at her private school. It is absolutely a financial sacrifice for my family. But I think it’s worth it because she’s been so happy.

I’m a little nervous about my son. One of the teachers at his school passed away suddenly over winter break. She was young. That’s the class he would have been going to next year, and he really liked her. It was kind of heartbreaking for his class and the teachers. I’m looking to see if the other teacher in the class stays or leaves. It worries me because I don’t know who’s coming in next. It takes him a while to warm up. My son has autism, and it took him almost to the end of the year to say something when he was in kindergarten.

Eric Gordon, superintendent

I’ve been in Cleveland 15 years, and 11 of them as the superintendent. I’m proud of the work we’ve done, but I would characterize the work we did pre-pandemic as rapid, continuous improvement. The work we’re trying to do now is much more transformational. That really arose out of the pandemic.

Kids just expect a much more engaging experience, and I’m trying to lead from a lens of, We can deliver on that. We can do more complex tasks kids care about. … We can make a more fun environment for learning. And we can use those tools to get better gains for all kids. It’s an approach I’ve always believed in, but as I’ve looked back, I’ve stayed more in the confines of the seat-time, credit-accumulation system. I’m challenging us to challenge those rules more aggressively than I was doing pre-pandemic.

TAOS, NEW MEXICO

Orion Salazar, graduating eighth grader, Taos Middle School

Last year I was not paying attention in school because I had my TV and phone and all that. This year, I didn’t have anything to distract me. It was pretty cool to learn.

It started off a little slow because of the pandemic, but my math teacher helped me a lot. … Kids just need someone to pay attention to them, to show them they are listening.

Mark Richert, social and emotional coordinator, Taos Municipal Schools

I heard from quite a few teachers around February or March that they noticed, as far as academics, that kids were not doing well and they didn’t care that they were not doing well. That’s something new and I heard that message quite a bit.

Traditionally, teachers are always trying to connect and find a way to recognize the value of materials, activities and learning. And it seemed like a lot of teachers ran into some roadblocks with that.

There’s the idea of normal and people are talking about the new normal. I would say, Let’s forget the idea of normal and just reinvent things. That’s my hope.

FREMONT COUNTY, WYOMING

Troy Zickefoose, superintendent

We had a little bit of a blowout in our community about adding eight days to our calendar. You would have thought the world had come to an end. … Not once did anyone mention academics. It was all about parent convenience.

People want public schools to be community centers, and day care, and social welfare agencies and feed-my-kid centers. The whole concept of public education being a place to learn — I’m waiting for that to come back again.

[When it comes to next year, I feel] a lot of hope, actually. There is a piece with this [Covid relief] funding that we’ve been able to spend on some curricular things that we’ve wanted to do for some time. The Census drove our poverty rates through the roof here. Our Title I budget [to support low-income students] doubled. If we can find them, we can hire more Title I teachers and interventionists, but that’s still a struggle. With people moving and quitting and trying something different, there’s just nobody to hire. 

FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS

Steven Weber, associate superintendent for teaching and learning at Fayetteville Public Schools

I definitely think we’ve learned to be more adaptable. We’ve learned more scenario planning and not just to plan for one or two outcomes. We’ve learned communication and how to communicate through multiple channels. We’ve learned, from an instructional standpoint, that we can use devices. But when we came back we were using the devices too much, so we’ve had to find a balance.

I believe some students got into some bad habits during the Covid pandemic related to attendance, and so we need to work with students and families to increase school attendance and make sure they’re on campus and they show up on time.

I certainly think focus groups help. A counselor can have a focus group, work through and talk to them. Quite often kids or parents will talk to you and say, This is what’s making me late. And then we can help them with transportation or whatever it is.

Maranda Seawood, student support specialist at Washington Elementary School

I’ve seen more trauma in the littles than I’ve seen in a long time. … Even now, with our pre-planning [for next year], I know the first few weeks of school, even though they want us to jump into curriculum like they did this year, we’ve got to really build relationships.

We’re prepared to make sure we love on them, first of all, when they get here. And then we’ll have a full week of routine procedures and building relationships. We’ve got to get back to that. I know what the administration wants, but we as teachers know what kids need, because we’re the ones in the building with them.

Evan Garner, father of four and rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

In our parish, we’ve had several members of our church who are not going back to in-person schooling because their children have flourished with virtual schooling. And they discovered that, and have maintained it. Not the majority, a handful. But in some ways it’s helped us either reaffirm what we know to be true about our children or maybe discover things that we didn’t know about how they can best learn.

I predict that [next year] our school system will have almost zero change, interruption, policies that anticipate or respond to local outbreaks, other than to ask people to stay at home when they test positive, and perhaps to have hand sanitizer. But it is almost impossible for me to imagine our local school system saying “we’re going virtual” or “virtual is a likely option.” … It feels like that ship has sailed.

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MARYLAND

Alvaro Ceron-Ruiz, 16, junior at Eleanor Roosevelt High School and student member of the Prince George’s County Board of Education. He was recently elected to a second term as student member, which he will serve during his upcoming senior year.

It took a bit for all of us to get back into the flow of things, but we are back to how things were before. It definitely feels more normal. Obviously the pandemic is not over, but it isn’t playing as active a role in our conversations as a school board. I’m glad we’re able to get some normalcy back.

I chose to run for student school board member again because of the passion I was able to develop over this year, and the awareness that one year really isn’t enough. A lot of your time in your first year is spent learning the procedures, practices and responsibilities of a board member. In the second year, you get a lot of time to do the governing.

The first thing I want to look into is our food — that’s something that students always want to see changed, but we never really see action. With the second term, I actually want to get on it. We’d bring in our food and nutrition department, different professions, individuals from the private sector who may be willing to offer better food. A lot of what our students were eating every day was pizza and french fries. 

With Covid fading away, I feel more hopeful and more optimistic on what you can do in the school system. A lot of the limitations that you have are lifted, in a way.

This story about the end of the year was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post ‘Next year will be a better year’: An oral history of year three of pandemic schooling, Part III appeared first on The Hechinger Report.