Category: Teachers

  • Funding high-quality teacher preparation programs should be the highest priority for policymakers

    Funding high-quality teacher preparation programs should be the highest priority for policymakers

    by Sharif El-Mekki and Heather Kirkpatrick, The Hechinger Report
    November 25, 2025

    By dismantling the Department of Education, the Trump administration claims to be returning control of education to the states. 

    And while states and local school districts are doing their best to understand the new environments they are working in, they have an opportunity amidst the chaos to focus on what is most essential and prioritize how education dollars are spent.  

    That means recruiting and retaining more well-prepared teachers with their new budget autonomy. Myriad factors affect student learning, but research shows that the primary variable within a school’s control is the teacher. Other than parents, teachers are the adults who spend the most time with our children. Good teachers have been shown to singularly motivate students.  

    And that’s why, amidst the chaos of our current education politics, there is great opportunity. 

    Until recently, recruiting, preparing and retaining enough great teachers has not been a priority in policy or funding choices. That has been a mistake, because attracting additional teachers and preparing them to be truly excellent is arguably the single biggest lever policymakers can use to demonstrate their commitment to high-quality public schools. 

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    Great teachers, especially whole schools full of great teachers, do not just happen. We develop them through quality preparation and meaningful opportunities to practice the profession. When teachers are well-prepared, students thrive. Rigorous teacher preparation translates into stronger instruction, higher K-12 student achievement and a more resilient, equitable education system. 

    Teachers, like firefighters and police officers, are public servants. We rightly invest public dollars to train firefighters and police officers because their service is essential to the safety and well-being of our communities. Yet teachers — who shape our future through our kids — are too often asked to shoulder the costs of their own preparation. 

    Funding high-quality teacher preparation should be as nonnegotiable as funding other vital public service professions, especially because we face a teacher shortage — particularly in STEM fields, special education and rural and urban schools.  

    This is in no small part because many potential teaching candidates cannot afford the necessary education and credentialing. 

    Our current workforce systems were not built for today’s teaching candidates. They were not designed to support students who are financially vulnerable, part-time or first-generation, or those with caregiving responsibilities.  

    Yet the majority of tomorrow’s education workforce will likely come from these groups, all of whom have faced systemic barriers in accumulating the generational wealth needed to pursue degrees in higher education. 

    Some states have responded to this need by developing strong teacher development pathways. For example, California has committed hundreds of millions to growing the teacher pipeline through targeted residency programs and preparation initiatives, and its policies have enabled it to recruit and support more future teachers, including greater numbers of educators from historically underrepresented communities. 

    Pennsylvania has created more pathways into the education field with expedited credentialing and apprenticeships for high school students, and is investing millions of dollars in stipends for student teachers. 

    It has had success bringing more Black candidates into the teaching profession, which will likely improve student outcomes: Black boys from low-income families who have a Black teacher in third through fifth grades are 18 percent more interested in pursuing college and 29 percent less likely to drop out of high school, research shows. Pennsylvania also passed a senate bill﷟HYPERLINK “https://www.senatorhughes.com/big-win-in-harrisburg-creating-the-teacher-diversity-pipeline/” that paved the way for students who complete high school courses on education and teaching to be eligible for career and technical education credits. 

    At least half a dozen other states also provide various degrees of financial support for would-be teachers, including stipends, tuition assistance and fee waivers for credentialing.  

    One example is a one-year teacher residency program model, which recruits and prepares people in historically underserved communities to earn a mster’s degree and teaching credential.  

    Related: Federal policies risk worsening an already dire rural teacher shortage 

    Opening new pathways to teaching by providing financial support has two dramatic effects. First, when teachers stay in education, these earnings compound over time as alumni become mentor teachers and administrators, earning more each year.  

    Second, these new pathways can also improve student achievement, thanks to policies that support new teachers in rigorous teacher education programs. 

    For example, the Teaching Academy model, which operates in several states, including Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan, attracts, cultivates and supports high school students on the path to becoming educators, giving schools and districts an opportunity to build robust education programs that serve as strong foundations for meaningful and long-term careers in education, and providing aspiring educators a head start to becoming great teachers. Participants in the program are eligible for college scholarships, professional coaching and retention bonuses.  

    California, Pennsylvania and these other states have begun this work. We hope to encourage other state lawmakers to seize the opportunities arising from recent federal changes and use their power to invest in what matters most to student achievement —teachers and teacher preparation pathways. 

    Sharif El-Mekki is founder & CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development in Pennsylvania. Heather Kirkpatrick is president and CEO Alder Graduate School in California. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

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

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-funding-high-quality-teacher-preparation-programs-should-be-the-highest-priority-for-policymakers/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • I didn’t think I needed the help or advice, but a new literacy teaching coach from afar gave me the self-confidence I lacked

    I didn’t think I needed the help or advice, but a new literacy teaching coach from afar gave me the self-confidence I lacked

    by Thomas MacCash, The Hechinger Report
    November 24, 2025

    I was the only guy in my education classes at Missouri State University, and until this year I was the only male out of nearly 100 teachers in my school. My approach to teaching is very different, and more often than not was met with a raised brow rather than a listening ear.  

    I teach kindergarten, and there are so few men in early childhood education that visitors to my classroom tend to treat me like a unicorn. They put me in a box of how I am “supposed” to be as a male in education without knowing the details of my approach to teaching.  

    As a result, I’d grown skeptical about receiving outside help. When someone new came into my classroom to provide unsolicited “support,” my immediate thought was always, “OK, great, what are they going to cook up? What are they trying to sell me?” I’d previously had former high school administrators come into my classroom to offer support, but they didn’t have experience with the curriculum I used or with kindergarten. The guidance was well-intentioned, but not relevant. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.  

    My entire view of getting help and support changed when Ashley Broadnax, a literacy coach from New Orleans, nearly 700 miles away, came into my class in St. James, Missouri, population 3,900. Ashley works for The New Teacher Project, or TNTP, a nonprofit aiming to increase students’ economic and social mobility. Once a month for a full academic year, she came in to help us transition to a “science of reading” approach, as part of a special pilot program, the Rural Schools Early Literacy Collaborative. 

    I never thought I would love having a literacy coach and their feedback, but I now believe it is something that can work for many teachers. I hope that as Missouri and other states transition to new ways of teaching reading, more coaches will be available for others who could use the support. The state says that over 15,000 teachers may get trained in the science of reading to help build our knowledge of how children learn to read and what type of instruction is most effective.  

    Ashley had used the curriculum herself and was on hand to provide timely support. This was the first time I received relevant feedback from a former teacher who had firsthand experience with the lessons I was leading.  

    It completely changed my approach and my students’ learning. Although I come from a family of teachers — my mom, grandma and brother all taught — I had started teaching two weeks out of college, and I wasn’t familiar with the new reading curriculum and didn’t have a lot of self-confidence. 

    When Ashley came in for the very first visit, I knew working with her was going to be different. Even though she had never been to St. James, she was sensitive to the rural context where I’ve spent all my life. We’re 90 minutes southwest of St. Louis and a little over an hour southeast of Jefferson City, the state capital. In St. James, you may see a person on a horse riding past a Tesla a few times a year. I’ve seen this world of extremes play out in school open houses and in the learning gaps that exist in my kindergarten classroom.  

    Ashley had researched our community and was open to learning more about our nuances and teaching styles. She was also the first coach I’d met who actually had taught kindergarten, so she knew what worked and what didn’t. As a young teacher with a significant number of students with special needs, I really appreciated this.  

    Related: How coaches for teachers could improve reading instruction, close early academic gaps 

    Ashley provided me with a pathway to follow the new curriculum while also maintaining my unique approach to teaching. Everything came from a place of ensuring that teachers have what they need to be successful, rather than an “I know better than you do” attitude. She would let me know “I loved how you did this” and she’d ask, “Can you extend it in this way?” or tell me, “This was great, here’s how you can structure it a bit further.” 

    Not everything she did to help was profound. But her little tips added up. For example, the curriculum we used came with 10 workbooks for each student as well as stacks of literature, and I needed help integrating it into my lessons.  

    I soon noticed a shift in my ability to teach. I was learning specific ways to help students who were on the cusp of catching on, along with those who weren’t getting it at all.  

    Throughout the course of the year, we saw how our students were more quickly achieving proficiency in English language arts. In my school, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the percentage of kindergartners reading on grade level went from 82 percent in the fall to 98 percent in the spring; the percentage of first graders on grade level went from 41 percent to 84 percent.  

    There were similar gains across the other schools in my county participating in the pilot program; one school had all of its kindergarten and first grade students demonstrate growth on reading assessments. Those students, on average, made gains that were more than double typical annual growth, TNTP found. 

    I attribute a great deal of this progress to the support from Ashley and her peers. I know I am a better educator and teacher for my students. Her support has made a change for the better in my grade and classroom. 

    Thomas MacCash is a kindergarten teacher at Lucy Wortham James Elementary in St. James, Missouri.  

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].  

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

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/teacher-voice-im-a-new-male-kindergarten-teacher-in-rural-missouri-extra-support-made-a-huge-difference-to-my-class/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • It will take patience and courage to fix K-12 education without the Department of Education

    It will take patience and courage to fix K-12 education without the Department of Education

    by John Katzman, The Hechinger Report
    November 19, 2025

    The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education this week provides a rare opportunity to rethink our current top-down approach to school governance.

    We should jump on it. It’s not sexy to talk about governance, but we can’t fix K-12 education until we do so, no matter how we feel about the latest changes.

    Since the Department of Education opened in 1980, we’ve doubled per-pupil spending, and now spend about twice as much per student as does the average country in the European Union. Yet despite that funding — and the reforms, reports and technologies introduced over the past 45 years — U.S. students consistently underperform on international benchmarks. And people are opting out: 22 percent of U.S. district students are now chronically absent, while record numbers of families are opting out of those schools, choosing charters, private schools and homeschooling.

    Most federal and state reform approaches have been focused on curricular standards and have accomplished little. The many billions spent on the Common Core standards coincided with — or triggered — a 13-year decline in academic performance. The underlying principles of the standards movement — that every student should learn the same things at the same time, that we know what those things are and that they don’t change over time — have made our schools even less compelling while narrowing instruction to what gets tested.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    We need to address the real problem: how federal, state and district rules combine to create a dense fog of regulations and directives that often conflict or constrain one another. Educators are losing a rigged game: It’s not that they’re doing the wrong things, it’s that governance makes them unresponsive, bureaucratic, ineffective and paralyzed — can you name an industry that spends less on research and development?

    Fixing governance won’t be simple, but it shouldn’t take more than 13 years to do it: three years to design a better system of state governance and 10 more to thoroughly test and debug it.

    I would start by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, ideally at a new “Center for K-12 Governance” at a university’s school of education or school of public policy, and give them three years to think through a comprehensive set of state laws and regulations to manage schools.

    The center would convene experts from inside and outside of education, in small groups focused on topics including labor, funding, data, evaluation, transportation, construction, athletics, counseling, technology, curricula and connections to higher education and the workforce. Its frameworks would address various educational and funding alternatives currently in use, including independent, charter and parochial schools, home schooling and Education Savings Accounts, all of which speak to the role of parents in making choices about their children’s education.

    Each group would start with the questions and not the answers, and there are hundreds of really interesting questions to be considered: What are the various goals of our K-12 schools and how do we authentically measure schools against them? What choices do we give parents, and what information might help them make the right decisions for their kids? How do we allow for new approaches to attract, support and pay great teachers and administrators? How does money follow each student? What data do we collect and how do we use it?

    After careful consideration, the center would hand its proposed statutes to a governor committed to running a long-term pilot to fully test the model. He or she would create a small alternative department of education, which would oversee a few hundred volunteer schools matched to a control group of similar schools running under the state’s legacy regime; both groups would include schools with a range of demographic and performance profiles. The two systems could run side by side for up to a decade.

    Related: Schools confront a new reality: They can’t count on federal money

    Each year, the state would assess the two departments’ performance against metrics like graduation and college-completion rates, teacher retention, income trajectories, civic participation, student and parent satisfaction, and, yes, NAEP scores. Under intense scrutiny by interested parties, both groups would be free to tweak their playbooks and evaluate solutions against a range of real-world outcomes. Once definitive longitudinal data comes in, the state would shutter one department and move the governance of its schools over to the other, perhaps launching a new test with an even better system.

    This all may seem like a lot of work, but it’s a patient approach to a root problem. Schools remain the nation’s most local public square; they determine income mobility, civic health and democratic resilience. If we fail to rewire the system now to support them properly, we guarantee their continued decline, to the detriment of students and society. Instead of celebrating students, teachers and principals who succeed despite the odds, we should address why we made those odds so steep.

    That’s why we should use this moment to draft and test something audacious, and give the next Supreme Court a happier education case to decide: how to retire a legacy system that finally lost a fair fight.

    John Katzman has founded and run three large ed tech companies: The Princeton Review, 2U and Noodle. He has worked closely with many large school districts and has served on the boards of NAPCS and NAIS.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about fixing K-12 education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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  • Why Small Private Colleges Matter More Than Ever – Edu Alliance Journal

    Why Small Private Colleges Matter More Than Ever – Edu Alliance Journal

    Opinion Piece by Dean Hoke — Small College America and Senior Fellow, The Sagamore Institute

    A Personal Concern About the Future of Public Education

    It’s impossible to ignore the rising level of criticism directed at our nation’s public schools. On cable news, social media channels, political stages, and in school board meetings, teachers and administrators have become easy targets. Public schools are accused of being ineffective, mismanaged, outdated, or, in some corners, ideologically dangerous. Some commentators openly champion the idea of a fully privatized K–12 system, sidelining the public institutions that have educated the vast majority of Americans for generations.

    For those of us who have spent our lives in and around education, this rhetoric feels deeply personal. Public schools aren’t an abstraction. They are the places where many of us began our education, where our children discovered their strengths, where immigrants found belonging, where students with disabilities received support, and where caring adults changed the trajectory of young lives.

    Behind every one of those moments stood a teacher.

    Amid this turbulence, there is one group of institutions still quietly doing the hard work of preparing teachers: small private nonprofit colleges.

    Small Private Colleges: An Overlooked Cornerstone of Teacher Preparation

    Despite the noise surrounding public education, small private colleges remain committed to the one resource every school depends on: well-prepared, community-rooted teachers.

    They rarely make national headlines. They don’t enroll tens of thousands of students. But they are woven into the civic and human infrastructure of their regions—especially in the Midwest, South, and rural America.

    This reality became even clearer during a recent episode of Small College America, in which I interviewed Dr. Michael Scarlett, Professor of Education at Augustana College. His insights provide an insider’s view into the challenges—and the opportunities—facing teacher preparation today. Note to hear the entire interview click here https://smallcollegeamerica.transistor.fm/28

    I. The Teacher Shortage: A Structural Crisis

    Much has been written about the teacher shortage, but too often the conversation focuses on symptoms rather than causes. Here are the forces shaping the crisis.

    1. Young people are turning away from teaching

    Data from the ACT show that only 4% of students express interest in becoming teachers—down from 11% in the late 1990s. Bachelor’s degrees in education have fallen nearly 50% since the 1970s. Surveys show that fewer than 1 in 5 adults would recommend teaching as a career.

    The message is clear: Teaching is meaningful, but many no longer see it as sustainable.

    As Dr. Scarlett told us: “The pipeline simply is not as wide as it needs to be.”

    Recent data offers a glimmer of hope: teacher preparation enrollment grew 12% nationally between 2018 and 2022. However, this modest rebound is almost entirely driven by alternative certification programs, which increased enrollment by 20%, while traditional college-based programs grew by only 4%. This disparity underscores a critical concern: the very programs that provide comprehensive, relationship-based preparation—including those at small colleges—are not recovering at the same rate as faster, less intensive alternatives.

    2. Burnout and attrition have overtaken new entrants

    The pandemic accelerated an already-existing national trend: teachers are leaving faster than new ones are entering.

    Reasons include:

    • Student behavior challenges
    • Standardized testing pressure
    • Emotional fatigue
    • Inequities across districts
    • Lack of respect
    • Political and social media hostility

    As Scarlett notes, these realities weigh heavily on early-career teachers: “What new teachers face today goes far beyond content knowledge. They face inequities, discipline issues, emotional exhaustion… and they’re expected to do it all.”

    3. Alternative certification can’t fill the gap

    Alternative routes help—but they cannot replace the traditional college-based pipeline. Many alt-cert teachers receive less pedagogical training and leave sooner.

    Scarlett captures the trend: “Teaching has always attracted people later in life… we’ve definitely seen an uptick.”

    And while alternative routes have seen growth in recent years—increasing 20% between 2018 and 2021—this expansion has not translated into solving the shortage. As of 2025, approximately 1 in 8 teaching positions nationwide remains either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments. The shortcut approach cannot substitute for comprehensive preparation.

    “The national teacher shortage is real… and retention is just as big a challenge as recruitment.” — Dr. Michael Scarlett

    II. The Quiet Backbone: How Small Private Colleges Sustain the Teacher Workforce

    Small private colleges graduate fewer teachers than large public institutions, but their impact is disproportionately large—especially in rural and suburban America.

    1. They prepare the teachers who stay

    About 786 private nonprofit colleges offer undergraduate education degrees—representing roughly 20% of all teacher preparation institutions in the United States. Together, they produce approximately 25,119 graduates per year, an average of 32 per institution.

    These numbers may seem modest, but these graduates disproportionately:

    • Student-teach locally
    • Earn licensure in their home state
    • Take jobs within 30 miles of campus
    • Stay in the profession longer

    Public schools desperately need these ‘homegrown’ teachers who understand the communities they serve.

    2. Small colleges excel at the one thing teaching requires most: mentoring

    Teacher preparation is not transactional. It is relational. And this is where private colleges excel. Scarlett put it plainly: “Close relationships with our students, small classes, a lot of direct supervision… we nurture them throughout the program.” In a profession that relies heavily on modeling and mentorship, this matters enormously.

    3. Faculty—not adjuncts—supervise student teachers

    One of the most striking differences: “Full professors… working with the students in the classrooms and out in field experiences. Other institutions outsource that.”

    This is not a trivial distinction. Faculty supervision affects:

    • Preparedness
    • Confidence
    • Classroom management
    • Retention

    Where larger institutions rely on external supervisors, small colleges invest the time and human capital to do it right.

    4. They serve the regions hit hardest by shortages

    Rural districts have the highest percentage of unfilled teaching positions. Many rural counties rely almost exclusively on a nearby private college to produce elementary teachers, special education teachers, and early childhood educators.

    When a small college stops offering education degrees, it often leaves entire counties without a sustainable teacher pipeline.

    5. They diversify the educator workforce

    Small colleges—especially faith-based, minority-serving, or mission-driven institutions—often enroll first-generation students, students of color, adult career-changers, and bilingual students. These educators disproportionately fill shortage fields.

    “What we have here is special… students understand the value of a small college experience.” — Dr. Michael Scarlett

    III. Should Small Colleges Keep Offering Education Degrees? The Economic Question

    Let’s be direct: Teacher preparation is not a high-margin program.

    Costs include:

    • Intensive field supervision
    • CAEP or state accreditation
    • High-touch advising
    • Small cohort sizes

    Education majors also often have lower net tuition revenue compared to business or STEM.

    So why should a small college continue offering a program that is expensive and not highly profitable?

    Because the alternative is far worse—for the institution and for the region it serves.

    1. Cutting teacher-prep weakens a college’s identity and mission

    Many private colleges were founded to prepare teachers. Teacher education is often central to institutional mission, community trust, donor expectations, and alumni identity.

    Removing education programs sends the message that the college is stepping away from public service.

    2. Teacher-prep strengthens community partnerships

    Education programs open doors to:

    • District partnerships
    • Dual-credit pipelines
    • Grow Your Own initiatives
    • Nonprofit and state grants
    • Alumni involvement

    These relationships benefit the entire institution, not just the education department.

    3. Education majors support other academic areas

    Teacher-prep indirectly strengthens:

    • Psychology
    • English
    • Sciences
    • Social sciences
    • Music and arts

    When teacher education disappears, these majors often shrink too.

    4. The societal mission outweighs the limited revenue

    There are moments when institutional decisions must be driven by mission, not margins. Producing teachers is one of them.

    5. Addressing concerns about program quality and scale

    Some critics question whether small programs can match the resources and diversity of perspectives available at large universities. This is a fair concern—and the answer is that small colleges offer something different, not lesser.

    Graduation and licensure pass rates at small private colleges consistently match or exceed those of larger institutions. What smaller programs may lack in scale, they compensate for through personalized mentorship, faculty continuity, and deep community integration. These are not peripheral benefits—they are the very qualities that predict long-term teacher retention.

    IV. Why Students Still Choose Teaching—and Why Small Colleges Are Ideal for Them

    Despite all the challenges, students who pursue teaching are deeply motivated by purpose.

    Scarlett described his own journey: “I wanted to do something important… something that gives back to society.”

    Many education majors choose the field because:

    • A teacher changed their life
    • They want meaningful work
    • They value community and service
    • They thrive in supportive, intimate learning environments

    This makes small colleges the natural home for future teachers.

    V. What Small Colleges Can Do to Strengthen Their Programs

    Below are the strategies that are working across the country.

    1. Build Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher pipelines

    Districts increasingly partner to:

    • Co-fund tuition
    • Support paraeducator-to-teacher pathways
    • Provide paid residencies
    • Guarantee interviews for graduates

    2. Develop dual-credit and “teacher cadet” high school programs

    Scarlett sees this as a major reason for hope: “We’re seeing renewed interest in teaching through high school programs… This gives me hope.”

    3. Offer specialized certifications (ESL, special ed, early childhood, STEM)

    These areas attract students and meet district needs.

    4. Create 4+1 BA/M.Ed pathways

    Parents and students love the value.

    5. Provide flexible programs for career-changers

    The rise of adult learners presents a major opportunity for private colleges. “We prepare our students for the world that exists.” — Dr. Michael Scarlett

    VI. Why Small Colleges Must Stay in the Teacher-Prep Business

    If small private colleges withdraw from teacher preparation, the consequences will be immediate and dramatic:

    • Rural and suburban schools will lose their primary source of new teachers.
    • Teacher diversity will shrink.
    • More underprepared teachers will enter classrooms.
    • Districts will become more dependent on high-turnover alternative routes.
    • Student learning will suffer.

    And the profession will lose something even more important: the human-centered preparation that small colleges provide so well.

    • The teacher shortage will not be solved by legislation alone.
    • It will not be solved by fast-track certification mills.
    • It will not be solved by online mega-universities.
    • It will not be solved by market forces.
    • It will be solved in the classrooms, hallways, and mentoring relationships of the small colleges that still believe in the promise of teaching.

    If we want public schools to remain strong, we must support the institutions that prepare the teachers who keep them alive. Small private colleges aren’t just participants in the teacher pipeline—they are its foundation.

    When these colleges thrive, they produce educators who stay, who care, and who transform communities. That’s not just good for education—it’s essential for American democracy.

    Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy firm. He formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). Dean has worked with higher education institutions worldwide. With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on colleges’ challenges and opportunities. Dean is the Executive Producer and co-host for the podcast series Small College America and a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute based in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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  • Do male teachers make a difference? Not as much as some think

    Do male teachers make a difference? Not as much as some think

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    November 17, 2025

    The teaching profession is one of the most female-dominated in the United States. Among elementary school teachers, 89 percent are women, and in kindergarten, that number is almost 97 percent.

    Many sociologists, writers and parents have questioned whether this imbalance hinders young boys at the start of their education. Are female teachers less understanding of boys’ need to horse around? Or would male role models inspire boys to learn their letters and times tables? Some advocates point to research that lays out why boys ought to do better with male teachers.

    But a new national analysis finds no evidence that boys perform or behave better with male teachers in elementary school. This challenges a widespread belief that boys thrive more when taught by men, and it raises questions about efforts, such as one in New York City, to spend extra to recruit them.

    “I was surprised,” said Paul Morgan, a professor at the University at Albany and a co-author of the study. “I’ve raised two boys, and my assumption would be that having male teachers is beneficial because boys tend to be more rambunctious, more active, a little less easy to direct in academic tasks.”

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    “We’re not saying gender matching doesn’t work,” Morgan added. “We’re saying we’re not observing it in K through fifth grade.”

    Middle and high school students might see more benefits. Earlier research is mixed and inconclusive. A 2007 analysis by Stanford professor Thomas Dee found academic benefits for eighth-grade boys and girls when taught by teachers of their same gender. And studies where researchers observe and interview a small number of students often show how students feel more supported by same-gender teachers. Yet many quantitative studies, like this newest one, have failed to detect measurable benefits for boys. At least 10 since 2014 have found zero or minimal effects. Benefits for girls are more consistent.

    This latest study, “Fixed Effect Estimates of Teacher-Student Gender Matching During Elementary School,” is a working paper not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal.* Morgan and co-author Eric Hu, a research scientist at Albany, shared a draft with me.

    Morgan and Hu analyzed a U.S. Education Department dataset that followed a nationally representative group of 8,000 students from kindergarten in 2010 through fifth grade in 2017. Half were boys and half were girls. 

    More than two-thirds — 68 percent — of the 4,000 boys never had a male teacher in those years while 32 percent had at least one. (The study focused only on main classroom teachers, not extras like gym or music.)

    Among the 1,300 boys who had both male and female teachers, the researchers compared each boy’s performance and behavior across those years. For instance, if Jacob had female teachers in kindergarten, first, second and fifth grades, but male teachers in third and fourth, his average scores and behavior were compared between the teachers of different genders.

    Related: Plenty of Black college students want to be teachers, but something keeps derailing them

    The researchers found no differences in reading, math or science achievement — or in behavioral and social measures. Teachers rated students on traits like impulsiveness, cooperation, anxiety, empathy and self-control. The children also took annual executive function tests. The results did not vary by the teacher’s gender.

    Most studies on male teachers focus on older students. The authors noted one other elementary-level study, in Florida, that also found no academic benefit for boys. This new research confirms that finding and adds that there seems to be no behavioral or social benefits either.

    For students at these young ages, 11 and under, the researchers also didn’t find academic benefits for girls with female teachers. But there were two non-academic ones: Girls taught by women showed stronger interpersonal skills (getting along, helping others, caring about feelings) and a greater eagerness to learn (represented by skills such as keeping organized and following rules).

    When the researchers combined race and gender, the results grew more complex. Black girls taught by women scored higher on an executive function test but lower in science. Asian boys taught by men scored higher on executive function but had lower ratings on interpersonal skills. Black boys showed no measurable differences when taught by male teachers. (Previous research has sometimes found benefits for Black students taught by Black teachers and sometimes hasn’t.)**

    Related: Bright black students taught by black teachers are more likely to get into gifted-and-talented classrooms

    Even if data show no academic or behavioral benefits for students, there may still be compelling reasons to diversify the teaching workforce, just as in other professions. But we shouldn’t expect these efforts to move the needle on student outcomes.

    “If you had scarce resources and were trying to place your bets,” Morgan said, “then based on this study, maybe elementary school isn’t where you should focus your recruitment efforts” to hire more men.

    To paraphrase Boyz II Men, it’s so hard to say goodbye — to the idea that young boys need male teachers.

    *Clarification: The article has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal but has undergone some peer review.

    **Correction: An earlier version incorrectly characterized how researchers analyzed what happened to students of different races. The researchers focused only on the gender of the teachers, but drilled down to see how students of different races responded to teachers of different genders. 

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about male teachers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • Rural teacher shortages could get worse thanks to Trump’s visa fee

    Rural teacher shortages could get worse thanks to Trump’s visa fee

    by Ariel Gilreath, The Hechinger Report
    November 7, 2025

    HALIFAX COUNTY, N.C. — When Ivy McFarland first traveled from her native Honduras to teach elementary Spanish in North Carolina, she spent a week in Chapel Hill for orientation. By the end of that week, McFarland realized the college town on the outskirts of Raleigh was nowhere near where she’d actually be teaching.

    On the car ride to her school district, the city faded into the suburbs. Those suburbs turned into farmland. The farmland stretched into more farmland, until, two hours later, she made it to her new home in rural Halifax County.

    “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is far,’” McFarland said. “It was shocking when I got here, and then I felt like I wanted to go back home.”

    Nine years later, she’s come to think of Halifax County as home.

    In this stretch of rural North Carolina, teachers hail from around the globe: Jamaica, the Philippines, Honduras, Guyana. Of the 17 teachers who work at Everetts Elementary School in the Halifax County school district, two are from the United States. 

    In this rural school district surrounded by rural school districts, recruiting teachers has become a nearly impossible task. With few educators applying for jobs, schools like Everetts Elementary have relied on international teachers to fill the void. Districtwide, 101 of 156 educators are international. 

    “We’ve tried recruiting locally, and it just has not worked for us,” said Carolyn Mitchell, executive director of human resources in the eastern North Carolina district of about 2,100 students. “Halifax is a rural area, and a lot of people just don’t want to work in rural areas. If they’re not people who are from here and want to return, it’s challenging.” 

    Around the country, many rural schools are contending with a shortage of teacher applicants that has ballooned into a crisis in recent years. Fewer students are enrolling in teacher training programs, leading to a shrinking pipeline that’s made filling vacancies one of the most challenging problems for school leaders to solve in districts with smaller tax bases and fewer resources than their suburban and urban peers. In certain grade levels and subject areas — like math and special education positions — the challenge is particularly acute. Now, some of the levers rural schools have used to boost their teacher recruitment efforts are also disappearing.

    This spring, the federal Department of Education eliminated teacher residency and training grants for rural schools. In September, President Donald Trump announced a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications — visas hundreds of schools like Everetts Elementary use to hire international teachers for hard-to-staff positions — saying industries were using the visas to replace American workers with “lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.” A lawsuit filed by a coalition of education, union, nonprofit and other groups is challenging the fee, citing teacher shortages. Rural schools are also bracing for more cuts to federal funding next year.

    “We’re not only talking about a recruitment and retention problem. We’re talking about the collapse of the rural teacher workforce,” said Melissa Sadorf, executive director of the National Rural Education Association.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Most of Halifax’s international teachers arrive on H-1B visas, which allow them to work in the U.S. for about five years with the possibility of a green card at the end of that period. About one-third of the district’s international teachers have J-1 visas, which let them work in the country for three years with the possibility of renewing it for two more. At the end of those five years, educators on J-1 visas are required to return to their home countries.

    A few years ago, Halifax County Schools decided to shift from hiring teachers on J-1 visas in favor of H-1B, hoping it would reduce teacher turnover and keep educators in their classrooms for longer. The results have been mixed, Mitchell said, because within a few years, some of their teachers ended up transferring to bigger, higher-paying districts anyway. 

    There are trade-offs for the teachers, too. Mishcah Knight came to the U.S. from Jamaica both to expand her skills and increase her pay as an educator. In the rural North Carolina county, finding transportation has been the biggest challenge for Knight, who teaches second grade. 

    She lacks a credit history needed to buy a car, leaving her reliant on carpooling to work. A single taxi driver serves the area, which doesn’t have public transit, Uber or Lyft. “Sometimes, he’s in Virginia,” Knight said. “It’s lucky when we actually get him to take us somewhere.”

    Being away from family also takes its toll on teachers. Nar Bell Dizon, who has taught music at Everetts Elementary since 2023, had to leave his wife and son back home in the Philippines. He visits in the summer, but during the school year, he sees them only through video calls. 

    “This is what life is — not everything is smooth,” Dizon said. “There will always be struggles and sacrifices.”

    Dizon’s first year in Everetts Elementary School was hard — it took time adapting to a different teaching style and classroom management. Now that he’s in his third year, he feels like he’s gotten his feet beneath him. 

    “When you can build a rapport with your students, things become easier,” Dizon said.

    When her international teachers are able to stay for longer, the students perform better, said Chastity Kinsey, principal of Everetts Elementary. “I know the benefit the teachers bring to the classroom,” Kinsey said. “After the first year or two, they normally take off like rock stars.” 

    Related: Trump’s cuts to teacher training leave rural school districts, aspiring educators in the lurch 

    Trump’s new fee does not address any of the challenges the Halifax district had with the H-1B visa, and it effectively slams the door on future hires. Now, the district will have to rely on J-1 visas to recruit new international teachers, meaning the educators will have to leave just as they’ve acclimated to their classrooms.

    “We just can’t afford to,” Mitchell said of paying the $100,000 fee. Other districts, she said, might turn to waivers allowing them to increase class sizes and hire fewer teachers, among other strategies.

    Since the applicant pool began drying up about a decade ago, the make-up of the district’s teaching staff has slowly shifted to international teachers. 

    At the heart of the problem is that when a position opens up, few, if any, citizens apply, said Katina Lynch, principal of Aurelian Springs Institute of Global Learning, an elementary school in Halifax County. 

    When Lynch had to hire a new fourth grade teacher this summer, she received three applications: Only one was a licensed teacher from the U.S.

    Nationally, about 1 in 8 teaching positions are either vacant or filled by teachers who are not certified for the position, according to data from the nonprofit Learning Policy Institute, published in July. In addition to fewer college students graduating with degrees in education, diminished public perception of the teaching profession and political polarization of schools are to blame, school leaders said. In some states, the growth of charter and private school options has made competing for teachers even harder. On top of a widening pay gap between rural and urban districts, it’s a perfect storm for schools in more remote parts of the country, said Sadorf.

    In rural Bunker Hill, Illinois, where more than 500 students attend two schools, some positions have gone unfilled for years. “We’ve posted for a school psychologist for years, never had anybody apply. We posted for a special ed teacher — have not had anybody apply. We’ve posted for a high school math teacher two years in a row,” said Superintendent Todd Dugan. “No applicants.”

    As a result, students often end up with a long-term substitute or an unlicensed student teacher. 

    When teachers do arrive in the district, Dugan works hard to try to get them to stick around. He pairs new teachers with experienced mentors, and uses federal funding to help those who want master’s degrees to afford them. 

    He also formed a calendar committee to give teachers input on which days they get off during the year. “More than pay, having at least a little bit of involvement, control and say in your work environment will cause people to stay,” said Dugan. It seems to be working: Bunker Hill’s teacher retention rate is more than 92 percent. 

    Related: Schools confront a new reality: They can’t count on federal money 

    Schools across the country face the same challenges to varying degrees. Several years ago, the Everett Area School District in southern Pennsylvania would receive 30 to 50 applications for a given position at its elementary schools, Superintendent Dave Burkett said. Now, they’re lucky if they get three or four.

    Last year, the district learned that a middle school science teacher would retire that summer. Just three people applied for the opening, and only one was certified for the role.

    “We offered the job before that person even left the building,” Burkett said. The candidate accepted it, but when it was time to fill out paperwork that summer, the teacher had taken a different job in a bigger district.

    One way Burkett has tried to address the shortage is to hire a permanent, full-time substitute teacher in each of its buildings. If a vacancy opens up that they haven’t been able to fill, the full-time substitute can step in until a permanent replacement is found. The permanent substitute makes more than a traditional sub and also receives health insurance. 

    Sadorf, with the National Rural Education Association, says other ways to help include introducing students to teacher training pathways starting in high school, building “grow-your-own” programs to train local people for teaching jobs, and offering loan forgiveness and housing support.

    Sadorf’s organization is in favor of creating an educator-specific visa track that would allow international teachers to be in communities for longer. The group is also in favor of exempting schools from the $100,000 H-1B fee. “Stabilizing federal support is something that really needs to be focused on at the federal level,” Sadorf said.

    At Everetts Elementary in Halifax County, McFarland, the educator from Honduras, is among the most senior teachers in the school. She has adapted to the rural community, where she met and fell in love with her now-husband. She gets asked sometimes why she hasn’t moved to a bigger city.

    “Education has taken me places I’ve never expected,” McFarland said. “For me, being here, there’s a reason for it. I see the difference I can make.”

    Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].

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

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/federal-policies-risk-worsening-an-already-dire-rural-teacher-shortage/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • What research says about Mamdani and Cuomo’s education proposals

    What research says about Mamdani and Cuomo’s education proposals

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    November 3, 2025

    New York City, where I live, will elect a new mayor Tuesday, Nov. 4. The two front runners — state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent — have largely ignored the city’s biggest single budget item: education. 

    One exception has been gifted education, which has generated a sharp debate between the two candidates. The controversy is over a tiny fraction of the student population. Only 18,000 students are in the city’s gifted and talented program out of more than 900,000 public school students. (Another 20,000 students attend the city’s elite exam-entrance high schools.) 

    But New Yorkers are understandably passionate about getting their kids into these “gated” classrooms, which have some of the best teachers in the city. Meanwhile, the racial composition of these separate (some say segregated) classes — disproportionately white and Asian — is shameful. Even many advocates of gifted education recognize that reform is needed. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    Mamdani wants to end gifted programs for kindergarteners and wait until third grade to identify advanced students. Cuomo wants to expand gifted education and open up more seats for more children. 

    The primary justification for gifted programs is that some children learn so quickly that they need separate classrooms to progress at an accelerated pace. 

    But studies have found that students in gifted classrooms are not learning faster than their general education peers. And analyses of curricula show that many gifted classes don’t actually teach more advanced material; they simply group mostly white and Asian students together without raising academic rigor.

    In my reporting, I have found that researchers question whether we can accurately spot giftedness in 4- or 5-year-olds. My colleague Sarah Carr recently wrote about the many methods that have been used to try to identify young children with high potential, and how the science underpinning them is shaky. In addition, true giftedness is often domain-specific — a child might be advanced in math but not in reading, or vice versa — yet New York City’s system labels or excludes children globally rather than by subject. 

    Because of New York City’s size — it’s the nation’s largest public school system, even larger than 30 states — what happens here matters.

    Policy implications

    • Delaying identification until later grades, when cognitive profiles are clearer, could improve accuracy in picking students. 
    • Reforming the curriculum to make sure that gifted classes are truly advanced would make it easier to justify having them. 
    • Educators could consider ways for children to accelerate in a single subject — perhaps by moving up a grade in math or English classes. 
    • How to desegregate these classrooms, and make their racial/ethnic composition less lopsided, remains elusive.

    I’ve covered these questions before. Read my columns on gifted education:

    Size isn’t everything

    Another important issue in this election is class size. Under a 2022 state law, New York City must reduce class sizes to no more than 20 students in grades K-3 by 2028. (The cap will be 23 students per class in grades 4-8 and 25 students per class in high school.) To meet that mandate, the city will need to hire an estimated 18,000 new teachers.

    During the campaign, Mamdani said he would subsidize teacher training, offering tuition aid in exchange for a three-year commitment to teach in the city’s public schools. The idea isn’t unreasonable, but it’s modest — only $12 million a year, expected to produce about 1,000 additional teachers annually. That’s a small fraction of what’s needed.

    The bigger problem may be the law itself: Schools lack both physical space and enough qualified teachers. What parents want — small classes led by excellent, experienced educators — isn’t something the city can scale quickly. Hiring thousands of novices may not improve learning much, and will make the job of school principal, who must make all these hires, even harder.

    For more on the research behind class-size reductions, see my earlier columns:

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about education issues in the New York City mayoral election was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • Why one reading expert says ‘just-right’ books are all wrong

    Why one reading expert says ‘just-right’ books are all wrong

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    October 27, 2025

    Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has spent his career evaluating education research and helping teachers figure out what works best in the classroom. A leader of the National Reading Panel, whose 2000 report helped shape what’s now known as the “science of reading,” Shanahan has long influenced literacy instruction in the United States. He also served on the National Institute for Literacy’s advisory board in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

    Shanahan is a scholar whom I regularly consult when I come across a reading study, and so I was eager to interview him about his new book, “Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives.” (Harvard Education Press, September 2025). In it, Shanahan takes aim at one of the most common teaching practices in American classrooms: matching students with “just-right” books. 

    He argues that the approach — where students read different texts depending on their assessed reading level — is holding many children back. Teachers spend too much time testing students and assigning leveled books, he says, instead of helping all students learn how to understand challenging texts.

    “American children are being prevented from doing better in reading by a longstanding commitment to a pedagogical theory that insists students are best taught with books they can already read,” Shanahan writes in his book. “Reading is so often taught in small groups — not so teachers can guide efforts to negotiate difficult books, but to ensure the books are easy enough that not much guidance is needed.”

    Comprehension, he says, doesn’t grow that way.

    The trouble with leveled reading

    Grouping students by ability and assigning easier or harder books — a practice known as leveled reading — remains deeply embedded in U.S. schools. A 2018 Thomas B. Fordham Institute survey found that 62 percent of upper elementary teachers and more than half of middle school teachers teach at students’ reading level rather than at grade level.  

    That may sound sensible, but Shanahan says it’s not helping anyone and is even leading teachers to dispense with reading altogether. “In social studies and science, and these days, even in English classes,” he said in an interview, “teachers either don’t assign any readings or they read the texts to the students.” Struggling readers aren’t being given the chance — or the tools — to tackle complex material on their own.

    Instead, Shanahan believes all students should read grade-level texts together, with teachers providing more support for those who need it.

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    “What I’m recommending is instructional differentiation,” he said in our interview. “Everyone will have the same instructional goal — we’re all going to learn to read the fourth-grade text. I might teach a whole-class lesson and then let some kids move on to independent work while others get more help. Maybe the ones who didn’t get it, read the text again with my support. By the end, more students will have reached the learning goal — and tomorrow the whole class can take on another text.”

    27 different ways

    Shanahan’s approach doesn’t mean throwing kids into the deep end without help. His book outlines a toolbox of strategies for tackling difficult texts, such as looking up unfamiliar vocabulary, rereading confusing passages, or breaking down long sentences. “You can tip over into successful reading 27 different ways,” he said, and he hopes future researchers discover many more. 

    He is skeptical of drilling students on skills like identifying the main idea or making inferences. “We’ve treated test questions as the skill,” he said. “That doesn’t work.”

    There is widespread frustration over the deterioration of American reading achievement, especially among middle schoolers. (Thirty-nine percent of eighth graders cannot reach the lowest of three achievement levels, called “basic,” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.) But there is little agreement among reading advocates on how to fix the problem. Some argue that what children primarily need is more knowledge to grasp unfamiliar ideas in a new reading passage, but Shanahan argues that background knowledge won’t be sufficient or as powerful as explicit comprehension instruction. Other reading experts agree. Nonie Lesaux, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education who specializes in literacy in her own academic work, endorsed Shanahan’s argument in an October 2025 online discussion of the new book. 

    Shanahan is most persuasive in pointing out that there isn’t strong experimental evidence to show that reading achievement goes up more when students read a text at their individual level. By contrast, a 2024 analysis found that the most effective schools are those that keep instruction at grade level. Still, Shanahan acknowledges that more research is needed to pinpoint which comprehension strategies work best for which students and in which circumstances.

    Misunderstanding Vygotsky

    Teachers often cite the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” to justify giving students books that are neither too easy nor too hard. But Shanahan says that’s a misunderstanding of Vygotsky’s work.

    Vygotsky believed teachers should guide students to learn challenging things they cannot yet do on their own, he said.

    He offers an analogy: a mother teaching her child to tie their shoes. At first, she demonstrates while narrating the steps aloud. Then the child does one step, and she finishes the rest. Over time, the mother gradually releases control and the child ties a bow on his own. “Leveled reading,” Shanahan said, “is like saying, ‘Why don’t we just get Velcro?’ This is about real teaching. ‘Boys and girls, you don’t know how to ride this bike yet, but I’m going to make sure you do by the time we’re done.’ ”

    Related: What happens to reading comprehension when students focus on the main idea

    Shanahan’s critique of reading instruction applies mainly from second grade onward, after children learn how to read and are focusing on understanding what they read. In kindergarten and first grade, when children are still learning phonics and how to decode the words on the page, the research evidence against small group instruction with different level texts isn’t as strong, he said. 

    Learning to read first – decoding – is important. Shanahan says there are rare exceptions to teaching all children at grade level. 

    “If a fifth grader still can’t read,” Shanahan said, “I wouldn’t make that child read a fifth-grade text.” That child might need separate instruction from a reading specialist.

    Advanced readers, meanwhile, can be challenged in other ways, Shanahan suggests, through independent reading time, skipping ahead to higher-grade reading classes, or by exploring complex ideas within grade-level texts.

    The role of AI — and parents

    Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to rewrite texts for different difficulty levels. Shanahan is skeptical of that approach. Simpler texts, whether written by humans or generated by AI, don’t teach students to improve their reading ability, he argues.

    Still, he’s intrigued by the idea of using AI to help students “climb the stairs” by instantly modifying a single text to a range of reading levels, say, to third-, fifth- and seventh-grade levels, and having students read them in quick succession. Whether that boosts comprehension is still unknown and needs to be studied.

    AI might be most helpful to teachers, Shanahan suspects, to help point to a sentence or a passage that tends to confuse students or trip them up. The teacher can then address those common difficulties in class. 

    Shanahan worries about what happens outside of school: Kids aren’t reading much at all.

    He urges parents to let children read whatever they enjoy — regardless if it’s above or below their level — but to set consistent expectations. “Nagging may not be effective,” he said. “But you can be specific: ‘After dinner Thursday, read the first chapter. When you’re done, we’ll talk about it, and then you can play a computer game or go on your phone.’ ”

    Too often, he says, parents back down when kids resist. “They are the kids. We are the adults,” Shanahan said. “We’re responsible. Let’s step up and do what’s right for them.”

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about reading levels was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

    A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

    After decades serving in the Marine Corps and in education, I know firsthand that servant leadership and diplomacy can and should be taught. That’s why I hoped to bring 32 high school seniors from Texas to Washington, D.C., this fall for a week of engagement and learning with top U.S. government and international leaders.  

    Instead of open doors, we faced a government shutdown and had to cancel our trip. 

    The shutdown impacts government employees, members of the military and their families who are serving overseas and all Americans who depend on government being open to serve us — in businesses, schools and national parks, and through air travel and the postal service.  

    Our trip was not going to be a typical rushed tour of monuments, but a highly selective, long-anticipated capstone experience. Our plans included intensive interaction with government leaders at the Naval Academy and the Pentagon, discussions at the State Department and a leadership panel with senators and congressmembers. Our students hoped to explore potential careers and even practice their Spanish and Mandarin skills at the Mexican and Chinese embassies.  

    The students not only missed out on the opportunity to connect with these leaders and make important connections for college and career, they learned what happens when leadership and diplomacy fail — a harsh reminder that we need to teach these skills, and the principles that support them, in our schools. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.  

    Senior members of the military know that the DIME framework — diplomatic, informational, military and economic — should guide and support strategic objectives, particularly on the international stage. My own time in the Corps taught me the essential role of honesty and trust in conversations, negotiations and diplomacy. In civic life, this approach preserves democracy, yet the government shutdown demonstrates what happens when the mission shifts from solving problems to scoring points.  

    Our elected leaders were tasked with a mission, and the continued shutdown shows a breakdown in key aspects of governance and public service. That’s the real teachable moment of this shutdown. Democracy works when leaders can disagree without disengaging; when they can argue, compromise and keep doors open. If our future leaders can’t practice those skills, shutdowns will become less an exception and more a way of governing. 

    Students from ILTexas, a charter network serving over 26,000 students across the state, got a lesson in failed diplomacy after the government shutdown forced cancellation of their long-planned trip to the nation’s capital. Credit: Courtesy International Leadership of Texas Charter Schools

    With opposing points of view, communication is essential. Bridging language is invaluable. As the adage goes, talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. Speak in his own language, that goes to his heart. That is why, starting in kindergarten, we teach every student in our charter school network English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.  

    Some of our graduates will become teachers, lawyers, doctors and entrepreneurs. Others will pursue careers in public service or navigate our democracy on the international stage. All will enter a world more fractured than the one I stepped into as a Marine. 

    While our leaders struggle to find common ground, studies show that nationally, only 22 percent of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and fewer than 20 percent of American students study a foreign language. My students are exceptions, preparing to lead in three languages and through servant leadership, a philosophy that turns a position of power into a daily practice of responsibility and care for others.  

    Related: COLUMN: Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it 

    While my students represent our ILTexas schools, they also know they are carrying something larger: the hopes of their families, communities and even their teenage peers across the country. Some hope to utilize their multilingual skills, motivated by a desire to help the international community. Others want to be a part of the next generation of diplomats and policy thinkers who are ready to face modern challenges head-on.  

    To help them, we build good habits into the school day. Silent hallways instill respect for others. Language instruction builds empathy and an international perspective. Community service requirements (60 hours per high school student) and projects, as well as dedicated leadership courses and optional participation in our Marine Corps JROTC program give students regular chances to practice purpose over privilege. 

    Educators should prepare young people for the challenges they will inherit, whether in Washington, in our communities or on the world stage. But schools can’t carry this responsibility alone. Students are watching all of us. It’s our duty to show them a better way. 

    We owe our young people more than simply a good education. We owe them a society in which they can see these civic lessons modeled by their elected leaders, and a path to put them into practice.  

    Eddie Conger is the founder and superintendent of International Leadership of Texas, a public charter school network serving more than 26,000 students across the state, and a retired U.S. Marine Corps major. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].  

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

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

    Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    About one in four teachers say their schools don’t give students zeroes. And nearly all of them hate it.

    The collection of practices known as equitable grading, which includes not giving students zeroes, not taking off points for lateness, and letting students retake tests, has spread in the aftermath of the pandemic. But it wasn’t known how widespread the practices were.

    A new nationally representative survey released Wednesday finds equitable grading practices are fairly common, though nowhere near universal. More than half of K-12 teachers said their school or district used at least one equitable grading practice.

    The most common practice — and the one that drew the most heated opposition in the fall 2024 survey — is not giving students zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests. Just over a quarter of teachers said their school or district has a no-zeroes policy.

    Around 3 in 10 teachers said their school or district allowed students to retake tests without penalty, and a similar share said they did not deduct points when students turned in work late. About 1 in 10 teachers said they were not permitted to factor class participation or homework into students’ final grades.

    Only 6% of teachers said their school used four or more equitable grading practices.

    That was surprising to Adam Tyner, who co-authored the new report for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, in partnership with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. He expected more schools would be following a “whole package” of grading reforms supported by advocates like former teacher and education consultant Joe Feldman, who wrote the influential book “Grading for Equity.”

    “It’s not like this has swept the country,” said Tyner, who has studied grading practices. He argues that some policies meant to create equity lead to grade inflation and don’t benefit students.

    The findings come as many schools are rethinking what students should have to do to get a high school diploma, and how much emphasis should be put on grades. At the same time, many schools continue to struggle with student disengagement and historically high rates of absenteeism following the pandemic. As a result, they’re trying to hold students accountable for their work without making it impossible to catch up on missed assignments.

    Though ideas about how to grade students more fairly predate the pandemic, several large districts started rethinking their grading practices following that disruption, as more students struggled to meet strict deadlines or do their homework.

    Proponents of equitable grading say it’s important for students to be able to show what they know over time, and that just a few zeroes averaged into a grade can make it difficult for students to ever catch up. When students don’t see a path to passing a class, it can make them less motivated or stop trying altogether.

    Still, some teachers have pushed back, arguing that no-zeroes policies can hurt student motivation, too.

    That showed up in the recent survey.

    Eight in 10 teachers said giving students partial credit for assignments they didn’t turn in was harmful to student engagement. Opposition to no-zeroes policies came from teachers of various racial backgrounds, experience levels, and who worked with different demographics of students.

    No-zeroes policies can take various forms but often mean that the lowest possible grade is a 50 on a 100-point scale. Some schools use software that will automatically convert lower grades to a 50, one teacher wrote on the survey.

    Schools that enrolled mostly students of color were more likely to have no-zeroes policies, the survey found. And middle schools were more likely than high schools and elementary schools to have no-zeroes policies, no-late-penalty policies, and retake policies.

    Researchers weren’t sure why those policies popped up more in middle schools.

    But Katherine Holden, a former middle school principal in Oregon’s Ashland School District who trains school districts on equitable grading practices, has some guesses.

    High schools may be more worried that changing their grading practices will make it harder for students to get into college, Holden said — a misconception in her eyes. And districts may see middle schoolers as especially likely to benefit from things like clear grading rubrics and multiple chances to show what they know, as they are still developing their organization and time-management skills.

    In the open-ended section of the survey, several teachers expressed concerns that no-zeroes policies were unfair and contributed to low student motivation.

    “Students are now doing below-average work or no work at all and are walking out with a C or B,” one teacher told researchers.

    “Most teachers can’t stand the ‘gifty fifty,’” said another.

    More than half of teachers said letting students turn in work late without any penalty was harmful to student engagement.

    “[The policy] removes the incentive for students to ever turn work in on time, and then it becomes difficult to pass back graded work because of cheating,” one teacher said.

    But teachers were more evenly divided on whether allowing students to retake tests was harmful or not.

    “Allowing retakes without penalty encourages a growth mindset, but it also promotes avoidance and procrastination,” one teacher said.

    Another said teachers end up grading almost every assignment more than once because students have no reason to give their best effort the first time.

    The report’s authors recommend getting rid of blanket policies in favor of letting individual teachers make those calls. Research has shown that other grading reforms, such as grading written assignments anonymously or using grading rubrics, can reduce bias.

    Still, teachers don’t agree on the best approach to grading. In the survey, 58% of teachers said it was more important to have clear schoolwide policies to ensure fair student grading — though the question didn’t indicate what that policy should look like — while the rest preferred using their professional judgment.

    “There are ways to combat bias, there are ways to make grading more fair, and we’re not against any of that,” Tyner said. “What we’re really concerned about is when we’re lowering standards, or lowering expectations. … Accountability is always a balancing act.”

    Nicole Paxton, the principal of Mountain Vista Community School, a K-8 school in Colorado’s Harrison School District 2, has seen that balancing act in action.

    Her district adopted a policy a few years ago that requires teachers to grade students on a 50-100 scale. Students get at least a 50% if they turn in work, but they get a “missing” grade if they don’t do the assignment. Middle and high schoolers are allowed to make up missing or incomplete assignments. But it has to be done within the same quarter, and teachers can deduct up to 10% for late assignments.

    Paxton thinks the policy was the right move for her district. She says she’s seen it motivate kids who are struggling to keep trying, when before they stopped doing their work because they didn’t think they could ever bounce back from a few zeroes.

    “As adults, in the real world, we get to show what we know and learn in our careers,” Paxton said. “And I think that kids are able to do that in our building, too.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on classroom trends, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub.

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