Tag: benefit

  • Parents Sued LAUSD Over Remote Learning. How the Settlement Will Benefit Students – The 74

    Parents Sued LAUSD Over Remote Learning. How the Settlement Will Benefit Students – The 74


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    This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

    More than 250,000 students in Los Angeles Unified will be eligible for extra tutoring, summer school and other academic help after the district settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that its remote learning practices during the pandemic were discriminatory.

    The settlement, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, was announced Wednesday by the law firm representing families who said their children fell disastrously behind during the Covid-related school shutdown in 2020-21.

    “After five years of tireless advocacy on behalf of LAUSD students and families, we are proud to have secured a historic settlement that ensures students receive the resources they need to thrive,” said Edward Hillenbrand, a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. “This critical support will help pave the way for lasting educational equity.”

    Los Angeles Unified had no comment on the case because the settlement has yet to be approved by the court. A hearing is set for December, although the settlement goes into effect immediately.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles and nearly every other school district in California closed for in-person learning from March 2020 through fall 2021. Students attended classes virtually, and most fell behind academically. Test scores statewide plummeted after schools reopened. Chronic absenteeism soared.

    In fall 2020, a group of families whose children were languishing during remote learning sued Los Angeles Unified, saying the district wasn’t doing enough to ensure students were receiving an adequate education.

    One parent, Akela Wroten Jr., said that his second-grade daughter was behind before the pandemic and became even more lost during remote learning. She struggled with reading and never got the extra attention she needed because teachers weren’t assessing her progress.

    Another parent, Vicenta Martinez, said her daughter didn’t get any instruction in spring 2020, in part because she never received logon information for remote instruction and the school never followed up. When she finally did access remote classes, the lessons were short and teachers offered little feedback.

    “LAUSD’s remote learning plan fails to provide students with even a basic education and is not preparing them to succeed,” the lawsuit alleged.

    The suit singled out an agreement between the district and its teachers union that said teachers would only be required to work four hours a day, wouldn’t have to give tests and weren’t required to deliver live lessons — their lessons could be asynchronous, or recorded beforehand. In addition, the agreement said the district wouldn’t evaluate or monitor teachers during that time.

    United Teachers Los Angeles supports the settlement, saying it provides more assistance for students while leaving teachers’ “hard-won contractual rights” intact and avoiding “unwarranted judicial interference” in the district.

    The union also noted that student test scores have recovered significantly since the pandemic..

    The plaintiffs argued that the district’s policies discriminated against low-income, Black, Latino, disabled and English learner students, because those were the students least likely to have adequate support to succeed in remote learning. Those student groups also comprise the vast majority of students in the district, the nation’s second-largest.

    The settlement requires the district to offer a host of academic support, including summer school and after-school tutoring, to the 250,000 students who were enrolled in L.A. Unified during the pandemic and are still with the district. Among those students, 100,000 who are performing below grade level will be eligible for 45 hours of one-on-one tutoring every year through 2028.

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • International students benefit local economies, and this extends to those living and working there

    International students benefit local economies, and this extends to those living and working there

    Universities once again find themselves in the crosshairs of a political argument around migration.

    I suspect no one on these pages needs convincing of the benefits international students bring to the UK: the diversity and vibrancy they add to our campuses, the fees that help our finances add up so we can carry out research and teach home students, the wider economic impact they bring through their fees and their spending in the UK economy, and the long term soft power of goodwill and friendship that our international alumni generate.

    And there is plenty of public opinion research – for example from Public First and UUK in 2023, from King’s College London in 2024, and from British Future in 2025 – that shows that the British public supports international student migration, thinks it brings economic benefits, and doesn’t see cutting numbers as a priority.

    But we have to be clear that we are losing the political argument on the value of international students – as have our HE colleagues in Canada, Australia and the US in recent months.

    A local industry

    This is the case despite the hard facts we have about the positive impacts of international students, including the £42 billion aggregate (2021–22 numbers) annual economic benefit estimated by London Economics. But those facts may not be enough as the political climate changes; we need to be agile in responding to where the political debate is moving.

    For example, we understand that the aggregate economic impact of international students is not disputed within the government. But they are not convinced that positive impacts are felt at the local level. So what do these big, aggregate numbers mean for citizens at the local level? To address that question, the University of York commissioned some rapid work from Public First – building on the London Economics modelling – to show the benefits of international students at constituency level, both as an export industry, and in their impact on domestic living standards.

    The first part of this work was published a few weeks ago at the heart of the debate around the final stages of the immigration white paper. This showed that international higher education is one of our most important export industries. This was counterintuitive for many politicians – who generally think of exports as goods or services which we trade overseas. But in fact, every international student coming and living in the UK is an “export” – bringing in foreign currency and supporting our economy.

    Politicians rightly champion our other UK exports – our cars, our pharmaceuticals, our creative industries. But across the country, higher education is just as, if not more important. We showed that in 26 parliamentary constituencies around the country, higher education is the single largest export industry – and it is in the top three in a total of 102 constituencies, spread around the country. To put it another way, in many towns and cities, higher education is the car plant, or the steel mill, or the pharmaceuticals factory that drives local economies.

    We hear that this evidence of real local impact was significant within Whitehall, and contributed to seeing off some of the wider proposals for restricting student flows that could have been in the immigration white paper.

    Pounds in pockets

    The second half of this research, published today, takes on some of the critique we know has been advanced in government in recent months: that while students may bring economic value in some abstract, aggregate way at national level, there are costs that are felt locally in our towns and cities that reduce living standards.

    Our analysis comprehensively debunks that. Instead, we show that international students are net contributors to the taxpayer, and that at the local level they raise wages and living standards for domestic residents. We calculate that every worker in the UK has higher wages to the value of almost £500 a year purely as a result of international students’ economic contribution. And in more than 100 constituencies, the benefit is much larger, equating to more than two and a half weeks’ wages for the average worker.

    These local-level impacts are often well-recognised by MPs and councillors. They are not yet in national-level debate. So we will continue to make the case for the wider benefits of international students for our towns and cities as well as abstract national GDP figures.

    In addition, we need to push back against the misguided assumptions in the white paper that the proposed new international students levy would have only a minor impact on recruitment, and show in detail why the reduction in numbers would be large, and carry with it an economic loss that would go way beyond universities’ gates and into their local communities. We are pleased to be working alongside colleagues in the sector to do just that.

    In all this we need to recognise the politics of the moment. All governments are political. That is how they got there, and to be so isn’t wrong! We have a government focused at the moment on its electoral prospects, and many of its actions can be explained by a drive to keep its voting coalition together, especially with the insurgent threat of Reform, and especially on the highly politicised issue of migration.

    Universities are well advised to steer clear of party politics. As a vice chancellor, I work without fear or favour to support the needs of staff and students, but also the city and communities around York. But my academic background is as a political scientist so I’m a keen observer of how universities, migration, and their intersection have electoral significance. So, looking at the 100 constituencies we identify in our research which benefit the most from international students either as an export, or in rising domestic wages, it is noteworthy that over 80 per cent of those constituencies are currently held by Labour MPs, often by very narrow margins.

    In those and the many other constituencies where international students bring real, tangible economic benefits, it is important that local citizens and political representatives understand what is at stake when widely held public concerns about migration lead to the targeting a group – international students – who the public both think highly of, and who make a big contribution to local economies.

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  • Many States Picked Diploma Pathways Over HS Exit Exams. Did Students Benefit? – The 74

    Many States Picked Diploma Pathways Over HS Exit Exams. Did Students Benefit? – The 74


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

    When 18-year-old Edgar Brito thinks about what he’ll do in the future, mechanical engineering is high on the list.

    The senior at Washington state’s Toppenish High School first considered the career after he joined a STEM group in middle school. In a ninth grade class, he researched the earning potential for a STEM degree (“so much more money”) and the demand for mechanical engineers (“exploding”).

    So Brito took some engineering classes at his high school, became president of his state’s Technology Student Association, and is starting at the University of Washington this fall on a pre-science track.

    Brito’s experience is what state education leaders hoped for when they replaced the high school exit exam with multiple pathways to graduation. When he graduates in June, Brito will have completed several diploma pathways, including ones aimed at preparing for college and building career skills.

    But his experience isn’t necessarily typical. He has friends who have no idea what pathway they’re on — or if they’re on one at all. The requirements could be clearer and advisers could spend more time talking about them with students, he said.

    “Making sure that we know exactly what our pathway is and what it means to be on a pathway would have definitely helped out a lot more students,” Brito said.

    Five years after Washington rolled out its pathways, they appear to have helped more students who aren’t college-bound to graduate, which was part of the goal. But the system has also created new issues and replicated some old ones.

    For the Class of 2023 — the most recent year with available data — around 1 in 5 seniors didn’t have a pathway. That meant they weren’t on track to graduate within four years and at risk of dropping out. Some students relied on pandemic-era waivers that don’t exist anymore. That’s similar to the share of students who didn’t graduate on time in 2019, the final year of the exit exam.

    Asian and white students are much more likely to complete one of the math and English pathways, considered the college-prep route, while Native students, English learners, and students with disabilities are more likely to have no graduation pathway.

    “The implementation of graduation pathways has reinforced that the student groups who are the furthest from educational justice are completing the requirement at lower rates,” state education officials wrote in a 2023 report.

    Across the state, students don’t have equal access to the pathways. Many schools, especially smaller and rural ones, struggle to offer more than a handful of career and technical education classes. Some career pathways train students for low-paying jobs with little opportunity for advancement. Some students get funneled to the military pathway, despite having no aspirations to serve, because the aptitude test is easier to pass. Many teens, like Brito’s friends, find the pathways confusing.

    Washington is not alone. Nearly half of states offer multiple diploma options or graduation pathways. And some, like Indiana, have already taken a second pass at their pathways. Many have struggled to address the same big questions, including what exactly high school is for, and what students should need to do to earn a diploma.

    Now the state board of education is poised to overhaul its graduation requirements again.

    Piling on more ways for students to graduate is not the answer, said Brian Jeffries, the policy director at the Partnership for Learning, an education foundation affiliated with the Washington Roundtable, which is made up of executives from across the state.

    “Let’s better prepare our students to meet the pathways, [rather] than keep creating a smorgasbord or a cafeteria of options, which too often turn into trapdoors,” said Jeffries, who sits on the state task force that’s looking at graduation requirements. Until disadvantaged kids have access to better instruction and more support, he said, “we’re going to keep spinning this wheel.”

    The path to 100 high school graduation pathways

    Back in the early 2000s, many states raised the bar to graduate from high school with the hope it would get more kids to college. As a result, by 2012, half of all states required an exit exam, including Washington state.

    But as student debt soared and some questioned the value of higher education, schools abandoned that college-for-all mentality. Critics of exit exams argued that they blocked too many disadvantaged students from graduating.

    In Washington state’s final year of the exit exam, around 1 in 10 high school seniors didn’t pass the English language arts portion, and 1 in 5 didn’t pass the math test, the Seattle Times reported. The law that nixed the exit exam had broad support from the Washington teachers union, state education officials, and parents. Lawmakers passed it unanimously.

    Just six states require an exit exam now, with New York and Massachusetts dropping their tests this school year.

    But absent an exit exam, states haven’t really reached a consensus on what students should have to do to prove they’re ready to graduate.

    Nationwide, there are now more than 100 ways to graduate from high school, according to a recent report from the Education Strategy Group, a K-12 consulting firm. The myriad options provide flexibility, but “also contribute to the lack of clarity about what it means to earn a diploma,” the report found.

    When the nation’s main K-12 education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed 10 years ago, it tasked schools with getting students ready for college and career. But many states and schools are still trying to figure out how to do the career part well.

    “Part of the challenge, frankly, is that schools are going through a bit of a post-high-stakes-test-based accountability identity crisis,” said Shaun Dougherty, a professor of education and policy at Boston College.

    Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, says that’s partly because for all the talk about changing high schools, graduation policies are still fairly restrictive. One reason Washington is revisiting its policies now is because some educators worry the state’s 24-credit requirement fills up students’ schedules, leaving little time for apprenticeships and other hands-on learning.

    Many kids are still “sleepwalking through six or seven class periods a day, mostly through college-prep courses,” Petrilli said, with “maybe a few career-tech electives on the side.”

    “We haven’t really unleashed high schools to do things very differently,” Petrilli said. “If we actually think that career tech is valuable, if we think that college-for-all was a mistake, then we need to be willing to act on it.”

    Diploma pathways can bolster teens’ interest in school

    What’s happening in the Toppenish School District illustrates the potential of the pathways model.

    The district, which serves around 3,700 students in south-central Washington, is able to offer a wide range of career and technical courses, including in growing industries, like health care and agriculture. The career-oriented pathway has helped increase some students’ interest in school.

    “It is very hands-on, and so it’s definitely more engaging,” said Monica Saldivar, Toppenish’s director of career and technical education. The old one-size-fits-all approach had “a negative impact for our students with diverse learning needs, academic challenges, and also language barriers.”

    Just before the state overhauled its graduation requirements, over 81% of Toppenish students graduated within four years. Now over 89% do.

    The improvements have been especially pronounced for English learners and Native students, many of whom live on the Yakama Nation. Since the state introduced pathways, Native student graduation rates have risen from 67% to 88%.

    Since pathways launched, the district has added several career-technical education courses, including advanced welding and classes that prepare students to work as medical transcriptionists or home health care aides. That can require some careful career counseling with students, as those jobs are in high demand but don’t pay well unless students get additional training or schooling and move up the career ladder.

    Still, the expanded offerings have helped some students tailor their post-high school plans.

    Frances Tilley, a Toppenish senior who’s headed to Gonzaga University in the fall, will graduate in June after completing both college-prep and career-oriented pathways.

    The 18-year-old took two of the new sports medicine classes and liked learning about what to do if you have a concussion. (Don’t try to stay awake. “We learned that’s not true,” Tilley said.)

    She followed that up with another health care class that touched on different disciplines. She gravitated toward psychology and now plans to get a master’s in counseling and become a mental health worker.

    Pathways can also help schools expose students to career options earlier.

    Three years ago, Toppenish started offering middle schoolers two-week labs to test drive careers such as marketing, nursing, or culinary arts. By the end of eighth grade, they’ve learned about 10 different careers. Now school counselors use students’ interests to help plot their high school schedules.

    Kaylee Celestino, 16, had long considered becoming a teacher. The Toppenish sophomore often gets “education” as an answer when she takes career quizzes. But the career-exploration labs also piqued her interest in science, and now she could also envision becoming a pediatric nurse. So her course schedule reflects that with advanced biology and college-level chemistry.

    “I just want to help people out,” she said, “like my teachers have helped out me.”

    Staffing, standards, data gaps make pathways challenging

    Staffing career and technical classes is one of the biggest hurdles to doing pathways well.

    Washington makes it easier than other states for professionals to put their work experience toward a teaching license. But many schools still struggle to attract and retain teachers for attractive fields like health services and welding when the private sector beckons.

    “These are lucrative fields,” said Dougherty, who has researched career education programs in several states, including Washington. “It’s hard to convince people to give up that salary to become full-time educators.”

    That creates extra work for schools. Saldivar, for example, meets regularly with regional employers to learn about their workforce needs. That helps inform whether Toppenish should drop or add certain classes, and which teachers to recruit. Saldivar is constantly networking and following up on “so and so may know someone” tips.

    Figuring out how to hold all students to a high standard when they are meeting different criteria to graduate is a challenge, too. Some worry Washington’s pathways are too flexible.

    The state rolled out a new pathway this year that allows students to graduate by completing a project, work-related experience, or community service. Lawmakers wanted to give students a way to show what they know besides taking a class or a test. But students don’t have to work with a teacher at their school, and if they choose to work with an outside mentor, there’s no clear rules for how they should be vetted.

    “Where are they finding these people?” said Jeffries of the Partnership for Learning. “Is their opinion an expert opinion that we could trust, or is this based on vibes?”

    Experts say it’s also important for students to understand what their likely earnings and other outcomes will be depending on which career pathway they follow.

    “We should not be talking about CTE in a very generic way,” said Dan Goldhaber, a professor at the University of Washington who has researched career and technical education teacher preparation in the state. “What the concentration is matters.”

    But Washington state doesn’t yet know how students’ outcomes may vary depending on which career and technical education concentration they chose, Katie Hannig, a spokesperson for Washington’s state education agency, wrote in an email. This is a common problem nationwide.

    The state also doesn’t yet know whether the pathway, or pathways, students completed were connected to their post-high school plan, which they must create to graduate. That hasn’t assuaged concerns that students are completing pathways disconnected from their college and career goals.

    The state expects to get that data in the future, Hannig wrote. Analyzing how diploma pathways affect graduation trends and postsecondary outcomes could help schools target resources and support.

    “Any new policy is a work in progress, but the fundamental core value of this policy is preparing students for their next step after high school graduation,” Hannig wrote. “Washington is proud to be one of those states that have established and continue to refine those pathways.”

    For now, districts like Toppenish are scrambling to coordinate weekly college presentations, field trips to work sites, and military recruiter visits — “a little of everything,” Saldivar said — to hedge their bets.

    Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at [email protected].

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


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  • USCIS Announces Guidance on Social Media Screening for Immigration Benefit Requests

    USCIS Announces Guidance on Social Media Screening for Immigration Benefit Requests

    by CUPA-HR | April 9, 2025

    On April 9, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it will begin considering “aliens’ antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests.” According to the announcement, the guidance is effective immediately and impacts individuals applying for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students, and “aliens affiliated with educational institutions” linked to antisemitic activity.

    Under the new guidance, USCIS will look at social media content that indicates a requestor “endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity as a negative factor in any USCIS discretionary analysis when adjudicating immigration benefit requests.” The announcement states that DHS and USCIS aim to enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, consistent with President Trump’s executive orders on combatting antisemitism and national security controls to protect against foreign terrorists.

    In early March, USCIS published a proposal to collect social media information on applications for immigration-related benefits. USCIS claimed that such collection of information was necessary to comply with Trump’s national security executive order discussed above. The comment period for this information collection proposal is still open. The comment period closes May 5.

    CUPA-HR continues to monitor for updates on immigration policy changes that could potentially impact student and nonimmigrant work visas used by the higher education community.



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  • Social media can benefit college students with disabilities

    Social media can benefit college students with disabilities

    College students often have a complicated relationship with social media, with a large number of learners active on multiple social media platforms but also aware of the negative mental health consequences social media can have.

    Teens receive hundreds of notifications on their phones every day, with over half of one study’s participants receiving more than 237 notifications per day. Nearly one in five teens say they’re on YouTube or TikTok almost constantly, according to a 2023 survey from Pew Research.

    A May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found one-third of respondents indicated social media was one of the biggest drivers of what many call the college mental health crisis.

    A recent study authored by a group of researchers from Michigan State University and published in the Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education evaluates how students with disabilities interact on social media and build social capital.

    Researchers found disabled students—including those with autism, anxiety, attention-deficit and/or hyperactivity disorder—were more likely to seek out new relationships and engage in active social media posting, which can advance connectedness and relationships among learners.

    The background: While social media can offer users social supports, such as promoting a sense of belonging during times of transition or crisis, it also poses risks for young people, including cyberbullying and online harassment, according to the study.

    Previous studies show youth with disabilities experience higher rates of cyberbullying compared to their peers, but students with disabilities are also more likely to report they receive social support through social media, which could be tied to the social isolation they can experience in person.

    Existing literature often focuses on the negative effects of social media for young adults with disabilities, but it is not known if there are differences between the experiences of those with and without disabilities and their social media habits.

    “Understanding different learners’ experiences with social media could help college faculty, special education professionals, and counselors not only consider using social media to create more welcoming and supportive learning environments but also how they might play a role in building individual learner’s capacity for positive digital participation,” researchers wrote.

    Methodology: Researchers conducted a survey of college undergraduates in the U.S. with and without disabilities in fall 2021, collecting data on social media use, social capital and psychological well-being. In total, 147 students responded to the survey.

    From this sample, researchers selected five individuals with and five individuals without disabilities to participate in semistructured interviews. Participants were matched based on social media habits and demographic factors, such as gender.

    Results: Through postsurvey interviews with 10 students, researchers learned that while both groups of students engage on social media for personal entertainment and to stay connected with people in their social circles, students with disabilities were more likely to say they used social media to initiate and grow relationships.

    All five participants without disabilities used Snapchat to interact with friends or keep in touch with loved ones in an informal manner, and all participants used Instagram to stay up-to-date with their peers.

    Among the five participants with disabilities, students reported using more social media platforms individually, and these learners were more likely to use TikTok (which in fall 2021 first hit one billion monthly active users compared to Instagram’s then-two billion users) compared to their peers. Students reported using TikTok for watching videos, sharing humor with their friends or participating in larger community building, including professional learning networks or cosplaying.

    Students without disabilities were more likely to say social media made no difference on their relationships or that it positively impacted their relationships by allowing them to stay in touch over geographical distances or other barriers.

    Similarly, all students with disabilities said social media assisted with their relationships, allowing them to connect with new people, expand their community and help manage their disabilities by connecting with others.

    Some respondents with disabilities said they felt more confident to engage with strangers in a safe way online and that social media was an avenue to find like-minded people they wouldn’t ordinarily interact with, allowing them to build new relationships. This was a unique trend to students with disabilities; those without were more likely to say they use social media to engage with people they already had relationships with.

    Students with disabilities may have greater challenges with in-person socialization, which researchers theorize makes social media particularly important for these learners, who also said they’re more likely to post on social media versus passively scroll.

    Interacting with others in the disability community and breaking stigma around disability was another theme in conversations with disabled students. These interactions could be with peers who share their disability or from medical professionals or support groups who provide new information.

    One limitation to the research was social desirability bias, or respondents’ tendency to answer questions in a way that would please researchers, meaning students underreport undesirable behaviors. The sample included only female and nonbinary students, which creates further limitations to the data.

    Put in practice: Researchers offered some suggestions for how educators can utilize this data to create a more inclusive learning environment, including:

    • Integrating social media into the classroom. While some digital learning platforms have forums for community building, such as a discussion board, these platforms can be less accessible than traditional social media platforms.
    • Facilitating personalized learning environments. Higher education leaders can consider ways to use social media to create formal and informal learning experiences in and around courses. These learning environments can also include methods for peer communication and connection, helping make learning more collaborative.
    • Engaging on social media themselves. Self-disclosure by professors can help build relationships in the classroom and enhance learning, but instructors must weigh safety, privacy and other legal boundaries in their social media usage. This could be one way to model positive social media usage for students, including how to have productive interactions with others.

    In the future, researchers see opportunities for analysis of design, implementation and evaluation of social media interventions for connection among students with disabilities, such as peer mentoring programs, online support groups or digital storytelling. There should also be consideration of the long-term effects of social media use on students’ mental health and well-being.

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