Tag: finds

  • New international enrollment dipped this fall, NAFSA survey finds

    New international enrollment dipped this fall, NAFSA survey finds

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    Dive Brief:

    • Many U.S. colleges are experiencing declines in undergraduate and graduate enrollment amid tightening visa policies, according to a new study released by NAFSA: Association of International Educators and other groups. 
    • U.S. colleges reported a 6% average drop in new international bachelor’s enrollment and a 19% drop in new international master’s enrollment for the fall. Of some 200 surveyed U.S. institutions, 48% saw declines in their international bachelor’s students, and 63% experienced a drop-off in international graduate enrollment. 
    • Canada suffered even more dramatic declines, while international student enrollment rose in Asian and European countries, according to the NAFSA study. Both U.S. and Canadian institutions primarily blamed restrictive government policies for the decline.

    Dive Insight:

    Since taking office, the Trump administration has launched a suite of aggressive policies that have made it difficult for many international students to study in the U.S. 

    Among other moves, dramatically slowed visa processing raised concerns this summer that tens of thousands of students might be stymied from coming to the U.S. for college. On top of that, the administration has revoked thousands of visas for international students already studying here and proposed a four-year cap on student visas, which could hit doctoral students particularly hard. 

    In the U.S., restrictive government policies were by far the No. 1 obstacle to international enrollment, with 85% of surveyed colleges citing them in the NAFSA study. That’s up from 58% of colleges that said the same in 2024. 

    “We are navigating one of the most dynamic moments in international education, driven in no small part by shifts in U.S. visa and immigration policy,” NAFSA Executive Director and CEO Fanta Aw said in a statement. “The ripple effects of these policy changes are being felt across campuses and communities around the world.”

    The distant No. 2 concern was tuition and living costs, with 47% of U.S. respondents citing them as an obstacle this year. 

    As international enrollment declines take a toll on college finances, 36% of colleges surveyed by NAFSA said they plan to expand into new markets to adapt. Another 28% are planning budget cuts, and 26% intend to expand online programming to gin up enrollment. 

    To be sure, the U.S. isn’t the only country where government restrictions weigh on foreign enrollment. In Canada — where new international bachelor’s and master’s enrollment fell by 36% and 35%, respectively — 90% of polled colleges listed restrictive policies as the top obstacle to enrollment. European colleges, excluding those in the U.K., also listed restrictions as the primary obstacle. 

    The survey was conducted in October and drew on responses from 461 institutions across 63 countries, including 201 U.S. colleges. 

    The NAFSA study adds to mounting evidence of international enrollment drop-offs this fall. A survey of more than 800 colleges found that their international enrollment declined overall by 1% in fall 2025, with their graduate student enrollment plummeting by 12%, per the annual Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State released earlier this month.

    New international enrollment fell even more overall — by 17% — this fall, according to the Open Doors survey.

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  • Texas A&M Faculty Finds Dismissed Prof’s Academic Freedom Violated

    Texas A&M Faculty Finds Dismissed Prof’s Academic Freedom Violated

    A Texas A&M University faculty council determined in late September that Melissa McCoul, an instructor fired for teaching about gender identity in a children’s literature class, had her academic freedom violated and that former president Mark Welsh flouted proper termination processes when he fired her, The Texas Tribune reported Monday.

    McCoul was dismissed in September after a video went viral, showing a student confronting her in class and claiming the professor’s gender identity lesson was illegal. McCoul is actively appealing her termination. The documented justification for her dismissal was that McCoul’s course content and material did not match the description in the course catalog, but the faculty council said this was false. 

    “The content of the course was the reason for the dismissal and not the stated reason: failure of academic responsibility,” the council wrote in its report. “Given the timeline of dismissal, the political pressure brought to bear, and statements by Regents that the course content was illegal, President Welsh’s assertion that the firing was for failure of academic responsibility appears pretextual.”

    In an Oct. 2 memo obtained by the Tribune, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Blanca Lupiani rejected the council’s conclusions and said the council acted outside its charge to review matters that were “largely unrelated to academic freedom.” The complaint about McCoul was never assigned to the council, Lupiani said in the memo. 

    University rules require the department head to write charges for dismissal, seek approval from the dean and give the faculty member a notice of intent to dismiss with five business days to respond, but Welsh requested McCoul’s dismissal on Sept. 9 “effective immediately,” the Tribune reported. 

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  • Florida DOGE Finds Disproportionate Spending at New College

    Florida DOGE Finds Disproportionate Spending at New College

    New College spent $83,207 per student in fiscal year 2024, the highest among state universities.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Thomas Simonetti/The Washington Post/Getty Images

    Nearly three years into a conservative overhaul of New College of Florida, costs are adding up as the operating expenses per student dramatically outpace other State University System of Florida members.

    Data presented at Thursday’s Florida Board of Governors offers the clearest breakdown so far of what New College is spending per student compared to 11 other system members. NCF spent $83,207 per student in fiscal year 2024, the highest among state universities.

    The University of Florida, a major research institution, was the next highest at $45,765 per student, while the lowest was the University of Central Florida at $12,172 per student, according to data compiled by the Florida Department of Government Efficiency.

    New College and UF also had the highest number of administrators per 100 students. New College had 33.3 administrators per 100 students while UF had 26.9. Others in the system ranged from a low of 4.6 administrators per student at UCF to 12.6 at the University of South Florida.

    Silence on Spending

    Now, despite support from Republican governor Ron DeSantis—who appointed a slate of conservative trustees in early 2023 and tasked them with reimagining the small liberal arts college—NCF is facing growing scrutiny over soaring operating expenses from alumni and other community members. But the Florida Board of Governors, which is appointed by DeSantis, had little to say when presented with the numbers at Thursday’s meeting.

    Eric Silagy, who has been the board member most critical of NCF’s spending and has previously pressed college leadership on the matter, was the only one to offer remarks about the disparity. In limited comments, Silagy thanked Ben Watkins, director of the Florida Division of Bond Finance, for the presentation, which he said made university spending clear.

    Now, Silagy said, “there can be no question anymore about what the numbers really are.” He added that Florida’s DOGE data will allow the Board of Governors to “address outliers where it’s not working” and determine how to reach “better outcomes for the students and the taxpayers.”

    Silagy had clashed with NCF President Richard Corcoran, a former Republican lawmaker, on how much New College spends per student in past meetings. Silagy had estimated NCF spent $91,000 per student, while Corcoran initially said the number was closer to $68,000 per head. Corcoran later backtracked, agreeing the figure was between $88,000 and $91,000 per student.

    That spending has ticked up even as critics in the community and state legislature are growing, and as the college saw its place in U.S. News & World Report rankings fall nearly 60 spots since the takeover. The rankings are highly valued by Florida lawmakers and system officials.

    Asked about DOGE’s findings, a New College spokesperson said issues preceded current leadership.

    “Thanks to Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature making a bold move to appoint new leadership with clear goals, the impact of New College’s revitalization is already visible with enrollment surpassing 900 students for the first time in history,” New College spokesperson James Miller wrote in an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed. “As enrollment growth continues to skyrocket, cost-per-student and cost-per-graduate metrics will be one of the lowest of all top liberal arts schools in the country.”

    Other Meeting Notes

    Thursday’s board meeting also included an update from UCF President Alexander Cartwright, who told FLBOG members that the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) had approved the university for initial accreditation, amid an effort to switch accreditors that had been underway since 2023.

    UCF, like other state institutions, sought to switch from Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to another accreditor, following a change to state law in 2022 that mandated the switch after state officials clashed with the organization over various issues.

    Cartwright said he received the news from HLC just hours earlier during the meeting.

    State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues credited Cartwright for his work on the effort and criticized the Biden administration for allegedly slow-walking the process.

    Rodrigues argued that the Biden administration “did not want to see reform in the area of accreditation” and “put up barriers and obstacles to states like Florida and universities like UCF” who were seeking to change accreditors while following Department of Education guidelines.

    The Florida Board of Governors also approved a policy change that will now require professors at all state universities to publicly post course materials. The policy will require “universities to post current syllabi for all courses and course sections offered for the upcoming term” at least 45 days before the first day of class. Those materials will then remain online for at least five years.

    That policy change, which has been the subject of recent media coverage highlighting faculty concerns about being targeted for course content, was passed as part of the consent agenda with no public discussion. No faculty members spoke about the policy change during the public comment portion of the meeting despite concerns expressed by professors in recent coverage.

    The board did not take action or discuss a directive from DeSantis late last month to “pull the plug” on hiring workers on H-1B visas at state universities amid concerns that such hires are taking jobs that could otherwise be filled by Floridians. (However, critics have noted such jobs are often highly specialized and hard to fill.) The board plans to consider that directive in January.

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  • Thousands of Qualified Community College Students Failing to Transfer to CSU, New Report Finds

    Thousands of Qualified Community College Students Failing to Transfer to CSU, New Report Finds

    More than 32,000 California community college students who earned transfer degrees never applied to California State University despite guaranteed admission, according to a new report that highlights critical gaps in the state’s higher education pipeline.

    Marisol Cuellar MejiaThe Public Policy Institute of California study reveals that 21 percent of Associate Degree for Transfer recipients between 2018-19 and 2022-23 failed to apply to CSU. Most concerning, more than half of these students — 32,500 individuals — appear to have abandoned their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree altogether.

    The findings come as California races to meet an ambitious goal of 40 percent baccalaureate completion among working-age residents by 2030, a target that depends heavily on improving transfer rates from community colleges. 

    “When the transfer pathway works, it works,” said Marisol Cuellar Mejia, co-author of the report. “The challenge lies in ensuring that more California community college students are able to get to the point of applying.”

    The report identifies another significant loss point: nearly 63,000 students who were admitted to CSU but chose not to enroll never appeared at any four-year institution. This group represents what researchers call “the most immediate opportunity for enrollment gains” at the state university system.

    Despite these gaps, the study found high success rates for students who complete the transfer process. Among community college applicants to CSU, 92 percent are eventually admitted to at least one campus, and 76 percent of fall 2020 transfer students graduated by spring 2024. Transfer applications and enrollment remain below pre-pandemic levels.  Fall 2024 saw 50,259 new transfer students enroll at CSU, a 6 percent increase from the prior year but still 17 percent below the 2020 peak of 60,529 students. Applications are down 16.4 percent from 2020 levels.

    The decline has not affected campuses equally. San Diego State, Cal State Los Angeles, and San Francisco State continued enrollment drops through fall 2024, with the latter two campuses seeing transfer enrollment more than 30 percent below 2020 peaks. 

    Meanwhile, five campuses — Fresno State, Fullerton, Sonoma State, Monterey Bay, and Chico State — have surpassed their 2020 transfer enrollment numbers. The report notes that CSU is the leading destination for California community college transfers, receiving about 58 percent of students who successfully transfer to four-year institutions. Another 17 percent transfer to University of California campuses, while 25 percent go to private or out-of-state schools.

    The study found that the typical CSU applicant spends nine terms enrolled in the community college system before applying. However, students who reach key academic milestones during their first year can apply sooner. Three in ten applicants apply in more than one term, and almost half of these students had all applications denied initially but were admitted later. Among admitted students, 69 percent chose to enroll at CSU.

    The California Community Colleges system serves more than 2.1 million students, with most expressing intent to transfer. However, only one in five actually transfers within four years of initial enrollment, meaning even modest improvements could substantially boost four-year college enrollment statewide.

    CSU recently committed to increasing transfer enrollment by 15 percent over the next three years as part of its systemwide strategic plan. The move comes as high school graduate numbers are expected to plateau or decline, limiting the pool of first-time freshmen and making community college transfers increasingly important for maintaining enrollment.

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  • Canberra finds staff underpaid $1.5m – Campus Review

    Canberra finds staff underpaid $1.5m – Campus Review

    The University of Canberra will review casual academic staff payslips after it found professional employees have been underpaid over $1.5 million over six years.

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  • Science of Reading Training, Practice Vary, New Research Finds – The 74

    Science of Reading Training, Practice Vary, New Research Finds – The 74


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    North Carolina is one of several states that have passed legislation in recent years to align classroom reading instruction with the research on how children learn to read. But ensuring all students have access to research-backed instruction is a marathon, not a sprint, said education leaders and researchers from across the country on a webinar from the Hunt Institute last Wednesday.

    Though implementation of the state’s reading legislation has been ongoing since 2021, more resources and comprehensive support are needed to ensure teaching practice and reading proficiency are improved, webinar panelists said.

    “The goal should be to transition from the science of reading into the science of teaching reading,” said Paola Pilonieta, professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who was part of a team that studied North Carolina’s implementation of its 2021 Excellent Public Schools Act.

    That legislation mandates instruction to be aligned with “the science of reading,” the research that says learning to read involves “the acquisition of language (phonology, syntax, semantics, morphology, and pragmatics), and skills of phonemic awareness, accurate and efficient work identification (fluency), spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension.”

    The legislature allocated more than $114 million to train pre-K to fifth grade teachers and other educators in the science of reading through a professional development tool called the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS). More than 44,000 teachers had completed the training as of June 2024.

    Third graders saw a two-point drop, from 49% to 47%, in reading proficiency from the 2023-24 to 2024-25 school year on literacy assessments. It was the first decline in this measure since LETRS training began. First graders’ results on formative assessments held steady at 70% proficiency and second graders saw a small increase, from 65% to 66%.

    “LETRS was the first step in transforming teacher practice and improving student outcomes,” Pilonieta said. “To continue to make growth in reading, teachers need targeted ongoing support in the form of coaching, for example, to ensure effective implementation of evidence-based literacy instruction.”

    Teachers’ feelings on the training

    Pilonieta was part of a team at UNC-Charlotte and the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC) at UNC-Chapel Hill that studied teachers’ perception of the LETRS training and districts’ implementation of that training. The team also studied teachers’ knowledge of research-backed literacy practices and how they implemented those practices in small-group settings after the training.

    They asked about these experiences through a survey completed by 4,035 teachers across the state from spring 2023 to winter 2024, and 51 hour-long focus groups with 113 participants.

    Requiring training on top of an already stressful job can be a heavy lift, Pilonieta said. LETRS training looked different across districts, the research team found. Some teachers received stipends to complete the training or were compensated with time off, and some were not. Some had opportunities to collaborate with fellow educators during the training; some did not.

    “These differences in support influenced whether teachers felt supported during the training, overwhelmed, or ignored,” Pilonieta said.

    Teachers did perceive the content of the LETRS training to be helpful in some ways and had concerns in others, according to survey respondents.

    Teachers holding various roles found the content valuable in learning about how the brain works, phonics, and comprehension.

    They cited issues, however, with the training’s applicability to varied roles, limited differentiation based on teachers’ background knowledge and experience, redundancy, and a general limited amount of time to engage with the training’s content.

    Varied support from administrators, coaches

    When asking teachers about how implementation worked at their schools, the researchers found that support from administrators and instructional coaches varied widely.

    Teachers reported that classroom visits from administrators with a focus on science of reading occurred infrequently. The main support administrators provided, according to the research, was planning time.

    “Many teachers felt that higher levels of support from coaches would be valuable to help them implement these reading practices,” Pilonieta said.

    Teachers did report shifts in their teaching practice after the training and felt those tweaks had positive outcomes on students.

    The team found other conditions impacted teachers’ implementation: schools’ use of curriculum that aligned to the concepts covered in the training, access to materials and resources, and having sufficient planning time.

    Some improvement in knowledge and practice

    Teachers performed well on assessments after completing the training, but had lower scores on a survey given later by the research team. Pilonieta said this suggests an issue with knowledge retention.

    Teachers scored between 95% to 98% across in the LETRS post-training assessment. But in the research team’s survey, scores ranged from 48% to 78%.

    Teachers with a reading license scored higher on all knowledge areas addressed in LETRS than teachers who did not.

    When the team analyzed teachers’ recorded small-group reading lessons, 73% were considered high-quality. They found consistent use of explicit instruction, which is a key component of the science of reading, as well as evidence-backed strategies related to phonemic awareness and phonics. They found limited implementation of practices on vocabulary and comprehension.

    Among the low-quality lessons, more than half were for students reading below grade level. Some “problematic practices” persisted in 17% of analyzed lessons.

    What’s next?

    The research team formed several recommendations on how to improve reading instruction and reading proficiency.

    They said ongoing professional development through education preparation programs and teacher leaders can help teachers translate knowledge to instructional change. Funding is also needed for instructional coaches to help teachers make that jump.

    Guides differentiated by grade levels would help different teachers with different needs when it comes to implementing evidence-backed strategies. And the state should incentivize teachers to pursue specialized credentials in reading instruction, the researchers said.

    Moving forward, the legislation might need more clarity on mechanisms for sustaining the implementation of the science of reading. The research team suggests a structured evaluation framework that tracks implementation, student impact, and resource distribution to inform the state’s future literacy initiatives.

    This article first appeared on EdNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • Six States Lead Nation in Anti-DEI Legislative Push, New Report Finds

    Six States Lead Nation in Anti-DEI Legislative Push, New Report Finds

    A new policy brief from the University of Southern California reveals that six states—Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Indiana—have emerged as national leaders in efforts to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in higher education, with significant consequences for students and faculty of color.

    The report, “DEI Under Fire: Policy, Politics, and the Future of Campus Diversity,” released by USC’s Black Critical Policy Collective, analyzed legislative trends across all 50 states between August 2024 and July 2025. Researchers developed a composite scoring system based on bills introduced and laws passed, identifying states with the most aggressive anti-DEI activity.

    Texas topped the rankings with a composite score of 16, having introduced 10 bills and passed three laws restricting DEI efforts. Missouri followed with 15 bills introduced, though none passed into law. Tennessee, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Indiana rounded out the top six states, all scoring between 9 and 14 on the composite scale.

    As of July 2025, 14 states have passed a total of 20 anti-DEI laws, up from 12 states with 14 laws when data collection began in December 2024. These laws typically target four main areas: elimination of DEI offices and staff, bans on mandatory diversity training, prohibitions on diversity statements in hiring, and restrictions on identity-based preferences in admissions and employment.

    “Diversity, equity, and inclusion are not peripheral ideals. They are institutional functions—woven into the operational, cultural, and legal architecture of colleges and universities,” wrote Dr. Kendrick B. Davis, series editor for the Critical Policy Collective, in the report’s introduction. “When those functions are restricted or removed, the effects are material.”

    The institutional responses have been swift and substantial. At the University of Texas System, at least 49 DEI-related employees were terminated following the passage of three bills in 2023. The system shut down its Multicultural Engagement Center and Gender & Sexuality Center at UT-Austin and eliminated funding for student identity-based organizations and scholarships for undocumented students.

    In Iowa, following Senate File 2435’s passage in May 2024, the University of Iowa eliminated its Office of Inclusive Education and Strategic Initiatives and laid off 11 DEI-related staff members. The university also removed scholarships specifically aimed at racially minoritized students, redirecting funds to support low-income students more broadly. By October 2024, Iowa’s state universities had reallocated more than $2.1 million from DEI programs.

    Indiana University announced one of the most sweeping academic restructurings in its history, planning to suspend, eliminate, or consolidate at least 43 undergraduate programs, including African American and African Diaspora Studies, Gender Studies, and multiple language programs. The changes follow passage of Senate Bills 202 and 289, which banned DEI offices and prohibited diversity statements in hiring.

    Preliminary enrollment data following the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard—which effectively ended race-conscious admissions—shows declining representation of students of color at several elite institutions. At Harvard Law School, Black student enrollment in 2024 dropped to 19 first-year students, down from 43 the previous year. MIT reported a 1% decrease in the proportion of Hispanic and Black students, while UNC-Chapel Hill experienced a 5% decrease in Black, Indigenous, and people of color students overall.

    “The ongoing attacks on DEI, manifested in policy restrictions forcing institutions to comply with race-evasive policies, have significant implications for racial and ethnic diversity, student access and success, and workforce development,” the report states.

    Research shows faculty diversity benefits all students by fostering critical thinking and better preparing graduates for diverse workforces. However, DEI rollbacks make it significantly more difficult to recruit faculty of color, as institutions are now restricted from considering race in hiring decisions—a limitation reinforced by the Harvard ruling.

    The report’s authors—Mya Haynes, Glenda Palacios Quejada, Shawntae Mitchum, and Alexia Oduro—note that even private institutions like Vanderbilt University have implemented similar changes despite not being subject to state laws, “reflecting broader anxieties within the private sector about maintaining—or being seen to maintain—equity-oriented infrastructure under political scrutiny.”

    Student activism has emerged in response to the restrictions. Iowa State University students organized rallies and petitions opposing the elimination of the DEI office and restructuring of the LGBTQIA+ Center. In Alabama, university professors and students filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s DEI ban, arguing it violates First Amendment rights.

    “What is one of the things that’s sometimes difficult to see is the level of coordination between states,” Davis said in an interview. “Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, and Missouri—they’re not just a random collection. They’re a coordinated collection of states that have made some formal, some informal decisions, but what is clear through the legislation is that they share a common goal in restricting access to anything that is culturally relevant or sensitive to racially and ethnically minoritized groups in this country.” 

    Davis noted that while federal actions have dominated recent headlines, states initiated the anti-DEI movement shortly after 2020.

    “We have to remember the states started this anti-DEI, anti-critical race theory movement shortly after 2020,” he explained. “This has been a long time in the making, and I think the current federal efforts are just complementary to what states had already been doing.” The report aims to help policymakers and practitioners “get through some of the noise” and track the escalating legislative activity across multiple states, Davis said.

    The report recommends that institutions embed DEI principles within broader student success initiatives, leverage private funding where public funding is restricted, and strengthen alliances among students, faculty, staff, and community organizations to advocate for institutional accountability.

    Missouri represents a notable exception in the analysis. Despite introducing 14 bills targeting DEI—more than any state except Texas—none have passed into law. The report attributes this to intense legislative gridlock, ideological conflicts within the Republican majority, and strong opposition from educational institutions and community organizations. However, the 2025 legislative session has seen renewed efforts to advance anti-DEI policies.

    The researchers emphasize that the policy shifts carry particular consequences for Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, who are losing access to culturally affirming resources, mentorship opportunities, and financial aid programs specifically designed to address historical inequities in higher education access.

    “If access is conditional and inclusion retractable, higher education cannot claim to serve the public,” Davis wrote.

    The report represents the third in a series examining how equity is being withdrawn across the education pipeline.

     

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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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  • Some social emotional lessons improve how kids do at school, Yale study finds

    Some social emotional lessons improve how kids do at school, Yale study finds

    Social emotional learning — lessons in soft skills like listening to people you disagree with or calming yourself down before a test — has become a flashpoint in the culture wars. 

    The conservative political group Moms for Liberty opposes SEL, as it is often abbreviated, telling parents that its “goal is to psychologically manipulate students to accept the progressive ideology that supports gender fluidity, sexual preference exploration, and systemic oppression.” Critics say that parents should discuss social and emotional matters at home and that schools should stick to academics. Meanwhile, some advocates on the left say standard SEL classes don’t go far enough and should include such topics as social justice and anti-racism training. 

    While the political battle rages on, academic researchers are marshalling evidence for what high-quality SEL programs actually deliver for students. The latest study, by researchers at Yale University, summarizes 12 years of evidence, from 2008 to 2020, and it finds that 30 different SEL programs, which put themselves through 40 rigorous evaluations involving almost 34,000 students, tended to produce “moderate” academic benefits.

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

    The meta-analysis, published online Oct. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Review of Educational Research, calculated that the grades and test scores of students in SEL classes improved by about 4 percentile points, on average, compared with students who didn’t receive soft-skill instruction. That’s the equivalent of moving from the 50th percentile (in the middle) to the 54th percentile (slightly above average). Reading gains were larger (more than 6 percentile points) than math gains (fewer than 4 percentile points). Longer-duration SEL programs, extending more than four months, produced double the academic gains — more than 8 percentile points. 

    “Social emotional learning interventions are not designed, most of the time, to explicitly improve academic achievement,” said Christina Cipriano, one of the study’s four authors and an associate professor at Yale Medical School’s Child Study Center. “And yet we demonstrated, through our meta-analytic report, that explicit social emotional learning improved academic achievement and it improved both GPA and test scores.”

    Cipriano also directs the Education Collaboratory at Yale, whose mission is to “advance the science of learning and social and emotional development.”

    The academic boost from SEL in this 2025 paper is much smaller than the 11 percentile points documented in an earlier 2011 meta-analysis that summarized research through 2007, when SEL had not yet gained widespread popularity in schools. That has since changed. More than 80 percent of principals of K-12 schools said their schools used an SEL curriculum during the 2023-24 school year, according to a survey by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the RAND Corporation. 

    Related: A research update on social-emotional learning in schools

    The Yale researchers only studied a small subset of the SEL market, programs that subjected themselves to a rigorous evaluation and included academic outcomes. Three-quarters of the 40 studies were randomized-controlled trials, similar to pharmaceutical trials, where schools or teachers were randomly assigned to teach an SEL curriculum. The remaining studies, in which schools or teachers volunteered to participate, still had control groups of students so that researchers could compare the academic gains of students who did not receive SEL instruction. 

    The SEL programs in the Yale study taught a wide range of soft skills, from mindfulness and anger management to resolving conflicts and setting goals. It is unclear which soft skills are driving the academic gains. That’s an area for future research.

    “Developmentally, when we think about what we know about how kids learn, emotional regulation is really the driver,” said Cipriano. “No matter how good that curriculum or that math program or reading curriculum is, if a child is feeling unsafe or anxious or stressed out or frustrated or embarrassed, they’re not available to receive the instruction, however great that teacher might be.”

    Cipriano said that effective programs give students tools to cope with stressful situations. She offered the example of a pop quiz, from the perspective of a student. “You can recognize, I’m feeling nervous, my blood is rushing to my hands or my face, and I can use my strategies of counting to 10, thinking about what I know, and use positive self talk to be able to regulate, to be able to take my test,” she said.

    Related: A cheaper, quicker approach to social-emotional learning?

    The strongest evidence for SEL is in elementary school, where the majority of evaluations have been conducted (two-thirds of the 40 studies). For young students, SEL lessons tend to be short but frequent, for example, 10 minutes a day. There’s less evidence for middle and high school SEL programs because they haven’t been studied as much. Typically, preteens and teens have less frequent but longer sessions, a half hour or even 90 minutes, weekly or monthly. 

    Cipriano said that schools don’t need to spend “hours and hours” on social and emotional instruction in order to see academic benefits. A current trend is to incorporate or embed social and emotional learning within academic instruction, as part of math class, for example. But none of the underlying studies in this paper evaluated whether this was a more effective way to deliver SEL. All of the programs in this study were separate stand-alone SEL lessons. 

    Advice to schools

    Schools are inundated by sales pitches from SEL vendors. Estimates of the market size range wildly, but a half dozen market research firms put it above $2 billion annually. Not all SEL programs are necessarily effective or can be expected to produce the academic gains that the Yale team calculated. 

    Cipriano advises schools not to be taken in by slick marketing. Many of the effective programs have no marketing at all and some are free. Unfortunately, some of these programs have been discontinued or have transformed through ownership changes. But she says school leaders can ask questions about which specific skills the SEL program claims to foster, whether those skills will help the district achieve its goals, such as improving school climate, and whether the program has been externally evaluated. 

    “Districts invest in things all the time that are flashy and pretty, across content areas, not just SEL,” said Cipriano. “It may never have had an external evaluation, but has a really great social media presence and really great marketing.” 

    Cipriano has also built a new website, improvingstudentoutcomes.org, to track the latest research on SEL effectiveness and to help schools identify proven programs.

    Cipriano says parents should be asking questions too. “Parents should be partners in learning,” said Cipriano. “I have four kids, and I want to know what they’re learning about in school.”

    This meta-analysis probably won’t stop the SEL critics who say that these programs force educators to be therapists. Groups like Moms for Liberty, which holds its national summit this week, say teachers should stick to academics. This paper rejects that dichotomy because it suggests that emotions, social interaction and academics are all interlinked. 

    Before criticizing all SEL programs, educators and parents need to consider the evidence.

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

    This story about SEL benefits 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.

    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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  • New Report Finds Low Share of R&D Funds Goes to HBCUs

    New Report Finds Low Share of R&D Funds Goes to HBCUs

    A new report from the Center for American Progress and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund shows that historically Black colleges and universities receive a disproportionately low percentage of federal research and development funding.

    While HBCUs make up roughly 3 percent of all four-year higher ed institutions, they’ve received less than 3 percent of R&D funding since at least 2010, according to the report. In recent years, between 2018 and 2023, they were awarded less than 1 percent of R&D expenditures.

    Some agencies have given HBCUs a relatively high proportion of R&D funding, including the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Agriculture, which has required allotments for land-grant HBCUs. But the two federal agencies that award the most R&D funding annually, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense, have doled out especially low shares of those funds to HBCUs; in 2023, they awarded 0.54 percent and 0.40 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, 17 of the 43 federal agencies that supply research funding didn’t give HBCUs any R&D funds at all that year.

    Sara Partridge, associate director of higher education policy at CAP and co-author of the report, said both Republicans and Democrats have sought to address inequities in R&D funding, but their efforts have been insufficient.

    “In order to support these key drivers of scientific achievement and upward mobility, we need federal policymakers to commit to measurable benchmarks for the share of funds awarded to these institutions,” she said in a press release.

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