Seventy percent of employers nationwidesaid they have high confidence in higher education, according to a poll released Thursdayfrom the American Association of Colleges and Universities and research firm Morning Consult.
Three-quarters of Republican employers expressed high confidence in higher education, followed by 70% of Democrats and 55% of independents. That finding contrasts with other recent polls, which show Democrats viewing the sector more positively than Republicans.
The survey suggests that employers hold colleges in higher esteem than the general public does. Just 42% of adults said they had high confidence in the higher education sector in a poll earlier this year from Gallup and Lumina Foundation.
Dive Insight:
The results from AAC&U and Morning Consult contrast sharply with recent surveys that show the public is continuing to question whether higher education is worth the price. In the new poll, nearly three-quarters of surveyed employers, 73%, said they believe a college degree is “definitely” or “somewhat” worth it.
Meanwhile, a recent NBC News poll found justone-third of registered voters adults agreed that a four-year degree is“worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime.”That’s down from 53% of adults who said the same in 2013.
The results of the new poll suggest employers want college graduates to have a wide range of skills when they enter the workplace. Applying knowledge to the real world was the No. 1 skill desired, with 95% of employers agreeing that ability is “very” or “somewhat” important.
Similar shares of employers also said teamwork, oral and written communication, locating and evaluating information, analyzing and solving complex problems, critical thinking, and ethical judgment and decision-making were important skills.
In addition, employers indicated they want college graduates to have skills related to artificial intelligence.
More than 9 in 10 of the respondents said AI skills are very or somewhat important. A slightly smaller share, 81%, expressed confidence that colleges are helping students develop those skills.
Employers indicated they’d be more likely to hire graduates who had hands-on experiences in college. When considering such experiences, employers were most likely to say completing an internship or apprenticeship, as well as holding a leadership role, would make them more likely to consider hiring a candidate.
Eight in 10 employers said they’d be very or somewhat more likely to hire someone with those experiences.
Around three-quarters of respondents also said they’d be more likely to hire graduates who participated with a community organization, worked with people from different backgrounds, acted as a peer mentor, held either an on- or off-campus job, or undertook research with the help of faculty.
Microcredentials are also becoming more popular with employers, with 81% saying they are somewhat or very valuable when making hiring decisions. Nearly half of employers, 47%, consider them as “evidence of proficiency for a technical skill.”
However, only 22% of employers view them as a substitute for a college degree.
According to a report accompanying the survey, the results also suggest that employers “strongly support conditions that foster open dialogue, diverse perspectives, and students’ freedom to learn.”
Nearly 9 in 10 employers agreed that “all topics should be open for discussion on college campuses.” And a similar share said they would view a degree more favorably if it came “from an institution known for respecting diverse perspectives.”
Additionally, a little more than 8 in 10 said they would have a more positive view of a degree from an institution “that was not subject to government restrictions on what students learn and discuss.”
The survey was administered online in August to a little over 1,000 employers, whom the survey defined as managers or higher at organizations that employ 25 or more workers. Nearly three-quarters were hiring managers, while the remainder were executives.
For the first five years of children’s lives, many families are experiencing child care challenges — which have been at the center of discussions among the NC Task Force on Child Care and Early Education since Gov. Josh Stein established the group in March.
But gaps in child care do not disappear once children start kindergarten. Finding affordable, high-quality child care solutions for school-age children should be part of the state’s continuum of care, advocates and providers told the task force Monday.
“The parents I work with don’t experience child care as a 0 to 5 situation,” said Beth Messersmith, task force member and campaign director of MomsRising’s North Carolina chapter. “They experience it as a 0 to 12 situation, or older.”
Many families need care before and after the school day and during the summer months in order to work and keep students safe and engaged. However, four in five students in North Carolina do not have access to the out-of-school care they need, according to a report from the national Afterschool Alliance.
Students, including young children, are instead spending time unsupervised. About 3% of K-5 students, 11% of middle school students, and 34% of high school students spend an average of 5.7 hours without adult supervision per week, according to the same report.
Providers shared their struggles to serve children despite high demand and the benefits children, families, and businesses see when out-of-school care is accessible. After-school programs face many of the same challenges as child care programs. And some child care programs serving children before kindergarten also serve school-age children when school is out of session.
Erica Simmons, vice president of youth development at YMCA of Catawba Valley, shares her programs’ reach and barriers to that reach. (Liz Bell/EdNC)
Families need care that works with their schedules and engages students in activities that support them academically and socially, said Elizabeth Anderson, executive director of the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs, a nonprofit under the Public School Forum of North Carolina. That requires funding, workforce supports, transportation, and creative partnerships, Anderson and a panel of providers said.
“The more we can create a spectrum of opportunities for birth through grade 12, the more that children and families in our state are going to recognize the positive economic impacts of those investments,” Anderson said.
Report due in December on child care solutions ahead of short session
The governor’s task force will release a report by the end of December with recommendations on how the state should expand access to high-quality, affordable child care. Stein formed the group earlier this year as pandemic-era child care funding ran out and advocates across the state and country called for consistent public investment to meet families’ needs.
The state legislature did not allocate new funding for child care this year and did not pass a new comprehensive budget. Some new funding, though lower than advocates’ and state officials’ requests, was included in budget proposals from Stein’s office and the House and Senate, but those proposals were not ultimately passed.
The main child care legislation that was passed made regulatory changes to loosen staffing requirements and allow providers to serve more children in classrooms with appropriate space and teacher-to-child ratios.
The task force will meet again in February, though a date is not yet set. Ahead of next year’s short session, members on Monday discussed what role the group should play in moving policy solutions forward, including six recommendations in the group’s interim report released in June:
Set a statewide child care subsidy reimbursement rate floor.
Develop approaches to offer non-salary benefits to child care professionals.
Explore partnerships with the University of North Carolina System, N.C. Community Colleges System, and K-12 public school systems to increase access to child care for public employees and students.
Explore subsidized or free child care for child care teachers.
Link existing workforce compensation and support programs for early childhood professionals into a cohesive set of supports.
Explore the creation of a child care endowment to fund child care needs.
As the state faces many funding requests, federal funding uncertainty, and slim tax revenue, members said more legislators need to be aware of the state’s child care crisis and why it’s relevant to the state’s economy and future.
“Maybe we have some more work to do around actually educating and engaging members of the General Assembly to get this on their radar and build more champions,” said Susan Gale Perry, CEO of Child Care Aware of America and task force member.
Funding to address issues of access, quality, and affordability is needed, members said, and considering existing funding streams rather than new ones might be more politically feasible in the short term.
“Certain proposals about, ‘Let’s just go raise taxes,’ are probably not going to be something that is going to get across the aisle agreement, but it does create the opportunity to looking at areas where tax rates are already set, or certain revenue streams are already existing,” said Mary Elizabeth Wilson, task force member and the Department of Commerce’s chief of staff and general counsel.
Mary Elizabeth Wilson, task force member and the Department of Commerce’s chief of staff and general counsel, shares considerations for 2026. (Liz Bell/EdNC)
Sen. Jim Burgin, R-Harnett, who chairs the task force along with Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt, said he and other legislators will be introducing legislation that would double the tax rates on sports gambling.
“If it’s for the children, everybody needs to support it,” Burgin said. “And I don’t believe in gambling … I’m doing it because we need the money.”
Child care fixes would also increase tax revenue, said Erica Palmer-Smith, executive director of nonprofit NC Child and task force member.
“(The generated revenue) would more than cover the overall cost that we would need to put in in the long run to fix the child care system,” Smith said.
‘The gap between 3 and 6 and between May and August’
Many families either do not have an after-school program nearby, do not have transportation to programs, or cannot afford programs, Anderson said in a presentation to the group Monday.
In 2025, 188,295 children participated in after-school programs, but 664,362 additional children would have if they had access, according to the presentation.
Programs are funded through a mix of private grant funding, public funding, and parent tuition. The two biggest funding sources are from the federal government: the Child Care Development Fund, which funds child care subsidies for young children and school-age children up through 12 years old, and 21st Century Community Learning Centers through the Department of Public Instruction.
After-school programs exist in all different types of facilities — community-based organizations, schools, faith-based organizations, and child care centers and home-based programs. Anderson described these programs as “folks stepping in to fill the gap between 3 and 6 and between May and August.”
Students benefit when they access out-of-school programs, she said. In the case of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, 72% improved their attendance in the 2023-24 school year, 75% of students had decreased suspensions, and 90% improved their overall engagement in school.
Elizabeth Anderson, executive director of the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs, provides an overview of the demand for school-age care across the state. (Liz Bell/EdNC)
Anderson said the skills employers are seeking align with those that children are gaining from after-school programs, like problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration, communication, and leadership.
“We know that our after-school programs are an important place where children get to interact with one another and interact with mentors and positive adult figures that help them build these skills, which ultimately help them to become more successful, independent earners in the future,” she said.
Like child care programs in the early years, after-school programs not only help children, but allow parents to work. In a survey from the national report, 91% of parents said these programs help them be able to keep their job.
Families face particular challenges in the summer months. A national survey from LendingTree of more than 600 parents found this year that 66% of parents who seek summer care struggle to afford it, and 62% had taken on debt to pay for summer care.
Anderson said more conversations on child care should extend beyond the early childhood period. She pointed to research from the University of California that found educational and occupational attainment improvements were higher when children had access to both early care and education and out-of-school care once they entered school.
“It is something that parents need and want,” she said. “I think that we talk a lot about what happens for children birth to 5, but a child does not turn 5 years old and suddenly not need opportunity.”
Subsidy funding and reform would help, experts say
North Carolina is one of 23 states that does not have state level funding for after-school care, Anderson said. Anderson and panelists said funding is needed to retain teachers, increase access, provide transportation, and help families afford care.
Jon Williams, manager of the statewide School-Age Initiative at the Southwestern Child Development Commission, is focused on increasing the quality of out-of-school care across the state. He said the transient nature of school-age professionals disrupts consistency for children, families, and programs. A burdensome orientation process creates challenges for owners and directors constantly onboarding new people.
Williams said business training for after-school program directors would be helpful. Many have educational backgrounds and lack the business expertise to be successful in a challenging environment.
“They don’t have that financial background that is needed to run a business, and that creates a lot of financial instability,” Williams said. “If they don’t know how to orient or get new staffing in, that creates a huge problem.”
Jon Williams, manager of the NC School Age Initiative at the Southwestern Child Development Commission, says providers need funding and business training to improve the stability and quality of school-age care. (Liz Bell/EdNC)
A policy change that several panelists and task force members raised as a need is to align the eligibility requirements for child care subsidies across age groups. Right now, families who earn less than 200% of the federal poverty line are eligible for child care subsidies when their children are 5 years old or younger. But for school-age children, the threshold lowers: families must make less than 133% of the poverty line.
That disrupts care for families whose children need after-school care going to kindergarten or for families with multiple children of different ages who would prefer to send all of their children to one program.
A statewide subsidy floor, which is one of the policy priorities of the task force, would also help school-age care providers, said Erica Simmons, vice president of youth development at YMCA of Catawba Valley.
The floor would raise the per-child rate that child care programs receive to the state’s average rate. In cases where programs receive more than the average rate, they would continue receiving the same amount.
“(The floor) would make it a little more equitable,” Simmons said.
She said it costs similar amounts to provide care at her licensed programs in rural and urban communities. But the subsidy rates are much lower in rural areas.
“We have the same requirements for staff, we have the same programming requirements,” she said. “There’s no difference in the amount that we spend per program as an organization. However, there is a very big difference in what we are able to capture for subsidy. So there’s a big funding gap.”
Williams said there was a gap of $8,000 for one program just last month between the cost of services and the subsidy reimbursement. Annually, some programs in her network accrue around $100,000 in funding gaps for caring for children through subsidy.
Burgin asks a question of after-school program experts. (Liz Bell/EdNC)
Programs also receive subsidy payments retroactively. Changing the timing of funding could relieve some of the financial burden from programs, Williams said.
“I get paid via subsidy after I provide the services, and that’s a huge problem if I’m already in the red,” he said.
“… When we think about the mental health of our administration and our directors, that just adds fuel to the flame,” Williams said. “And it creates another gap, a 30-day gap, where I can say, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ and then that care drops off. So we have to rethink how we get that money out in the state. We have to rethink the rates at which they are given.”
Panelists also shared that liability insurance rates have risen drastically. Williams said her program’s rates have increased by 44% over the last year, a trend among child care providers overall. A 2024 survey from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) found 80% of respondents saw their liability insurance costs increase in the last year and 62% reported difficulty finding or affording it.
Updates on care for public employees, workforce supports, and funding models
The task force has been split up into three subgroups which have been studying how to move toward the group’s six recommendations.
Samantha Cole, child care business liaison at the Department of Commerce, said a subgroup focusing on expanding child care access for public employees has looked at models across K-12, community college, and UNC-system schools to create child care solutions.
“We really see that there have been a lot of successes that have come about in these three examples and others, but they’re hyperlocalized,” Cole said. More external communication is needed for other campuses to understand how and why peer institutions are offering child care.
Madhu Vulimiri, senior advisor for health and families policy for Stein’s office, said the subgroup focused on workforce compensation and supports has been studying strategies to ensure early childhood teachers have access to non-salary benefits like health insurance.
They have studied the possibility of adding early childhood teachers as an eligible population for the State Health Plan, subsidizing ACA marketplace premiums through state dollars, and educating early childhood providers about the recently launched Carolina Health Works, which offers options for groups of small businesses.
The group is also studying how existing workforce supports like TEACH scholarships, child care academies, and apprenticeships could be more seamlessly tied together to strengthen the early childhood profession. They have requested that the Hunt Institute create a map to demonstrate what supports are available in what counties.
Samantha Cole, child care business liaison at the Department of Commerce, says some schools and colleges across the educational continuum have built models to provide child care specific to their local needs and resources. (Liz Bell/EdNC)
“That will help us see more holistically, where do we have resources and where are there gaps, and help us hopefully target future resources that we might have to expand those statewide,” Vulimiri said.
The third group, which is focused on financing, has been studying several states’ approaches to endowments and other funding mechanisms for child care, including Nebraska, Connecticut, Arizona, Montana, and Washington, D.C. They aim to develop a paper that weighs the options for North Carolina and analyses costs and benefits of each.
Many high school seniors are now focusing on what they will do once they graduate – or how they don’t at all know what is to come.
Families trying to guide and support these students at the juncture of a major life transition likely also feel nervous about the open-ended possibilities, from starting at a standard four-year college to not attending college at all.
Here are four tips to help make deciding what comes after high school a little easier for everyone involved:
1. Shadow someone with a job you might want
I have worked with many college students who are interested in a particular career path, but are not familiar with the job’s day-to-day workings.
A parent, teacher or another adult in this student’s life could connect them with someone they shadow at work, even for a day, so the student can better understand what the job entails.
High school students may also find that interviewing someone who works in a particular field is another helpful way to narrow down career path options, or finalize their college decisions.
Full-time students can pay anywhere from about US$4,000 for in-state tuition at a public state school per semester to just shy of $50,000 per semester at a private college or university. The average annual cost of tuition alone at a public college or university in 2025 is $10,340, while the average cost of a private school is $39,307.
Tuition continues to rise, though the rate of growth has slowed in the past few years.
About 56% of 2024 college graduates had taken out loans to pay for college.
Concerns about affording college often come up with clients who are deciding on whether or not to get a degree. Research has shown that financial stress and debt load are leading to an increase in students dropping out of college.
It can be helpful for some students to look at tuition costs and project what their monthly student loan payments would be like after graduation, given the expected salary range in particular careers. Financial planning could also help students consider the benefits and drawbacks of public, private, community colleges or vocational schools.
Even with planning, there is no guarantee that students will be able to get a job in their desired field, or quickly earn what they hope to make. No matter how prepared students might be, they should recognize that there are still factors outside their control.
3. Normalize other kinds of schools
I have found that some students feel they should go to a four-year college right after they graduate because it is what their families expect. Some students and parents see a four-year college as more prestigious than a two-year program, and believe it is more valuable in terms of long-term career growth.
That isn’t the right fit for everyone, though.
Enrollment at trade-focused schools increased almost 20% from the spring of 2020 through 2025, and now comprises 19.4% of public two-year college enrollment.
Going to a trade school or seeking a two-year associate’s degree can put students on a direct path to get a job in a technical area, such as becoming a registered nurse or electrician.
But there are also reasons for students to think carefully about trade schools.
Still, it is important for students to consider which path is personally best for them.
Research has shown that job satisfaction has a positive impact on mental health, and having a longer history with a career field leads to higher levels of job satisfaction.
4. Consider a gap year before shutting down the idea
One strategy that high school graduates have used in recent years is taking a year off between high school and college in order to better determine what is the right fit for a student. Approximately 2% to 3% of high school graduates take a gap year – typically before going on to enroll in college.
Some young people may travel during a gap year, volunteer, or get a job in their hometown.
Whatever the reason students take gap years, I have seen that the time off can be beneficial in certain situations. Taking a year off before starting college has also been shown to lead to better academic performance in college.
by Maxwell Fjeld, The Hechinger Report December 1, 2025
Earning an associate degree alongside my high school diploma was an ambitious goal that turned into a positive high school experience for me. By taking on the responsibilities of a college student, I further prepared myself for life after high school.
I needed to plan out my own days. I needed to keep myself on task. I needed to learn how to monitor and juggle due dates, lecture times and exams while ensuring that my extracurricular activities did not create conflicts.
All of this was life-changing for a rural Minnesota high school student. Dual enrollment through Minnesota’s PSEO program saved me time and money and helped me explore my interests and narrow my focus to business management. After three years of earning dual credits as a high school student, I graduated from community college and was the student speaker at the commencement earlier this year in May — one month before graduating from high school.
As a student earning college credits while still in high school, I gained exposure to different career fields and developed a passion for civic engagement. At the beginning of my senior year, while taking courses at the local community and technical college, I was elected to serve as that school’s first cross-campus student body president.
While most states have dual-enrollment programs, Minnesota’s support for its PSEO students stands out. As policymakers consider legislative and funding initiatives to strengthen dual enrollment in other states, I believe that three features of our program could provide a blueprint for states that want to do more.
First, the college credits I earned are transferable and meet degree requirements.
Second, the PSEO program permitted me to take enough credits each semester to earn my associate degree. While the number of dual-enrollment credits high school students can earn varies by state and program, when strict limitations are set on those numbers, the program can become a barrier to higher education instead of an alternate pathway.
Third, Minnesota’s PSEO program limits the cost burden placed on students. With rising costs and logistical challenges to pursuing higher education credentials, the head start that students can create for themselves via loosened restrictions on dual-enrollment credits can make a real financial impact, especially for students like me from small towns.
Dual-enrollment costs vary significantly from state to state, with some programs charging for tuition, fees, textbooks and other college costs.In Minnesota, those costs are covered by the Department of Education. In addition, if families meet income requirements, the expenses incurred by students for education-related transportation are also covered.
If I did not have state support, I would not have been able to participate in the program. Financial support is a crucial component to being a successful dual-enrollment student. When the barrier of cost is removed, American families benefit, especially students from low-income, rural and farming backgrounds.
Early exposure to college helped me choose my major by taking college classes to experiment — for free. When I first started, I was interested in computer science as a major. After taking a computer science class and then an economics class the following semester, I chose business as my major.
The ability to explore different fields of study was cost-saving and game-changing for me and is an opportunity that could be just as beneficial for other students.
Targeted investments in programs like this have benefited many students, including my father in the 1990s. His dual-enrollment experience allowed him to get a head start on his education and gain valuable life skills at a young age and is a great example of dual enrollment’s potential generational impact.
When dual-enrollment students receive guidance and support, it can be transformational. Early exposure to college introduced me to college-level opportunities. As student government president, I went to Washington, D.C., to attend a national student summit. I was able to meet with congressional office staffers and advocate for today’s students and for federal investment in dual-enrollment programs, explaining my story and raising awareness.
The daily life of high school is draining for some and can be devastating for others. I had many friends who came to believe that the bullying, peer-pressure and culture they experienced in high school would continue in college, so they deemed higher education “not worth it.”
Through dual enrollment, I saw the difference in culture; students who face burnout from daily high school life can refocus and feel good about their futures again.
Congress can help state legislatures by establishing strong dual-enrollment programs nationwide. With adequate government support, dual-enrollment programs can help students from all walks of life and increase college graduation rates. If all states offer access to the same opportunities that I had in high school, our next generation will be better prepared for the workforce and more successful.
Maxwell Fjeld is pursuing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Carlson School of Management after earning an associate degree upon high school graduation through dual enrollment. He is also a student ambassador fellow at Today’s Students Coalition.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/student-voice-i-earned-my-associate-degree-while-still-in-high-school-and-it-changed-my-life/”>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&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
There’s been endless discussion about what students do with generative AI tools, and what constitutes legitimate use of AI in assessment, but as the technology continues to improve there’s a whole conversation to be had about what educators do with AI tools.
We’re using the term “educators” to encompass both the academics leading modules and programmes and the professionals who support, enable and contribute to learning and teaching and student support.
Realising the potential of the technologies that an institution invests in to support student success requires educators to be willing and able to deploy it in ways that are appropriate for their context. It requires them to be active and creative users of that technology, not simply following a process or showing compliance with a policy.
So it was a bit worrying when in the course of exploring what effective preparation for digital learning futures could look like for our Capability for change report last year, it was noticeable how concerned digital and education leaders were about the variable digital capabilities of their staff.
Where technology meets pedagogy
Inevitably, when it comes to AI, some HE staff are enthusiastic early adopters and innovators; others are more cautious or less confident – and some are highly critical and/or just want it to go away. Some of this is about personal orientation towards particular technologies – there is a lively and important critical debate about how society comes into a relationship with AI technology and the implications for, well, the future of humanity.
Some of it is about the realities of the pressures that educators are under, and the lack of available time and headspace to engage with developmental activity. As one education leader put it:
Sometimes staff, they know that they need to change what they’re doing, but they get caught in the academic cycle. So every year it’s back to teaching again, really, really large groups of students; they haven’t had the time to go and think about how to do things differently.
But there’s also an institutional strategic challenge here about situating AI within the pedagogic environment – recognising that students will not only be using it habitually in their work and learning, but that they will expect to graduate with a level of competence in it in anticipation of using AI in the workplace. There’s an efficiency question about how using AI can reprofile educator working patterns and workflows. Even if the prospect of “freeing up” lots of time might feel a bit remote right now, educators are clearly going to be using AI in interesting ways to make some of their work a bit more efficient, to surface insight from large datasets that might not otherwise be accessible, or as a co-creator to help enhance their thinking and practice.
In the context of learning and teaching, educators need to be ready to go beyond asking “how do the tools work and what can I do with them?” and be prepared to ask and answer a larger question: “what does it mean for academic quality and pedagogy when I do?”
As Tom Chatfield has persuasively argued in his recent white paper on AI and the future of pedagogy, AI needs to have a clear educative purpose when it is deployed in learning and teaching, and should be about actively enhancing pedagogy. Reaching this halcyon state requires educators who are not only competent in the technical use of the tools that are available but prepared to work creatively to embed those tools to achieve particular learning objectives within the wider framework and structures of their academic discipline. Expertise of this nature is not cheaply won – it takes time and resource to think, experiment, test, and refine.
Educators have the power – and responsibility – to work out how best to harness AI in learning and teaching in their disciplines, but education leaders need to create the right environment for innovation to flourish. As one leader put it:
How do we create an environment where we’re allowing people to feel like they are the arbiters of their own day to day, that they’ve got more time, that they’re able to do the things that they want to do?…So that’s really an excitement for me. I think there’s real opportunity in digital to enable those things.
Introducing “Educating the AI generation”
For our new project “Educating the AI generation” we want to explore how institutions are developing educator AI literacy and practice – what frameworks, interventions, and provisions are helpful and effective, and where the barriers and challenges lie. What sort of environment helps educators to develop not just the capability, but also the motivation and opportunity to become skilled and critical users of AI in learning and teaching? And what does that teach us about how the role of educators might change as the higher education learning environment evolves?
At the discussion session Rachel co-hosted alongside Kortext advisor Janice Kay at the Festival of Higher Education earlier this month there was a strong sense among attendees that educating the AI generation requires universities to take action on multiple fronts simultaneously if they are to keep up with the pace of change in AI technology.
Achieving this kind of agility means making space for risk-taking, and moving away from compliance-focused language to a more collaborative and exploratory approach, including with students, who are equally finding their feet with AI. For leaders, that could mean offering both reassurance that this approach is welcomed, and fostering spaces in which it can be deployed.
In a time of such fast-paced change, staying grounded in concepts of what it means to be a professional educator can help manage the potential sense of threat from AI in learning and teaching. Discussions focused on the “how” of effective use of AI, and the ways it can support student learning and educator practice, are always grounded in core knowledge of pedagogy and education.
On AI in assessment, it was instructive to hear student participants share a desire to be able to demonstrate learning and skills above and beyond what is captured in traditional assessment, and find different, authentic ways to engage with knowledge. Assessment is always a bit of a flashpoint in pedagogy, especially in constructing students’ understanding of their learning, and there is an open question on how AI technology can support educators in assessment design and execution. More prosaically, the risks to traditional assessment from large language models indicate that staff may need to spend proportionally more of their time on managing assessment going forward.
Participants drew upon the experiences of the Covid pivot to emergency remote teaching and taking the best lessons from trialling new ways of learning and teaching as a useful reminder that the sector can pivot quickly – and well – when required. Yet the feeling that AI is often something of a “talking point” rather than an “action point” led some to suggest that there may not yet be a sufficiently pressing sense of urgency to kickstart change in practice.
What is clear about the present moment is that the sector will make the most progress on these questions when there is sharing of thinking and practice and co-development of approaches. Over the next six months we’ll be building up our insight and we’d love to hear your views on what works to support educator development of AI in pedagogy. We’re not expecting any silver bullets, but if you have an example of practice to share, please get in touch.
This article is published in association with Kortext. Join Debbie, Rachel and a host of other speakers at Kortext LIVE on Wednesday 11 February in London, where we’ll be discussing some of our findings – find out more and book your place here.
From New York to Jakarta, the scene is the same: Shelves overflowing with cheap, ultra-processed snacks and sugary drinks have become the new normal for millions of children. As a result, for the first time in history, more children are obese than underweight.
UNICEF’s new Feeding Profit report explains why: Across the globe, cheap and intensely marketed ultra-processed foods dominate what families are able to put on the table, while nutritious options remain out of reach.
Across the world, one in 20 children under five and one in five children and adolescents aged five to 19 are overweight. The number of overweight children and teens in 2000 almost doubled by 2022, with South Asia experiencing an increase of almost 500%. In East Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, the increase was at least 10%.
Ultra-processed foods and beverages, defined as industrially formulated, are composed primarily of chemically-modified substances extracted from foods, together with additives and preservatives to enhance taste, texture and appearance as well as shelf life.
These foods — which are often cheaper, nutrient poor and higher in sugar, unhealthy fats and salt — are now more prevalent than traditional, nutritious foods in children’s diets.
Today, children’s paths to healthy eating are shaped less by personal choice than by the food environments that surround them. Those are the places where and conditions under which people make decisions about what to eat. They connect a person’s daily life with the broader food system around them, and are shaped by physical, political, economic and cultural factors that help determine what foods are available, affordable, appealing and regularly eaten.
Such environments are steering children toward ultra-processed, calorie-dense options, even when healthier foods are available.
Around the world, countries are beginning to push back. In Mexico, where nearly four million children aged 4-10 are obese, the government took a bold step in March 2025. It banned the sale of ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks in schools.
The new rules go beyond restriction: Schools must offer fresh, regional foods such as fruits, vegetables and seeds, promote water as the default beverage, and establish health education programs. The policy also calls for regular health monitoring, mandatory fortification of wheat and corn flours, and more opportunities for physical activity, with penalties for schools that fail to comply.
Taking steps to slim down our diets
In September 2025, Malaysia’s Ministry of Education followed similar steps. It now prohibits 12 categories of ultra-processed foods and drinks in school canteens, from instant noodles and skewered snacks to frozen desserts and candy.
But even as countries rewrite their food policies, millions of families still face difficult choices at the market.
Shauna Downs, associate professor of food policy and public health nutrition at Rutgers University, has seen firsthand how hunger and obesity can coexist within the same communities in her research on informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya.
“People are able to find nutrient-rich foods, like leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables, and animal-source foods, but they’re often expensive, and what they can get that’s cheaper is things like mandazi [fried dough], which provide energy, and they taste good, but they’re not getting the nutrients they need,” she said.
Families that want to buy the nutrient-rich foods are forced into heartbreaking choices, Downs said.
“So now they’re making a decision between ‘Am I gonna buy this food from the market, which my family needs, or am I gonna pay for my child to go to school?’” she said.
Looking at food environments
By spotlighting the food environment, consumers and researchers alike can move past the tired “eat less, move more” narrative to fight childhood obesity and ask a better question: Why wasn’t the healthy plate the obvious, easy and most affordable choice in the first place?
Long before ultra-processed foods flooded grocery shelves, they quietly took over another key part of children’s lives: school cafeterias. Back in 1981, the Reagan administration cut US$1.5 billion in U.S. school food funding, pushing public institutions to rely on convenience over nutrition.
Pamela Koch, associate professor of nutrition and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, said that one of the things cut was for funding for schools upgrade their kitchens.
“That was the same time as the food supply was becoming more and more [saturated] with highly-processed food, and a lot of food companies realized, ‘Wait, we could have a market selling to schools. Schools don’t have money to buy supplies’,” Koch said.
Companies began offering deals: Sign a long-term contract and receive a free convection oven to reheat ultra-processed foods. For schools facing budget cuts and limited staffing, the decision was simple. The cost of that convenience would echo for decades.
Let’s start with school meals.
The nonprofit Global Child Nutrition Foundation, highlights school meals as an essential lever for transforming food systems: Create demand for nutritious foods, improve the livelihoods of those working in the food system and promote climate-smart foods. However, the cost of scaling up national programs depends on the strength of supply chains, underlying food markets, logistics and procurement models.
Countries that depend on imported food, already challenged by infrastructure and expensive trading costs, will face additional challenges in delivering healthy school meals.
In much of the world, climate stress and weak infrastructure are making nutritious food both more difficult to grow and more expensive to purchase.
Small-scale farmers, sheep and cattle farmers, forest keepers and fishers — known collectively as smallholder farmers — grow much of the food in low-income countries. They face worsening yields due to climate change, land degradation and lack of access to the technology and resources that support sustainable food production.
At the same time perishable foods are becoming more expensive because the global supply chain — how food gets shipped from a farm in one country through distribution networks to store shelves in another country — is increasingly threatened by political tension, the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
Durability over nutrition
Kate Schneider, assistant professor of sustainable food systems at Arizona State University, said that smallholder farmers grow food as their livelihood. “They’re not able to grow enough food, which is partly a story of climate change,” Schneider said. “Multiple generations now have been farming … year after year on the same land, but without external inputs –– fertilizers and modern, high-yielding seeds –– they are resulting in very low yields.”
Even when fresh fruits and vegetables are available, logistical barriers make it easier to sell ultra-processed foods. Fresh produce is heavy, vulnerable to spoilage and expensive to move, especially in countries with poor transport networks.
“When we’re thinking about fresh items, they’re perishable, and they need a cold chain,” Schneider said. “You’re paying, when you buy an apple, for the three that also rotted.”
Meanwhile, ultra-processed products like soda avoid this problem entirely: “It’s cheaper for them to have a ton of different bottling plants around countries than to distribute long distances,” Schneider said.
Connecting sustainability of diets and the environment
The EAT-Lancet Commission 2.0, a scientific body redefining healthy and sustainable diets, offers a different view: The ultra-processed foods fuelling obesity are also pushing food systems beyond climate and biodiversity limits.
The planetary health diet suggests a plant-rich diet that consists of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and beans, with only moderate or small amounts of fish, dairy and meat.
To build healthier and more just food systems, experts also recommend a whole list of other things: make nutritious diets more accessible and affordable; protect traditional diets; promote sustainable farming and ecosystems; reduce food waste.
And all of this should be done with the participation of diverse sectors of the society.
The responsibility of transforming food systems falls not only on governments but also on donors and financial partners, development and humanitarian organizations, academic institutions and civil society. The stakes are high, but so is the potential to change. With bold, coordinated action, the next generation of children can be nourished by healthy food, while building food systems that sustain both people and the planet.
Questions to consider:
1. How is obesity connected to the environment?
2. What are some governments doing to try to tackle the obesity crisis?
3. What changes could you make to your diet to make it healthier?
LEWISTOWN — Slaughterhouses and butchers used to be scattered throughout the United States, numbering about 10,000 in 1967.
Only about 3,000 remain and about 85% of the American meatpacking industry is controlled by four companies: JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill and Smithfield. The other 15% of that market share is held in part by small and very small meat producers scattered across the country, including some in Montana.
This is true for much of the agricultural industry, and many small businesses have disappeared as corporate America has exerted its will on farmers and ranchers. About 70% of the consumer’s dollar went to cattle producers in 1970, with the other 30% going to processors and retailers. Cattle producers now get about 30% of the consumer’s dollar, according to Farm Action.
Additionally, about 98% of America’s beef is processed in just over 50 plants. Beef processing co-ops have been created around the state in an effort to help give beef producers more options, but there’s another problem too — employees.
That’s the place some educators in Montana are looking to step in. Fergus High School in Lewistown, for example, has a robust agricultural education program. It’s also part of the Central Montana Career and Technology Education Academy, a public charter school that was set up this year to connect students with skills and knowledge needed to work in agriculture.
‘A dying art’
Logan Turner, one the teachers at Fergus High School, put it pointedly.
“Kids aren’t really getting into it,” he said. “Cutting meat is kind of a dying art.”
His goal has been, in part, to help change that trend. The technical academy seeks to bridge a gap of agricultural knowledge. Beyond meat cutting, classes at the school include farm business management, fabrication and science classes geared toward teaching about soil health among others.
Turner grew up on his family’s farm outside Missoula and quickly decided he wanted to be a teacher. There’s an urgency for him too, with worries, among them a feeling no one knows where their food comes from and the world’s growing population.
“We’ve always been faced with this big issue as agriculturalists,” Turner said. “2050 is right around the corner, and there’s going to be two billion more people on the face of the planet, and how are we going to feed them all? I think it all starts with education and understanding … and so I felt like being an educator probably was the best way for me to contribute.”
Only about three percent of the food Montanans eat is produced in the state. There are options for eating local food, but they can sometimes be hard to find.
Having kids learn about these could also help them enter the workforce with more ideas about what they want to do, which is one of the goals of the program. Orin Johnson, the Central Montana CTE Academy director, said they also want to get students as close as possible to certification in a variety of careers.
“Every kid doesn’t learn the same way,” Johnson said. “And some really do strive and need to be hands on, and it’s about finding a way to create opportunities that they can be hands on.”
Students at the school have shown interest and it’s included partnerships with Future Farmers of America and the Montana Farmers Union, which gave the meat processing program two grants totaling about $13,000 over the summer.
“We do a lot of meat processing at my house because my dad loves hunting, and so we do a lot of wild game,” said Shyanne Ricks, a student at the school who’s gone through the program. “And so doing the meats class really helps with seeing the whole process, not just wild game.”
Ricks, along with Tori Rindal, a freshman at the school, and the other Lewistown agricultural education teacher — Jared Long — went to the Montana Farmers Union Annual convention and spoke about the program.
Rindal said she’s hoping to take the meats class next year. Long pointed out agricultural education is broad and students can take many different paths.
The program offers five pathways: welding, natural resource and conservation, meat processing, animal science and agricultural mechanics. There’s a variety of classes within those, both Long and Turner explained.
“The common misconception is that it’s just cows and plows,” Long said. “So that’s really our job, we feel like, is to open doors to kids that they might never have.”
Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: [email protected].
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PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 13, 2025 — A new poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression finds that a record number of Americans now believe that freedom of speech in the country is headed in the wrong direction.
The quarterly National Speech Index tracks changing attitudes toward free speech among the American public over time. Since its inception in January 2024, the NSI has asked respondents, “When it comes to whether people are able to freely express their views do you think things in America are heading in the RIGHT or WRONG direction?”
A staggering 74% of Americans in the October edition of the NSI responded that things are headed in the wrong direction for free speech, compared to only 26% who believe things are headed in the right direction. This represents a 10-point jump since the previous July survey.
Notably, drops in confidence across all political parties contributed to the record-levels of pessimism. From July of this year, Democrats who think things are heading in the right direction fell from 17% to 11%, Independents fell from 31% to 19%, and Republicans fell from 69% to 55%.
“In the last three months, America watched as Charlie Kirk was murdered for simply debating on a college campus, followed immediately by a wave of censorship of those who opposed his views,” said FIRE Research Fellow & Polling Manager Nathan Honeycutt. “It’s no surprise that a record number of Americans of all parties now think that it’s a dire time for free speech in America.”
To test support for academic freedom in the aftermath of the Kirk shooting, the October NSI also asked respondents about four politically charged — but constitutionally protected — remarks made by a professor on social media following the shooting. For each statement, majorities of Americans said the professor should not be fired. But their level of support varied by the statement, and substantial minorities in each case reported that the professor “probably” or “definitely” should be fired.
45% say a professor who posted “It’s O.K. to punch a Nazi” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.
37% say a professor who posted “These fascist Bible-thumpers want to drag us back to the Dark Ages” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.
24% say a professor who posted “Our colleges and universities are progressive indoctrination centers” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.
14% say that a professor who posted “We are going to make America great again” should probably or definitely be fired from their job.
“Americans were most divided on the statement supporting political violence, but it’s heartening that most Americans correctly backed academic freedom,” said FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “On the other hand, it’s deeply concerning that we intentionally included some rather tame political statements — including the winning slogan of the last presidential election — and vocal minorities still called for the professor’s firing.”
Overall, Americans view political violence as a problem across the ideological spectrum, with only modest differences in responses when asked about different ideologies. 57% of respondents said they agreed at least somewhat with the statement “Political violence is a problem among progressives.” But 56% said the same of conservatives, and 58% said they agreed at least somewhat that political violence was a problem across all political groups.
“Americans seem to recognize that political violence isn’t a partisan problem — it’s a national one,” said Honeycutt. “Our polling suggests that the public is less interested in pointing fingers and more interested in fixing the toxic culture of hostility in our politics.”
FIRE also asked for the first time several questions about “jawboning,” the unconstitutional practice in which the government censors by pressuring private actors to silence speech. Around half of Americans said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about the government pressuring social media companies (53%), video platforms (50%), or private broadcast companies (52%) to remove content based on the ideology expressed.
Slightly less, 46%, said they were very or extremely concerned about the federal government pressuring banks to disaffiliate with groups or individuals because of their viewpoints, a practice also known as “debanking.” 35% said they were very or extremely concerned about the federal government pressuring tech companies to remove misinformation from internet search results.
“Americans are deeply concerned about jawboning — and they’re right to be,” said FIRE Legislative Director Carolyn Iodice. “Both parties have been guilty in recent years of using government pressure to silence speech. This isn’t a partisan issue; it’s a constitutional one.”
The National Speech Index is a quarterly poll designed by FIRE and conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab to capture Americans’ views on freedom of speech and the First Amendment, and to track how Americans’ views change over time. The October 2025 National Speech Index sampled 1,000 Americans and was conducted from October 20 to 28. The survey’s margin of error is +/- 3.0%.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.
The Polarization Research Lab (PRL) is a nonpartisan collaboration between faculty at Dartmouth College, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. Its mission is to monitor and understand the causes and consequences of partisan animosity, support for democratic norm violations, and support for partisan violence in the American Public. With open and transparent data, it provides an objective assessment of the health of American democracy.
CONTACT:
Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]
COLUMBIA — South Carolina high schools posted their highest graduation rate in a decade, but a quarter of students still aren’t ready for college or the workforce, according to state report card data released Monday.
Generally, South Carolina’s schools improved compared to last year, according to the statewide data that gauges how well schools perform based on test scores, classroom surveys and student growth, among other metrics. Education officials applauded a 10-year high in the number of students graduating on time — meaning they graduated four years after entering ninth grade — while saying they would continue pushing for programs to improve how well those students were prepared for life after high school.
“We have to make sure that our diplomas are worth more than the piece of paper that they are written on,” said state Superintendent Ellen Weaver.
Overall, 270 schools rated “excellent” this year, an increase from 232 last year. The bottom tier of “unsatisfactory” decreased from 49 to 31, and “below average” schools dropped from 186 to 145.
Any time the number of schools in the lowest tier shrinks, that’s good news, since it means children across the state are getting a better education, said Patrick Kelly, a lobbyist with the Palmetto State Teachers Association.
“There’s encouraging information here,” Kelly said of the report cards.
Officials from the state Department of Education and the independent Education Oversight Committee, which is tasked by state law with grading schools, announced the results at Annie Burnside Elementary School in Columbia, which jumped two tiers this year, from “average” to “excellent.”
At the Richland District One school, 83% of the 306 students live in poverty. The school’s big rating boost was due to significant student improvement, as shown by their test scores, and results on a survey about the school’s general environment, according to its report card.
“Our academic gains are no coincidence,” said Principal Janet Campbell. “They are the result of setting measurable goals, challenging our students to reach them and supporting them along the way.”
Graduation rates and readiness
This year, 87% of high schoolers graduated on time, up from 85% last year. That’s worth celebrating, Kelly said.
“Our goal should be for every student in South Carolina who has the ability to earn a high school diploma,” he said.
Three-quarters of students were ready for either college or a career after graduation, a gain of 3 percentage points, according to the state data. Less than a third were ready for both.
Although the gap between students who are graduating and those who are prepared for what comes next continues to shrink slightly, state officials remain concerned about it, Weaver said.
“At the end of the day, we want our students, when they leave a South Carolina high school, to know that that diploma that they carry is a diploma of value,” Weaver said. “This is a diploma that is going to ensure that they are ready to go onto whatever post-secondary success looks like for them.”
All 11th graders in the state take a test assessing skills commonly needed for jobs, divided into four areas: math, reading, understanding data and “soft skills,” which include aspects of a job such as dressing professionally and working well with others. Results are graded from 1 to 5, with higher scores suggesting students are ready to pursue more careers.
Students are considered career-ready if they receive a score of 3 or higher on that test, earn a technical education certificate, complete a state-approved internship or receive a high enough score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery to enlist in the military. This year, 73% of students met that benchmark, compared to 70% last year, according to report card data.
College readiness is based on a student’s score on the ACT or SAT college entrance exam, college credit earned through a dual-enrollment course and/or scores on end-of-course Advanced Placement tests.
One-third of graduating students were college-ready, which is on par with at least the past five years, according to state data. The rate of high school students applying for college also continued to decrease, with 59% reporting filling out applications this year, compared with 61% last year.
A gap between graduation rate and readiness for the next step suggests schools are sometimes passing students without actually imparting the skills they need to succeed in life, Kelly said.
For instance, district policies setting minimum grades teachers can give makes it easier for students to pass their classes, even if they haven’t actually done the work, Kelly said. Alternatives for students who fail tests or classes are sometimes easier, meaning a student can catch up without actually learning the same skills as their peers, he said.
“We’ve put some policies in place that make it harder to evaluate what a student knows and can do,” Kelly said.
Beginning this school year, students can follow a so-called pathway to earn credentials that build on each other every year, allowing students to learn more advanced skills meant to make it easier to find a job in the field they want to pursue, said April Allen, chair of the Education Oversight Committee’s governing board.
“At the same time, we recognize that strengthening the system must go hand-in-hand with addressing the barriers that keep students from wholly engaging in school,” said Allen, who’s also a government relations director for Continental Tire.
Chronic absenteeism and test scores
For example, the number of students who missed at least 10 days of school this year remained a concern, Allen said.
Around 23% of students were chronically absent, essentially the same number as last year. The more days of school a student misses, the less likely they are to perform as expected for their grade level on end-of-year tests, according to a report the committee put out last year.
Those tests, in turn, play a role in determining how well a school or a district is performing. Officials and teachers’ advocates credited the Palmetto Literacy Project and a change in how early educators teach reading for improving English scores, but math scores remain low, with less than half of third- through eighth-graders able to perform on grade level, according to state testing data.
Just over half the state’s high school students scored at least a C, which is a 70%, on their end-of-course Algebra I exams, often taken freshman year, according to report card data. Nearly 69% passed their English 2 exams, typically taken sophomore year.
While rooting for improvement, teachers’ advocates also warned against depending too heavily on a single exam score in deciding how well teachers and students are performing. A single, high-pressure exam at the end of the year is not necessarily the best indicator of school performance, said Dena Crews, president of the South Carolina Education Association.
“If people are making judgments based on that, they’re missing a whole lot about schools and districts,” Crews said.
Teacher support
The Department of Education plans to focus on teachers in 2026, Weaver said.
“The No. 1 thing that we have to do to support student learning is take care of our teachers,” Weaver said.
She is asking legislators to raise the minimum pay for a first-year teacher to $50,000, up from $48,500. Legislators have increased the pay floor in increments for years, with the stated goal of reaching $50,000.
Weaver is also asking for $5 million to continue a pilot program that awards teachers bonuses based on how well their students perform on tests. She also wants to start a program that offers extra pay to exceptional teachers who mentor others. The additional responsibility would be another way to earn more money without leaving the classroom to go into school administration, she said.
Supporting teachers is key in improving how well schools are performing, Kelly said. The promising results in this year’s report cards came after the first dip in teacher vacancies since 2019, he added.
“It should not be a surprise to see school performance improve as teacher vacancies go down,” Kelly said.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: [email protected].
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Since the COVID-19 pandemic, high superintendent turnover rates have not let up — and that’s not surprising, said Wendy Birhanzel, a district leader in Colorado.
Nearly a quarter (23%) of the 500 largest districts experienced a change in their superintendency between July 1, 2024 and July 1, 2025, according to a September report by ILO Group, a national education strategy and policy firm. This turnover is up from last year’s survey results showing a 20% rate and a notable uptick from pre-pandemic averages ranging from 14% to 16%, ILO Group found.
The job of a superintendent “became a very different role” after COVID-19 shuttered school buildings nationwide in March 2020, said Birhanzel, who is in her seventh year as superintendent at Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Education is very politicized right now, and can be a little tricky to navigate from all the different sides of everyone in their opinions.”
Birhanzel said she mentors superintendents in Colorado and throughout the country, and she finds many saying they are “overwhelmed by the constant pressure” from their school boards, students’ families or school staff who are unhappy with the district.
While it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of high superintendent turnover nationwide, one underlying reason may be the “real tension” that’s emerged in communities since the pandemic, said Julia Rafal-Baer, CEO of ILO Group and Women Leading Ed, a national network for women education leaders.
From controversial COVID-19 policies to rules on screens and devices and growing district enrollment and financial challenges, she said, things have “come to a head” and landed on district leaders.
Moreover, the superintendency is one of the most influential roles in K-12 as it directly impacts high-level strategy as well as the teacher workforce and their working conditions, Rafal-Baer said.
“And yet we are paying less attention to the fact that the churn [in the superintendency] that we thought would be temporary is our new normal, and it’s straining our districts when students need that kind of steady, effective leadership,” she said.
Many districts typically outline a five-year strategic plan with set missions and goals that then acts as a blueprint for the system’s needs, said Dennis Willingham, superintendent at Walker County School District in Jasper, Alabama.
Superintendent turnover is concerning because that means district leaders are likely not staying long enough to execute those five-year strategies effectively, he said.
Then when a new superintendent steps into the role, they may want to take the district into a totally different direction, Willingham said, which can be discouraging and confusing to school communities.
Birhanzel also noted that superintendent turnover can lead to “a domino effect” with more district turnover in other roles like administrators, principals, teachers and even bus drivers. “It goes deeper than just one position,” she said.
Despite the high turnover, just one-third of superintendent roles are held by women, according to ILO Group data. Even with year-over-year improvement, parity between men and women won’t be reached until 2054 if the current pace continues, the firm said.
What can be done?
Willingham and Birhanzel agreed that much of the pressure put on superintendents stems from disagreements or tension with their school boards. While both superintendents reported good relationships with their boards, they said they recognized that the positive dynamic they experience can be rare.
Pressure from strained school board relationships “takes away the focus” from the school system and “also the joy of being a superintendent,” Willingham said.
Both superintendents emphasized that board support is key to retaining district leaders. If the superintendent and board are unified, it’s easier to move forward with strategic plans and focus on students and staff, Willingham said.
Birhanzel cautioned that superintendents should consider that relationship before accepting the job. It’s important to go where the board “aligns with what you believe in and your why,” she said. If that compatibility isn’t there, she added, “then that won’t be good for anyone in the system.”
A shift is also needed in society’s mindset about the value of a superintendent, Birhanzel said. Superintendent turnover may be common because communities and school boards associate firing these leaders with a way to make a change. But if that’s a frequent move, she said, it will be difficult for the school system to be successful.
Overall, Birhanzel said, a cultural change is needed to get rid of the idea that firing a superintendent is the answer to a problem — instead of working together to find a solution. “In way too many cases, do we see politics drive decisions of who leads school districts instead of [who is] the best leader for students?”
The role of superintendent can be isolating, Birhanzel acknowledged. That’s why it’s important to foster more networks and support systems for those in the role. There’s a high need for mentorship, especially for prospective women superintendents, Birhanzel added.
In September, Women Leading Ed released guidance outlining ways districts can go beyond mentorships by intentionally coaching and sponsoring future leaders, particularly women.
While efforts are underway to address the underrepresentation of women in district leadership, the issue persists, leading Birhanzel to ask, “How long is it going to take to change these numbers?”
