Tag: Schools

  • More Law Schools Embrace AI

    More Law Schools Embrace AI

    As of 2024, 55 percent of law schools offered courses on AI.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Maxxa_Satori and PhonlamaiPhoto/iStock/Getty Images

    As more and more law firms integrate generative artificial intelligence into their practices, a growing number of law schools are preparing future lawyers to adapt.

    Nearly three years after OpenAI’s ChatGPT went mainstream—followed by Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and a host of other similar platforms—some 30 percent of law offices are using AI-based technology tools, according to data published by the American Bar Association this past spring. While ChatGPT is the most widely used, legal research–specific tools, such as Thomson Reuters’ CoCounsel, Lexis+ AI and Westlaw AI, are also catching on in the sector.

    At the same time, 62 percent of law schools have incorporated formal opportunities to learn about or use AI into their first-year curriculum; 93 percent are considering updating their curriculum to incorporate AI education. In practice, however, many of those offerings may not be adequate, said Daniel W. Linna Jr., director of law and technology initiatives at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.

    “Law firms are starting to expect more and more that students will be exposed to this in law school,” he said. “But they also understand that the current reality is that not many law schools are doing much more than basic training. And some may not even be doing that.”

    AI-Savvy Will Have ‘Leg Up’

    At its best, experts believe AI has the power to make lawyers more efficient and accurate, as well as the potential to expand public access to legal services. But as fake citations and misquotes appearing in AI-generated legal filings have already shown, lawyers need more than access to these tools to get the most out of using them. They need to know how they work and recognize their limitations.

    “Law schools have to prepare students to be intentional users of this technology, which will require them to have foundational knowledge and understanding in the first place,” said Caitlin Moon, a professor and founding co-director of Vanderbilt Law School’s AI Law Lab. “We have to preserve that core learning process so that they remain the human expert and this technology complements and supports their expertise.”

    It’s not clear yet the extent to which AI will reshape the legal job market over the next several years, especially for new lawyers whose first jobs after law school have historically involved reviewing documents and conducting legal research—two areas where AI tools excel. According to one interpretation of a new report from Goldman Sachs on how AI could affect the workforce, 17 percent of jobs in the legal sector may be at risk.

    “Law firms on the cutting edge of innovation are certainly trying to figure out how leveraging this technology improves their bottom line,” Moon said. “For recent graduates, those who are coming into firms with an understanding and familiarity with AI have a leg up.”

    Pressure on Law Schools

    Regardless of what’s to come, all this uncertainty is putting pressure on law schools across the country to meet the moment, said Gary Marchant, faculty director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, which began offering an AI specialization last year.

    “It creates a requirement for law schools and law firms to train future lawyers differently, so that they learn some of the third- and fourth-year associate skills while they’re still in law school,” Marchant said. “Even if AI doesn’t advance any further, it’s already come so far that it’s transforming the practice of law, and it could change even more. Right now, the conclusion is that lawyers who know AI will replace lawyers who don’t know AI.”

    Recognition of that reality drove the University of San Francisco School of Law to become the first in the country to integrate generative AI education throughout its curriculum. Those efforts will be aided through partnerships with Accordance and Anthropic, the school announced last week.

    “AI is something every student needs to understand, no matter what kind of law they want to do,” said Johanna Kalb, dean of USF’s law school. “Given how quickly these AI tools are improving and becoming more specialized, each of these innovations is going to change what lawyers are being asked to do and what skills they really need.”

    While USF may be one of the few law schools with an AI curriculum mandate, 55 percent of programs offered specialized courses designed to teach students about AI in 2024, according to the most recent available ABA data.

    That percentage has likely increased over the past year, said Andrew Perlman, dean of Suffolk University Law School and a member of the ABA’s Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence.

    This fall Suffolk’s law school, which launched one of the country’s first legal technology programs nearly a decade ago, is requiring all first-year students to complete a custom generative AI learning track as part of its course on legal practice skills.

    “There was a lot of hesitation early on about how useful AI may be inside law practices, but there is now an increasingly widespread recognition that hiring lawyers who understand both the traditional methods of practicing law and have the ability to embrace AI is a useful combination,” Perlman said. “Training students with that new skill set is going to put our graduates in a better position to succeed in the long run.”

    Jacob Levine, a second-year student at Harvard Law School, got a taste of the demand for that balance during an internship at a law firm this summer.

    “AI was a tool that was present and using it was permitted, but there was a lot of emphasis on gauging the ability of the individual to be able to do the analytical work that’s expected of a young attorney,” he said. “It’s important to know how to use AI but not purely rely on it and use it blindly. A big part of being able to do that is knowing how to do everything yourself.”

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  • Advanced manufacturing expansion opens CTE opportunities for rural schools

    Advanced manufacturing expansion opens CTE opportunities for rural schools

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    Dive Brief:

    • Through strong industry partnerships and career and technical education, rural schools can equip their students for growing workforce needs in advanced manufacturing.
    • Advanced manufacturing in the U.S. is undergoing a period of rapid expansion, with an anticipated $1 trillion investment in projects, 63% of which is expected to be allocated to facilities near rural communities, according to an analysis from the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility.
    • The McKinsey Institute also surveyed nearly 1,500 rural high school students and recent graduates, finding that 8 in 10 would like career-connected learning and apprenticeship opportunities. However, only 5 in 10 reported having access to career-connected learning in high school, and only 3 in 10 had access to apprenticeships.

    Dive Insight:

    The report highlights that as advanced manufacturers expand into rural America, they play a crucial role in fostering strong relationships with local school systems.

    Advanced manufacturing industry experts and companies are seeking workers with foundational, technical and durable skills, the report found. However, there seems to be a short supply of these skill sets across the manufacturing labor pool.

    One cause of this shortage, the report argues, is a lack of strong, established collaborations between the industry and K-12 schools. The industry’s need for well-equipped future workers could also meet the needs of K-12 schools to expand students’ career opportunities.

    Research has found that taking CTE courses can lead to higher graduation rates and greater employment opportunities, which is why industry and rural schools can work together to provide K-12 students with the necessary education and technical skills to enter the incoming workforce, the report noted.

    To ensure that students are learning these high-demand skills, employers and industry associations should provide apprenticeships and other workplace learning opportunities for rural schools, as well as help create industry-relevant curricula, the report explained. A strong collaboration benefits not just schools and students, but companies that are also securing a pipeline of prepared workers.

    The report recommends that school systems work with local governments and organizations to build connections with employers. Through strong partnerships with industry professionals, schools can develop more effective, career-connected and evidence-based models, the report said.

    CTE courses provide students with hands-on, real-world skills for a defined set of careers, and an effective course focuses on skills in demand in the local market. As manufacturing investments grow in rural communities, the report said, schools could offer CTE courses that prepare students with technical and other STEM-based skills necessary in the advanced manufacturing field.

    The report also emphasized that industry partners should have regular interaction with students and touch base with them at regularly scheduled intervals. This ensures students are consistently aware of the different career pathways available to them. These interactions can evolve as students advance through different grades, shifting from informational to more tangible resources like apprenticeships, summer jobs and postsecondary scholarships later in high school.

    Beyond industry partnerships, state legislatures can also offer incentives for CTE programming through policies and funding, the report recommends. States are already providing these types of incentives, with 40 states collectively approving more than 150 policies focused on boosting CTE programming in 2024.

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  • How can schools launch sustainable drone programs?

    How can schools launch sustainable drone programs?

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    Dive Brief:

    • Learning how to use a drone can help students develop hands-on STEM skills such as programming while also fostering interpersonal skills like collaboration and resilience, experts said.
    • However, for these programs to be sustainable at the middle and high school levels, educators must ensure they connect drone usage to real-world scenarios, collaborate with local business and government agencies, and make the curriculum engaging beyond the first year of instruction, educators said.
    • “Drones are used in so many industries now. It’s no longer just trying to build a robot arm, they’re being used in police work, agriculture, space, construction work, etc.,” said Louann Cormier, senior program manager of aerial drone competition at the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation. She encourages educators to simply “take the leap” if they are interested in incorporating drones into their classrooms.

    Dive Insight:

    For a sustainable and effective drone program, educators need to connect with students and demonstrate that this technology can be applied in the real world, said David Thesenga, a middle school science teacher at Dawson School, a private school in Colorado. 

    Cormier noted how learning with drones can open students’ eyes to pathways they hadn’t considered before.

    “There’s so many industries where [students] don’t think of STEM or they don’t think of technology, but now all of a sudden they do, and it just opened up opportunities to them,” said Cormier. “The more that you can connect with them on their own interest levels or something that they find fascinating, that’s your entry point.”

    Drones can be an expensive undertaking, Thesenga said, but schools don’t need to buy top-of-the-line drones. It’s actually about balance, explained Cormier, because cheap drones are not a great option either — they tend to break more easily and have function issues.  

    Cormier encourages districts to start with an entry-level educational drone, because they are safe and don’t require any sort of certification to use. A sustainable drone program also requires a good teacher or coach who’s invested in it, who’s going to stick around for a while and think about how this is done, Thesenga said

    Going beyond the classroom and training students for drone competitions can also make the program more sustainable long-term. Students not only get excited, but it also gives them something to strive for, Cormier said.

    Competitions also help educators give a focus to instruction. For beginning educators who may not know what to cover, the competition aspect includes specific tasks, and the curriculum aligns with what they’ll be judged on. It provides a pathway to start, and from there, educators become more confident and comfortable and can progress into instructing on other areas of the drone industry.

    A sustainable drone program also needs to keep students engaged as they progress through the different school levels, said Jenn DeBarge-Goonan, executive vice president of communications for Rocket Social Impact, which works with companies and nonprofits to develop social impact programs. 

    DeBarge-Goonan said that making sure there’s a new challenge each year as the program evolves ensures that a student in year three is not doing the same thing they did in years one and two.

    There are several ways to fund these programs, Thesenga and Cormier noted. When looking at grants, Thesenga highlighted that they are often not specifically drone-related. However, schools can fund drone programs through general classroom grants or education tech grants.

    Cormier recommends reaching out to local organizations that utilize drones, as they are typically invested in the expansion of drone usage and need people in their labor pipeline.

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  • Preventing harm by connecting the dots in school safety

    Preventing harm by connecting the dots in school safety

    Key points:

    Swatting–false reports of school violence intended to trigger a police response–continues to increase across the country. During the 2022–2023 school year, nearly 64 percent of reported violent incidents in K–12 schools were linked to swatting. That’s over 440 incidents in one year–a more than 500 percent jump from just four years prior.

    Each call pulls officers from genuine emergencies, disrupts classrooms, and leaves students and staff shaken. While emergency protocols are essential, when swatting becomes routine, it’s clear that response plans alone won’t solve the problem.

    Unpacking the early signals

    Swatting rarely emerges out of thin air. It’s often the final act following a series of compounding behaviors, such as:

    • Online harassment
    • Peer conflicts
    • Risky social media challenges
    • Unaddressed behavioral concerns

    These warning signs exist, but are typically scattered across multiple school departments.

    Counselors might log escalating incidents. Teachers may notice changes in student behavior, and school resource officers (SROs) might track repeated visits involving the same individuals. Without a unified way to connect these observations, critical warning signs go unnoticed.

    Operationalizing early intervention

    Districts are reimagining how they capture and coordinate behavioral data. The goal isn’t surveillance or punitive action. It’s about empowering the right people with the right context to align and intervene early.

    When schools shift from viewing incidents in isolation to seeing behavior patterns in context, they are better positioned to act before concerns escalate. This can mean initiating mental health referrals, alerting safety teams, or involving families and law enforcement partners at the appropriate moment with comprehensive information.

    Technology that enables teams

    The process requires tools that support secure, centralized documentation and streamline communication across counselors, administrators, safety staff, and other stakeholders. These systems don’t replace human judgment, but create conditions for clearer decisions and more timely coordination.

    Swatting is just one example of how fragmented behavioral data can contribute to high-risk outcomes. Other incidents, such as escalating bullying, persistent mental health concerns, or anonymous threats often follow recognizable patterns that emerge over time. When schools use a centralized system to document and track these behaviors across departments, they can identify those patterns earlier. This kind of structured coordination supports proactive interventions, helping prevent larger issues before they unfold and reinforcing a culture of safety and awareness.

    Consider Washington State, where swatting affected more than 18,000 students last year, costing schools over $270,000 in lost instructional time. These figures illustrate the operational and human costs when coordination breaks down.

    Reducing risk, not just reacting to it

    Swatting is a symptom of a larger issue. Building safer schools means moving upstream from reactive emergency response to proactive coordination. It requires shared insight across teams, strengthened behavioral threat assessment protocols, and the right supports in place well before crisis calls occur.

    Early intervention isn’t about adding complexity. It’s about reducing risk, improving situational clarity, and equipping school communities to act with confidence–not simply responding when harm is imminent.

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  • Mental health screeners help ID hidden needs, research finds

    Mental health screeners help ID hidden needs, research finds

    Key points:

    A new DESSA screener to be released for the Fall ‘25 school year–designed to be paired with a strength-based student self-report assessment–accurately predicted well-being levels in 70 percent of students, a study finds.  

    According to findings from Riverside Insights, creator of research-backed assessments, researchers found that even students with strong social-emotional skills often struggle with significant mental health concerns, challenging the assumption that resilience alone indicates student well-being. The study, which examined outcomes in 254 middle school students across the United States, suggests that combining risk and resilience screening can enable identification of students who would otherwise be missed by traditional approaches. 

    “This research validates what school mental health professionals have been telling us for years–that traditional screening approaches miss too many students,” said Dr. Evelyn Johnson, VP of Research & Development at Riverside Insights. “When educators and counselors can utilize a dual approach to identify risk factors, they can pinpoint concerns and engage earlier, in and in a targeted way, before concerns become major crises.”

    The study, which offered evidence of, for example, social skills deficits among students with no identifiable or emotional behavioral concerns, provides the first empirical evidence that consideration of both risk and resilience can enhance the predictive benefits of screening, when compared to  strengths-based screening alone.

    In the years following COVID, many educators noted a feeling that something was “off” with students, despite DESSA assessments indicating that things were fine.

    “We heard this feedback from lots of different customers, and it really got our team thinking–we’re clearly missing something, even though the assessment of social-emotional skills is critically important and there’s evidence to show the links to better academic outcomes and better emotional well-being outcomes,” Johnson said. “And yet, we’re not tapping something that needs to be tapped.”

    For a long time, if a person displayed no outward or obvious mental health struggles, they were thought to be mentally healthy. In investigating the various theories and frameworks guiding mental health issues, Riverside Insight’s team dug into Dr. Shannon Suldo‘s work, which centers around the dual factor model.

    “What the dual factor approach really suggests is that the absence of problems is not necessarily equivalent to good mental health–there really are these two factors, dual factors, we talk about them in terms of risk and resilience–that really give you a much more complete picture of how a student is doing,” Johnson said.

    “The efficacy associated with this dual-factor approach is encouraging, and has big implications for practitioners struggling to identify risk with limited resources,” said Jim Bowler, general manager of the Classroom Division at Riverside Insights. “Schools told us they needed a way to identify students who might be struggling beneath the surface. The DESSA SEIR ensures no student falls through the cracks by providing the complete picture educators need for truly preventive mental health support.”

    The launch comes as mental health concerns among students reach crisis levels. More than 1 in 5 students considered attempting suicide in 2023, while 60 percent of youth with major depression receive no mental health treatment. With school psychologist-to-student ratios at 1:1065 (recommended 1:500) and counselor ratios at 1:376 (recommended 1:250), schools need preventive solutions that work within existing resources.

    The DESSA SEIR will be available for the 2025-2026 school year.

    This press release originally appeared online.

    eSchool News Staff
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  • Shortage of Rural Private Schools Complicates Indiana’s Voucher Expansion – The 74

    Shortage of Rural Private Schools Complicates Indiana’s Voucher Expansion – The 74


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    Sitting on the Kentucky border, the Christian Academy of Indiana draws students from 56 different ZIP codes in southern Indiana. Some come from as far as 30 miles away and live in counties without private schools.

    Families in those distant communities make the drive every day — sometimes carpooling — because they’re drawn to the school’s environment and extracurriculars, and especially its Christian teaching, said Lorrie Baechtel, director of admissions for the school, which is part of a three-school network in Indiana and Kentucky.

    “There are lots of good public school options in Indiana. Families come to our Indiana campus more for that mission,” Baechtel said.

    The school’s enrollment has boomed in the last four years, driven in part by the expansion of the Choice Scholarship, Indiana’s signature voucher program. That’s made tuition more affordable, Baechtel said. More than 1,200 students attended in 2024-2025, up from around 700 in 2021-22.

    That reflects a statewide trend: Voucher use has surged in recent years as Indiana lawmakers loosened eligibility requirements. In 2026, the program will open to all families, regardless of income.

    But the Christian Academy’s ability to attract students from far away tells another story too. Even as vouchers have become more accessible, Indiana’s rural students aren’t using them at the same rate as their urban and suburban peers. That’s in part because one-third of counties don’t have a private school that accepts vouchers within their borders, and distance is a factor in parents’ decisions on school choice.

    The result is that students who live closer to an urban center — which typically have one or more voucher-accepting private schools — may use vouchers at rates up to 30 percentage points higher than those for students who live in a neighboring district.

    That also means rural families may be at a significant disadvantage when the state opens the Choice Scholarship to all, and when private school scholarships funded by new federal tax credits also begin to roll out in 2027.

    “If there are no schools there for you to attend it’s unlikely it’s going to be all that useful for you,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

    More than that, public education advocates say splitting state school funding with vouchers leaves less for the rural public schools these students do attend.

    “We’re making the policy choice to fund a lot more choices than we used to,” said Chris Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association, which represents public schools. “We’re inviting more and more folks to Sunday dinner. It’s a little bit of a bigger meal, but a lot more guests.”

    But the state’s Republican lawmakers have dismissed the fears of a hit to public rural schools as a result of vouchers, saying that rural voters support choice and parents want educational options — whether that’s private, charter, or traditional public schools.

    Meanwhile, school choice advocates say the latest expansion of the Choice Scholarship, along with a growing preference for smaller learning environments and the rise of voucher-accepting online schools, could mean more private school access for rural areas in the near future.

    “I think we’re best when we have a robust ecosystem of private and public options,” said Eric Oglesbee of the Drexel Fund, a nonprofit venture philanthropy organization that funds new private schools in Indiana and throughout the U.S.

    Location matters in accessing a private school

    Across the state, around 76,000 students received vouchers for the 2024-25 school year — an increase of about 6,000 students from the year before. The program cost the state $497 million last year, and the average voucher recipient came from a household with just over $100,000 in income.

    But around one-third of Indiana counties don’t have voucher-accepting private schools within their borders, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state data, which also shows that voucher use is lower in rural areas than urban ones.

    Voucher use can shift dramatically even between nearby areas. For example, around 16% of students who reside in the Madison school district in southern Indiana use vouchers, but that rate drops to as low as 1% in nearby districts that are more rural. Similar trends hold in other areas of the state, like Indianapolis, Evansville, Fort Wayne, and South Bend.

    Location matters because driving distance has been shown to be a factor in how parents choose a school.

    In a 2024 survey of parent preferences by EdChoice, an Indianapolis-based group that supports vouchers, around half of parents said they would drive a max of 15 minutes for their children “to attend a better school.” Just over a quarter said they would drive no more than 20 minutes, and the final quarter said 30 minutes would be their max.

    Concerns about this issue have persisted in the state for years. Alli Aldis of the advocacy group EdChoice pointed to a 2018 report from her organization that called areas of rural Indiana as “schooling deserts.” It estimated that in the 2017-18 school year, around 3% of Indiana students, many in rural counties, lived more than 30 minutes from a charter, magnet, or voucher-accepting private school.

    Starting a new school anywhere, but particularly in a rural area, comes with challenges like finding a building, said Oglesbee of the Drexel Fund.

    A 2023 Drexel Fund report found that facilities in the state are “inadequate to meet the needs of new entrants to the market.” Though the report notes that real estate is both affordable and available, there are no public sources of facilities funding, and surplus facilities are not available to private schools.

    But new laws in Indiana have the potential to change that. House Enrolled Act 1515 established voluntary school facility pilot programs open to both public and private schools to “allow for additional flexibility and creativity in terms of what is considered a school facility,” like colocating with schools, government entities, and community organizations.

    Oglesbee said the organization is fielding an explosion of interest from potential new private schools in Indiana, possibly as a latent result of the 2023 expansion to voucher eligibility, which made the program nearly universal.

    School succeeds ‘if the community asks for it’

    Other challenges to opening a private school include hiring staff and recruiting students, which can be a particular issue in rural areas with both fewer children and licensed teachers, advocates said.

    Opening a school also requires a team of people with both education and business experience, Oglesbee said. And they’re more likely to succeed if they have roots in the community they hope to serve.

    “I see less of the ‘if you build it, they will come’ idea,” Oglesbee said. “A school is successful if the community asks for it.”

    At a recent conservative policy conference, Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston said rural Indiana communities were “super excited” for school choice, and noted that no Republican lawmaker had been beaten in a primary for supporting the policy.

    But Indiana voters haven’t voted on school vouchers, and don’t have a legal avenue to overturn the policy, said Chris Lubienski of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. Last year, voters in Kentucky and Colorado rejected ballot measures in favor of school choice, while Nebraska voters partially repealed a state-funded scholarship program.

    “There’s resistance: ‘Why do I want to have my taxes fund a program I can’t use?’” Lubienski said.

    In rural areas, support for school choice may actually mean support for transfers between public school districts, said Lagoni.

    Ultimately, the Rural Schools Association believes any school receiving state dollars should be subject to the same expectations of transparency and accountability, Lagoni said.

    Asked about concerns that rural students often have difficulty using vouchers, Huston said he expects voucher usage to continue to grow once the program becomes universal in 2026-27.

    “We want to make sure our policies align with what works best for families,” Huston said.

    Vouchers add to financial stress for rural schools

    With more school options in Indiana, downward pressure on local tax revenue, and declining population, rural public schools feel pressure to compete. Sometimes that means closing and consolidating schools.

    Vigo County schools recently announced plans to close two rural elementary schools as part of a plan to renovate facilities and offer more programming. The school corporation’s enrollment has declined slightly, due in part to an overall decline in the county’s total population, said spokesperson Katie Shane.

    More students who reside in the district are using vouchers, although they’re not the biggest reason for the district’s falling enrollment. While 429 students used vouchers to attend private schools last school year, an increase from 252 the year before, around 870 Vigo students transferred to another public school district in the fall of the 2024-25 school year. That reflects a statewide trend.

    Without their nearest public elementary schools, students may have to travel by bus for half an hour or more to the nearest school, according to community members who have started a petition to save one of the two schools marked for closure, Hoosier Prairie Elementary School.

    “Hoosier Prairie isn’t just about going to school,” said Shyann Koziatek, an educational assistant at the school who also signed the petition to stop its closure. “Kids love to learn and love the routine we have.”

    Rural schools also often function as large area employers and drivers of the economy.

    “Schools are often the center and identity of the community, how people view who they are,” Lubienski said. “You go and cheer on your football team, it’s where you put on your school play.”

    But private schools can serve the same role, choice advocates say.

    “If people have stronger educational options, more choices, that only strengthens the community,” said Aldis of EdChoice.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.


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  • L.A. Schools Telehealth Vendor Waited 8 Months to Report Breach – The 74

    L.A. Schools Telehealth Vendor Waited 8 Months to Report Breach – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    It’s another hot summer Friday and another day with news about a data breach — this one jeopardizing both student health and campus safety data.

    And once again, the development is unfolding in the country’s second-largest school district.

    Kokomo Solutions, which the Los Angeles district contracts with to provide telehealth services to students during the school day and to track campus safety threats, disclosed a data breach after it discovered an “unauthorized third party” on its computer network. The discovery happened in December 2024, but the notice to the California attorney general’s office wasn’t made until Aug. 5.  

    It’s the latest in a series of data privacy incidents affecting L.A. schools, including a high-profile 2022 ransomware attack exposing students’ sensitive mental health records and last year’s collapse of a much-lauded $6 million artificial intelligence chatbot project. 

    In the news

    Students at the center of Trump’s D.C. police takeover: In an unprecedented federal power grab, the Trump administration’s seizure of the D.C. police department and National Guard deployment is designed to target several vulnerable groups — including kids. | NPR

    • The move comes at a time when crime in the nation’s capital is on the decline. But a deep-dive from June explores how the district’s failure to prevent student absences has contributed to “the biggest youth crime surge in a generation.” | The Washington Post
    • Here’s what young people have to say about Trump’s D.C. takeover. | NBC 4
    • City police will roll out a youth-specific curfew Friday in the Navy Yard neighborhood. | Fox 5

    A new Ohio law requires school districts to implement basic cybersecurity measures in response to heightened cyberattacks. What the law doesn’t do, however, is provide any money to carry out the new mandate. | WBNS 

    News in Trump’s immigration crackdown: A federal judge in Minnesota has released from immigration detention a nursing 25-year-old mother, allowing her to return to her children as her case works its way through the court. | The Minnesota Star Tribune 

    • The Trump administration has revived one of its most controversial immigration policies from the president’s first term: Separating families. | The New York Times
    • Federal immigration officials quizzed an Idaho school resource officer about an unaccompanied migrant student, part of a broader national effort to conduct “welfare checks” on immigrant youth who came to the U.S. without their parents. | InvestigateWest
    • Leading Oklahoma Republican lawmakers have partnered with the Trump administration in a lawsuit challenging a state law allowing undocumented students to receive in-state college tuition. | InsideHigherEd
    • Los Angeles community members have organized to create protective perimeters around the city’s campuses after immigration agents reportedly drew their guns on a student outside a high school. | Los Angeles Times
      • The district announced new bus routes designed to improve student safety while commuting to school during heightened immigration enforcement. | NBC 4
    • The nonprofit Southwest Key, which for years has been the federal government’s largest provider of shelters for unaccompanied migrant children, has laid off thousands in Texas and Arizona after losing federal grants. The Trump administration dropped a lawsuit in March over allegations the nonprofit subjected migrant children to widespread sexual abuse. | ABC 15
    • A Texas court blocked the state attorney general’s request to depose and question a nun who leads Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, one of the largest migrant aid groups in the region. | The Texas Tribune
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    Microphone-equipped sensors installed in school bathrooms to crack down on student vaping could be hacked, researchers revealed, and turned into secret listening devices. | Wired

    ‘These are innocent children, sir’: New video of the delayed police response to the 2022 mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, shows the campus police chief attempting to negotiate with the gunman for more than 30 minutes. | The New York Times

    Kansas schools have become the latest target in the Trump administration’s campaign against districts that permit transgender students to participate in school athletics. | KCTV

    • The Loudoun County, Virginia, school board has refused to comply with an Education Department order to end a policy allowing transgender students to use restroom facilities that match their gender identity. | LoudounNow 
    • The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into allegations the Baltimore school district ignored antisemetic harassment by students and educators. | The Baltimore Banner

    Lots of drills — little evidence: A congressionally mandated report finds that active shooter drills vary widely across the country — making it difficult to understand their effect on mental and emotional health. | National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

    A federal judge has blocked a new Arkansas law requiring that public schools display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms. It’s the second state Ten Commandments law to be halted this year. | Axios 

    ICYMI: I did a deep-dive into the far-right Christian nationalists behind more than two dozen state Ten Commandments-in-schools bills nationally — each of which are inherently identical. | The 74

    Is Texas up next? Civil rights groups will ask a judge on Friday to prevent a similar law from going into effect. | Houston Chronicle

    ICYMI @The74

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    Don’t sleep on this Bloomberg feature into “Doodlemania” — the billion-dollar industry for hypoallergenic (and floofy!) designer pups.


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  • Why high schools should use teaching assistants

    Why high schools should use teaching assistants

    Key points:

    Exam scores always seem to go up. Whether it’s the SAT when applying for college or an AP score to earn college credit, competitive scores seem to be creeping up. While faculty are invaluable, students who recently completed classes or exams offer insight that bridges the gap between the curriculum and the exam. I believe students who recently excelled in a course should be allowed and encouraged to serve as teaching assistants in high school.

    Often, poor preparation contributes to students’ disappointing exam performance. This could be from not understanding content, being unfamiliar with the layout, or preparing the wrong material. Many times, in courses at all levels, educators emphasize information that will not show up on a standardized test or, in some cases, in their own material. This is a massive issue in many schools, as every professor has their own pet project they like to prioritize. For example, a microbiology professor in a medical school may have an entire lecture on a rare microbe because they research it, but nothing about it will be tested on the national board exams, or even their course final exams. This was a common theme in high school, with history teachers loving to share niche facts, or in college, when physics professors loved to ask trick questions. By including these things in your teaching, is it really benefiting the pupil? Are students even being tested correctly over the material if, say, 10 percent of your exam questions are on information that is superfluous?

    Universities can get around this issue by employing teaching assistants (TAs) to help with some of the confusion. Largely, their responsibilities are grading papers, presenting the occasional lecture, and holding office hours. The lesser-known benefit of having and speaking with TAs is the ability to tell you how to prioritize your studying. These are often older students who have been previously successful in the course, and as a result, they can give a student a much better idea of what will be included on an exam than the professor.

    When I was a TA as an undergrad, we were required to hold exam prep sessions the week of a big test. During these sessions, students answered practice questions about concepts similar to what would show up on the exam. All the students who showed up to my sessions performed extremely well on the tests, and they performed well because they were prepared for the exam and knew the concepts being tested. As a result, they would finish the course with a much higher grade because they knew what they should be studying. It is much more effective to give a student a practice question that uses similar concepts to what will be on their exam than it is for a professor to give a list of topics that are covered on a test. For example, studying for a math test is more impactful when answering 50 practice questions versus a teacher handing you a list of general concepts to study, such as: “Be able to manipulate inequalities and understand the order of operations.”

    Universities seem to know that professors might not provide the best advice, or at the least, they have used TAs as a decent solution to the problem. It is my opinion that having this style of assistance in high school would be beneficial to student outcomes. Having, say, a senior help in a junior-level class may work wonders. Teachers would have a decrease in their responsibilities based on what they trust their TA to do. They could help grade, run review sessions, and make and provide exam prep materials. In essence, all the unseen work in teaching that great teachers do could be done more efficiently with a TA. Every student has had an amazing teacher who provides an excellent study guide that is almost identical to the test, making them confident going into test day. In my experience, those guides are not completed for a grade or a course outcome, and effectively become extra work for the educator, all to help the students who are willing to use them effectively. Having a TA would ease that burden–it would encourage students to consider teaching as a profession in a time when there is a shortage of educators.

    There are many ways to teach and learn, but by far the best way to be prepared for a test is by talking to someone who has recently taken it. Universities understand that courses are easier for students when they can talk to someone who has taken it. It is my opinion that high schools would be able to adopt this practice and reduce teacher workload while increasing the student outcomes. 

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  • Why student engagement starts with teacher clarity

    Why student engagement starts with teacher clarity

    Key points:

    In Alpine School District, we serve a wide range of students, from Title I to highly affluent communities. While our population has traditionally been predominantly white and middle income, that’s changing. In response to this growing diversity and shifting needs, one of my missions as professional learning and curriculum director for secondary schools has been to provide needs-based professional learning, just in time for educators, and to give them a real voice in what that looks and feels like.

    I lead a team of full-time educator equivalents across every discipline: math, science, social studies, ELA, the arts, health, and PE. Together, we guide professional learning and instructional support. Over the past several years, we’ve had to take a hard look at how we teach, how we engage students, and how we prepare educators for long-term success.

    Where we started: Tier 1 challenges and high turnover

    When I first became curriculum director, I noticed in our data that our schools were not making much progress, and in some cases had stagnated in growth scores. We were leaning heavily on Tier 2 interventions, which told us that we needed to shore up our Tier 1 instruction.

    At the same time, we were hiring between 400 and 500 teachers each year. We’re located near several universities, so we see a continuous flow of new educators come and go. They get married, they relocate, or a spouse gets into medical school, which translates to a constant onboarding cycle for our district. To meet these challenges, we needed professional learning that was sound, sustainable, and meaningful, especially early in a teacher’s career, so they could lay a strong foundation for everything that would come after.

    Teacher clarity and engagement by design

    Several years ago, we joined the Utah State Cohort, doing a deep dive into the Teacher Clarity Playbook. That experience was a real turning point. We were the only team there from a district office, and we took a train-the-trainer approach, investing in our strongest educators so they could return and lead professional learning in their content areas. Since then, we’ve used Engagement by Design as the framework behind much of our PD, our classroom walkthroughs, and our peer observations. It helped us think differently: How do we support teachers in crafting learning intentions and success criteria that are actually meaningful? How do we align resources to support that clarity? We’ve embedded that mindset into everything.

    Coming out of the pandemic, Alpine, like many districts around the country, saw decreased student engagement. To focus deeply on that challenge, we launched the Student Engagement Academy, or SEA. I co-designed the Academy alongside two of our content specialists, Anna Davis and Korryn Coates. They’re both part-time teacher leaders at the district office and part-time visual arts teachers in schools, so they live in both worlds. That was important because we believe professional learning should always be contextualized. We don’t want teachers burning extra bandwidth trying to translate strategies across subject areas.

    SEA is a yearlong, job-embedded learning experience. Teachers participate in PLCs, conduct peer observations, and complete a personalized learning project that showcases their growth. Our PLC+ coaches work directly with our lead coach, Melissa Gibbons, to gather and analyze data that shapes each new round of learning. We also included classroom observations, not for evaluation, but to help teachers see each other’s practice in action. Before observations, Anna and Korryn meet with teachers in small groups to talk through what to look for. Afterward, they debrief with the teachers: What did we see? What evidence did we see of student engagement? What did we learn? What are we still wondering? As we answer these questions about teaching, we’re also asking students about their experience of learning.

    Learning from student surveys

    Hearing from our students has been one of the most powerful parts of this journey. With the support of our Director of Student and Educator Well-eing, we created a student survey. We asked a random group of students questions such as:

    • What are you learning?
    • How are you learning it?
    • How do you know how you’re doing?
    • Why does it matter?

    The responses were eye-opening. Many students didn’t know why they were learning something. That told us our teachers weren’t being as clear or as intentional as they thought they were. One specific question we asked was based on the fact that attendance in world language classes stayed high during the pandemic, while it dropped in other subjects. We asked students why. The answer? Relationships, expectations, and clarity. They said their world language teachers were clear, and they knew what was expected of them. That led other disciplines to reflect and recalibrate.

    Today, teachers across subjects like ELA, math, and social studies have participated in a SEA cohort or aligned learning. We’re seeing them plan more intentionally, better target skills, and align instruction with assessment in thoughtful ways. They’re starting to see how mirroring instruction with how learning is measured can shift outcomes. It’s been truly exciting to witness that change. Engaging students through improved teacher clarity, positive classroom relationships (with each other, the teacher, and the content), and providing the students with appropriate levels of rigor has been a game changer.

    Building teacher leadership teams

    Next year, we’re focusing on developing teacher leadership skills, knowledge, and dispositions across the full geographic area of our district. We’re building professional capacity through leadership teams using the PLC+ model, with an emphasis on facilitation skills, research-based practice, and advocacy for strong instruction in every discipline.

    If you’re a district leader looking to boost student engagement through professional development, my advice is simple: You can’t do it alone. You need a team that shares your values and your commitment to the work. You also have to be guided by research–there’s too much at stake to invest in strategies that don’t hold water. Finally, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Aim for small, incremental changes. There’s no silver bullet, but if you stay the course, you’ll see real transformation.

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  • How schools are tackling absenteeism

    How schools are tackling absenteeism

    (Note: This is the second piece in a two-part series on absenteeism in schools. Read the first part, on seven insights from researchers.)

    Chronic absenteeism, when students miss 10 percent or more of the school year, is 50 percent higher across the nation than before the pandemic. Researchers say it’s difficult for schools to address the problem because it is both so intense, with students missing huge chunks of the school year, and so extensive, affecting both rich and poor students and even high achievers. And the reasons vary widely, from asthma and bullying to transportation problems and the feeling that school is boring.

    “It’s hard to know where and when to target resources,” said Sam Hollon, a data analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, which hosted a symposium on the problem in May. “Who do you help when every student potentially can be a candidate for help?”

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

    The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement is exacerbating the problem. A June draft paper by Stanford University professor Thomas Dee calculated that recent raids coincided with a 22 percent increase in daily student absences with particularly large increases in absenteeism among the youngest students.

    Talking about the problem isn’t enough. Researchers say they want to study more schools that are making headway. It remains unclear if there are broadly applicable fixes or if each school or even each student needs individual solutions. Some underlying root causes for skipping school are more complex than others, requiring psychotherapy or housing assistance, which schools can’t provide alone. Here are a few examples of how very different communities are tackling the problem.

    Providence: Bus stops and weekend food bags

    Principal W. Jackson Reilly of Nathanael Greene Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island, said that when he arrived in April 2023, half of his 900 students in grades six to eight were chronically absent, up from 30 percent of students before the pandemic. Thirty percent of his teachers were also chronically absent. Achievement scores were in the state’s bottom 1 percent.  

    Reilly managed to slash his chronic absenteeism rate in half to 25 percent this past 2024-25 year. That’s still high. One in four students missed more than 18 days of school a year. But, it’s better. 

    He began by identifying 150 kids who were just over the threshold for chronic absenteeism, those who missed between 18 and 35 days, hoping that these kids would be easier to lure back to school than those who were more disengaged. Reilly and a group of administrators and guidance counselors each took 10 to 15 students and showed their families how much school they had missed and how low their grades were. His team asked, “What do you need in order for your kid to be coming to school?’” 

    The two most common replies: transportation and food. 

    Related: The chronic absenteeism puzzle

    Many students lived only a mile away, too close to school to qualify for bus service. Yet the walk deterred many, especially if it was raining or snowing. Yellow buses often passed these children’s homes as they were transporting children who lived farther out, and Reilly convinced the district to add stops for these chronically absent children. 

    Ninety percent of his students come from families who are poor enough to qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program and 80 percent are Hispanic. Although many children were fed breakfast and lunch at school, their families admitted that their kids would get so hungry over the weekend that they didn’t want to wake up and come to school on Mondays. Reilly partnered with a food pantry and sent bags of meat and pasta home with students on Fridays. 

    Individual attention also helped. At the start of each school day, Reilly and his team check in with their assigned students. Kids who show up get five “green bucks” to spend on snacks and prizes. Administrators call the homes of those who didn’t come to school. “If they did not answer the phone, we’d make a home visit,” said Reilly. 

    The most dramatic overhaul was scheduling. Reilly scrapped individual schedules for students and assigned four teachers to every 104 students. The kids now move in pods of 26 that take all their classes together, rotating through the same four teachers throughout the day. The classrooms are right near each other, creating a smaller community within the school. 

    “It’s all about relationship building,” said Reilly. When students look forward to seeing their classmates and teachers, he said, they’re more motivated to come to school. 

    Researchers say fostering relationships is effective. Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit organization that advises schools on how to boost attendance rates, said it’s still a battle to persuade some school leaders (and school board members) that making school a more welcoming place is more productive than punishing kids and families for skipping school.* 

    Reilly said his school now posts the lowest student and teacher chronic absenteeism rates in Providence. And he said his school is the highest performing middle school in the city and among the highest statewide in reading.  

    New York City: Catching the butterflies

    A cluster of New York City high schools are taking a more data-driven approach, guided by New Visions, a consulting organization that supports 71 city high schools. 

    After some experimentation, New Visions staff saw strong improvement in attendance in one subgroup of students who were on the cusp of missing 10 percent of school days, but had not yet crossed the chronic absenteeism threshold. These are students who might miss a day or two every week or every other week but were relatively engaged at school. Jonathan Green, a New Visions school improvement coach who is spearheading this effort, calls them “butterflies.” “They would flutter in and out every week,” he said. 

    Green suggested that someone at school meet weekly with these butterflies and show them their attendance data, set goals for the coming week and explain how their attendance was leading to better grades. The intervention took two to five minutes. “There were marked changes in attendance,” said Green.

    New Visions built a website where school administrators could print out two-page documents for each student so the data, including monthly attendance and tardiness, appeared in an easy-to-digest format. The quick meetings took place for eight to 10 weeks during the final grading period for the semester. “That’s when there’s the most opportunity to turn those potentially failing grades into passing grades,” said Green. “We were finding these sweet spots within the school calendar to do this very high resource, high-energy intensive weekly check-in. It’s not something that anyone can easily scale across a school.”

    Related: Tracking student data falls short in combating absenteeism at school

    Staff had to figure out the bell schedule for each child and intercept them between classes. One succeeded in holding their entire caseload of students below the chronic absenteeism threshold. Not everyone thought it was a good idea: Some school administrators questioned why so much effort should go into students who weren’t yet chronically absent rather than students in greater trouble.

    The dramatic results help answer that question. Among schools in the Bronx that volunteered to participate in the butterfly intervention, chronic absenteeism rates dropped 15 percentage points from 47 percent in 2021 to 32 percent in 2025, still high. But other Bronx high schools in the New Visions network that didn’t try this butterfly intervention still had a chronic absenteeism rate of 46 percent. 

    Green said this solution wouldn’t work for other high schoolers. Some have trouble organizing their study time, he said, and need more intensive help from teachers. “Two- to five-minute check-ins aren’t going to help them,” said Green. 

    Indianapolis: Biscuits and gravy

    The leader of an Indiana charter school told me he used a system of rewards and punishments that reduced the chronic absenteeism rate among his kindergarten through eighth graders from 64 percent in 2021-22 to 10 percent in 2024-25.

    Jordan Habayeb, the chief operating officer of Adelante Schools, said he used federal funds for the school breakfast and lunch program to create a made-from-scratch restaurant-style cafeteria. “Fun fact: On homemade biscuit and gravy days, we saw the lowest rates of tardies,” he said.

    Researchers recommend avoiding punishment because it doesn’t bring students back to school. But Habayeb said he adheres strictly to state law that requires schools to report 10 absences to the state Department of Child Services and to file a report with the county prosecutor. Habayeb told me his school accounted for a fifth of truancy referrals to the county prosecutor.

    The school created an automated warning system after five absences rather than waiting for the critical 10-day loss. And Habayeb said he dispatched the safety and attendance officer in a van to have “real conversations with families rather than being buried in paperwork.” Meanwhile, students who did show up received a constant stream of rewards, from locker decorations to T-shirts.

    Parent education was also important. During mandatory family orientations, the school illustrated how regular attendance matters for even young children. “We shared what a child might miss during a three-day stretch in a unit on ‘Charlotte’s Web’ — showing how easily a student could leave with a completely different understanding of the book,” said Habayeb. “This helped shift perspectives and brought urgency to the issue.”

    Kansas City: Candy and notes

    School leaders in Kansas City, Kansas, shared some tips that have worked for them during a webinar earlier this month hosted by Attendance Works. One elementary school reduced its chronic absenteeism from 55 percent in 2021 to 38 percent in 2024 by assigning all 300 students to an adult in the building, encouraging them to build an “authentic” relationship. Teachers were given a list of ideas but were free to do what seemed natural. One teacher left candy and notes on their assigned students’ desks. A preschooler proudly pasted his note, which said he was a “genius,” on the front door of his house. “The smiles kids have on their faces are amazing,” said Zaneta Boles, the principal of Silver City Elementary School. 

    When students do miss school, Boles said educators try to take a “non-blaming approach” so that families are more likely to divulge what is going on. That helps the school refer them to other community agencies for assistance. 

    Albuquerque: A shining example regroups 

    Alamosa Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was once a shining example of a school that persuaded more families to send their kids to class. Chronic absenteeism fell as low as 1 in 4 students in 2018, when The Hechinger Report wrote about the school. 

    But Alamosa has not been immune from the surge of absenteeism that has plagued schools around the nation. Chronic absenteeism spiked to 64 percent of students during the 2021-22 school year, when Covid variants were still circulating. And it remained shockingly high with 38 percent of students missing more than 10 percent of the 2024-25 school year — exactly matching the 50 percent increase in chronic absenteeism across the country since 2019.

    “We were on a roll. Then life happened,” said Daphne Strader, Albuquerque Public Schools’ director of coordinated school health, who works to reduce absenteeism.

    Strader said Alamosa and other Albuquerque schools have made some successful changes to how they’re tackling the problem. But the volume of absenteeism remains overwhelming. “There’s so many kids who have needs,” Strader said. “We need more staff on board.” 

    Related: 7 insights about chronic absenteeism, a new normal for American schools

    Strader said attendance interventions had been “too siloed” and they’re focusing more on the “whole child.” She’s encouraging schools to integrate attendance efforts with other initiatives to boost academic achievement and improve student behavior. “Students are hungry, they’re dysregulated, they don’t have grit,” said Strader, and all of these issues are contributing to absenteeism. But she also concedes that some students have more severe needs, and it’s unclear who in the system can address them.

    Her biggest advice for schools is to focus on relationships. “Relationships drive everything,” said Strader. “One of the major consequences of the pandemic was the isolation. If I feel a sense of belonging, I’m more likely to come to school.”

    *Clarification: This sentence was modified to make clear the Attendance Works executive director did not say all school leaders oppose the idea of eliminating punishments for absenteeism. 

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

    This story about how schools are tackling absenteeism was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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