Tag: shows

  • Free speech advocates rally to support FIRE’s defense of First Amendment protections for drag shows

    Free speech advocates rally to support FIRE’s defense of First Amendment protections for drag shows

    Drag shows are inherently expressive and protected under the First Amendment. That’s what a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held back in August, reversing a district court’s decision that had upheld West Texas A&M University’s campus-wide drag show ban. 

    Yet several weeks later, the Fifth Circuit elected to vacate the panel’s decision and rehear the case en banc, meaning the full Court will consider whether the First Amendment permits government officials to ban a drag show because they disagree with the show’s message. As FIRE fights to preserve the panel’s decision upholding the right of public university students to engage in expressive conduct, a broad coalition of free speech advocates has rallied to file “friend of the court” briefs in support.

    Here’s what happened: West Texas A&M University maintains Legacy Hall as an open forum for students and the public to interact and engage in expression. FIRE’s client in this case is Spectrum WT, a long-recognized student organization that seeks to provide support for and promote acceptance of the LGBTQ+ student body. To that end, Spectrum WT hosts a wide range of campus events, both social and educational, to raise awareness of issues important to LGBTQ+ students and foster a strong sense of community and acceptance.

    The Constitution prohibits University officials from censoring student expression on campus because they happen to disagree with its underlying message.

    Several years ago, Spectrum WT began planning a charity drag performance to be held at Legacy Hall. Proceeds from the event would benefit the Trevor Project, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention in the LGBTQ+ community. 

    But eleven days before the performance’s scheduled date, the university’s President, Walter Wendler, canceled the event. In a lengthy public statement, Wendler announced that “West Texas A&M will not host a drag show on campus,” even while conceding that drag performance is “artistic expression” and that “the law of the land” requires him to let the show go on. According to Wendler, he opposes drag’s underlying “ideology,” believing it “demeans” women and that there is “no such thing” as a “harmless drag show.”

    West Texas A&M President cancels student charity drag show for second time

    West Texas A&M President Wendler enforced his unconstitutional prior restraint by canceling a student-organized charity drag show for the second time.


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    That’s when FIRE stepped in. Our country’s universities are bastions of free expression, exploration, and self-discovery. They are uniquely places where young adults may have their opinions tested and viewpoints expanded. And the Constitution prohibits university officials from censoring student expression on campus because they happen to disagree with its underlying message. 

    That was what the Fifth Circuit panel held when it heard this case on appeal. Yet several weeks later, the court decided to vacate the panel’s decision and consider the case a second time. So the fight to preserve First Amendment protections for students’ artistic performance, regardless of whether university officials agree with the message, continues.

    Last week, a bipartisan coalition of university professors, prominent legal scholars, and no fewer than thirteen organizations filed five amicus briefs in support of Spectrum WT:

    • The ACLU of Texas and Equality Texas highlight the district court’s doctrinal errors in upholding Wendler’s blanket drag ban, including the court’s failure to recognize the message, history, and context of drag performance and its reliance on a standard for protected expression the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected. As the ACLU of Texas and Equality Texas explain: “The district court’s narrowing of the First Amendment’s protective scope sets an alarming precedent, which, if left uncorrected, could extend beyond the drag performance at issue in this case.”
    • The First Amendment Lawyers Association argues that the lower court’s decision violates the “bedrock First Amendment principle” that government officials may not censor speech merely because they dislike the message. They emphasize how this violation is even more egregious in the university setting, “where speech rights are particularly important.” As FALA describes, Wendler “suppressed protected speech, impoverished public discourse, and denied students and the broader community the right to engage, critique, and learn in a free marketplace of ideas.”
    • The National Coalition Against Censorship, Dramatists Guild of America, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Fashion Law Institute, Authors Guild, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, Freedom to Read Foundation, American Booksellers Association, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State emphasize the evidence establishing that Wendler’s blanket prohibition was inherently a viewpoint-based prior restraint that finds no support in First Amendment law. They argue that Wendler’s prohibition is, in fact, “a ‘classic’ example of a prior restraint” that is “unmoored from any objective standards” constraining his censorship authority. As they explain, such prior restraints are unconstitutional as reflected in the “text, history, and tradition of the First Amendment.”
    • The CATO Institute and renowned legal scholars Eugene Volokh and Dale Carpenter describe the applicable legal doctrine to explain why it ultimately does not matter whether Legacy Hall is classified as a limited public forum or nonpublic forum: because Wendler’s viewpoint discrimination is impermissible everywhere. They argue that drag performance is clearly protected expression under the First Amendment and that Wendler violated that protection by censoring drag performance because he disagrees with its message.
    • A coalition of eight professors specializing in LGBTQ+ studies delve into the history of drag performance as artistic expression. They describe how drag has long existed as a medium to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and defy gender norms and stereotypes. They argue that its message is unmistakable among the general public, and that Wendler’s sole motivation in censoring this artistic expression was his personal disagreement with that message.

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  • Alabama HBCU Shows Interest in Trump’s Compact

    Alabama HBCU Shows Interest in Trump’s Compact

    Oakwood University supports the Trump administration’s controversial compact for higher education that would require signatories to make changes to their policies in order to receive a potential edge in federal funding, Religion News Service (RNS) reported.

    The historically Black university in Alabama wrote a Nov. 18 letter to the Education Department about its interest in the compact. Oakwood is the second HBCU to show interest in signing on. Like the other HBCU, Saint Augustine’s University, Oakwood officials say the compact needs to change for them to actually sign it. 

    Of concern for the HBCUS are provisions that would cap undergraduate international student enrollment at 15 percent, require a five-year tuition freeze and limit the use of race in admissions and other decisions.

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     “While we strongly support the Compact’s overarching goals, several provisions of the draft framework raise important concerns that, if left unaddressed, could unintendedly hinder HBCUs’ ability to participate fully or effectively,” Oakwood President Gina Brown wrote in the letter, according to RNS. “Absent a mission-based exemption, HBCUs would face an untenable choice between compliance and fulfilling their congressionally mandated purpose.”

    Oakwood is affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and RNS noted that faith-based institutions would still be able to consider religion in admissions and hiring.

    The Trump administration invited nine universities to give feedback on the proposed compact. Most of that group declined outright to sign it, saying that federal funding should be based on merit, not adherence to a president’s priorities. Since then, New College of Florida, Valley Forge Military College and Saint Augustine’s have indicated interest in joining the compact.

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  • Advanced Teaching Roles Program Shows Improved Test Scores, but Faces Funding Concerns – The 74

    Advanced Teaching Roles Program Shows Improved Test Scores, but Faces Funding Concerns – The 74


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    North Carolina’s Advanced Teaching Roles program, which allows highly effective teachers to receive salary supplements for teaching additional students or supporting other teachers, is having positive effects on math and science test scores, according to an evaluation presented by NC State University’s Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at the State Board of Education meeting last week.

    Since 2016, the ATR initiative has allowed districts to create new career pathways and provide salary supplements for highly effective teachers — or Advanced Teachers — who mentor and support other educators while still teaching part of the day. Their roles include Adult Leadership teachers, who lead small teams and receive at least $10,000 supplements, and Classroom Excellence teachers, who take on larger student loads and receive a minimum of $3,000 supplements. 

    Those in adult leadership roles teach for at least 30% of the day, lead a team of 3-8 classroom teachers, and share responsibility for the performance of all those teachers’ students. Classroom excellence teachers are responsible for at least 20% more students than before they enter the role.

    “Our ATR program was designed to allow highly effective classroom educators to reach more students and to support the professional growth of educators,” said Dr. Callie Edwards, the program’s lead evaluator, at the State Board of Education meeting last Wednesday. “ATR aims to improve the quality of classroom instruction, the recruitment and retention of teachers, as well as ultimately impact student academic achievement.”

    In the 2024-25 school year, 26 districts operated ATR programs across 400 schools — 56% of which were elementary schools — employing 1,494 Advanced Teachers who supported nearly 4,000 classroom teachers statewide, according to the evaluation. Edwards said that 88% of Adult Leadership teachers received at least $10,000, and 85% of Classroom Excellence teachers received $3,000 or more.

    Statistical analysis of the 2023-24 school year’s data found that students in ATR schools outperformed their peers in non-ATR schools in math and science, showing statistically significant learning gains. 

    “Across the various programs I’ve evaluated, these are positive results — especially in math and science — where the impact of ATR is equivalent to about a month of extra learning for students,” said Dr. Lam Pham, the leading quantitative evaluator. “The results in ELA are positive but not statistically significant, which has been consistent for the last three years,” Pham said, referring to English Language Arts.

    These effects on math and science grow over time, according to the evaluation. Math scores improved throughout schools’ first six years of ATR implementation — though they are no longer significant by the seventh year of implementation, according to the presentation. For science scores, statistically significant gains began in the fifth year after schools began implementing ATR.

    Additionally, math teachers in ATR schools reported higher EVAAS growth scores than their peers in comparable schools.

    Teachers in ATR schools also reported feeling like they have more time to do their work compared to teachers in non-ATR schools.

    This year’s report featured data on teachers supported by ATR teachers for the first time. The evaluation found no positive effects on test scores for students taught by supported teachers compared to students taught by teachers who are not in the program. The researchers also found no effect on turnover levels for teachers supported by Advanced Teachers. However, the report says additional years of data will be necessary to verify if those effects appear over time.  

    The evaluation recommended that principals in ATR schools should foster collaboration and communicate strategically about the program with staff, beginning during Advanced Teachers’ hiring and onboarding.

    “It’s important to integrate ATR into those processes,” Edwards told the Board. “That means introducing Advanced Teachers to new staff and making collaboration, especially mentoring and coaching, a structured part of the day.”

    Edwards said these practices have been adopted in some schools, but principals reported needing more time and support to build collaboration opportunities into the school schedule.

    The report also urges district administrators to coordinate with Beginning Teacher (BT) programs, advertise ATR in recruitment materials, and improve their data collection practices. It also calls on state leaders to standardize the program to ensure consistency across participating districts.

    “Districts need standardized messaging, professional learning opportunities, and technical assistance to support implementation,” Edwards said. “The state can also create more opportunities for districts to share what’s working with one another and expand the evaluation beyond test scores to capture things like classroom engagement, social, emotional development, and feedback from teachers and principals.”

    The evaluators also said “there’s more to do” to expand the program in western North Carolina after Board members raised concerns about uneven participation across the state’s regions.

    2026-27 participants

    After the Friday Institute’s presentation, Board members heard a presentation on proposals for the next round of districts to join the ATR program from Dr. Thomas R. Tomberlin, senior director of educator preparation, licensure, and performance.

    Tomberlin said DPI received 15 proposals representing 22 districts. These proposals have been evaluated by seven independent evaluators, Tomberlin said. The Board had to choose the program’s next participants by Oct. 15 to comply with a legislative requirement. 

    The state can only allocate $911,349 for new implementation grants in 2026-27 — less than one-sixth of the funding required to fund all applications. That level of funding is “very low” compared to previous years, Tomberlin said. In the 2023-25 state budget, the General Assembly appropriated $10.9 million in recurring funds for these supplements in each year of the biennium.

    Tomberlin recommended that the Board approve the three highest-scoring proposals for the 2026-27 fiscal year, and fund these districts at 85% of their request. If the Board approves this recommendation, the state would still have $37,981 in planning funds left over for districts approved during the 2026 proposal cycle.

    Tomberlin said districts are already struggling to pay for the program’s salary supplements. The Friday Institute’s report showed that, despite the high median supplements, some districts are offering supplements as little as $1,000.

    “Some districts are not able to pay the full $10,000 because they have more ATR teachers than the funding that we can give them in terms of those allotments,” Tomberlin said. “And we had requested the General Assembly, I think, an additional $14 million to cover those supplements, and we didn’t get any.”

    The Senate’s budget proposal this session included funds to expand the ATR program over the biennium, while the House proposal did not. The General Assembly has not yet passed a comprehensive state budget, and its mini-budget did not include ATR program funding.

    Tomberlin said DPI would be in touch with the three districts to verify if they can proceed with the program despite limited funding.

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


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  • Transfer Data Shows Little Progress for First-Time Students

    Transfer Data Shows Little Progress for First-Time Students

    The new “Tracking Transfer” report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows little improvement in transfer rates for first-time college students. But it also sheds light on factors that could contribute to better outcomes.

    The latest report, part of a series, examined transfer data for students who entered community college in 2017 and for former community college students enrolled at four-year institutions that academic year.

    It found that only 31.6 percent of first-time students who started community college in 2017 transferred within six years. And slightly fewer than half of those who transferred, 49.7 percent, earned a bachelor’s degree, consistent with outcomes for the previous cohort.

    But some types of students had better outcomes than others. For example, students who came to community college with some dual-enrollment credits had higher transfer and bachelor’s degree completion rates, 46.9 percent and 60.1 percent, respectively.

    Bachelor’s degree completion rates were also highest for transfer students at public four-year institutions compared to other types of institutions. Nearly three-quarters of students who transferred from community colleges to public four-year institutions in the 2017–18 academic year earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. The report also found that most transfer students from community colleges, 75.2 percent, attend public four-year colleges and universities.

    Retention rates among these students were also fairly high. Among students who transferred, 82 percent returned to their four-year institutions the following year. The retention rate was even higher for students who earned a certificate or an associate degree before they transferred, 86.8 percent, which was nearly 10 percentage points higher those who didn’t earn a credential before transferring.

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  • Survey Shows High Graduation and Employment Rates

    Survey Shows High Graduation and Employment Rates

    College Possible’s latest alumni survey shows strong outcomes for participants in its coaching program, including a 93 percent five-year graduation rate for those who attended a four-year college and high rates of employment and job satisfaction.

    According to the report, which is based on a survey of 1,300 of the college access nonprofit’s more than 100,000 graduates, 95 percent are employed, 83 percent are employed full-time and more than four in five respondents said they felt fulfilled by their jobs.

    The salaries of College Possible graduates are also high, with half reporting salaries over $60,000. The median salary for those working in STEM fields is $101,650, while those in non-STEM careers made a median income of $46,680. Sixty-eight percent of respondents indicated they feel at least somewhat financially secure.

    The report also highlights that most of College Possible’s graduates say they benefited significantly from the coaching program, with nine in 10 saying they would recommend College Possible to others and 17 percent returning to coach other students or work for the organization in another capacity.

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  • Autistic College Students Face Dramatically Higher Rates of Mental Health Challenges, New Research Shows

    Autistic College Students Face Dramatically Higher Rates of Mental Health Challenges, New Research Shows

    Autistic college students are experiencing anxiety and depression at significantly higher rates than their non-autistic peers, according to new research from Binghamton University that analyzed data from nearly 150,000 undergraduate students across 342 institutions nationwide.

    The study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, represents one of the most comprehensive examinations to date of mental health challenges facing autistic students in higher education—a population that researchers say has been historically underrepresented in academic research despite growing enrollment numbers.

    “What we found is really staggering—autistic individuals endorse much higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their non-autistic peers,” said Diego Aragon-Guevara, the study’s lead author and a PhD student in psychology at Binghamton University.

    The research team analyzed data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which in 2021 became the first year that autism was included as an endorsable category in the survey. This milestone allowed researchers to conduct the first large-scale comparison of mental health outcomes between autistic and non-autistic college students.

    “We were really excited to see what the data would tell us. It was a big opportunity to be able to do this,” said Dr. Jennifer Gillis Mattson, professor of psychology and co-director of the Institute for Child Development at Binghamton University, who co-authored the study.

    The findings come at a critical time for higher education institutions as autism diagnoses continue to rise nationwide and more autistic students pursue college degrees. The research highlights a significant gap in support services that could impact student success and retention.

    “We know the number of autistic college students continues to increase every single year,” Gillis-Mattson noted. “We really do have an obligation to support these students, and to know how best to support these students, we need to look beyond just autism.”

    The study reveals that campus support systems may be inadvertently overlooking mental health needs while focusing primarily on autism-specific accommodations. Aragon-Guevara, whose research focuses on improving quality of life for autistic adults, said this represents a critical oversight in student services.

    “Support personnel might address an individual’s autism and, in the process, overlook their mental health issues,” he explained. “More care needs to be put into addressing that nuance.”

    The research underscores the need for institutions to develop more comprehensive support frameworks that address both autism-related needs and concurrent mental health challenges. The findings suggest that traditional disability services approaches may need significant enhancement to serve this population effectively.

    “We want to provide the best support for them and to make sure that they have a college experience where they get a lot out of it, but also feel comfortable,” Aragon-Guevara said.

    Dr. Hyejung Kim, an assistant professor in Binghamton’s Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership, noted that the complexity of factors affecting autistic students requires deeper investigation. 

    “This population often skews male, and interactions between personal factors and conditions such as anxiety and depression may shape overall well-being in college,” she said.

    Kim also pointed to additional considerations that institutions should examine. 

    “Autistic students are also more likely to pursue STEM fields, and many report different experiences with faculty and staff across institutional settings,” she said. “We still have much to learn about how these and other contextual factors relate to mental well-being.”

    The Binghamton team views this study as foundational research that confirms the scope of mental health challenges among autistic college students. Their next phase will investigate specific contributing factors, including social dynamics, faculty support, campus accessibility, and other environmental elements that influence student well-being.

    “There are so many elements that go into being comfortable in the new environment that is college,” Aragon-Guevara explained. “We want to look into that and see if there are any deficits in those areas that autistic college students are experiencing, so that we know where we can help support them, or create institutional things to help improve quality of life as a whole.”

    The research is part of a broader effort at Binghamton to better understand and support autistic students in higher education, with plans to collaborate with campus partners to develop targeted interventions based on their findings.

     

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  • Congress Shows Resistance to Trump’s Science Budget Cuts

    Congress Shows Resistance to Trump’s Science Budget Cuts

    Researchers and the academic community may have reason to be hopeful about the future of federal funding. Early indications from the appropriations process suggest that both the House and Senate will diverge significantly from the president’s federal budget proposal for science and technology for the next fiscal year.

    In May, the White House released its budget proposal that aims to reduce federal research and development funding by nearly a quarter, according to an analysis from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It also proposed eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

    Congress still has months of negotiations before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1 but, so far, funding for science has received bipartisan support in appropriations meetings—though the House appears more willing to make significant cuts than the Senate.

    In a July 10 Senate Appropriations Committee meeting, legislators put forth a cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF) of only $16 million compared to the more than $5 billion proposed by Trump. Four days later, a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee suggested slashing $2 billion—less than half of Trump’s proposal.

    Alessandra Zimmermann, budget analyst and senior manager for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s R&D Budget and Policy Program, highlighted in a statement the Senate’s proposal and noted that the House’s over 20 percent proposed cut to NSF is still “a much smaller decrease than the Administration’s initial request.”

    “This shows that there is bipartisan support for investing in basic research, and putting the U.S. on track for FY26,” Zimmermann said. “The story of the future of science is still being written, and we appreciate the strong support from Congress.”

    The House has also suggested increasing by $160 million funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science—rejecting the White House’s planned 14 percent cut. The House has floated cutting NASA’s Science Mission Directorate by $1.3 billion, or 18 percent, but that’s still better than Trump’s proposal to nearly halve that budget. The House also proposed $288 million for the Fulbright scholarship, a highly selective cultural exchange program that Trump had recommended eliminating.

    The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.

    Bipartisan Support for R&D

    Congressional Republicans have remained in lock step with the second Trump administration. Early grumbles about the One Big Beautiful Bill were silent when the House passed it into law July 3, cutting nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, eliminating a loan program for graduate students and much more.

    Still, observers say there is reason for science and research communities to have some optimism that Republicans will step out of line on budget proposals.

    “Neither bill goes to the extreme of the president’s budget,” said Debbie Altenburg, vice president of research policy and advocacy at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. “We are pleased that both the House and the Senate have marked up bills that are above what the president called for.”

    She noted that Republicans, who want the federal government to have a smaller footprint, control Congress and the White House.

    “We will be lucky if we get that flat funding” that senators have proposed, she said.

    The House and Senate have to agree on a dozen appropriations bills to pass the federal budget by Sept. 30 or risk a government shutdown.

    “It’s a very tense political situation,” she said. “It will be hard for Congress to complete all of these bills by the end of September.”

    Roger Pielke, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, noted that “this is not the first time that Congress, on science-technology policy issues, has pushed back on the Trump administration.” It happened during Trump’s first term. And, going back to the 1970s and ’80s, research and development “has been a strong bipartisan area of agreement.”

    “R&D money goes all over the country,” Pielke said. “… It does kind of have a built-in support structure.”

    He said the NSF, which focuses on basic research, may be more insulated from political fights than agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which deals with climate science, and the National Institutes of Health, which deals with vaccines. The congressional appropriations committees haven’t yet indicated what they plan to do with Trump’s proposed 38 percent cut to the NIH.

    But, Pielke noted, “in this day and age, everything can be politicized.”

    ‘Scientific Supremacy’

    While House Republicans appear more willing to protect spending for science than the president, Democratic members of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee have criticized the bill. Representative Grace Meng, a New York Democrat and the subcommittee’s ranking member, said a proposed cut to the NSF and NASA “disinvests in the scientific research that drives American innovation, technological leadership and economic competitiveness.”

    “As other countries are racing forward in space exploration and climate science, this bill would cause the U.S. to fall behind by cutting NASA’s science account by over $1.3 billion,” Meng said.

    Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat and ranking member of the full House Appropriations Committee, said the bill “continues Republicans’ senseless attacks on America’s scientific supremacy.”

    “They have fired hundreds of scientists, including scientists who monitor extreme weather and who advance our scientific goals in space,” DeLauro said, referencing the mass layoffs at federal research agencies. “Why on Earth are we forfeiting America’s scientific supremacy? What would you do differently if you were America’s adversary and wanted to undermine everything that made us a superpower?”

    In the Senate, where Republicans need Democratic support to get to 60 votes to pass their bill, proposed spending cuts have been more modest.

    Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said during its July 10 meeting that the NSF and NASA appropriations bill “funds research in critical scientific and technological fields.” She said another appropriations bill “supports much-needed investments in agricultural research in animal and plant health that were requested by nearly every member in this room.”

    Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat and ranking member of the Senate committee, said “these compromise bills offer a far better outcome for families back home than the alternatives of either the House or another disastrous CR [continuing resolution].”

    She cautioned, though, that rescissions legislation—like the bill passed by Congress last week that claws back $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding–could undermine consensus on a budget.

    “We cannot allow bipartisan bills with partisan rescission packages,” she said, asking, “if we start passing partisan cuts to bipartisan deals, how are we ever supposed to work together?”

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  • When ZIP Codes Teach: How Geographic Inequity Shows Up in Our Classrooms – Faculty Focus

    When ZIP Codes Teach: How Geographic Inequity Shows Up in Our Classrooms – Faculty Focus

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  • When ZIP Codes Teach: How Geographic Inequity Shows Up in Our Classrooms – Faculty Focus

    When ZIP Codes Teach: How Geographic Inequity Shows Up in Our Classrooms – Faculty Focus

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  • Many students decide they’re not a ‘math person’ by the end of elementary school, new study shows

    Many students decide they’re not a ‘math person’ by the end of elementary school, new study shows

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

    Roughly half of middle and high schoolers report losing interest in math class at least half the time, and 1 in 10 lack interest nearly all the time during class, a new study shows.

    In addition, the students who felt the most disengaged in math class said they wanted fewer online activities and more real-world applications in their math classes.

    Those and other findings published Tuesday from the research corporation RAND highlight several ongoing challenges for instruction in math, where nationwide student achievement has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels and the gap between the highest and lowest-performing students in math has continued to grow.

    Feeling bored in math class from time to time is not an unusual experience, and feeling “math anxiety” is common. However, the RAND study notes that routine boredom is associated with lower school performance, reduced motivation, reduced effort, and increased rates of dropping out of school.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found that the students who are the most likely to maintain their interest in math comprehend math, feel supported in math, are confident in their ability to do well in math, enjoy math, believe in the need to learn math, and see themselves as a “math person.”

    Dr. Heather Schwartz, a RAND researcher and the primary investigator of the study, noted that the middle and high school years are when students end up on advanced or regular math tracks. Schwartz said that for young students determining their own sense of math ability, “Tracking programs can be a form of external messaging.”

    Nearly all the students who said they identified as a “math person” came to that conclusion before they reached high school, the RAND survey results show. A majority of those students identified that way as early as elementary school. In contrast, nearly a third of students surveyed said they never identified that way.

    “Math ability is malleable way past middle school,” Schwartz said. Yet, she noted that the survey indicates students’ perception of their own capabilities often remains static.

    The RAND study drew on data from their newly established American Youth Panel, a nationally representative survey of students ages 12-21. It used survey responses of 434 students in grades 5-12. Because this was the first survey sent to members of the panel, there is no comparable data on student math interest prior to the pandemic, so it doesn’t measure any change in student interest.

    The RAND study found that 26% percent of students in middle and high school reported losing interest during a majority of their math lessons. On the other end of the spectrum, a quarter of students said they never or almost never lost interest in math class.

    There weren’t major differences in the findings across key demographic groups: Students in middle and high school, boys and girls, and students of different races and ethnicities reported feeling bored during a majority of math class at similar rates.

    Dr. Janine Remillard, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and expert in mathematics curriculum, said that in many math classes, “It’s usually four or five students answering all the questions, and then the kids who either don’t understand or are less interested or just take a little bit more time — they just zone out.”

    Over 50% of students who lost interest in almost all of their math classes asked for fewer online activities and more real-world problems, the RAND study shows. Schwartz hypothesizes that some online math programs represent a “modern worksheet” and emphasize solo work and repetition. Students who are bored in class instead crave face-to-face activities that focus on application, she said.

    During Remillard’s math teacher training classes, she puts students in her math teacher training class into groups to solve math problems. But she doesn’t tell them what strategy to use.

    The students are forced to work together in order to understand the process of finding an answer rather than simply repeating a given formula. All of her students typically say that if they had learned math this way, they would think of themselves as a math person, according to Remillard, who was not involved in the RAND study.

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

    For more news on STEM learning, visit eSN’s STEM & STEAM hub.

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