Tag: Teachers

  • A Teacher’s Take on Game-Based Learning – The 74

    A Teacher’s Take on Game-Based Learning – The 74


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    I see it every fall: A student suddenly needs to go to the bathroom mid-lesson. Another zones out completely, distracting nearby classmates during a lesson. Tears well up as a child struggles with a problem they just can’t get through.

    These are the telltale signs of math anxiety creeping back into my classroom, and it’s heartbreakingly common. Between 70% and 78% of students experience a decline in math skills over the summer across elementary grades. By the time they reach fifth grade, students can lag behind their peers by two to three years.

    That means students are missing out on crucial math skills that form the foundation for everything that comes later. As many teachers can attest, math remains one of the hardest subjects to teach because the basics aren’t always as black and white as they seem.

    I’ve had to look for new ways to break down those barriers and ease the pressure. That’s why I’ve leaned into game-based learning. It takes something stressful and makes it approachable. In teaching math, that makes all the difference.

    I first brought games into my math block because I wanted to try something different. A student suggested we review a concept with a math game he had used, and I decided to give it a shot.

    There are plenty of games: Math Reveal, Quizizz and Coolmath among them. In my class we use Prodigy, which allows students to play as wizards exploring different fantasy worlds. They progress through the game by engaging in math-based quests and battles, answering a series of math questions to power spells, cast attacks or heal their wizard. Behind the scenes, the platform analyzes each student’s strengths and gaps, then adjusts and tailors content to the appropriate learning level.

    The benefits were clear almost immediately, and the atmosphere in my classroom shifted. Kids who normally avoided eye contact were leaning in, laughing and actually asking to do math. It was a small change at first, but it began breaking down the anxiety that had been holding students back.

    Their anxiety turns into curiosity, and their avoidance shifts into active participation. Students knew they could make mistakes, try again and keep moving without the fear of failure they often carried into traditional lessons.

    Over time, I’ve learned that these games weren’t just fun. They were powerful teaching tools. Game-based learning platforms helped students review after new lessons and revisit older concepts to keep their skills sharp. As a result, when we moved on to fractions or multi-step problems, they weren’t burdened by forgotten fundamentals.

    Now, I incorporate game-based learning throughout my curriculum. I may introduce a new lesson with a quick round or have students partner up to practice and reinforce a concept. Before a test, I can assign relevant game modules that give students a low-stakes way to practice and prepare.

    I noticed students catching up quicker than in previous years. At the start of one school year, I had eight students who were pulled out of my class for extra math help. By the end of the year, only two needed the extra support.

    And let’s be honest: These tools have helped me, too. Teaching math can be overwhelming, especially with constant pressure to get every student up to speed and prepared for benchmark tests.

    Game-based learning became a comforting resource for me because it offers new ways to personalize lessons and celebrate small wins. As students play, I can track their learning in real time to see which skills they’ve mastered, where they’re struggling and how their performance is shifting over time. Students can move at their own pace now, and I can step into the role of guide rather than taskmaster.

    Like any classroom tool, game-based learning works best when you use it with intention. Over the years, I’ve learned some strategies that make it more than just “play time.”

    • Play along: When I first started using game-based learning platforms, I didn’t fully understand how each game worked or the way they built in rewards, challenges, and storylines that keep kids engaged.

      That changed when I created my own character and began playing alongside my students. Suddenly, when a student shouted, “I just beat the Puppet Master!” I knew exactly what that meant, and I could celebrate and learn with them.

      By experiencing the games myself, I learned how to implement them in the classroom. I could see firsthand how to weave them into lessons, when to use them for review versus pre-teaching, and how to keep the fun from becoming a distraction.

    • Assign with purpose: I don’t just let students log in and click around. I strategically tie games to the key concepts we’re learning that week or use them to revisit skills. For example, I might assign a short warm-up where they tackle problems from earlier in the year so they’re never losing touch with old material. Cyclical practice helps build long-term retention while lowering the stress of new concepts.
    • Differentiate lessons: One of the biggest wins with game-based learning is how easy it is to differentiate and personalize learning. In any classroom, I have students at wildly different levels: Some need extra review, others are ready to race ahead. With games, I can assign work that meets each child where they are.

      That flexibility saves me time, but more importantly, it saves students from unnecessary stress. They can master concepts step by step, and I can gently move them up without overwhelming them.

    When I first introduced game-based learning, I didn’t know what to expect. It felt like one more thing to manage. But I let students guide me, and the results spoke for themselves. They were more engaged, less anxious and more willing to try.

    For teachers who are unsure, my advice is simple: Give it a chance. Watch your students light up when math feels less like a hurdle and more like a game. For me, the greatest reward has been seeing kids who once dreaded math start to relax, build confidence and move from “I can’t do this” to “Can we play again?”

    Game-based learning isn’t about replacing rigor. It’s about sparking curiosity, reducing fear and creating the kind of engagement that fosters a genuine love of learning. Most of all, it reminds us — and our students — that math can, and should, be fun.


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  • Teachers Create Tool to Help NYC Families Find Childcare

    Teachers Create Tool to Help NYC Families Find Childcare

    Educators tap two tech firms to create NYC Childcare Navigator, a free platform that cuts through the chaos.

    A one-stop shop

    Frustrated by the maze of agencies, websites, and applications families face to find childcare and possible financial support, New York City teachers said, “Enough!”

    The United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents more than 200,000 educators and professionals in New York City, teamed up with two tech firms to build a better approach: NYC Childcare Navigator.

    Navigator is a platform that connects New York City families to upwards of 12,000 childcare options across the five boroughs. It offers instant eligibility checks for money-saving programs, step-by-step application support, and the most comprehensive directory of childcare providers in the city — all in one free, easy-to-use website.

    The union created the tool as a benefit for its own members, but it was so successful that the union opened it up to all New York City residents in October. 

    “We couldn’t gatekeep something that we knew so many New York City families needed,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

    Centralizing tailored childcare

    The union partnered with Mirza, a city-based tech firm that builds platforms to connect low-wage workers with local, state, and federal benefits, including for childcare.

    “We wanted to get meaningful benefits to parents, but there wasn’t a single place that would allow a parent to see all the options available. That felt like a big missing piece. But it also pointed toward a solution,” said Siran Cao, CEO and Co-Founder of Mirza, who said she was inspired by how her own mother navigated a new country and the impact that a few well-timed bits of financial support had on her own family.

    The union then introduced Upfront, a software company that consolidates multiple sources of childcare providers into a single, centralized database. The result: parents using the NYC Childcare Navigator can see every licensed program in NYC (center, home, and school-based), searchable by zip code, child’s age, availability, languages spoken, special needs, and many other filters. For the first time, childcare providers can claim a dedicated page to share current information about their specific childcare services.

    “It’s everything in a single location instead of having to make dozens of calls and scour multiple, incomplete websites,” said Levin-Robinson, who said she was motivated by how challenging it was to find care for her own children.

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  • Rural teacher shortages could get worse thanks to Trump’s visa fee

    Rural teacher shortages could get worse thanks to Trump’s visa fee

    by Ariel Gilreath, The Hechinger Report
    November 7, 2025

    HALIFAX COUNTY, N.C. — When Ivy McFarland first traveled from her native Honduras to teach elementary Spanish in North Carolina, she spent a week in Chapel Hill for orientation. By the end of that week, McFarland realized the college town on the outskirts of Raleigh was nowhere near where she’d actually be teaching.

    On the car ride to her school district, the city faded into the suburbs. Those suburbs turned into farmland. The farmland stretched into more farmland, until, two hours later, she made it to her new home in rural Halifax County.

    “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is far,’” McFarland said. “It was shocking when I got here, and then I felt like I wanted to go back home.”

    Nine years later, she’s come to think of Halifax County as home.

    In this stretch of rural North Carolina, teachers hail from around the globe: Jamaica, the Philippines, Honduras, Guyana. Of the 17 teachers who work at Everetts Elementary School in the Halifax County school district, two are from the United States. 

    In this rural school district surrounded by rural school districts, recruiting teachers has become a nearly impossible task. With few educators applying for jobs, schools like Everetts Elementary have relied on international teachers to fill the void. Districtwide, 101 of 156 educators are international. 

    “We’ve tried recruiting locally, and it just has not worked for us,” said Carolyn Mitchell, executive director of human resources in the eastern North Carolina district of about 2,100 students. “Halifax is a rural area, and a lot of people just don’t want to work in rural areas. If they’re not people who are from here and want to return, it’s challenging.” 

    Around the country, many rural schools are contending with a shortage of teacher applicants that has ballooned into a crisis in recent years. Fewer students are enrolling in teacher training programs, leading to a shrinking pipeline that’s made filling vacancies one of the most challenging problems for school leaders to solve in districts with smaller tax bases and fewer resources than their suburban and urban peers. In certain grade levels and subject areas — like math and special education positions — the challenge is particularly acute. Now, some of the levers rural schools have used to boost their teacher recruitment efforts are also disappearing.

    This spring, the federal Department of Education eliminated teacher residency and training grants for rural schools. In September, President Donald Trump announced a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications — visas hundreds of schools like Everetts Elementary use to hire international teachers for hard-to-staff positions — saying industries were using the visas to replace American workers with “lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.” A lawsuit filed by a coalition of education, union, nonprofit and other groups is challenging the fee, citing teacher shortages. Rural schools are also bracing for more cuts to federal funding next year.

    “We’re not only talking about a recruitment and retention problem. We’re talking about the collapse of the rural teacher workforce,” said Melissa Sadorf, executive director of the National Rural Education Association.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Most of Halifax’s international teachers arrive on H-1B visas, which allow them to work in the U.S. for about five years with the possibility of a green card at the end of that period. About one-third of the district’s international teachers have J-1 visas, which let them work in the country for three years with the possibility of renewing it for two more. At the end of those five years, educators on J-1 visas are required to return to their home countries.

    A few years ago, Halifax County Schools decided to shift from hiring teachers on J-1 visas in favor of H-1B, hoping it would reduce teacher turnover and keep educators in their classrooms for longer. The results have been mixed, Mitchell said, because within a few years, some of their teachers ended up transferring to bigger, higher-paying districts anyway. 

    There are trade-offs for the teachers, too. Mishcah Knight came to the U.S. from Jamaica both to expand her skills and increase her pay as an educator. In the rural North Carolina county, finding transportation has been the biggest challenge for Knight, who teaches second grade. 

    She lacks a credit history needed to buy a car, leaving her reliant on carpooling to work. A single taxi driver serves the area, which doesn’t have public transit, Uber or Lyft. “Sometimes, he’s in Virginia,” Knight said. “It’s lucky when we actually get him to take us somewhere.”

    Being away from family also takes its toll on teachers. Nar Bell Dizon, who has taught music at Everetts Elementary since 2023, had to leave his wife and son back home in the Philippines. He visits in the summer, but during the school year, he sees them only through video calls. 

    “This is what life is — not everything is smooth,” Dizon said. “There will always be struggles and sacrifices.”

    Dizon’s first year in Everetts Elementary School was hard — it took time adapting to a different teaching style and classroom management. Now that he’s in his third year, he feels like he’s gotten his feet beneath him. 

    “When you can build a rapport with your students, things become easier,” Dizon said.

    When her international teachers are able to stay for longer, the students perform better, said Chastity Kinsey, principal of Everetts Elementary. “I know the benefit the teachers bring to the classroom,” Kinsey said. “After the first year or two, they normally take off like rock stars.” 

    Related: Trump’s cuts to teacher training leave rural school districts, aspiring educators in the lurch 

    Trump’s new fee does not address any of the challenges the Halifax district had with the H-1B visa, and it effectively slams the door on future hires. Now, the district will have to rely on J-1 visas to recruit new international teachers, meaning the educators will have to leave just as they’ve acclimated to their classrooms.

    “We just can’t afford to,” Mitchell said of paying the $100,000 fee. Other districts, she said, might turn to waivers allowing them to increase class sizes and hire fewer teachers, among other strategies.

    Since the applicant pool began drying up about a decade ago, the make-up of the district’s teaching staff has slowly shifted to international teachers. 

    At the heart of the problem is that when a position opens up, few, if any, citizens apply, said Katina Lynch, principal of Aurelian Springs Institute of Global Learning, an elementary school in Halifax County. 

    When Lynch had to hire a new fourth grade teacher this summer, she received three applications: Only one was a licensed teacher from the U.S.

    Nationally, about 1 in 8 teaching positions are either vacant or filled by teachers who are not certified for the position, according to data from the nonprofit Learning Policy Institute, published in July. In addition to fewer college students graduating with degrees in education, diminished public perception of the teaching profession and political polarization of schools are to blame, school leaders said. In some states, the growth of charter and private school options has made competing for teachers even harder. On top of a widening pay gap between rural and urban districts, it’s a perfect storm for schools in more remote parts of the country, said Sadorf.

    In rural Bunker Hill, Illinois, where more than 500 students attend two schools, some positions have gone unfilled for years. “We’ve posted for a school psychologist for years, never had anybody apply. We posted for a special ed teacher — have not had anybody apply. We’ve posted for a high school math teacher two years in a row,” said Superintendent Todd Dugan. “No applicants.”

    As a result, students often end up with a long-term substitute or an unlicensed student teacher. 

    When teachers do arrive in the district, Dugan works hard to try to get them to stick around. He pairs new teachers with experienced mentors, and uses federal funding to help those who want master’s degrees to afford them. 

    He also formed a calendar committee to give teachers input on which days they get off during the year. “More than pay, having at least a little bit of involvement, control and say in your work environment will cause people to stay,” said Dugan. It seems to be working: Bunker Hill’s teacher retention rate is more than 92 percent. 

    Related: Schools confront a new reality: They can’t count on federal money 

    Schools across the country face the same challenges to varying degrees. Several years ago, the Everett Area School District in southern Pennsylvania would receive 30 to 50 applications for a given position at its elementary schools, Superintendent Dave Burkett said. Now, they’re lucky if they get three or four.

    Last year, the district learned that a middle school science teacher would retire that summer. Just three people applied for the opening, and only one was certified for the role.

    “We offered the job before that person even left the building,” Burkett said. The candidate accepted it, but when it was time to fill out paperwork that summer, the teacher had taken a different job in a bigger district.

    One way Burkett has tried to address the shortage is to hire a permanent, full-time substitute teacher in each of its buildings. If a vacancy opens up that they haven’t been able to fill, the full-time substitute can step in until a permanent replacement is found. The permanent substitute makes more than a traditional sub and also receives health insurance. 

    Sadorf, with the National Rural Education Association, says other ways to help include introducing students to teacher training pathways starting in high school, building “grow-your-own” programs to train local people for teaching jobs, and offering loan forgiveness and housing support.

    Sadorf’s organization is in favor of creating an educator-specific visa track that would allow international teachers to be in communities for longer. The group is also in favor of exempting schools from the $100,000 H-1B fee. “Stabilizing federal support is something that really needs to be focused on at the federal level,” Sadorf said.

    At Everetts Elementary in Halifax County, McFarland, the educator from Honduras, is among the most senior teachers in the school. She has adapted to the rural community, where she met and fell in love with her now-husband. She gets asked sometimes why she hasn’t moved to a bigger city.

    “Education has taken me places I’ve never expected,” McFarland said. “For me, being here, there’s a reason for it. I see the difference I can make.”

    Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].

    This story about the visa fee was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/federal-policies-risk-worsening-an-already-dire-rural-teacher-shortage/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • The new AI tools are fast but can’t replace the judgment, care and cultural knowledge teachers bring to the table

    The new AI tools are fast but can’t replace the judgment, care and cultural knowledge teachers bring to the table

    by Tanishia Lavette Williams, The Hechinger Report
    November 4, 2025

    The year I co-taught world history and English language arts with two colleagues, we were tasked with telling the story of the world in 180 days to about 120 ninth graders. We invited students to consider how texts and histories speak to one another: “The Analects” as imperial governance, “Sundiata” as Mali’s political memory, “Julius Caesar” as a window into the unraveling of a republic. 

    By winter, our students had given us nicknames. Some days, we were a triumvirate. Some days, we were Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades. It was a joke, but it held a deeper meaning. Our students were learning to make connections by weaving us into the histories they studied. They were building a worldview, and they saw themselves in it. 

    Designed to foster critical thinking, this teaching was deeply human. It involved combing through texts for missing voices, adapting lessons to reflect the interests of the students in front of us and trusting that learning, like understanding, unfolds slowly. That labor can’t be optimized for efficiency. 

    Yet, today, there’s a growing push to teach faster. Thousands of New York teachers are being trained to use AI tools for lesson planning, part of a $23 million initiative backed by OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic. The program promises to reduce teacher burnout and streamline planning. At the same time, a new private school in Manhattan is touting an AI-driven model that “speed-teaches” core subjects in just two hours of instruction each day while deliberately avoiding politically controversial issues. 

    Marketed as innovation, this stripped-down vision of education treats learning as a technical output rather than as a human process in which students ask hard questions and teachers cultivate the critical thinking that fuels curiosity. A recent analysis of AI-generated civics lesson plans found that they consistently lacked multicultural content and prompts for critical thinking. These AI tools are fast, but shallow. They fail to capture the nuance, care and complexity that deep learning demands. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.  

    When I was a teacher, I often reviewed lesson plans to help colleagues refine their teaching practices. Later, as a principal in Washington, D.C., and New York City, I came to understand that lesson plans, the documents connecting curriculum and achievement, were among the few steady examples of classroom practice. Despite their importance, lesson plans were rarely evaluated for their effectiveness.  

    When I wrote my dissertation, after 20 years of working in schools, lesson plan analysis was a core part of my research. Analyzing plans across multiple schools, I found that the activities and tasks included in lesson plans were reliable indicators of the depth of knowledge teachers required and, by extension, the limits of what students were asked to learn. 

    Reviewing hundreds of plans made clear that most lessons rarely offered more than a single dominant voice — and thus confined both what counted as knowledge and what qualified as achievement. Shifting plans toward deeper, more inclusive student learning required deliberate effort to incorporate primary sources, weave together multiple narratives and design tasks that push students beyond mere recall. 

     I also found that creating the conditions for such learning takes time. There is no substitute for that. Where this work took hold, students were making meaning, seeing patterns, asking why and finding themselves in the story. 

    That’s the transformation AI can’t deliver. When curriculum tools are trained on the same data that has long omitted perspectives, they don’t correct bias; they reproduce it. The developers of ChatGPT acknowledge that the model is “skewed toward Western views and performs best in English” and warn educators to review its content carefully for stereotypes and bias. Those same distortions appear at the systems level — a 2025 study in the World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews found that biased educational algorithms can shape students’ educational paths and create new structural barriers. 

    Ask an AI tool for a lesson on westward expansion, and you’ll get a tidy narrative about pioneers and Manifest Destiny. Request a unit on the Civil Rights Movement and you may get a few lines on Martin Luther King Jr., but hardly a word about Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer or the grassroots organizers who made the movement possible. Native nations, meanwhile, are reduced to footnotes or omitted altogether. 

    Curriculum redlining — the systematic exclusion or downplaying of entire histories, perspectives and communities — has already been embedded in educational materials for generations. So what happens when “efficiency” becomes the goal? Whose histories are deemed too complex, too political or too inconvenient to make the cut? 

    Related: What aspects of teaching should remain human? 

    None of this is theoretical. It’s already happening in classrooms across the country. Educators are under pressure to teach more with less: less time, fewer resources, narrower guardrails. AI promises relief but overlooks profound ethical questions. 

    Students don’t benefit from autogenerated worksheets. They benefit from lessons that challenge them, invite them to wrestle with complexity and help them connect learning to the world around them. That requires deliberate planning and professional judgment from a human who views education as a mechanism to spark inquiry. 

    Recently, I asked my students at Brandeis University to use AI to generate a list of individuals who embody concepts such as beauty, knowledge and leadership. The results, overwhelmingly white, male and Western, mirrored what is pervasive in textbooks.  

    My students responded with sharp analysis. One student created color palettes to demonstrate the narrow scope of skin tones generated by AI. Another student developed a “Missing Gender” summary to highlight omissions. It was a clear reminder that students are ready to think critically but require opportunities to do so.  

    AI can only do what it’s programmed to do, which means it draws from existing, stratified information and lags behind new paradigms. That makes it both backward-looking and vulnerable to reproducing bias.  

    Teaching with humanity, by contrast, requires judgment, care and cultural knowledge. These are qualities no algorithm can automate. When we surrender lesson planning to AI, we don’t just lose stories; we also lose the opportunity to engage with them. We lose the critical habits of inquiry and connection that teaching is meant to foster. 

    Tanishia Lavette Williams is the inaugural education stratification postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, a Kay fellow at Brandeis University and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].  

    This story about male AI and teaching was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.  

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  • What research says about Mamdani and Cuomo’s education proposals

    What research says about Mamdani and Cuomo’s education proposals

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    November 3, 2025

    New York City, where I live, will elect a new mayor Tuesday, Nov. 4. The two front runners — state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent — have largely ignored the city’s biggest single budget item: education. 

    One exception has been gifted education, which has generated a sharp debate between the two candidates. The controversy is over a tiny fraction of the student population. Only 18,000 students are in the city’s gifted and talented program out of more than 900,000 public school students. (Another 20,000 students attend the city’s elite exam-entrance high schools.) 

    But New Yorkers are understandably passionate about getting their kids into these “gated” classrooms, which have some of the best teachers in the city. Meanwhile, the racial composition of these separate (some say segregated) classes — disproportionately white and Asian — is shameful. Even many advocates of gifted education recognize that reform is needed. 

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

    Mamdani wants to end gifted programs for kindergarteners and wait until third grade to identify advanced students. Cuomo wants to expand gifted education and open up more seats for more children. 

    The primary justification for gifted programs is that some children learn so quickly that they need separate classrooms to progress at an accelerated pace. 

    But studies have found that students in gifted classrooms are not learning faster than their general education peers. And analyses of curricula show that many gifted classes don’t actually teach more advanced material; they simply group mostly white and Asian students together without raising academic rigor.

    In my reporting, I have found that researchers question whether we can accurately spot giftedness in 4- or 5-year-olds. My colleague Sarah Carr recently wrote about the many methods that have been used to try to identify young children with high potential, and how the science underpinning them is shaky. In addition, true giftedness is often domain-specific — a child might be advanced in math but not in reading, or vice versa — yet New York City’s system labels or excludes children globally rather than by subject. 

    Because of New York City’s size — it’s the nation’s largest public school system, even larger than 30 states — what happens here matters.

    Policy implications

    • Delaying identification until later grades, when cognitive profiles are clearer, could improve accuracy in picking students. 
    • Reforming the curriculum to make sure that gifted classes are truly advanced would make it easier to justify having them. 
    • Educators could consider ways for children to accelerate in a single subject — perhaps by moving up a grade in math or English classes. 
    • How to desegregate these classrooms, and make their racial/ethnic composition less lopsided, remains elusive.

    I’ve covered these questions before. Read my columns on gifted education:

    Size isn’t everything

    Another important issue in this election is class size. Under a 2022 state law, New York City must reduce class sizes to no more than 20 students in grades K-3 by 2028. (The cap will be 23 students per class in grades 4-8 and 25 students per class in high school.) To meet that mandate, the city will need to hire an estimated 18,000 new teachers.

    During the campaign, Mamdani said he would subsidize teacher training, offering tuition aid in exchange for a three-year commitment to teach in the city’s public schools. The idea isn’t unreasonable, but it’s modest — only $12 million a year, expected to produce about 1,000 additional teachers annually. That’s a small fraction of what’s needed.

    The bigger problem may be the law itself: Schools lack both physical space and enough qualified teachers. What parents want — small classes led by excellent, experienced educators — isn’t something the city can scale quickly. Hiring thousands of novices may not improve learning much, and will make the job of school principal, who must make all these hires, even harder.

    For more on the research behind class-size reductions, see my earlier columns:

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

    This story about education issues in the New York City mayoral election was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-nyc-mayor-election-education/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • Why one reading expert says ‘just-right’ books are all wrong

    Why one reading expert says ‘just-right’ books are all wrong

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    October 27, 2025

    Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has spent his career evaluating education research and helping teachers figure out what works best in the classroom. A leader of the National Reading Panel, whose 2000 report helped shape what’s now known as the “science of reading,” Shanahan has long influenced literacy instruction in the United States. He also served on the National Institute for Literacy’s advisory board in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

    Shanahan is a scholar whom I regularly consult when I come across a reading study, and so I was eager to interview him about his new book, “Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives.” (Harvard Education Press, September 2025). In it, Shanahan takes aim at one of the most common teaching practices in American classrooms: matching students with “just-right” books. 

    He argues that the approach — where students read different texts depending on their assessed reading level — is holding many children back. Teachers spend too much time testing students and assigning leveled books, he says, instead of helping all students learn how to understand challenging texts.

    “American children are being prevented from doing better in reading by a longstanding commitment to a pedagogical theory that insists students are best taught with books they can already read,” Shanahan writes in his book. “Reading is so often taught in small groups — not so teachers can guide efforts to negotiate difficult books, but to ensure the books are easy enough that not much guidance is needed.”

    Comprehension, he says, doesn’t grow that way.

    The trouble with leveled reading

    Grouping students by ability and assigning easier or harder books — a practice known as leveled reading — remains deeply embedded in U.S. schools. A 2018 Thomas B. Fordham Institute survey found that 62 percent of upper elementary teachers and more than half of middle school teachers teach at students’ reading level rather than at grade level.  

    That may sound sensible, but Shanahan says it’s not helping anyone and is even leading teachers to dispense with reading altogether. “In social studies and science, and these days, even in English classes,” he said in an interview, “teachers either don’t assign any readings or they read the texts to the students.” Struggling readers aren’t being given the chance — or the tools — to tackle complex material on their own.

    Instead, Shanahan believes all students should read grade-level texts together, with teachers providing more support for those who need it.

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

    “What I’m recommending is instructional differentiation,” he said in our interview. “Everyone will have the same instructional goal — we’re all going to learn to read the fourth-grade text. I might teach a whole-class lesson and then let some kids move on to independent work while others get more help. Maybe the ones who didn’t get it, read the text again with my support. By the end, more students will have reached the learning goal — and tomorrow the whole class can take on another text.”

    27 different ways

    Shanahan’s approach doesn’t mean throwing kids into the deep end without help. His book outlines a toolbox of strategies for tackling difficult texts, such as looking up unfamiliar vocabulary, rereading confusing passages, or breaking down long sentences. “You can tip over into successful reading 27 different ways,” he said, and he hopes future researchers discover many more. 

    He is skeptical of drilling students on skills like identifying the main idea or making inferences. “We’ve treated test questions as the skill,” he said. “That doesn’t work.”

    There is widespread frustration over the deterioration of American reading achievement, especially among middle schoolers. (Thirty-nine percent of eighth graders cannot reach the lowest of three achievement levels, called “basic,” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.) But there is little agreement among reading advocates on how to fix the problem. Some argue that what children primarily need is more knowledge to grasp unfamiliar ideas in a new reading passage, but Shanahan argues that background knowledge won’t be sufficient or as powerful as explicit comprehension instruction. Other reading experts agree. Nonie Lesaux, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education who specializes in literacy in her own academic work, endorsed Shanahan’s argument in an October 2025 online discussion of the new book. 

    Shanahan is most persuasive in pointing out that there isn’t strong experimental evidence to show that reading achievement goes up more when students read a text at their individual level. By contrast, a 2024 analysis found that the most effective schools are those that keep instruction at grade level. Still, Shanahan acknowledges that more research is needed to pinpoint which comprehension strategies work best for which students and in which circumstances.

    Misunderstanding Vygotsky

    Teachers often cite the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” to justify giving students books that are neither too easy nor too hard. But Shanahan says that’s a misunderstanding of Vygotsky’s work.

    Vygotsky believed teachers should guide students to learn challenging things they cannot yet do on their own, he said.

    He offers an analogy: a mother teaching her child to tie their shoes. At first, she demonstrates while narrating the steps aloud. Then the child does one step, and she finishes the rest. Over time, the mother gradually releases control and the child ties a bow on his own. “Leveled reading,” Shanahan said, “is like saying, ‘Why don’t we just get Velcro?’ This is about real teaching. ‘Boys and girls, you don’t know how to ride this bike yet, but I’m going to make sure you do by the time we’re done.’ ”

    Related: What happens to reading comprehension when students focus on the main idea

    Shanahan’s critique of reading instruction applies mainly from second grade onward, after children learn how to read and are focusing on understanding what they read. In kindergarten and first grade, when children are still learning phonics and how to decode the words on the page, the research evidence against small group instruction with different level texts isn’t as strong, he said. 

    Learning to read first – decoding – is important. Shanahan says there are rare exceptions to teaching all children at grade level. 

    “If a fifth grader still can’t read,” Shanahan said, “I wouldn’t make that child read a fifth-grade text.” That child might need separate instruction from a reading specialist.

    Advanced readers, meanwhile, can be challenged in other ways, Shanahan suggests, through independent reading time, skipping ahead to higher-grade reading classes, or by exploring complex ideas within grade-level texts.

    The role of AI — and parents

    Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to rewrite texts for different difficulty levels. Shanahan is skeptical of that approach. Simpler texts, whether written by humans or generated by AI, don’t teach students to improve their reading ability, he argues.

    Still, he’s intrigued by the idea of using AI to help students “climb the stairs” by instantly modifying a single text to a range of reading levels, say, to third-, fifth- and seventh-grade levels, and having students read them in quick succession. Whether that boosts comprehension is still unknown and needs to be studied.

    AI might be most helpful to teachers, Shanahan suspects, to help point to a sentence or a passage that tends to confuse students or trip them up. The teacher can then address those common difficulties in class. 

    Shanahan worries about what happens outside of school: Kids aren’t reading much at all.

    He urges parents to let children read whatever they enjoy — regardless if it’s above or below their level — but to set consistent expectations. “Nagging may not be effective,” he said. “But you can be specific: ‘After dinner Thursday, read the first chapter. When you’re done, we’ll talk about it, and then you can play a computer game or go on your phone.’ ”

    Too often, he says, parents back down when kids resist. “They are the kids. We are the adults,” Shanahan said. “We’re responsible. Let’s step up and do what’s right for them.”

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

    This story about reading levels was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • Teachers unions leverage contracts to fight climate change

    Teachers unions leverage contracts to fight climate change

    This story first appeared in Hechinger’s climate and education newsletter. Sign up here. 

    In Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union won a contract with the city’s schools to add solar panels on some buildings and clean energy career pathways for students, among other actions. In Minnesota, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators demanded that the district create a task force on environmental issues and provide free metro passes for students. And in California, the Los Angeles teachers union’s demands include electrifying the district’s bus fleet and providing electric vehicle charging stations at all schools. 

    Those are among the examples in a new report on how unionized teachers are pushing their school districts to take action on the climate crisis, which is damaging school buildings and disrupting learning. The report — produced by the nonprofit Building Power Resource Center, which supports local governments and leaders, and the Labor Network for Sustainability, a nonprofit that seeks to unite labor and climate groups — describes how educators can raise demands for climate action when they negotiate labor contracts with their districts. By emphasizing the financial case for switching to renewable energy, educators can simultaneously act on climate change, improve conditions in schools and save districts money, it says. 

    As federal support and financial incentives for climate action wither, this sort of local action is becoming more difficult — but also more urgent, advocates say. Chicago Public Schools has relied on funding for electric buses that has been sunsetted by the Trump administration, said Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union. But the district is also seeking other local and state funding and nonprofit support.

    Bradley Marianno, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that educator unions embracing climate action is part of a move started about 15 years ago in which more progressive unions — like those in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere — focus on “collective good bargaining,” or advocating for changes that are good for their members but also the broader community. But this approach is unlikely to catch on everywhere: “The risk lies in members feeling that core issues like wages and working conditions are being overlooked in favor of more global causes,” he wrote in an email. 

    I recently caught up with Potter, the CTU vice president, about the report and his union’s approach to bargaining for climate action. Collaborating with local environmental and community groups, the Chicago Teachers Union ultimately succeeded in winning a contract that calls for identifying schools for solar panels and electrification, expanding indoor air quality monitoring, helping educators integrate climate change into their curriculum, and establishing training for students in clean energy jobs, among other steps. 

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

    The report talks about contract negotiations being an underused — and effective — lever for demanding climate action. Why do you see that process as such an opportunity for climate action?

    On the local level, our schools are 84, 83 years old on average. There is lead paint, lead pipes, mold, asbestos, PCBs, all kinds of contamination in the HVAC system and the walls that require upgrades. By our estimate, the district needs $30 billion worth of upgrades, and right now I think they spend $500 million a year to just do patch-up work. We’re at a point where it’s a system fail of epic proportions if we can’t figure out a way to transition and make things healthier. And so if you’re going to do a roof repair, put solar on it, have independence from fossil fuels, clean air in areas that have faced environmental racism and contamination. 

    We’re also dealing with a legacy of discrimination and harm, and that is true of the nation. So how do we get out of this and also save the planet and also prevent greater climate events that further destabilize vulnerable communities and put people at risk? It made sense for us to use our contract as a path to do both things — deal with this local crisis that was screaming for new solutions and ideas, in a moment when the climate is on fire, literally.  

    How challenging was it to get educators to view climate issues as a priority? There are so many other things, around pay and other issues, on the table. 

    When we started, it almost felt like people in the membership, in the community, viewed it as a niche issue. Like, ‘Oh, isn’t that cute, you care about green technology.’ As we figured out how to think about it and talk about it and probe where people were having issues in their schools, it became really obvious that when you started talking about asbestos, lead and mold remediation — and helping communities that have been hit the hardest with cumulative impacts and carcinogens and how those things are present in schools — that became much more tangible. Or even quality food and lunch and breakfast for students who are low-income. It went from bottom of the list to top of the list, instantaneously. 

    Your contract calls for a number of climate-related actions, including green pathways for students and agreements with building trade unions to create good jobs for students. Tell me about that. 

    We’re trying to use the transformation of our facilities as another opportunity for families and students in these communities that have been harmed the most to get the greatest benefit from the transformation. So if we can install solar, we want our students to be part of that project on the ground in their schools, gaining the skills and apprenticeship credentials to become the electricians of the future. And using that as a project labor agreement [which establishes the terms of work on a certain project] with the trades to open doors and opportunities. The same goes for all the other improvements — whether it’s heat pumps, HVAC systems, geothermal. And for EV — we have outdated auto shop programming that’s exclusively based on the combustible engine reliant on fossil fuels, whereas in [the nearby city of] Belvidere they are building electric cars per the United Auto Workers’ new contract. Could we gain a career path on electric vehicles that allows students to gain that mechanical knowledge and insight and prepares them for the vehicles of the future? 

    The report talks about the Batesville School District in Arkansas that was able to increase teacher salaries because of savings from solar. Have you tried to make the case for higher teacher salaries because of these climate steps?  

    The $500 million our district allocates for facility upgrades annually comes out of the general fund, so we haven’t at all thought about it in terms of salary. We’ve thought about it in terms of having a school nurse, social worker, mental health interventions at a moment when there is so much trauma. We see this as a win-win: The fewer dollars the district has to spend on facility needs means the more dollars they can spend on instructional and social-emotional needs for students. In terms of the Arkansas model, it’s pretty basic. If you get off the fossil fuel pipelines and electric lines and you become self-sufficient, essentially, powering your own electric and heat, there is going to be a boon, particularly if there are up-front subsidies. 

    Math and climate change 

    When temperatures rise in classrooms, students have more trouble concentrating and their learning suffers — in math, in particular. That’s according to a new report from NWEA, an education research and testing company.

    The report, part of a growing body of evidence of the harms of extreme heat on student performance, found that math scores declined when outdoor temperatures on test days rose above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Students in high-poverty schools, which are less likely to have air conditioning, saw declines up to twice as large as those in wealthier schools. 

    The learning losses grew as temperatures rose. Students who took tests on 101-degree days scored roughly 0.06 standard deviations below students who tested when temperatures were 60 degrees, the equivalent of about 10 percent of the learning a fifth grader typically gains in a school year. 

    It’s not entirely clear why student math scores suffer more than reading when temperatures rise. But Sofia Postell, an NWEA research analyst, said that on math tests, students must problem-solve and rely on their memories, and that kind of thinking is particularly difficult when students are hot and tired. Anxiety could be a factor too, she wrote in an email: “Research has also shown that heat increases anxiety, and some students may experience more testing anxiety around math exams.”

    The study was based on data from roughly 3 million scores on NWEA’s signature MAP Growth test for third to eighth graders in six states. 

    The report urged school, district and state officials to take several steps to reduce the effects of high heat on student learning and testing. Ideally, tests would be scheduled during times of the year when it wasn’t so hot, it said, and also during mornings, when temperatures are cooler. Leaders also need to invest in updating HVAC systems to keep kids cool. 

    “Extreme heat has already detrimentally impacted student learning and these effects will only intensify without action,” wrote Postell. 

    Mea culpa: A quick note to say I got two things wrong in my last newsletter — the name of the Natural Resources Defense Council was incorrect, as was the number of hours of learning California students have missed so far this year. It’s more than 54,000. 

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

    This story about teachers unions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter on climate and education.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Where are tomorrow’s teachers? Education degrees drop over 2 decades.

    Where are tomorrow’s teachers? Education degrees drop over 2 decades.

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    The number of education degrees awarded in the U.S. steadily decreased in the nearly two decades between 2003-04 and 2022-23, according to a new analysis of federal data by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

    Bachelor’s degrees in education dipped from 109,622 annually to 90,710 while master’s degrees declined from 162,632 to 143,669 in that time span, AACTE said in its report on data from the U.S. Department of Education.

    On Thursday, AACTE released a data dashboard based on these findings as well as two related reports. One covers the degrees and certificates conferred in education and the other highlights teacher preparation program trends.

    As the Trump administration seeks to dismantle the Education Department and limit funding for federal education research, Jacqueline King, a co-author of the reports and an AACTE consultant, called for the agency to continue publishing research on teacher preparation programs. 

    “These reports provide a valuable check-up on the supply of new educators, and it is exciting that this year we can offer readers the opportunity to customize how they view the data through our new data dashboards,” King said in a Thursday statement. “It is essential that the federal government continue to provide the field — and the broader public — with this important information.”

    Here are some standout figures on AACTE’s findings on the state of teacher preparation programs nationwide.

    By the numbers

     

    -3%

    The one-year decline in bachelor’s degrees awarded in education from 2021-22 to 2022-23, the most recent year with available data.

     

    -5%

    The one-year decline in master’s degrees awarded in education from 2021-22 to 2022-23.

     

    407,556.

    The number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive higher education institution during the 2022-23 academic year.

     

    611,296

    The number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive higher education institution during the 2012-13 academic year.

     

    124,428

    The number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at an alternative teacher preparation program — ones not based at colleges — during the 2022-23 academic year. In the 2012-13 academic year, that number was just 43,099

     

    112,913

    The number of students who completed a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive college or university in the 2022-23 academic year. During the 2012-13 academic year, that number stood at 163,851.

     

    16,899

    The number of students who completed an alternative teacher preparation program not based at a college during the 2022-23 academic year. In 2012-13, that number was 15,550.

     

    +9%

    The growth in students completing alternative teacher preparation programs not based at higher education institutions between 2012-13 and 2022-23.

     

    +44%

    The growth in students who completed alternative teacher preparation programs based at colleges between 2012-13 and 2022-23.

     

    29%

    The share of education bachelor’s degrees awarded to non-White graduates in 2022-23, up from 23% in 2016-17.

     

    33%

    The percentage of education master’s degrees that went to non-Whites in 2022-23, up from 28% in 2016-17.

     

    42%

    The portion of education doctoral degrees earned by non-Whites in 2022-23, up from 37% in 2016-17.

    Correction: A previous version of this article stated the wrong number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive higher education institution during the 2022-23 academic year. The correct enrollment figure is 407,556 students.

     

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  • A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

    A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

    After decades serving in the Marine Corps and in education, I know firsthand that servant leadership and diplomacy can and should be taught. That’s why I hoped to bring 32 high school seniors from Texas to Washington, D.C., this fall for a week of engagement and learning with top U.S. government and international leaders.  

    Instead of open doors, we faced a government shutdown and had to cancel our trip. 

    The shutdown impacts government employees, members of the military and their families who are serving overseas and all Americans who depend on government being open to serve us — in businesses, schools and national parks, and through air travel and the postal service.  

    Our trip was not going to be a typical rushed tour of monuments, but a highly selective, long-anticipated capstone experience. Our plans included intensive interaction with government leaders at the Naval Academy and the Pentagon, discussions at the State Department and a leadership panel with senators and congressmembers. Our students hoped to explore potential careers and even practice their Spanish and Mandarin skills at the Mexican and Chinese embassies.  

    The students not only missed out on the opportunity to connect with these leaders and make important connections for college and career, they learned what happens when leadership and diplomacy fail — a harsh reminder that we need to teach these skills, and the principles that support them, in our schools. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.  

    Senior members of the military know that the DIME framework — diplomatic, informational, military and economic — should guide and support strategic objectives, particularly on the international stage. My own time in the Corps taught me the essential role of honesty and trust in conversations, negotiations and diplomacy. In civic life, this approach preserves democracy, yet the government shutdown demonstrates what happens when the mission shifts from solving problems to scoring points.  

    Our elected leaders were tasked with a mission, and the continued shutdown shows a breakdown in key aspects of governance and public service. That’s the real teachable moment of this shutdown. Democracy works when leaders can disagree without disengaging; when they can argue, compromise and keep doors open. If our future leaders can’t practice those skills, shutdowns will become less an exception and more a way of governing. 

    Students from ILTexas, a charter network serving over 26,000 students across the state, got a lesson in failed diplomacy after the government shutdown forced cancellation of their long-planned trip to the nation’s capital. Credit: Courtesy International Leadership of Texas Charter Schools

    With opposing points of view, communication is essential. Bridging language is invaluable. As the adage goes, talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. Speak in his own language, that goes to his heart. That is why, starting in kindergarten, we teach every student in our charter school network English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.  

    Some of our graduates will become teachers, lawyers, doctors and entrepreneurs. Others will pursue careers in public service or navigate our democracy on the international stage. All will enter a world more fractured than the one I stepped into as a Marine. 

    While our leaders struggle to find common ground, studies show that nationally, only 22 percent of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and fewer than 20 percent of American students study a foreign language. My students are exceptions, preparing to lead in three languages and through servant leadership, a philosophy that turns a position of power into a daily practice of responsibility and care for others.  

    Related: COLUMN: Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it 

    While my students represent our ILTexas schools, they also know they are carrying something larger: the hopes of their families, communities and even their teenage peers across the country. Some hope to utilize their multilingual skills, motivated by a desire to help the international community. Others want to be a part of the next generation of diplomats and policy thinkers who are ready to face modern challenges head-on.  

    To help them, we build good habits into the school day. Silent hallways instill respect for others. Language instruction builds empathy and an international perspective. Community service requirements (60 hours per high school student) and projects, as well as dedicated leadership courses and optional participation in our Marine Corps JROTC program give students regular chances to practice purpose over privilege. 

    Educators should prepare young people for the challenges they will inherit, whether in Washington, in our communities or on the world stage. But schools can’t carry this responsibility alone. Students are watching all of us. It’s our duty to show them a better way. 

    We owe our young people more than simply a good education. We owe them a society in which they can see these civic lessons modeled by their elected leaders, and a path to put them into practice.  

    Eddie Conger is the founder and superintendent of International Leadership of Texas, a public charter school network serving more than 26,000 students across the state, and a retired U.S. Marine Corps major. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].  

    This story about the government shutdown and students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.  

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

    Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

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

    About one in four teachers say their schools don’t give students zeroes. And nearly all of them hate it.

    The collection of practices known as equitable grading, which includes not giving students zeroes, not taking off points for lateness, and letting students retake tests, has spread in the aftermath of the pandemic. But it wasn’t known how widespread the practices were.

    A new nationally representative survey released Wednesday finds equitable grading practices are fairly common, though nowhere near universal. More than half of K-12 teachers said their school or district used at least one equitable grading practice.

    The most common practice — and the one that drew the most heated opposition in the fall 2024 survey — is not giving students zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests. Just over a quarter of teachers said their school or district has a no-zeroes policy.

    Around 3 in 10 teachers said their school or district allowed students to retake tests without penalty, and a similar share said they did not deduct points when students turned in work late. About 1 in 10 teachers said they were not permitted to factor class participation or homework into students’ final grades.

    Only 6% of teachers said their school used four or more equitable grading practices.

    That was surprising to Adam Tyner, who co-authored the new report for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, in partnership with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. He expected more schools would be following a “whole package” of grading reforms supported by advocates like former teacher and education consultant Joe Feldman, who wrote the influential book “Grading for Equity.”

    “It’s not like this has swept the country,” said Tyner, who has studied grading practices. He argues that some policies meant to create equity lead to grade inflation and don’t benefit students.

    The findings come as many schools are rethinking what students should have to do to get a high school diploma, and how much emphasis should be put on grades. At the same time, many schools continue to struggle with student disengagement and historically high rates of absenteeism following the pandemic. As a result, they’re trying to hold students accountable for their work without making it impossible to catch up on missed assignments.

    Though ideas about how to grade students more fairly predate the pandemic, several large districts started rethinking their grading practices following that disruption, as more students struggled to meet strict deadlines or do their homework.

    Proponents of equitable grading say it’s important for students to be able to show what they know over time, and that just a few zeroes averaged into a grade can make it difficult for students to ever catch up. When students don’t see a path to passing a class, it can make them less motivated or stop trying altogether.

    Still, some teachers have pushed back, arguing that no-zeroes policies can hurt student motivation, too.

    That showed up in the recent survey.

    Eight in 10 teachers said giving students partial credit for assignments they didn’t turn in was harmful to student engagement. Opposition to no-zeroes policies came from teachers of various racial backgrounds, experience levels, and who worked with different demographics of students.

    No-zeroes policies can take various forms but often mean that the lowest possible grade is a 50 on a 100-point scale. Some schools use software that will automatically convert lower grades to a 50, one teacher wrote on the survey.

    Schools that enrolled mostly students of color were more likely to have no-zeroes policies, the survey found. And middle schools were more likely than high schools and elementary schools to have no-zeroes policies, no-late-penalty policies, and retake policies.

    Researchers weren’t sure why those policies popped up more in middle schools.

    But Katherine Holden, a former middle school principal in Oregon’s Ashland School District who trains school districts on equitable grading practices, has some guesses.

    High schools may be more worried that changing their grading practices will make it harder for students to get into college, Holden said — a misconception in her eyes. And districts may see middle schoolers as especially likely to benefit from things like clear grading rubrics and multiple chances to show what they know, as they are still developing their organization and time-management skills.

    In the open-ended section of the survey, several teachers expressed concerns that no-zeroes policies were unfair and contributed to low student motivation.

    “Students are now doing below-average work or no work at all and are walking out with a C or B,” one teacher told researchers.

    “Most teachers can’t stand the ‘gifty fifty,’” said another.

    More than half of teachers said letting students turn in work late without any penalty was harmful to student engagement.

    “[The policy] removes the incentive for students to ever turn work in on time, and then it becomes difficult to pass back graded work because of cheating,” one teacher said.

    But teachers were more evenly divided on whether allowing students to retake tests was harmful or not.

    “Allowing retakes without penalty encourages a growth mindset, but it also promotes avoidance and procrastination,” one teacher said.

    Another said teachers end up grading almost every assignment more than once because students have no reason to give their best effort the first time.

    The report’s authors recommend getting rid of blanket policies in favor of letting individual teachers make those calls. Research has shown that other grading reforms, such as grading written assignments anonymously or using grading rubrics, can reduce bias.

    Still, teachers don’t agree on the best approach to grading. In the survey, 58% of teachers said it was more important to have clear schoolwide policies to ensure fair student grading — though the question didn’t indicate what that policy should look like — while the rest preferred using their professional judgment.

    “There are ways to combat bias, there are ways to make grading more fair, and we’re not against any of that,” Tyner said. “What we’re really concerned about is when we’re lowering standards, or lowering expectations. … Accountability is always a balancing act.”

    Nicole Paxton, the principal of Mountain Vista Community School, a K-8 school in Colorado’s Harrison School District 2, has seen that balancing act in action.

    Her district adopted a policy a few years ago that requires teachers to grade students on a 50-100 scale. Students get at least a 50% if they turn in work, but they get a “missing” grade if they don’t do the assignment. Middle and high schoolers are allowed to make up missing or incomplete assignments. But it has to be done within the same quarter, and teachers can deduct up to 10% for late assignments.

    Paxton thinks the policy was the right move for her district. She says she’s seen it motivate kids who are struggling to keep trying, when before they stopped doing their work because they didn’t think they could ever bounce back from a few zeroes.

    “As adults, in the real world, we get to show what we know and learn in our careers,” Paxton said. “And I think that kids are able to do that in our building, too.”

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

    For more news on classroom trends, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub.

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