In my career as an arts educator and school administrator, I have met countless families whose children are excited to embark on a college education focused on filmmaking or acting.

The parents are often less excited than their children, however: They seem both apprehensive and determined to steer their children to more “practical” pursuits. Given the financial realities regularly confronted by the arts and the high cost of postsecondary education, a bit of hesitation may be natural.

Just as there are a number of ways to build a career in filmmaking or acting, there are various ways to pursue learning these crafts. Whether through formal, postsecondary degree attainment or informal, out-of-school time opportunities via summer camps and workshops, the foundational skills students build by studying a creative craft are portable and durable and can set them up for success in whatever field they ultimately pursue.

A performing arts education, in particular, not only enhances one’s ability to learn — building listening skills, developing empathy and perseverance, enhancing focus and creating opportunities to express emotions — it also equips students with practical skills that translate seamlessly to life as we now live it.

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In my view, the performing arts have enormous value in ways we don’t often think of or even expect. Storytelling — the foundation of all these crafts — helps students to organize their thoughts, to understand the elements necessary to keep people engaged in a journey.

How many of us have had to stand up in a classroom or a conference room to hold or persuade an audience? It’s all storytelling. Understanding what makes a story work, how to perform it, how to capture your audience and get them to care about what you are saying are skills that can be taught and learned. These skills matter whether you’re hoping to score an A on a research presentation, perform a soliloquy or secure funding from a venture capitalist.

Mastering these skills gives students the practical abilities necessary to write well and create contemporary media; for the latter, they must develop skills with associated technologies, which include constantly changing gear and software. It puts them in the driver’s seat in an entrepreneurial, creator-driven economy.

Mastering their art also includes developing essential “soft skills,” such as organization, time management, collaboration, empathy, public speaking and persuasion, as well as planning and budgeting, multitasking, self-regulation and the development of cultural awareness, to name a few.

Related: PROOF POINTS: The lesson the arts teach

I’ve witnessed the positive impact of working in these crafts not only for the thousands of students I’ve worked with over my 30 years at the New York Film Academy (NYFA), but also through my own children, who were encouraged at an early age to participate in theater, music and media arts: Auditioning, performing and writing stories were common activities in our home.

Their exposure to these experiences and the resulting skills and self-assurance they gained spilled over to their studies and social acumen. I can say, without hesitation, that they succeeded in traditional academics in part due to the skills learned in their education and pursuits in the arts. Beyond that, my wife and I regularly received feedback about how much more poised and confident our children were than many of their peers.

Students with access to these experiences develop habits and practices that inform their ability to be present and prepared in a wide range of situations.

Today, it’s nearly impossible to find a career that doesn’t, on some level, rely on our ability to leverage a combination of technology, media and performance skills. We hear endless statistics about the need for strong technical skills, the need for a workforce that is literate in STEM — science, technology engineering, and math. Yet as a society, we have historically proven fickle when it comes to prioritizing the arts and supporting arts education.

Adding the arts to STEM, “STEAM” as some refer to it, marries the technical and the creative. There is a clear need and dependency on both. Together they not only engage both sides of the brain, they bring us a fuller experience of the world — to say nothing of the economic opportunities.

I worry that because we have so neglected and undervalued the arts, we have created a generation of anxious, socially disaffected young people struggling to find their place, to connect and make sense of an increasingly complex world. This neglect has set them up with a false belief that the human experience is binary: creative or linear; purposeful or financially lucrative.

The arts compel students to take control, whether directing a crew on set, creating a character or performing a part. Acting, in particular, offers students a safe space to be vulnerable and explore feelings that can overwhelm us in our “real” lives.

Mastering artistic skills can make the difference between success and failure in so many contexts, both personal and professional.

By prioritizing arts education, we empower students to pursue their passions and fulfill their potential. We equip them not only with the tools they need to succeed in any occupation but to make their unique and meaningful mark on the world.

By encouraging our kids to pursue the arts, we may actually achieve those things that so often feel nearly impossible: their happiness and success.

David Klein is the senior executive vice president at the New York Film Academy. He oversees the operations, development and delivery of programs including Acting for Film, Filmmaking, Musical Theatre, Broadcast Journalism and Cinematography.

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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Almost every day at the public elementary school she attended in Montgomery County, Maryland, Stephanie heard comments about her weight. Kids in her fifth grade class called her “fatty” instead of her name, she recalled; others whispered, “Do you want a cupcake?” as she walked by. One classmate spread a rumor that she had diabetes. Stephanie was so incensed by his teasing that she hit him and got suspended, she said.

But nothing the kids did upset her as much as the conduct of her teachers.

For years teachers ignored her in class, even when she was the only one raising her hand, said Stephanie, whose surname is being withheld to protect her privacy. “I was like, ‘Do you not like me or something?” she recalled.

She felt invisible. “They would sit me in the back. I couldn’t see the board,” she said. When Stephanie spoke up once in middle school, a teacher told her, “I can’t put you anywhere else because you’re going to block other students.” She burned with embarrassment when her classmates laughed.

Nearly 20 percent of children in the U.S. — almost 15 million kids — were considered obese as of the 2020 school year, a number that has likely increased since the pandemic (new data is expected next year). The medical conditions associated with obesity, such as asthma, diabetes and sleep apnea, are well known. Children with obesity are also more likely to have depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.

Far less discussed are the educational outcomes for these children. Research has found that students with obesity are more likely to get lower grades in reading and math and to repeat a grade, and twice as likely to be placed in special education or remedial classes. They are also significantly more likely to miss school and be suspended or receive detention, and less likely than their peers to attend and graduate from college.

Researchers have suggested different reasons for this “obesity achievement gap,” including biological causes (such as reduced cortical thickness in the brain in children with obesity, which is linked to compromised executive functioning, and higher levels of the hormone cortisol, linked to poorer academic performance). They have also examined indirect causes of poor performance, such as that kids with obesity might miss school more often because of medical appointments or bullying. 

But a relatively new area of research has shifted attention to educator bias. Studies have found that teachers often perceive children with obesity as emotional, unmotivated, less competent and non-compliant. That can lead to teachers giving these students fewer opportunities to participate in class, less positive feedback and lower grades.

Weight bias is part of American culture, said Rebecca Puhl, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut, who has studied childhood obesity and bias. “Teachers are not immune to those attitudes,” she said. While many school districts have tried in the last 20 years to reduce childhood obesity through more nutritious meals and increased exercise, Puhl and other experts say schools also need to train teachers and students to recognize and confront the weight bias they say is hampering the education of an increasing number of children.

Some advocates argue that childhood obesity, which has steadily risen over the last 40 years, should be seen as an “academic risk factor” because of its lasting effects on educational and economic mobility. “There’s certainly been a big push for racial and ethnic diversity, for gender identity diversity, that’s so important,” said Puhl. “But weight is often left off the radar, it’s often not getting addressed.”

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Stephanie, now 18, has struggled with obesity her whole life. Within her family, being overweight never felt like a problem. But school was different.

Beginning in kindergarten, her classmates told her she looked like a Teletubby, she said. Even teachers made comments related to her weight. “If someone brought pastries for a birthday, they would ask, ‘Are you sure you want to eat that? Why don’t you try carrots and hummus?’” Stephanie recalled. Once Stephanie listened as an educator told her mother to put her on a diet. She stopped eating lunch at school after that. “When I was home, I ran to food because it was like the only place I would feel comfortable eating,” she said.

There were a handful of occasions teachers noticed her for something besides her weight. Stephanie smiled as she recalled a time when an English teacher praised an essay she wrote; when she won second place prize in a coding camp; when she was named ‘cadet of the year’ in JROTC during remote school during the pandemic. In elementary school, she received the President’s Award for Educational Achievement, designed to reward students who work hard, often in the face of obstacles to learning.

It wasn’t enough to make her feel like she had educators on her side. “In school, they want you to confide in teachers, they made us believe that we can go to teachers for anything,” she said. “If you have no friends or if there’s no one to trust — you can always find a teacher who you can feel safe with, you can always trust them. So, I would try, but they always pushed me away.”

One interaction in particular shattered her confidence. Toward the end of seventh grade, Stephanie stayed to ask a question after class. Her teacher asked if she was a new student. “‘How did you not notice I was in your class and the entire year I turned in work?” Stephanie wondered. “That’s when I started to feel like I’m a shadow.” From that point on she stopped caring about getting good grades. 

Liliana López, a spokesperson for Montgomery County Public Schools, said that teachers are not “expressly trained on weight bias,” but they “elevate all the identities individuals hold as valuable and we work with staff to identify ways they can create spaces full of affirmation, validation and significance for those identities.” Celeste Fernandez, spokesperson for the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, said her organization does not offer specific training or information on weight bias.

Related: A surprising remedy for teens in mental health crises

Researchers are increasingly identifying links between poor outcomes for students with obesity and teacher’s attitudes toward kids. In 2015, Erica Kenney, an associate professor of public health nutrition at Harvard University, helped lead a team that analyzed data from a representative sample of children from across the nation. The researchers examined, among other things, whether the kids’ weight gain influenced teachers’ perceptions of their abilities and their standardized test scores.

Gaining weight didn’t change a child’s test scores, the researchers found, but, based on surveys, it was significantly linked to teachers having lower perceptions of students’ ability, for both girls and boys. In other words, kids who gained weight faced a small but significant“academic penalty” from their teachers, Kenney said.

A separate study, involving 130 teachers, found that educators were more likely to give lower grades to essays if they believed a child who was obese had written them. For the study, Kristin Finn, a professor in the school of education at Canisius University, in Buffalo, New York, took four essays written at a sixth grade level and paired them with stock photographs of students who looked similar but some had been digitally altered to appear overweight. The overweight students received moderately lower scores.

Finn found that the teachers were more likely to view the students with obesity as academically inferior, “messy” and more likely to need tutoring. In surveys, teachers also predicted that students with obesity weren’t good in other subjects such as math and social studies.

“To be able to make a judgment about somebody’s mathematical abilities based on a short essay seemed pretty remarkable,” said Finn. Yet, teachers maintained that they were personally unbiased in their evaluations. “They all think that they’re treating these children fairly,” she said.

Teachers’ perceptions of children’s academic potential matters: Their recommendations can affect not only students’ grades, but also their access to higher level courses, competitive programs, specialized camps and post-secondary opportunities including college.

Girls are at particular risk of being stigmatized for being obese, research has found. In one study, nearly a third of women who were overweight said they had had a teacher who was biased against them because of their weight. Students who face other barriers including poverty are also more likely to be penalized for being overweight, what is called a “double disadvantage.”

Related: One state mandates teaching climate change in almost every subject – even PE

Covid, which hit during the spring of Stephanie’s eighth grade year, was a welcome interruption. She loved learning in the privacy of her home and not being “judged for my body,” she said.

When schools reopened in the fall of 10th grade, Stephanie couldn’t bear the thought of returning. She had gained weight during remote learning, some 100 pounds. Citing her asthma and her father’s diabetes, she applied for a waiver that would permit her to attend classes virtually. But “the real reason was because I was ashamed of what I look like,” she said.

She received the waiver and continued her high school studies at home.

After a 2022 diagnosis of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, which had made her body resistant to insulin, Stephanie decided to undergo bariatric surgery. Following the operation, Stephanie lost more than half her body weight. When she returned to her high school to take exams, people were suddenly nice to her, she said. It frustrated her, she said: “I’m the same person.”

Negative perceptions of people with obesity start early. In one study, children as young as 3 who were shown drawings of people of varying weights perceived the obese people as “mean” more often than “nice.” In another study, when 5- and 6-year-olds were shown images of children of different body sizes, most said they did not want to invite the heavier children to their birthday party.

Experts argue that administrators and teachers must become more sensitive to and knowledgeable about the challenges facing children with obesity. Yolandra Hancock, a pediatrician who specializes in patients with obesity and a former teacher, said she frequently intervenes with educators on behalf of her patients with obesity. One 7-year-old boy was often late to class because he found it difficult to climb the three flights of stairs to get there.

“The assistant principal actually told him if he wasn’t so fat, he would be able to get up the stairs faster,” Hancock said. She explained that the student wasn’t walking slowly because of “laziness” but because obesity can cause a bowing of the leg bones, making it hard to navigate steps. Giving the student more time between classes or arranging for his classes to be on the same floor would have been simple fixes, she said.

In another case, an elementary school student with obesity was getting into trouble for requesting frequent bathroom breaks, a result of his large abdomen putting pressure on his bladder, similar to what happens during pregnancy. “He came close to having an accident,” Hancock said. “His teachers wouldn’t allow him to go to the restroom and would call his mother to complain that he wasn’t focusing.” She wrote to the school requesting that he be allowed to go to the restroom whenever he needed. “If you don’t allow them to do what it is that their body needs,” Hancock said, “you’re creating more barriers to them being able to learn.”

Research has found that teachers can play an important “buffering role” in reducing bullying for children with obesity. In one study, children who believed educators would step in to prevent future bullying did better in school than those who didn’t share this conviction.

But often teachers don’t intervene, said Puhl, the University of Connecticut researcher, because they believe that if students “want the teasing to stop, they need to lose weight.” Yet “body weight is not a simple issue of eating less and exercising more,” she added, but is instead a highly complex condition influenced by genetics, hormones, culture, environment and economics.Bullying and mistreatment don’t motivate people to lose weight, Puhl said, but often contribute to binge eating, reduced physical activity and weight gain.

One way to help, would be for schools to include body weight in their anti-bullying policies, Puhl said. At present, most schools’ anti-bullying policies protect children on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender identity, disability and religious beliefs, “but very few mention body weight.” That lack is really shocking, she added, “because body weight is one of the most prevalent reasons that kids are bullied today.”

This spring, Stephanie went back to school to attend her graduation ceremony and receive her diploma. She still struggles with body image but is determined to put her negative experiences behind her and start fresh in college this fall, she says.

She plans to study psychology. “I want to understand people better, because I didn’t feel heard and there were a lot of things I didn’t speak about,” she said. “I just want to help people.”

Contact the editor of this story, Caroline Preston, at 212-870-8965 or preston@hechingerreport.org.

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

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Young people experiencing family instability and trauma are at increased risk for precarious living situations and interrupted educational experiences. And students who leave school before graduation are considerably more likely to experience homelessness and less likely to enroll in college. 

By failing to systematically and preemptively address youth homelessness through our schools, we are increasing the chances of hundreds of thousands of young people becoming and remaining homeless. 

We can change this. 

Schools are key to intervention. Schools can and should serve as indispensable resources for students who are experiencing unstable housing or outright homelessness. Lamentably, too often, there aren’t enough staff members to carry out existing support programs, much less manage additional programs designed for youth who are at risk for or are already experiencing homelessness.

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I saw these issues firsthand when I worked as the chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, but they are prevalent at schools nationwide. For roughly 700,000 youth ages 13 to 17, not having stable or any housing is top of mind, a recent study found. 

Here are some suggestions for identifying youth at risk and tackling youth homelessness systemically. 

Paying more attention to risk factors will increase the chance that at-risk students will be identified earlier and interventions enacted. 

We’ve learned a lot about risk factors at the independent, nonpartisan policy research center I lead. For example, a family’s income is a strong indicator of risk, so school officials and staff should be hypersensitive in districts where families are struggling financially.

Yet appearances alone won’t necessarily indicate which students are struggling. Many schools rely on student self-reporting, which students are less likely to do if they don’t know there are resources available or if they are too ashamed to reveal their status. 

Schools should initiate a universal screening at the beginning of the school year to gauge if students are vulnerable to homelessness. All staff should routinely be trained to look for signs of homelessness and risk factors. 

Not everyone at a school needs to deeply engage with each student, but they should be aware of signs so they can make referrals to a social worker or the school’s McKinney-Vento liaison if needed.

The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act includes a requirement for schools to provide “comparable” transportation for homeless students to get to and from school. And while every school has a McKinney-Vento liaison who administers programs funded by federal dollars, at many schools that assistance boils down to just providing a bus pass for homeless students, nothing more. 

If their school is only able to provide a bus pass, students’ many other needs — like clothing and mental health care — will not be met. 

Having more school social workers would also help identify students struggling with housing stability and match them to programs and services that could meet their needs. 

Another significant risk factor for homelessness is dropping out of school. A truancy officer’s role is critical when students drop out. Administrators should be asking themselves what it takes to get kids back in school to stay. The goal of that position should not be to identify and punish students but to figure out what resources they need to get them back to school and keep them there. 

Related: Couch surfing, living in cars: Housing insecurity derails foster kids’ college dreams

One way to ensure that interventions are available and applied would be to mirror the work of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, the place where evidence-based interventions for child welfare are vetted, rated and made eligible for federal reimbursement. 

The inclusion of an evidence-based clearinghouse in a federal program is a legislative component that has historically enabled bipartisan buy-in. Since schools are already burdened by tight budgets and overworked staff, adding a clearinghouse for homelessness prevention efforts would allow qualified outside agencies to provide — and be reimbursed for — evidence-based intervention services. 

Two other points not to be overlooked are that youth homelessness is experienced disproportionately by Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ youth, and youth homelessness is a leading pathway into adult homelessness. That’s why supporting young people at risk for or experiencing homelessness — through substantial investments and increased services — is a significant way to address racial inequity and break these cycles. 

The point of school is to educate and nurture our youth so they can successfully pass on to the next phase of life. If we work together, we can disrupt the brutal cycle of homelessness and give more young people the future they deserve. 

Bryan Samuels is executive director of Chapin Hall. He previously served as chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, director of Illinois DCFS, and commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first Obama administration.

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What you need to know

Hechinger’s executive editor, Nirvi Shah, joins us this week to share what she learned at the recent Moms for Liberty summit and how the organization’s targeted focus on transgender students helped lead to a temporary block to portions of President Joe Biden’s new Title IX regulations in some states. 

You found that schools even in the same district are following different Title IX regs. What does this mean for students? 

The big takeaway: These are confusing times. Federal court rulings have paused *requiring* schools in some states to follow new Biden administration regulations on sex discrimination. And individual schools in other states are also exempt from being *forced* to adopt those rules, though local school boards, generally, can adopt the regulation. The reality on the ground is, however, that schools within some districts may be following different federal rules about Title IX, which makes for an administrative mess. 

Hechinger’s Sarah Butrymowicz created a pair of searchable databases to see which colleges and K-12 schools do not have to follow the Biden administration, but the list can change — 1,700 schools were added during the week of the Moms for Liberty summit — so make note of the time stamp.

After some defeats for Moms for Liberty-backed school board candidates, observers have questioned whether the group’s influence has waned. What’s your assessment of the group’s strategy? 

The group is still big on endorsing school board candidates, and school board races are the only elected office for which it makes endorsements, co-founder Tiffany Justice told me and Hechinger writer Laura Pappano in an interview during the summit. (Justice endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump personally during a one-on-one chat the two had at the M4L summit over Labor Day weekend in D.C.) Justice reiterated in our interview that “All politics is local,” and that the group wants power to be closest to the people and not the federal Education Department. “So how do you solve that? You make sure that you have strong local school boards who answer to their constituents.”

School board races aside, many, including Moms for Liberty, would characterize it as a significant victory — for local schools and like-minded parents — that they got a federal court to agree to preferences of Moms for Liberty member parents on which Title IX regulation should apply at their children’s schools, even if Justice said it was something she never imagined when the group got its start during the pandemic. 

What most surprised you about this year’s Moms for Liberty summit? 

This was the theme of our story: this laser-like focus on transgender issues at schools. It came up often and was at the center of many speeches and breakout sessions. In the past, the group has had a more expansive message but this year, they seem to have one specific target. “There’s no such thing as a transgender child. Please quote me on that,” Justice told us. “There are children who are experiencing mental distress and they need kindness and compassion and help to feel comfortable in their own bodies, because no child is born in the wrong body. There is no right way to be a boy or a girl.”

What we are reading

All-charter no more: New Orleans opens its first traditional school in nearly two decades 

My colleague, Ariel Gilreath, reports on the opening of the first traditional school run by the New Orleans school district since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. 

Theater, economics and psychology: Climate class is now in session

Hechinger Report editor Caroline Preston launched her climate change newsletter (which you can sign up for here) with a look at how some colleges are embedding climate-related instruction into diverse fields.

Students aren’t benefiting much from tutoring, one new study shows

Despite billions in federal funding during the pandemic, a new study shows that tutoring to help students catch up on learning losses hasn’t yielded great results, reports Hechinger columnist Jill Barshay.

How transparent are state school report cards about the effects of COVID?

Most states are failing to help parents understand how the pandemic negatively affected students’ academic performance and attendance, according to a new report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education. This may be because some school districts didn’t have quality longitudinal data on absenteeism and other measures before the pandemic and have not made that data public. 

Characteristics associated with English Learners’ academic performance

Having a teacher of the same race, and attending a school with a higher percentage of students enrolled in dual language immersion English instruction, is associated with better reading scores for English learners, according to a new analysis by the Government Accountability Office. Hechinger Report contributor Kavitha Cardoza wrote recently about a former superintendent’s fraught efforts to make his Alabama district more welcoming for English learners. 

A framework for digital equity

In this report, nonprofit group Digital Promise explains how K-12 schools can take a leadership role in ensuring Black, Hispanic, Native American and rural students have equal access to high speed internet, computers and digital literacy training. I wrote about these digital divides in an article about the 2024 National Education Technology Plan.

How Americans feel about hot-button education issues

About 60 percent of people support school vouchers, according to a new poll from news outlet The 19th and SurveyMonkey. Eight-seven percent of respondents want schools to teach about the history of slavery and racism, 60 percent favor instruction on Judeo-Christian values, and 51 percent support instruction on LGBTQ+ people in history and literature. 

From the vault

When my colleague Sarah Butrymowicz began reporting on education in 2010, cell phones in the classroom were all the rage. Educators and experts hoped that allowing students access to their own devices in school would revolutionize learning. Now that’s changed, of course: A growing number of districts and states are banning the devices or clamping down on cell phone use (and in some cases even Chromebooks and tablets), arguing that they distract students from learning and pose threats to young people’s mental health. 

Cell phone use also frequently leads to behavior problems. Sarah spent months last winter examining thousands of discipline records from a dozen school districts as part of Hechinger’s series on school discipline, Suspended for … what? Cell phones played a role in hundreds of student suspensions. Students were suspended for refusing to give up their phones, recording teachers, blaring music or taking videos, and taking calls in the middle of class. As cell phone bans spread, we’ll be following whether some of these discipline issues subside – or whether there’s an uptick in discipline and suspensions as schools punish kids and send them home for refusing to follow the bans. 

Et cetera

Do we need to rethink school policies that put parents on the hook for paying for lost or damaged digital devices? Michael Wear, chief executive officer of the Center for Christianity & Public Life, recently used X to draw attention to this issue: “As someone who grew up in a family that struggled financially, I really think school districts need to think carefully about the ethics and ramifications of mandating kids accept a $1000 electronic device that they didn’t ask for, and then telling parents that if anything happens to the device the family will have to compensate the district for the loss.”

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MISSOULA, Mont. — From the outside, the building that was once Cold Springs Elementary School in Missoula, Montana, looks abandoned. Beige paint peels from its cinder-block facade. A blue banner proclaiming “graduation matters” hangs tattered and bleached by the sun. But inside, past a vacant office and around a dimly lit corner, there’s a stack of brand new cots, shoe racks with tiny sandals and the telltale smell of graham crackers.

Five independent child care centers opened here in the spring, the first participants in a unique network called Missoula Child Care Advantage, or MCCA. A sixth center plans to open its doors at Cold Springs in September. When the programs reach full capacity, they’ll serve a combined total of up to 90 kids, infant through pre-school.

Like many communities across the country, Missoula County has a desperate shortage of affordable child care. But Missoulians have found one part of the solution hiding in plain sight: unused public buildings, such as schools closed to accommodate changing enrollments. Cold Springs Elementary was bursting at its nearly 90-year-old seams when it shut its doors in late 2018 and its students moved to a new facility.

As the retrofit projects proceed, new ways of doing the business of child care are emerging, too.

The details of the child care crisis vary by community, but the big picture is the same: Parents are scrambling. More than half of American children under the age of 5 live in a “child care desert,” defined as any census tract where the number of children under 5 is at least triple the number of licensed child care slots. In Montana, the number of slots available meets only 44 percent of total demand, according to the state’s Department of Labor and Industry. For infants, that percentage drops to 32 percent.

Parents Adam Rasmussen and Meredith Repke, who secured one of the initial 42 spots at Cold Springs, are among the lucky ones. For a decade, Missoula offered the couple their ideal lifestyle: mountains within minutes to bike, hike, run, and climb. In late 2022, they welcomed a daughter, Hope. But when it came time for Hope to start in child care a year later, they couldn’t find a single provider with an open slot. At the time, they had been spending a lot of time in Whitefish, a town about 130 miles to the north, due to an illness in the family. When they couldn’t find a child care opening in Missoula, they opted to stay in Whitefish while they continued the search.

MCCA’s opening felt too good to be true, Repke said. Hope enrolled at Montessori Plus International, whose founder saw the Cold Springs location as a way to expand her popular day care to a second site. Repke and Rasmussen moved back to Missoula, into a new house a short bike ride away from the school. “It allowed us to resume our lives,” Repke said.

Related: Our biweekly Early Childhood newsletter highlights innovative solutions to the obstacles facing the youngest students. Subscribe for free.

Inside Cold Springs, each of the six MCCA classrooms has been transformed into a unique day care. Through one door, a nature-themed space with fluorescent ceiling lights covered in fabric replicates staring up into a stand of birch trees; through another is Hope’s Montessori-inspired program where children learn to speak in Mandarin.

There are a few hang-ups with the space, said Sally Henkel, who coordinates MCCA under the auspices of the United Way of Missoula County. Due to licensing guidelines written before the network’s inception, children in different child care programs are required to stay strictly apart. This ensures clear accountability if anything goes wrong, said Henkel, who works closely with the county licensor.

For most providers in the area, it’s never an issue because they operate alone. But for the co-located providers at Cold Springs, it makes for a strange dance. And for kids who see other kids but aren’t allowed to interact with them, it’s just confusing. “Outdoor time is awkward,” Henkel said.

Still, the space at Cold Springs is a win. Communities need infrastructure devoted to child care much as they need schools, roads, and bridges. But “there’s no dedicated federal funding source to support that,” said Bevin Parker-Cerkez, who leads early childhood work nationwide for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a community development financial institution. As a result, small-scale child care providers often are on their own when it comes to planning for, maintaining, and upgrading facilities, Parker-Cerkez said. And with barely-there profit margins, upgrades typically aren’t in the budget.

“These are spaces for zero-to-five year olds — they’re getting beat up with wear and tear,” Parker-Cerkez said. “People don’t recognize how much [space] affects the quality of programming. Not just for kids, but for employees, too.”

At Cold Springs, some maintenance costs are built into providers’ $900 per month rent. For small providers who might otherwise operate out of a residence, that’s a steal. The median rent for a two-bedroom house in Missoula is twice that, and housing prices have more than doubled in the past decade.

Missoula County Public Schools’ involvement is a part of what makes MCCA work, said Grace Decker, who spearheaded the network’s formation in her role as the coordinator of Zero to Five Missoula, under the United Way’s umbrella. The district has offered a 5-year lease and cut-rate rent.

But space is only part of the solution to an enormously complex problem. “It’s the pot, but it’s not the soup,” said Decker, who started a new job in March coordinating Montana Advocates for Children, a statewide coalition.

Related: Free child care in America exists — if you cross paths with the right philanthropist

In 2019, Decker began meeting with a group of Missoulians with an interest in the future of child care, including providers, school district officials, and representatives from local businesses and health care. The child care providers painted a bleak picture of their balance sheets. For example, unexpected vacancies — as when a child is pulled out of a center on short notice — can cost them thousands of dollars and threaten their financial survival.

Decker and her collaborators brainstormed ways to alleviate costs. They came up with a plan for a new kind of child care network, open to any licensed provider in Missoula County, in which local businesses could purchase a membership. While the providers would offer child care to all families, employees at member businesses would have waitlist priority. The membership fees paid by the businesses would fund shared access, network-wide, to critical money- and time-saving services like waitlist management, telehealth, and payroll. “That’s where we start to actually stabilize the sector,” Decker said.

Today, Cold Springs school serves as a pilot site for the network. MCCA used a $414,000 state grant and raised about $200,000 more to reconstruct the classrooms as care centers. Two businesses are signed on as charter members. The hope is that the network’s success at Cold Springs will help to drive its growth countywide.

Henkel, whose position is funded by the city, came on as MCCA’s coordinator in January 2023, several months after she was hired. The hold-up? She couldn’t find child care for her 8-month-old son.

On a recent walk through Cold Springs, Henkel and project architect Adam Jones pointed out the changes made to each room to make them child-care ready. Bathrooms were built, electrical sockets were brought up to code, too-porous countertops were replaced.

Asbestos abatement set the project back $12,000. “That could’ve been a lot worse,” said Jones. And rumors of a long-neglected septic tank onsite turned out to be false. “We thought we’d have to tap into brownfield funding,” Henkel said. “That would’ve set us back at least a year.”

Since MCCA’s opening last March, Henkel has fielded calls from child care advocates from other parts of Montana, as well as from Connecticut, Idaho, West Virginia and Wyoming, all looking to learn more about how the network works. A project based directly on MCCA will launch in the fall in Ravalli County, just south of Missoula.

Missoula is not alone in its approach to expanding child care. Other areas around the country faced with the child care space conundrum have looked at using closed school buildings.

In upstate New York, the 2023 closure of a parochial school led to the creation of the Ticonderoga Community Early Learning Center, set to open in September to 50 children, age 5 and under. In Texas, the United Way of Greater Austin expects to invest more than $18 million over at least two years to transform the shuttered Pease Elementary into a child care center for more than 100 children, ages 6 months to 5 years, as well as community spaces to be used for events like parent classes and continuing education for early childhood educators.

Related: Why are we sending children to pre-K programs in converted salons, bars and turkey coops?

And in Portland, Indiana, 95 miles northeast of Indianapolis, crews are completing renovations on the former Judge Haynes Elementary School, which will reopen in September as the Jay County Early Learning Center, serving 150 kids, ages 6 months to 5 years.

For years, the community has been clamoring for more child care options, said Doug Inman, executive director of the Portland Foundation. Well over half of the county’s young children in need of care are not enrolled in a known program, and only 9 percent of those in need of care are in a program deemed high quality, based on a 2018 survey. Providers named “building renovations” as one of the top barriers keeping them from seeking a higher rating.

The Judge Haynes project faced a setback in 2021 when county leaders opted not to provide funding, citing concerns about concentrating child care slots in the county seat rather than scattering them throughout the region. But the foundation’s board pushed ahead, Inman said. They purchased Judge Haynes from the local school district for $35,000 and brought on a seasoned provider with three other Indiana locations to run the center. They ultimately secured about $4 million, mostly from state and philanthropic grants, but also from community members like a Portland retiree who showed up at the foundation offices to pledge $2,500.

Today, the Jay County Early Learning Center has a new roof, floors, lighting, and bathrooms, a kitchen, a lactation room, and a gym. A toddler-friendly playground will be installed in late August, cleared of “all that equipment that would cause you to get a tetanus shot,” Inman said.

“We knew going into this that we were taking a big bite, but this is a generational project,” he said. “If we can be a model for any small community to see that a community of 20,000 people can do this, we’d love to be a place that others can learn from.”

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

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With five children aged 11 to 24, Cyd Detiege has sent her kids to Palm Springs Unified School District in Southern California for nearly two decades.

“It’s gotten hotter,” she said, noting record-breaking temperatures in the desert city, which hit an all-time high of 124 degrees this July. The first day of school in Palm Springs this year was August 7, when temperatures reached 109 degrees. Since around 2019, Detiege says she’s contacted district officials, spoken at meetings, and posted on local Facebook pages with one goal: moving the first day of school to after Labor Day.

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Across the U.S., climate change is influencing discussions about how, and when, kids are educated. School districts, teachers, parents, students and experts are all considering how extreme heat is transforming education, and what changes need to happen for schools to adapt to extreme heat. In some places, this now includes reshaping what “back-to-school” means, as districts attempt to schedule the academic year around extreme heat.

America’s schools are vastly underprepared for extreme heat: An estimated 36,000 public schools don’t have adequate HVAC systems, and the combined costs of upgrading or installing necessary HVAC systems by 2025 is estimated at $4.4 billion nationally, according to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. Even school districts with air conditioning may be exposing kids to excessive heat, allowing kids to play on hot outdoor blacktops without adequate shade for recess and lunchtime.

As districts work through the lengthy process of financing and planning these infrastructure upgrades, some hope that pushing back the first day of school could reduce school closures and other effects of extreme heat on students.

The impacts of heat on students’ health and learning is well-documented; studies have found that without air conditioning, every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature during a school year reduces the year’s learning by 1 percent. Unexpected school closures can leave parents scrambling for child care, and in some cases might send students to homes that are also hot and un-air conditioned.

Since the early 1970s, demand for cooling during the back-to-school season has increased by an average of 32 percent, according to an analysis of 231 locations by the nonprofit Climate Central.

“It’s not just that we get extreme weather. It’s that our summers are literally longer,” said Joellen Russell, Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Integrative Science at the University of Arizona and member of Science Moms, a nonpartisan group of climate scientists who are also moms.

Most school districts are left on their own to plot out their state-dictated minimum days of instruction onto a calendar, while planning for holiday breaks and end-of-year testing, and balancing input from parents, teachers and students.

In Palm Springs Unified School District, this calculation has landed students with a start date in the first week of August for the past several years, according to Joan Boiko, the district’s coordinator for communications and community outreach. This allows for a three-week winter break and a two-week spring break, and allows high schoolers to finish exams before winter break.

“While it is certainly warm here in the desert in August, it is typically just as hot in early September,” wrote Boiko in an email. Detiege, meanwhile, said she remains “very disappointed” in the calendar.

The neighboring Desert Sands Unified School District made a different decision. According to Jordan Aquino, assistant superintendent for business services at the district, planning for this school year included looking into what weeks are typically hottest. As a result, the district moved its first day back from the third to fourth week of August, pushing the last day of school further into June.

The two California desert districts have air conditioning, so students are primarily affected by heat on their way to and from school, at recess, during P.E. and at lunchtime. But in other regions of the country, districts are grappling with a need for air conditioning that didn’t exist when school buildings were first constructed. Nationwide, an estimated 41 percent of districts need to update or replace HVAC systems in at least half of their schools, according to a 2020 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In recent years, the lack of adequate HVAC systems has led to school closures and early dismissals as classrooms become too hot for students. School district leaders hope that proactively planning the school year around extreme heat will reduce some of these unexpected closures.

Carrie A. Olson taught in classrooms without air conditioning for three decades in Denver Public Schools. When the weather got warm, she’d leave her classroom windows open overnight, allowing cool air to flow in. But this tactic is less effective with the climate change-driven rise in nighttime temperatures.

In 2020, Denver voters approved a bond measure that set aside funding to install air conditioning at 24 schools. “But it still wasn’t everybody, and that rollover from when the bond was passed to when everything would be implemented was time-consuming,” said Olson, who has a doctorate in curriculum and instruction and now serves as president of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education. Pushing back the first day of school by a week seemed like an interim solution, so the district did just that starting in the 2021-22 school year.

“At that time, it seemed like things were cooling off in mid- to late-August, and a week later would really help,” said Olson. A total of 29 schools are still without air conditioning in the district, and another bond measure is going before voters this fall.

Related: Teaching among the ashes: ‘It’s not just your home that’s burned, it’s everyone’s’

In Milwaukee, where only about one-fourth of public school classrooms have air conditioning, the district took a similar approach this year. Previously, Milwaukee’s high schools and most middle schools started in August and most elementary schools started in September. But when the district surveyed employees, parents and students about the academic calendar last year, the biggest concern was air conditioning.

Moving all students to a September start date “would put the district in the best position to avoid excessive heat days during the upcoming school year,” said Milwaukee Public Schools Chief Human Resources Officer Adria Maddaleni during a December 2023 meeting. The change seems to have staved off some unexpected cancellations for the district, at least this school year: Heat indexes rose above 100 degrees in Milwaukee during the last week of August, forcing some private schools that were already in session to cancel classes.

“The reality is that it’s an okay solution, but it’s not perfect, because there are many school districts where you could get 100-degree days in November,” said V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at the University of California, Los Angeles, who also leads the new Center of Excellence for Heat Resilient Communities. “But the other thing is that the heat season isn’t just shifting, it’s getting longer.”

That brings up questions of how adjusting school calendars might affect summer break and students who don’t have air conditioning at home, said Turner. For example, for a student without air conditioning at home, spending a longer portion of the hottest days of summer at home would just mean staying in a hot home or apartment.

In Philadelphia, heat also came up as one of the biggest topics of discussion when the district planned the 2023-24 and 2024-25 calendars, with survey responses from parents, students, teachers and others showing a preference for a post-Labor Day start date. “Beginning school after Labor Day avoids possible school closures due to excessive heat,” according to a document prepared for a February 2023 school board meeting. The board voted that month to start 2023-24 after Labor Day, but to begin the 2024-25 school year in August due to scheduling limitations. The district now aims to start after Labor Day “whenever possible,” while also working to expand cooling systems, according to the board meeting document. 

The School District of Philadelphia has made gains in cooling its aging buildings, including through a donation from Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts that added air conditioning units to 10 schools this year. But 63 schools still lack adequate cooling and close early when weather is expected to reach 85 degrees by noon, according to Monique Braxton, deputy chief of communications for the district.

Philadelphia dismissed schools early in 2023 and 2024 due to heat during the first week of school. Last year, 73 schools received early dismissal during the entire first week of school after Labor Day, and this year, the 63 remaining schools without adequate cooling dismissed early on Aug. 27 and Aug. 28.

Related: Canceled classes, sweltering classrooms: How extreme heat impairs learning

Experts on heat and schools say scheduling academic calendars around extreme heat comes with limitations. In much of the country, August typically experiences hotter days than June, but pushing back the first day of school still risks pushing the school year further into June, which also experiences temperatures high enough to cancel school. And with temperatures projected to keep getting higher on both ends of the academic calendar, relying on scheduling alone to address extreme heat would be a constant shuffle.

“I think that the degree that you would need to push back the school year will become greater and greater every year, unless we figure out how to adapt the structures that kids are learning in, and make the investments in updating this older infrastructure, because temperatures will continue to increase,” said Lindsey Burghardt, chief science officer at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

The University of Arizona’s Russell called the strategy a “temporary stopgap” to extreme heat.

Federal money is available now for HVAC upgrades; the Inflation Reduction Act included a provision that will reimburse schools that install heat pumps and other clean energy technologies, according to Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Undauntedk12, an organization focused on supporting schools’ transition to clean energy. Some districts also used federal Covid-relief aid to improve HVAC systems, according to Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, although she said it’s hard to know for sure how many districts used the funds for those upgrades due to different reporting requirements in each state.

In Denver, Olson said the board hasn’t considered pushing the start date back even further into August or September.

“Just thinking about the shift in our climate across our planet, shifting the calendar isn’t going to be as helpful as it was three years ago when we passed this,” said Olson. “The solution is going to be to get more heat mitigation strategies and air conditioning in our schools with an eye toward sustainability.”

This story about excessive heat in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s climate change and education newsletter.

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The pandemic disrupted education in previously unimaginable ways. It limited testing and pushed schools toward remote learning and easier assignments, along with softer grading and a more relaxed attitude around attendance.

These accommodations were supposed to be short-term, but most are still with us and are having a negative impact on students. This needs to change.

That’s why, as parents nationwide help their children settle into school this fall, they may want to ask questions about whether their kids are ready to dive into grade-level work — and, if not, find out what is being done to address that.

Four and a half years after the start of the pandemic, it’s time to raise the bar and stop making excuses for sagging achievement. Newly released data show that student growth in 2023-24 lagged behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in nearly every grade. That data follows the big declines in reading and math scores on the most recent Nation’s Report Card and the release of a study showing that high-needs districts have been recovering from the pandemic more slowly than their wealthier counterparts, worsening long-standing achievement gaps.

The pandemic also led to an explosion in chronic absenteeism, and we’ve seen only modest improvements. A recent study by USC researchers found a lack of concern about the issue among parents. School leaders also aren’t as worried as you’d expect, with only 15 percent saying they were “extremely concerned” about student absences in a survey released by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

At the same time, we can see clear evidence of grade inflation in rising GPAs coupled with falling or flat test scores. And while I know that teachers are trying to be supportive, lowering expectations is harmful; recent research shows that students learn more from teachers who have higher grading standards.

However, the need to raise standards doesn’t just rest on the shoulders of teachers. Education leaders and policymakers are also making things too easy. After decades of raising the bar for what’s considered grade-level performance, several states have lowered their “cut scores,” or what it means to be deemed proficient on end-of-year achievement tests.

Many states are also cutting back on K-12 assessments and graduation requirements, despite the fact that they are critical to holding education systems accountable.

Even students don’t like the go-easy-on-them approach. In an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun, recent high school graduate Benjamin Handelman notes that what is more helpful is for teachers to show enthusiasm for the subjects they teach and offer rigorous and engaging learning opportunities.

That’s important for all students, but especially for those from historically marginalized groups, who are least likely to get interesting, high-level learning opportunities.

Related: PROOF POINTS: Why are kids still struggling in school four years after the pandemic?

Keeping the bar low is going to make our kids less competitive when they leave school. It shocks me every time I hear people say, “Well, if everyone is behind, then no one is really behind.”

Eventually, young people will compete for jobs that aren’t going to have lower standards. In fact, employers will likely have higher expectations than a decade ago given advances in generative AI, the impact of technological advances on the world of work and a growing demand for employees with strong analytical, problem-solving and interpersonal skills.

Progress over time is central to our lives. When I was growing up, my competitive swimming coach was a former world record holder and Olympian. The time she had needed to be the fastest in the world in the 200-meter butterfly in 1963 was just barely fast enough for her daughter to qualify for the U.S. Olympic trials 30 years later.

We cannot be complacent about the fact that math achievement for 13-year-olds has fallen to levels not seen since the 1990s. That’s why I’m glad there are states and systems holding kids to high expectations. We can learn from them.

In Maryland, Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright has pledged to raise rigor, much like she did in Mississippi, which made major achievement gains under her stewardship. Her strategy, emulated by others, centers around raising standards and implementing evidence-based instructional strategies, most notably in reading. Mississippi is among three states, along with Illinois and Louisiana, where research shows that students have returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading. Additional strategies adopted by Illinois and Louisiana include tutoring and interventions for struggling learners and professional development for educators.

These states show us that all students can succeed when challenged and supported with high expectations and opportunities to learn. That must be what we strive for to help all kids finally put the pandemic behind them.

Lesley Muldoon is the executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card. She previously served as chief operating officer of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

This story about post-pandemic grade-level work 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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In August, more than 300 students started the school year in the first traditional school run directly by the New Orleans school district since 2019. It’s the first time the district has opened its own school since Hurricane Katrina swept through the city nearly two decades ago.

The pre-K-8 school, named after New Orleans cultural and civil rights icon Leah Chase, came together in just a handful of months. Its opening ends the city’s five-year run as the only all-charter school district in the nation. Charter schools receive public funding, but are independently run. 

For some, the opening of the Leah Chase School is a symbol of stability. In a district that’s been out of the business of directly managing schools for five years, it is a tentative step toward a new era in the city where permanent, traditional neighborhood schools are more commonplace. NOLA Public Schools, the district’s official name, has about 41,600 students, 75 percent of whom are Black.

The decision to open the school in a short time also reflects shifting attitudes in the community and the Orleans Parish School Board, which was once committed to having only charter schools in the district. What happens with the Leah Chase School is a litmus test for a school system that was once considered failing in most metrics, and it will likely determine how it operates future schools, and when. 

“I think the opening of the Leah Chase School does mark a new period for New Orleans public schools,” said J. Celeste Lay, a political science professor at Tulane University who studies education policy. “I think they are more willing to consider directly running schools in ways we haven’t seen, certainly since Katrina.”

The dispute over who runs schools in Orleans Parish goes beyond the national debate over school choice. What happens when a city with a struggling school system gets swallowed by the sea, and how does that system recover when the waters recede?

The idea to open Leah Chase cropped up in January after a tense board meeting over the future of Lafayette Academy. That charter school, in New Orleans’ Uptown neighborhood, received an F rating on the state’s report card. Superintendent Avis Williams recommended revoking the school’s charter in November. Typically, a different charter group would offer to step in.

But when the December deadline for a new operator came and went with no charter group stepping up, Williams recommended that the board keep the school closed, requiring parents to find another option for their children.

At that time, she presented the obstacles to opening a district-run school, from the abbreviated timeline to hire staff and adopt curriculum to planning for the city’s declining birth rate and drop in district enrollment.

Board members ultimately approved the superintendent’s recommendation, but they made it clear: If the school is closing, the district should have a plan to replace it. 

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

A day after the January board meeting, the superintendent made a sharp turn. The district would run the school after all, in the building that had been occupied by Lafayette Academy.

Williams said the decision to open the school was what the board, and community, wanted.

“That was just something the community has impressed upon our board members, and they did vote unanimously for us to direct-run the Leah Chase School and for us to direct-run more schools,” Williams said. 

Both the Recovery School District – a special statewide district created to manage underperforming schools – and New Orleans Public Schools had poured money into renovating and abating asbestos in the building that housed Lafayette Academy that is now the site of the Leah Chase School. That was one factor in wanting to keep this particular building open. But more than anything, the decision stemmed from a growing sentiment in the community, and among newer board members, that it’s time for the district to have a traditional school again, said Carlos Zervigon, a member of the Orleans Parish School Board whose district includes the Leah Chase School.

“There’s a sense that if we’re a system of choice and a system of innovation, one choice should be a school run in a traditional way by the school district directly, with a focus on the neighborhood,” Zervigon said. “That should be one of the choices, and there’s a strong feeling about that.” 

In its first week open, the Leah Chase School had already met the goals district leaders outlined for it. The school has a full staff, a principal, a bus transportation system and more than 300 students enrolled — many of whom transferred from Lafayette.

“My expectation was certainly that there would be some glitches, but it was a seamless day,” said Williams, the superintendent.

The district still has logistical questions to answer. School enrollment in NOLA has dropped by about 5 percent — 2,400 students in five years, according to the district — and if enrollment continues to fall, more school closures are on the horizon. That’s something the superintendent has been tasked with addressing in a five-year plan she’s set to present to the board this fall, along with goals for future traditional public schools.

“That’s part of the optimization plan — we’re looking at size of schools, number of seats available,” said Leila Jacobs Eames, vice president of the Orleans Parish School Board and one of the board’s more vocal advocates for traditional schools.

Financially, the district will need to open more traditional schools to cover the cost of district office staff required to run schools. The district is currently using its fund balance to cover much of the start-up costs for the Leah Chase School. 

“The question is, with their skeleton crew, can they do all that and create the internal capacity to operate schools again?” said Douglas N. Harris, a professor at Tulane University and director of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice. “And the larger question — will they be good at it?”

Related: PROOF POINTS: New study shows controversial post-Katrina school reforms paid off for New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina was the catalyst that resulted in New Orleans’ charter-focused district, but the district’s poor performance, and the city’s broken trust in the school system, predates the devastating storm. In 2004, one year before Katrina, only half of high school students were graduating, and under a quarter of seniors were enrolling in college. School board members and officials were indicted on corruption charges stemming from millions of unaccounted-for dollars. The 2005 hurricane pushed a district already on the brink into collapse.

When Katrina destroyed nearly 90 percent of the public schools in the city, the state’s Recovery School District took most of them over, while the Orleans Parish School Board still had control of a few schools. The years immediately following Katrina were chaotic — schools opened, and closed, on a dime. 

“You had kids that were switching schools every other year because their school would close or their school would transition” to a charter school, “would take on new grades or close certain grades. It was a crazy, terrible time,” said Lay.

Slowly, the few remaining noncharter schools transitioned into charter schools. The arguments in favor of a charter system were numerous: Academic and school management decisions would be left to schools instead of to a district with a history of corruption; charters gave students the opportunity to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods; and the new system brought the promise of change for a city that desperately needed better options.

But it also left a bitter taste. There were concerns about shifting power from a majority-Black, locally elected school board to a majority-white state board — many of whose members had no direct ties to New Orleans. And the district’s entire teaching staff, which was 71 percent Black, was fired. By 2014, fewer than 50 percent of public school teachers in New Orleans were Black.

“You have a Black majority constituency that is being told your elected officials cannot directly control your schools, and it feels a lot like disenfranchisement,” said Zervigon, the school board member. 

Because charter schools were no longer merely an option for families but the main source of public education in New Orleans, the Recovery School District created rules that charters elsewhere don’t have to follow: Enrollment in schools was handled by the district, charters had to provide transportation options, and they had to have district permission before expelling a student. The state passed legislation — Act 91 — enshrining those rules into law before the Recovery School District handed its schools back to the New Orleans public school district in 2017. By 2019, every public school in the parish was a charter, and most of those schools are Black-led, Zervigon said. 

Related: New Orleans finally has control of its own schools, but will all parents really have a say? 

Overall, schools in the district are performing better now than they were before Katrina. The high school graduation rate has risen to 78 percent in 2022, from 54 percent in 2004. The college entry rate rose to 56 percent in 2021, from 37 percent in 2004. 

“Test scores went up, high school graduation, college graduation, ACT scores — everything improved, which is really unusual,” Harris said. “A lot of them improved quite considerably, which is also very unusual. It’s generally the most successful district school reform that we’ve ever seen — of any kind, not just a charter district.”

Schools have stabilized compared to the years after Katrina, but the framework of a charter system requires closing poor performing and financially struggling schools. Though the number of schools closing each year is far lower than it was in the years directly after Katrina, it is not uncommon for a charter to get revoked. Along with Lafayette Academy, the school district rescinded the charter of the 180-student Living School, which didn’t reopen this fall.

Ultimately, people are sick of that cycle, Zervigon said.

“It’s just not reasonable to tolerate closing schools anymore,” he said. “This idea of closing your way to improvement — no one wants to do that.” 

There’s disagreement on how successful the city’s charter model has been for students more recently. In 2019, New Orleans schools were among the top in the nation for academic growth according to a Stanford University report. But annually, most of the city’s schools get a C, D or F rating on state report cards. A 2016 study from a different department at Stanford University said the quality of schools in the city varies greatly depending on the school, and the main mode for addressing this — closing failing schools — hurts achievement for displaced students.

“There’s a lot of disagreement around whether the schools are better and what better means,” said Lay, the Tulane professor. “There are people who will certainly point to increases in test scores and graduation rates as solid evidence of improvement. But I think many others look at that as a very narrow way to measure transformation or success, and instead would prefer a holistic view of success of the district: inclusion of students, stability in terms of being able to attend schools, and know those schools are going to be open for the next several years of their education.”

The five-year plan that Williams, the superintendent, will present to board members in October will include plans for new traditional schools and how the district will address declining enrollment.

Board members and the superintendent have said they are still committed to charters. But the school system will likely add more traditional schools to join the Leah Chase School.

“They’ll probably operate a couple more, but still fundamentally remain a mostly charter school district,” Harris said. “I think that partly because a big change can only happen slowly.”

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

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Apparently, there is not enough joy to go around, and some “joyful warriors” are upset about, among other things, what they see as their nickname being ripped off.

Joy has become a theme of the Democratic ticket — Vice President Kamala Harris proclaimed herself and running mate Tim Walz “joyful warriors” against their Republican opponents. The conservative parent group Moms for Liberty made a point of attacking the Democrats’ use of the phrase during its four-day annual summit over Labor Day weekend in Washington D.C.

“I want to remind people who are the OG Joyful Warriors,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich said Friday evening, ahead of an appearance by Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.    

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

As a whole, the summit sent dual messages. One cast Moms for Liberty and the broader Republican party as working to appeal across party lines. The other unleashed strikingly vitriolic language about claimed dangers of the Harris-Walz ticket — especially to parents. Leaders made one particular issue — transgender students — the focus of their messaging. Staple concerns of past years, including social emotional learning, DEI initiatives and “inappropriate” books, took a backseat. There was little talk of academics or learning.

Instead, co-founder Tiffany Justice painted schools as predatory, seeking to infect children with ideas about gender that lead them to declare they are nonbinary. And Walz, whose policies as governor of Minnesota are considered LGBTQ+-friendly, was a special target of attack. 

“Tim Walz is, I mean, what a radical, radical bad guy,” Justice said in an interview with The Hechinger Report, calling him “anti-parent” and repeating inaccurate portrayals of  Minnesota law as allowing minor children to come to the state for gender-affirming care without their parents’ consent and saying that children can be removed from their parents’ custody if they disagree with their kids’ desire for gender-affirming care. (A Minnesota law gives courts there the ability to intervene temporarily in a custody dispute across state lines when a child cannot obtain care.)

She also raised concerns about what she called “a social contagion that has taken over in our country. It’s called rapid onset gender dysphoria,” Justice said, referring to a disorder described in a paper published last year in the scientific journal Archives of Sexual Behavior that has since been retracted. 

“There’s no such thing as a transgender child. Please quote me on that,” she continued. “There are children who are experiencing mental distress and they need kindness and compassion and help to feel comfortable in their own bodies, because no child is born in the wrong body.”

Aside from a playful interlude featuring covers of John Mellencamp and Lynyrd Skynyrd that brought attendees clad in sequined MAGA wear and American Flag-inspired fashion to their feet, the event felt less organized — and less joyful — than past years.

Related: Title IX regulations on sex discrimination can be Trump-era or Biden-era, depending on your state or school

Instead, the prevailing tone was one of aggression. The us-versus-them framing is not new. At the first Moms for Liberty summit, in Tampa in 2022, attendees were invited to a well-choreographed unveiling of the alleged dangers facing children in public school — and an urgent call to get involved. The second, in Philadelphia, schooled them in real-time opposition as the extent of protests seemed to surprise attendees doing what they saw as the noble work of moms. This year, many got that this was less about gathering information or learning than rallying around your team. On the cusp of a big election, what could they do to help? How could they recruit more people to defeat a Democratic ticket cast as lethal to their children’s well-being — even as they look to be having lots of fun and supporting lunchbox issues like school meals?

“It’s crazy what’s going on,” said one Maryland mom, a first-time attendee who said she has become more active “because I can” since her youngest graduated from high school. “Moms with 5- and 6-year-olds don’t have time to fight.”

The summit gathered some 600 moms, grandmothers — and a fair number of dads, for whom an in-person appearance from Trump was perhaps the biggest draw. Even though the former president was on stage for nearly an hour, he said little about education, instead repeatedly veering to the subject of immigration regardless of what question Justice asked him. In some of his few comments on schools, he charged without evidence that public schools are aggressively involved in providing gender-affirming care.  

“The transgender thing is incredible,” Trump said. “Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

Some of Trump’s remarks on immigration, meanwhile, focused on the dangers of newcomers to public education. At one point, he alleged that new arrivals bring gangs and disease into schools, and are welcomed warmly while current students are shut out. “They don’t even speak English,” he said. “It’s crazy. And we have our people that aren’t going into a classroom. We have students that were there last year that aren’t allowed into the school.”

Trump also spent time reflecting on the difficulties of being a candidate. When Justice asked Trump for his advice to busy moms considering a run for school board — some of the core work of Moms for Liberty is to encourage members to seek office — his answer was, “Don’t do it.” 

While Justice noted to the crowd that Moms for Liberty endorses candidates only in school board races, she personally endorsed Trump as she concluded her interview. 

Related: Moms For Liberty flexes its muscles — and faces pushback

Despite the clearly partisan tone of the summit, there was an effort to cross ideological lines to expand support for the Republican ticket ahead of the election. A Friday morning keynote panel featured four women whom Justice said had “chosen to walk away from the Democratic party”: Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii; Texas state Rep. Shawn Thierry, who left the Democratic party in late August; athletic clothing maker and former gymnast Jennifer Sey who has written about how she regrets voting for President Joe Biden; and New York City parent advocate and former Democratic congressional candidate Maud Maron.

Gabbard, who was recently named to be part of Trump’s transition team, said the Democratic Party “is no longer the big tent party that welcomes people from all walks of life.” She coached attendees on how to approach a person in their circle “who doesn’t quite see the truth,” and urged them to do so. “Scroll through your phone. Think about the people who may need a little bit of a nudge,” she said.

“Who’s gonna unite our country?” Gabbard called to the crowd. “We are!”  

This year’s summit lacked the hundreds of protesters who were a constant presence at the 2023 event in Philadelphia, spurring a large and visible security detail and barricades at the hotel entrance. By contrast, the streets outside of the JW Marriott in Washington, less than half a mile from the White House, were quiet.

Yet many of the same groups that had gathered to protest Moms for Liberty last year  staged a separate counter-event, “Celebration of Reading,” on Saturday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington. Participants read aloud banned books and gave away nearly 1,000 of them to children and families who arrived in strollers and on foot.

At the same time, several dozen conservative groups, including Moms for Liberty, organized what they said would be the first annual “March for Kids” to “bring awareness to the decline of our educational system and the erosion of parental rights.” Originally planned for the National Mall, it was moved at the last minute indoors to the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall; organizers cited safety concerns. As it got underway, some 300 people populated a hall with a capacity of 3,702.

Meg Simons, digital strategy manager at the progressive advocacy group People for the American Way, said that the strong showing of protestors in Philadelphia so motivated many older members of her 40-year-old organization that they started Grandparents For Truth to counter Moms for Liberty.

Marge Baker, a founding member of the grandparent group, said it bothered her to see Moms for Liberty “out there organizing and trying to claim this mantle of freedom when what they want is the freedom to decide what all parents and children can read.” Baker spoke moments before her husband, Robert Banks, was to read aloud “The Lorax,” which has been banned in some places for promoting an environmentalist agenda and negatively depicting the logging industry.

Heidi Ross, another grandmother, traveled from Buckeye, Arizona, to help out at the event. “This is my world,” she said, holding up a screen shot of her 2-year-old granddaughter, Lili. Ross said she has been upset by the rise of school vouchers in her state and the attacks on books. “Children should know about everybody, every family,” she said, adding that, “there are different families, even in my Republican neighborhood.”

During the Moms for Liberty summit, attendees chatted at booths staffed by representatives of organizations such as Lifewise Academy, which touts a Bible education program for public school students that can be offered during the school day. Other booths plus a strategy session run by lawyers with The Heritage Foundation and Institute for Free Speech offered guidance to parents for fighting the new Biden administration Title IX regulation, which extends protection against sex discrimination to students based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Moms for Liberty helped derail the regulation, at least for now, in 26 states and thousands of schools in other states, a list that is growing by the week.

Julie Womack, head of organizing for Red, Wine & Blue, a national progressive group that helps suburban women organize, hosted an online information event about the new Title IX rules, a panel with parents of trans kids, and is planning a “Troublemaker Training” on Oct. 16 to counter disinformation about transgender individuals. “Many people in real life have very little experience,” with transgender individuals, said Womack.  Even parents of transgender youth, she said, admit “they didn’t know how to handle it. Well, we are all learning. It is OK to learn. But it is not OK to exclude.”

Liz King, who leads the education program for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the counter-event’s sponsors, said Moms for Liberty is boxing people out rather than being inclusive. As the group’s language escalates, she said, “they have resorted to the old canard of fear-mongering.”

This all comes at a critical time.“One of the questions right now is, ‘What does it mean to be a parent?’” said King. “What we see with this organization of Moms for Liberty is a betrayal of the responsibility of parents and an anti-liberty agenda.”

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

The post At Moms for Liberty’s national summit, a singular focus on anti-trans issues appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Lawsuits challenging the Biden administration’s Title IX rule on sex discrimination have led to judges blocking its implementation in 26 states. The new rule was also halted in schools and universities attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United, following lawsuits from those groups.

The result is a messy legal landscape with school officials trying to figure out their obligations. Below are lists of K-12 schools and colleges that, because of court injunctions, are continuing to follow the Trump administration’s Title IX rules instead of the newer regulations.

Search below and read our full report about this issue.

The post See whether your school uses Biden or Trump’s rules on sexual discrimination and gender identity appeared first on The Hechinger Report.