Dual enrollment is exploding. During the 2022-23 school year, nearly 2.5 million high school students took college classes, simultaneously earning high school and college credits. That’s up from 1.5 million students in the fall of 2021 and roughly 300,000 students in the early 2000s. Figures released last week show that dual enrollment grew another 7 percent in the fall of 2024 from a year earlier, even as the number of traditional college freshmen fell. 

Exactly how much all of this is costing the nation isn’t known. But the state of Texas, which accounts for 10 percent of high schoolers who are taking these college classes, was investing $120 million annually as recently as 2017, according to one estimate. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to extrapolate that over $1 billion a year in public funds is being spent on dual enrollment across the nation. 

Alongside this meteoric rise of students and resources, researchers are trying to understand who is taking advantage of these early college classes, whether they’re expanding the pool of college-educated Americans, and if these extra credits help students earn college degrees faster and save money.

A new analysis released in October 2024 by the Community College Research Center (CCRC), at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center tracked what happened to every high school student who started taking dual enrollment classes in 2015. Of these 400,000 high schoolers, more than 80 percent enrolled in college straight after high school. That compares favorably with the general population, of whom only 70 percent of high school graduates went straight to college. Almost 30 percent of the 400,000 dual enrollees, roughly 117,000 students, earned a bachelor’s degree in four years. But a majority (58 percent) had not earned any college degree, either a four-year bachelor’s or a two-year associate, or any post-secondary credential, such as a short-term certificate, within this four-year period. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

This is the most detailed and extensive analysis of dual enrollment that I’ve seen, covering all students in the nation, and tracking them for years after high school. But the analysis does not answer the fundamental question of whether dual enrollment  is a worthwhile public policy. 

It’s not clear that  an early taste of higher education encourages  more students to go to college who wouldn’t have otherwise. And it’s hard to tell from this report if the credits are helping students get through college any faster. 

The fact that students with dual enrollment credits are faring better than students without dual enrollment credits isn’t terribly persuasive. In order to qualify for the classes, students usually need to have done well on a test, earned high grades or be on an advanced or honors track in school. These high-achieving students would likely have graduated from college in much higher numbers without any dual enrollment courses.

“Are we subsidizing students who were always going to go to college anyway?” asked Kristen Hengtgen, a policy analyst at EdTrust, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that lobbies for racial and economic equity in education. “Could we have spent the time and energy and effort differently on higher quality teachers or something else? I think that’s a really important question.”

Related: High schoolers account for nearly 1 out of every 5 community college students

Hengtgen was not involved in this latest analysis, but she is concerned about the severe underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic students that the report highlights. A data dashboard accompanying the new report documents that only 9 percent of the high schoolers in dual enrollment classes were Black, while Black students made up 16 percent of high school students. Only 17 percent of dual enrollment students were Hispanic at a time when Hispanic students made up almost a quarter of the high school population. White students, by contrast, took 65 percent of the dual enrollment seats but represented only half of the high school population. Asian students were the only group whose participation in dual enrollment matched their share of the student population: 5 percent of each. 

Advocates of dual enrollment have made the argument that an early taste of college can motivate students to go to college, and the fact that so few Black and Hispanic students are enrolling is perhaps is the most troubling sign that the giant public-and-private investment in education isn’t fulfilling one of its main objectives: to expand the college-educated workforce.

Hengtgen of EdTrust argues that Black, Hispanic and low-income students of all races need better high school advising to help them sign up for the classes. Sometimes, she said, students don’t know they have to take a prerequisite class in 10th grade in order to be eligible for a dual enrollment class in 11th grade, and by the time they find out, it’s too late. Cost is another barrier. Depending upon the state and county, a family may have to pay fees to take the classes. Though these fees are generally much cheaper than what college students pay per course, low-income families may still not be able to afford them. 

Tatiana Velasco, an economist at CCRC and lead author of the October 2024 dual enrollment report, makes the argument that dual enrollment may be most beneficial to Black and Hispanic students and low-income students of all races and ethnicities. In her data analysis, she noted that dual enrollment credits were only providing a modest boost to students overall, but very large boosts to some demographic groups. 

Among all high school students who enrolled in college straight after high school, 36 percent of those with dual enrollment credits earned a bachelor’s degree within four years compared with 34 percent without any dual enrollment credits. Arguably, dual enrollment credits are not making a huge difference in time to completion, on average.

However, Velasco found much larger benefits from dual enrollment when she sliced the data by race and income. Among only Black students who enrolled in college straight away, 29 percent of those who had earned dual enrollment credits completed a bachelor’s degree within four years, compared to only 18 percent of those without dual enrollment credits. That’s more than a 50 percent increase in college attainment. “The difference is massive,” said Velasco.

Among Hispanic students who went straight to college, 25 percent of those with dual enrollment credits earned a bachelor’s degree within four years. Only 19 percent of Hispanic college students without dual enrollment credits did. Dual enrollment also seemed particularly helpful for college students from low-income neighborhoods; 28 percent of them earned a bachelor’s degree within four years compared with only 20 percent without dual enrollment. 

Again, it’s still unclear if dual enrollment is driving these differences. It could be that Black students who opt to take dual enrollment classes were already more motivated and higher achieving and still would have graduated from college in much higher numbers. (Notably, Black students with dual enrollment credits were more likely to attend selective four-year institutions.) 

There is a wide variation across the nation in how dual enrollment operates in high schools. In most cases, high schoolers never step foot on a college campus. Often the class is taught in a high school classroom by a high school teacher. Sometimes community colleges supply the instructors. English composition and college algebra are popular offerings. The courses are generally designed and the credits awarded by a local community college, though 30 percent of dual enrollment credits are awarded by four-year institutions. 

A few other takeaways from the CCRC and National Student Clearinghouse report:

• States with very high rates of college completion from their dual enrollment programs, such as Delaware, Georgia, Mississippi and New Jersey, tend to serve fewer Black, Hispanic and low-income students. Florida stood out as an exception. CCRC’s Velasco noted it had both strong college completion rates while serving a somewhat higher proportion of Hispanic students.
• In Iowa, Texas and Washington, half of all dual enrollment students ended up going to the college that awarded their dual enrollment credits. 
• In Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin, dual enrollment students have become a huge source of future students for community colleges. (A separate cost study shows that some community colleges are providing dual enrollment courses to a nearby high school at a loss, but if these students subsequently matriculate, their future tuition dollars can offset those losses.)

And that perhaps is the most worrisome unintended consequence of the explosion of dual enrollment credits. Many bright high school students are racking up credits from three, four or even five college classes and they’re feeling pressure to take advantage of these credits by enrolling in the community college that partners with their high school. That might seem like a sensible decision. It’s iffy whether these dual enrollment credits can be transferred to another school, or, more importantly, count toward a student’s requirements in a major, which is what really matters and holds students back from graduating on time. 

But a lot of these students could get into their state flagship or even a highly selective private college on scholarship. And they’d be better off. Dual enrollment students who started at a community college, the report found, were much less likely than those who enrolled at a four-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree four years after high school.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

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

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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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The free community college movement effectively began in 2014 when Republican Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee signed the Tennessee Promise Scholarship Act, which offered the state’s high school graduates free tuition to attend any two-year public community college or technical college in Tennessee.

Communities around the country had been experimenting with free college programs since 2005, usually with private funding, but Tennessee was the first to make it a statewide policy, and it inspired 36 states to follow suit. This year, Massachusetts was the most recent to make community college free. (Here is a search tool for all the free college programs, including more than 400 local ones.) 

But as free-tuition programs have multiplied, so have questions and doubts. Are low-income students benefiting? Is free tuition leading to more college graduates? 

Unfortunately we have to wait years to allow students time to get through college, but answers to these important questions are starting to emerge from Tennessee. College Promise, a nonprofit that advocates for making college free, along with tnAchieves, the nonprofit that helps administer the Tennessee program, released a 10-year anniversary report on Oct. 14. The report offers encouraging signs that the Tennessee Promise scholarship program, which now costs about $29 million a year in tuition subsidies and other services, has helped more students go to college and earn two-year associate degrees. In addition, Tennessee shared some of the lessons learned. 

First the numbers. The report highlights that more than 90 percent of all Tennessee high school seniors apply for the free college program. All students regardless of family income are eligible, and roughly 15,000 students a year ultimately use the program to enroll in college right after high school.  About half come from low-income families who qualify for the Federal Pell Grant. 

Thirty-seven percent of students who initially enrolled in college with the Promise scholarship program earned a two-year associate degree within three years, compared with only 11 percent of students who applied for the scholarship but never met its requirements, such as financial aid paperwork and service hours.* Tennessee projects that since its inception, the scholarship program will have produced a total of 50,000 college graduates by 2025, administrators told me in an interview.

Before the free tuition program went statewide, only 16 percent of Tennessee students who started community college in 2011 had earned an associate degree three years later. Graduation rates then rose to 22 percent for students who started community college in 2014. At this time, 27 Tennessee counties had launched their own free tuition programs, but the statewide policy had not yet gone into effect. 

By 2020, when free tuition statewide had been in effect for five years, 28 percent of Tennessee’s community college students had earned a degree in three years. Not all of these students participated in the free tuition program, but many did. 

It’s unclear if the free tuition program is the driving force behind the rising graduation rates. It could be that motivated students sign up for it and abide by the rules of the scholarship program and might have still graduated in higher numbers without it. It could also be that unrelated nationwide reforms, from increases in federal financial aid to academic advising, have helped more students make it to the finish line.

I talked with Celeste Carruthers, an economist at University of Tennessee Knoxville, who has been studying the free tuition program in her state. She is currently crunching the numbers to figure out whether the program is causing graduation rates to climb, but the signs she sees right now are giving her “cause for optimism.” Using U.S. Census data, she compared Tennessee’s college attainment rates with the rest of the United States. In the years immediately following the statewide scholarship program, beginning with the high school class of 2015, there is a striking jump in the share of young adults with associate degrees a few years later, while associate degree attainment elsewhere in the nation improved only mildly. Tennessee quickly went from being a laggard in young adult college attainment to a leader – at least until the pandemic hit. (See graph.)

While evaluation of the Tennessee program continues, researchers and program officers point to three lessons learned so far: 

• The scholarship program hasn’t helped many low-income students financially. The Federal Pell Grant of $7,395 far exceeds annual tuition and fees at Tennessee’s community colleges, which hover around $4,500 for a full-time student. Community college was already free for low-income students, who represent roughly half of the students in Tennessee’s free college program. Like other free college programs around the country, Tennessee’s is structured as a “last dollar” program, which means that it only pays out after other forms of financial aid are exhausted. 

That means that tuition subsidies have primarily gone to students from higher income families that don’t qualify for the Pell Grant. In Tennessee, the funding source is the state lottery. Roughly $22 million of lottery proceeds were used to pay for community college tuition in the most recent year.

• Free tuition alone isn’t enough help. In 2018, Tennessee added coaching for low-income students to give them extra support. (Low-income students hadn’t been receiving any tuition subsidies because other financial aid sources already covered their tuition.) Then, in 2022, Tennessee added emergency grants for books and other living expenses for needy students – up to $1,000 per student per semester.* The extra assistance for low-income students is financed through state budget allocations and private fundraising. For students who are the first generation in their families to attend college, current graduation rates have jumped to 34 percent with this extra support compared with 11 percent without it, the 10-year report said. 

“Pairing the financial support with the non-financial support – that mentoring support, the coaching support – is really the sweet spot,” said Graham Thomas, chief community and government relations officer at tnAchieves. “It’s the game changer, and that is often overlooked for the money part.” 

Coaching is best conducted in person on campus. During COVID, Tennessee launched an online mentoring platform, but students didn’t engage with it. “We learned our lesson that in-person is the most valuable way to go when building relationships,” said Ben Sterling, chief content officer at tnAchieves.

• The worst case scenario didn’t happen. When free community college was first announced, critics fretted that the zero price tag would lure students away from four-year colleges, which aren’t free. That’s bad because the transfer process from community college back to a four-year school can be rocky with students losing credits and the time invested. Studies have shown that most students are more likely to complete a four-year degree if they start at a four-year institution. But the number of bachelor’s degrees did not fall. It seems possible that the free tuition policy lured students who wouldn’t have gone to college at all in the past, without cannibalizing four-year colleges. However, bachelor’s degree acquisition in Tennessee, though rising, remains far below the rest of the nation. (See graph.)

As an aside, students are also able to use their Tennessee Promise scholarship funds at a limited number of public four-year colleges that offer associate degrees. About 10 percent of the program’s students take advantage of this option.

Despite all the positive signs for educational attainment in Tennessee, recent years have not been kind. “Everything that’s happened to enrollment since COVID  kind of erased all of the gains from Tennessee Promise,” said the University of Tennessee’s Carruthers. The combination of pandemic disruptions, a strong job market and changing public sentiment about higher education hammered enrollment at community colleges nationwide. Students have started returning again in Tennessee, but community college enrollment is still below what it was in 2019.  

* Correction and clarifications: Because of incorrect information supplied to The Hechinger Report, an earlier version of this story mischaracterized the two groups of students that succeeded in earning a college degree within three years. This story was also modified to clarify that only coaching was introduced in 2018. A separate mentoring service already existed. In addition, the $1,000 emergency grants, which began in 2022, are not one-time grants but can be issued multiple times.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

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

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Everybody is trying to find ways to help students catch up after the pandemic. One new data analysis suggests some promising ideas. 

TNTP, a nonprofit based in New York that advocates for improving K-12 education, wanted to identify schools that are the most effective at helping kids recover academically and understand what those schools are doing differently. These are not schools where students post the highest test scores, but schools where kids learn more each school year than students typically do. 

TNTP researchers plunged into a giant pool of data housed at Stanford University that tracked hundreds of millions of students’ scores on state tests at more than half the elementary and middle schools in the nation from 2009 to 2018. The researchers found that at 28,000 of the 51,000 elementary and middle schools in the database, students entered third grade or middle school below grade level. TNTP calculated that the top 5 percent of these start-behind schools – 1,345 of them – were helping students learn at least 1.3 year’s worth of material every year, based on how test scores improved as students progressed from grade to grade. In other words, the students at the top 5 percent of the start-behind schools learned the equivalent of an extra full year or more of math and reading every three years. 

“Growing at this rate allows most students to catch up to grade level during their time in school,” concluded the report, which was released in September 2024.

Previous researchers conducted a similar analysis in 2017 with whole school districts instead of individual schools. In that study, Chicago emerged as the nation’s most effective school district. Like the schools in the 2024 analysis, Chicago didn’t post the highest test scores, but its students were progressing the most each year. 

“There are many schools that are effective at helping students learn, even in high-poverty communities,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who was part of the team that developed the Stanford Education Data Archive. “The TNTP report uses our data to identify some of them and then digs in to understand what makes them particularly effective. This is exactly what we hoped people would do with the data.” 

TNTP did not name all 1,345 schools that beat the odds. But they did describe their overall characteristics (see table). 

TNTP did identify seven of the 1,345 highly effective schools that it selected to study in depth. Only one of the seven schools had a majority Black population, reflecting the fact that Black students are underrepresented at the most effective schools. 

The seven schools ranged widely. Some were large. Some were small. Some were city schools with many Hispanic students. Others were mostly white, rural schools. They used different instructional materials and did a lot of things differently, but TNTP teased out three traits that it thought these schools had in common.  

Seven of the 1,345 schools where students started behind but made large learning gains over a decade from 2009 to 2018

“What we found was not a silver-bullet solution, a perfect curriculum, or a rockstar principal,” the report said. “Instead, these schools shared a commitment to doing three core things well: they create a culture of belonging, deliver consistent grade-level instruction, and build a coherent instructional program.

According to TNTP’s classroom observations, students received good or strong instruction in nine out of 10 classrooms. “Across all classrooms, the steady accumulation of good lessons—not unattainably perfect ones—sets trajectory-changing schools apart,” the report said, contrasting this consistent level of “good” with its earlier observation that most U.S. schools have some good teaching, but there is a lot of variation from one classroom to the next.

In addition to good instruction, TNTP said that students in these seven schools were receiving grade-level content in their English and math classes although most students were behind. Teachers in each school used the same shared curriculum. According to the TNTP report, only about a third of elementary school teachers nationwide say they “mostly use” the curriculum adopted by their school. At Trousdale County Elementary in Tennessee, one of the exemplar schools, 80 percent of teachers said they did. 

While many education advocates are pushing for the adoption of better curriculum as a lever to improve schools, “It’s possible to get trajectory-changing results without a perfect curriculum,” TNTP wrote in its report.

Teachers also had regular, scheduled sessions to collaborate, discuss their instruction, and note what did and did not work.  “Everyone holds the same high expectations and works together to improve,” the report said. 

The schools also gave students extra instruction to fill knowledge gaps and extra practice to solidify their skills. These extra support classes, called “intervention blocks,”  are now commonplace at many low-income schools, but TNTP noted one major difference at the seven schools they studied. The intervention blocks were connected to what students were learning in their main classrooms. That requires school leaders to make sure that interventionists, classroom aides and the main classroom teachers have time to talk and collaborate during the school day. 

These seven schools all had strong principals. Although many of the principals came and left during the decade that TNTP studied, the schools maintained strong results. 

The seven schools also emphasized student-teacher relationships and built a caring community. At Brightwood, a small charter school in Washington, D.C., that serves an immigrant population, staff members try to learn the names of every student and to be collectively responsible for both their academics and well-being. During one staff meeting, teachers wrote more than 250 student names on giant pads of paper. Teachers put check marks by each child they felt like they had a genuine relationship with and then brainstormed ways to reach the students without checks. 

At New Heights Academy Charter School in New York City, each teacher contacts 10 parents a week—by text, email, or phone—and logs the calls in a journal. Teachers don’t just call when something goes wrong. They also reach out to parents to talk about an “A” on a test, academic improvement, or good attendance, the report said. 

It’s always risky to highlight what successful schools are doing because other educators might be tempted to just copy ideas. But TNTP warns that every school is different. What works in one place might not in another. The organization’s advice for schools is to change one practice at a time, perhaps starting with a category that the school is already pretty good at, and improve it. TNTP warns against trying to change too many things at once. 

TNTP’s view is that any school can become a highly effective school, and that there aren’t particular educational philosophies or materials that a school must use to accomplish this rare feat. A lot of it is simply about increasing communication among teachers, between teachers and students, and with families. It’s a bit like weight-loss diets that don’t dictate which foods you can and cannot eat, as long as you eat less and exercise more. It’s the basic principles that matter most.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at (212) 678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

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

The post The habits of 7 highly effective schools appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Fifteen years ago, the Obama administration and philanthropic foundations encouraged more Americans to get a college degree. Remedial classes were a big barrier. Two-thirds of community college students and 40 percent of four-year college students weren’t academically prepared for college-level work and were forced to take prerequisite “developmental” courses that didn’t earn them college credits. Many of these college students never progressed to college-level courses. They racked up student loan debts and dropped out. Press reports, including my own, called it a “remedial ed trap.”

One controversial but popular solution was to eliminate these prerequisite classes and let weaker students proceed straight to college-level courses, called “corequisite courses,” because they include some remedial support at the same time. In recent years, more than 20 states, from California to Florida, have either replaced remedial classes at their public colleges with corequisites or given students a choice between the two. 

In 2015, Tennessee’s public colleges were some of the first higher education institutions to eliminate stand-alone remedial courses. A 10-year analysis of how almost 100,000 students fared before and after the new policy was conducted by researchers at the University of Delaware, and their draft paper was made public earlier this year. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal and may still be revised, but it is the first longer term study to look at college degree completion for tens of thousands of students who have taken corequisites, and it found that the new supports haven’t worked as well as many hoped, especially for lower achieving students .

First the good news. Like earlier research, this study of Tennessee’s two-year community colleges found that after the elimination of remedial classes, students passed more college courses, both introductory courses in English and math, and also more advanced courses in those subjects.

However, the extra credit accumulation effect quickly faded. Researchers tracked each student for three years, and by the end of their third year, students had racked up about the same number of total credits as earlier students had under the old remedial education regime. The proportion of students earning either two-year associate degrees or four-year bachelor’s degrees did not increase after the corequisite reform. Lower achieving college students, defined as those with very low ACT exam scores in high school, were more likely to drop out of college and less likely to earn a short-term certificate degree after the switch to corequisites.

“The evidence is showing that these reforms are not increasing graduation rates,” said Alex Goudas, a higher education researcher and a community college professor at Delta College in Michigan, who was not involved in this study. “Some students are benefiting a little bit – only temporarily – and other students are harmed permanently.”

It seems like a paradox. Students are initially passing more courses, but are also more likely to drop out and less likely to earn credentials. Florence Xiaotao Ran, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware and the lead researcher on the Tennessee study, explained to me that the dropouts appear to be different types of students than the ones earning more credits. Students with somewhat higher ACT test scores in high school, who were close to the old remedial ed cutoff of 19 points (out of 36) and scoring near the 50th percentile nationally, were more likely to succeed in passing the new corequisite courses straight away. Some students who were far below this threshold also passed the corequisite courses, but many more failed. Students below the 10th percentile (13 and below on the ACT) dropped out in greater numbers and were less likely to earn a short-term certificate. 

Data from other states shows a similar pattern. In California, which largely eliminated remedial education in 2019, failure rates in introductory college-level math courses soared, even as more students also succeeded in passing these courses, according to a study of an Hispanic-serving two-year college in southern California. 

Ran’s Tennessee analysis has two important implications. The new corequisite courses – as they currently operate – aren’t working well for the lowest achieving students. And the change isn’t even helping students who are now able to earn more college credits during the first year or two of college. They’re still struggling to graduate and are not earning a college degree any faster.

Some critics of corequisite reforms, such as Delta College’s Goudas, argue that some form of remedial education needs to be reintroduced for students who lack basic math, reading and writing skills. 

Meanwhile, supporters of the reforms believe that corequisite courses need to be improved. Thomas Brock, director of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, described the higher dropout rates and falling number of credentials in the Tennessee study as “troubling.” But he says that the old remedial ed system failed too many students. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

“The answer is not to go back,” said Brock, “but to double down on corequisites and offer students more support,” acknowledging that some students need more time to build the skills they lack. Brock believes this skill-building can happen simultaneously as students earn college credits and not as a preliminary stepping stone. “No student comes to college to take remedial courses,” he added.

One confounding issue is that corequisite classes come in so many different forms. In some cases, students get a double dose of math or English with three credit hours of a remedial class taken concurrently with three credit hours of a college-level course. A more common approach is to tack on an extra hour or so to the college class. In her analysis, Ran discovered that instructional time was cut in half for the weakest students, who received many more hours of math or writing instruction under the old remedial system.

“In the new scenario, everyone gets the same amount of instruction or developmental material, regardless if you are just one point below the cutoff or 10 points below the cutoff,” said Ran.

There are also big differences in what takes place during the extra support time that’s built into a corequisite course. Some colleges offer tutoring centers to help students fill in their knowledge gaps. Others schedule computer lab time where students practice math problems on educational software. Another option is extended class time, where the main professor teaches the same material that’s in the college level course only more slowly, spread across four hours a week instead of the usual three.  

Overcoming weak foundational skills is not the only obstacle that community college students face. The researchers I interviewed emphasized that these students are struggling to juggle work and family responsibilities along with their classes, and they need more support – academic advising, career counseling and sometimes therapy and financial help.  Without additional support, students get derailed.  This may explain why the benefits of early credit accumulation fade out and are not yet translating into higher graduation rates. 

Even before the pandemic, the vast majority of community college students arrived on campus without a strong enough foundation for regular college-credit bearing classes and were steered to either remedial or new corequisite classes. High school achievement levels have deteriorated further since 2020, when the data in Ran’s study ended. “It’s not their fault,” said Ran. “It’s the K-12 system that failed them.”

That’s why it’s more important now than ever to figure out how to help under-prepared college students if we want to improve post-secondary education. 

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at (212) 678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

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

The post A decade of data in one state shows an unexpected result when colleges drop remedial courses appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

VESTAVIA HILLS, Ala. — Principal Lauren Dressback didn’t think about it after it happened. After all, she was workplace-close with Wesley Smith, the custodian at Cahaba Heights Elementary School, in this affluent suburb of Birmingham. She called him “the mayor.” She said that he knew her two children, asked about her family almost daily and made a point of interacting. “Every day, a huge bear hug,” she recalled.  

So, when Dressback, just after last Valentine’s Day, asked Smith to come into the nurse’s office and shut the door, and then shared three photos on her phone of who she had just started dating, it felt ordinary. Afterward, she said, “I just moved right on about my day.” 

But the 2 minute, 13 second-exchange — captured on video by the nurse — would prove fateful.  

In a few short months, after a two-decade career, Dressback, a popular educator, would go from Vestavia Hills City school district darling to controversial figure after she came out as gay, divorced her husband, and began dating a Black woman.  

Within days of showing the custodian the photos, she was ordered to leave the building and was barred from district property. Soon, she found herself facing a litany of questions from district leaders about a seemingly minor issue: employee timesheets. In April, she was officially placed on administrative leave. On May 2, during a packed school board meeting, she was demoted, replaced as principal, and sent to run the district’s alternative high school. 

At that school board meeting, as he had for weeks, Todd Freeman, the superintendent, refused to offer an explanation, even to Dressback. Rather, at the beginning of the meeting, he read a statement that “we have not, cannot, and will not make personnel decisions based on an individual’s race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin or disability.” (When contacted, Vestavia Hills City Schools spokesperson Whit McGhee said the district would not discuss confidential personnel matters and declined to make Freeman available for an interview. He provided links to school board meeting minutes, district policies and Alabama educator codes without explaining how they applied in Dressback’s case. Freeman and two other district officials involved in the situation did not respond to emails requesting interviews or a list of detailed questions.) 

Despite Freeman’s assertion regarding personnel decisions, many people in the community believe differently. So many, in fact, that “the Dressback situation” has lit up social media (one TikTok post has more than 313,000 views), spurred supermarket conversations and online chatter — and challenged allegiances.  

“The entire situation has divided the community,” said Abbey Skipper, a parent at Cahaba Heights Elementary. Some people, she said, are “trying to label everyone who is on the side of Dressback as leftists or Democrats or radicals” and assuming “everyone who supports the superintendent and the board is a Republican — which isn’t true.”  

A private Facebook group, “We Stand With Lauren” quickly gathered 983 members, while a public Facebook post by a fifth grade teacher at Cahaba Heights complained of the “news frenzy and whirlwind of social media misinformation” and stated that, “We Stand for Our Superintendent, Our District Office, Our Board, and our new principal, Kim Polson.” The May 8 teacher post, which got 287 likes and 135 comments, both in support and challenging the post, went on to say, “To do our jobs to the best of our ability, we trust the people who have been charged to lead us.”  

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

Alabama has among the strictest anti-gay policies in the nation. This past legislative session, the House passed a bill to ban LGBTQ+ flags and symbols from schools. It also expands to middle schools the current “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits instruction or discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in elementary schools. Its sponsor, Rep. Mack Butler, who represents a suburban community in northeast Alabama, stated that it could “purify the schools just a little bit.” He later walked back the comment. The bill died in the Senate, but Butler has vowed to reintroduce it next session. 

The bill was one of dozens introduced or passed in states around the country restricting classroom discussion of gender identity, books with LGBTQ+ characters and displays of pride symbols. The laws have contributed to a climate in which “every classroom has been turned into a front” in a battle, said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, which advocates for LGBTQ+ individuals in K-12 education. “Every educator, every administrator now has to be on that front line every single day,” she said. “We’re seeing educators leave because of the strain of the job made worse by the political moment we’re in and we’re also seeing because of the political moment we’re in, educators being targeted for their personal identity.” 

Tiffany Wright, a professor at Millersville University in Pennsylvania who studies the experience of LGBTQ+ educators, said right now many “are very on edge.”* Wright and her colleagues have surveyed LGBTQ+ educators four times since 2007, with new 2024 data to be released in November. While the past decade has seen strides toward acceptance, “the regional differences are huge,” she said. “Folks in the South definitely felt less safe being out to their communities and students.” November’s presidential and statewide elections could yield even sharper differences in LGBTQ+ protections between red and blue states.  

While quite a few states long had laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, it took a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, to bring such protections to Alabama. That changed landscape spurred Dressback to engage lawyer Jon Goldfarb, who filed a complaint alleging work-based discrimination with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is investigating. This fall, he expects to file a separate federal civil rights complaint. In 30 years of practice in Alabama, Goldfarb said, “I’ve had a lot of people that have come to me and complain about being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.” Until Bostock, he would tell them, “There is nothing we can do.” 

A review of Dressback’s personnel file shows no reprimands until June, when she received an evaluation questioning her professional conduct that followed her filing the EEOC complaint. This raises a question: Why was she removed?  

Dressback’s situation, however, is about more than the law. It also challenges her place in the white Christian, predominantly conservative community she grew up in, belongs to and loves. And it offers a test case in a divided political time: Will her removal and the outcry that followed harden partisan alignments — or shake them? Even in Alabama, a Pew Research Center survey shows, more than one-third of those who lean Republican say homosexuality should be accepted. 

Brian DeMarco, a local attorney and high school classmate of Dressback’s, was sporting bright print swim trunks, a T-shirt and a Vestavia Hills baseball cap when we met at the public swimming pool where he’d brought his kids. We sat at a picnic table; the squeals of children released to the joys of summer carried in the warm Alabama air. He said he understands why some people may not be comfortable with a gay elementary school principal. 

“Her coming out as an educator, being around children, I think that frightens people, certain people all over the country,” he said. And in the South, in a conservative town, “it does become a bigger issue to people.” Politically, DeMarco tends “to swing right,” but sent Dressback a message of support on Facebook. “Everybody that knows Lauren  knows she is a good person,” he said. 

In fact, Dressback’s case has spurred public outrage because so many people do  know her. She attended Vestavia Hills Public Schools — Class of 1997 — and her mother, now retired, was a popular high school English teacher and yearbook adviser. She followed her parents into education (her father was a geography professor) and returned to teach social studies at the high school.  

In 2015, she was named secondary teacher of the year; in 2017, the graduating class dedicated the yearbook to her. She moved into administration and advanced; in 2022 she was appointed principal of Cahaba Heights Elementary School. She was awarded a three-year contract, effective July 2023, following a probationary year. In December — weeks before she was told to gather her things and was escorted off school grounds — she was given a positive write-up by an assistant superintendent who observed her running a meeting of teachers about the school’s “core values.” 

It also matters that this story is unfolding in Vestavia Hills. The city’s motto is “A Life Above,” and the municipal website declares that it “exemplifies the ideals of fine southern hospitality.” The community was born as a post-World War II subdivision and incorporated in 1950 with 3,000 residents (it now has 38,000). It is an effortfully attractive place with well-kept painted brick homes and clipped lawns. It is named for Vestavia, the exotic estate of former Birmingham Mayor George C. Ward whose Roman-inspired home was here. The 1930s-era news accounts describe lavish parties with male servers draped in togas. 

Vestavia Hills is also one of the “over the mountain” suburbs of Birmingham. When you drive over Red Mountain out of the urban core with its reminders of steelmaking and jazz, of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Negro Leagues, away from streets where shabbily dressed men push wheeled contrivances, where pride flags fly and breweries sprout, where drag queens coexist with affirming churches, you enter a different world. Birmingham is a Black city; Vestavia Hills is 86 percent white.  

Related: A superintendent made big gains with English learners. His success may have been his downfall 

And like surrounding white suburbs of Mountain Brook, Homewood and Hoover, Vestavia Hills competes on lifestyle, including its public schools. Alabama is hardly an education leader, yet the four districts earn mention in U.S. News rankings. Church is also central to life here; biographies for public officials name which they attend.  

“You move a child into the school system, there’s two questions they’re asked,” Julianne Julian, a resident and another Dressback high school classmate, said when we met at a coveted rear table inside the Diplomat Deli, a popular Vestavia Hills lunch spot. “Who are you for as far as football — Alabama? Auburn? — and what church do you go to?” 

Teams matter in Vestavia Hills — the high school’s in particular. The district itself was founded in 1970 amid federal desegregation orders, when residents broke away from the Jefferson County Schools and agreed to pay an extra tax. They adopted the Rebel Man in Civil War military uniform as the district’s mascot. Dressback’s 1996 junior year high school yearbook includes a photo of students at a rally waving massive Confederate flags. “It was just kind of the way we were growing up,” said DeMarco, who in high school displayed a Confederate flag on his Nissan pickup. “It was just kind of cool.” 

It wasn’t until 2015 that the district considered changing the mascot. After contentious public meetings in which some argued that the mascot and flag were not racist — a point ridiculed by John Oliver on national television — the district chose to adopt the 1Rebel rebrand. (Mess with one Rebel and you mess with us all, is the concept. They are still called “The Rebels,” but simply use the letters “VH.”) 

When I met with Dressback, days after school let out, she answered the door to her apartment wearing a T-shirt that read “love. empathy. compassion. inclusion. justice. kindness.” She looked like she could use every one of those things.  

She was welcoming, but said she was nervous about talking. She had not spoken publicly since she was escorted out of Cahaba Heights Elementary in February. We sat at her dining table — I brought an Italian sub, no onions or peppers, hot, from Diplomat Deli, Dressback’s regular order — and in our conversations then and later, she appeared to believe the best about people. 

Others in Vestavia clearly believe the best about her: Since things erupted, her phone has pinged with messages, including from former students. “Thank you for making an impact on my life,” said one of the many that she shared with me. “You stood up for me in class when someone made fun of me for having depression and I’ll never forget that,” wrote another. And, “you may not remember me, but I had you as a teacher during my time at VHHS and even when I was not your student, I still saw you as a person who cared for all students, not just the ones on your roster.” (Dressback said she has “not received any negative messages. Not one.”) 

At Cahaba Heights, parents noticed her gift for calming children with behavior issues. A mother of twins who got tripped up by transitions (drop-off is “the hardest part of our morning”) said that, with Dressback greeting them at the curb, “We didn’t have that struggle this year at all.” Sometimes Dressback would slip on a wig or costume — Santa, Minion, astronaut, among others; before winter breaks she donned an elf outfit and climbed atop the brick marquee in front of the school to the delight of arriving children and passing cars. She wanted to remind everyone that school is fun. 

“Her love for the children just reached every square inch of the school,” said Skipper, the Cahaba Heights parent of a second grader who moved to the neighborhood specifically for the school. Her removal “plunged me into grief. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I lost weight. The amount of upset was palpable. I loved her. She loved my child.” 

As we sat at her dining table, Dressback shared that she sensed she was gay in high school but said that “it sort of felt clear to me that I couldn’t have that life here.” The only gay people she knew well were two family members. When her Uncle Dennis died of complications from HIV and her cousin Robyn died by suicide, as upset as she was, being out was tough to imagine.  

The tragedies coincided with her time at Samford University, the private Baptist college where her father taught. “It’s one of the most religiously conservative schools in the nation,” she said. “You go to Samford to not be different.” And it was there in a geography class that she met Shane Dressback, when the two arrived early one day and “started chit-chatting.” They were engaged the next year, and married in January 2001, just after her December graduation. 

“I met Shane and did very genuinely fall in love with him,” she said. “He is a wonderful man.” They had two children —  Kaylee graduated from college in May and is playing semi-pro soccer, and Tyler is a senior in high school — and were consumed with family life. But then, as she approached becoming an empty nester, Dressback began having panic attacks around being gay, she said, feeling that “I’ve pushed this down for a really long time.”  

Related: School clubs for gay students move underground after Kentucky’s anti-LGBTQ law goes into effect  

This past December, she came out to Shane. They didn’t speak for more than 24 hours. Then, she texted him to say she was going to church. Minutes after the service began, she told me, “He texted me and said, ‘I’m here. May I come sit by you?’ So, we sat together at this church service. Both of us cried the whole way through it.” 

Shane Dressback told me that he struggled with the news. On one of his worst days, however, he said that God told him to love her “no matter what.” The next day, he told Lauren, “I was going to love her unconditionally and unconventionally.” The marriage ending was painful, but they remain close. “I know she loved me for 23 years,” he said. “There was nothing fake there.”  

The two held hands as they told their children and parents. They divorced, sold their home and rented apartments near one another. They still have family dinners and Shane cooks; leftovers of “Daddy’s Jambalaya” were in the refrigerator of Lauren Dressback’s apartment when I visited. Kaylee came by with her goldendoodle, Dixie, to grab a helping for lunch. 

Throughout Dressback’s ordeal with the school district, Shane has been her defender. “Lauren is a child of God and should be treated as such,” he said, as we sat at a friend’s brewery during off-hours. He knows her to be professionally excellent; her personal life should not matter. “It was no one’s business what was going on in our bedroom beforehand and I don’t think that’s anybody’s business now,” he said. “People have drawn a line in the sand where I think it needs to be more about, you know, loving people as Jesus did.” 

Shane was the one who urged Dressback to attend a brunch in early February organized by members of a LILLES Facebook group, which connects later-in-life lesbians. There she met her girlfriend, Angela Whitlock, a former medical operations officer in the U.S. Army and law student (she graduated in May). The two began a relationship that appears to charm and steady Dressback. At a dinner during my visit, they held hands under the table.  

Dressback says she came out to Freeman, the superintendent, at the end of a one-on-one meeting in January in the spirit of transparency. But the incident that appears central to Dressback’s removal unfolded just after Valentine’s Day, when Dressback asked Smith, the custodian, to come into the office of nurse Julie Corley, whom she described as a close friend at the time, and “close the door.”  

Dressback said it was Corley’s idea to show Smith the photos to see his reaction. He was in the lunchroom near Corley’s office. The brief exchange between Dressback and Smith was captured on video. (Dressback said she did not initially notice Corley filming, but did not stop her when she did, something she now regrets.) Corley did not respond to several interview requests by email and text, and, when reached by phone, said she was not interested in speaking and hung up. Dressback said she has not had any communication with Corley since being removed. 

“You shared something about your past, I was going to share something with you,” Dressback says to Smith in the video. “Do you want to see a picture of who I’m dating?” She and Whitlock had had their third date on Feb. 14. He says reflexively, “Shane?” She responds, “He’s my ex-husband.” Smith appears surprised. “April Fool?” and asks how long they were married. She says, “23 years.” He expresses disbelief. “You and him broke up?” Dressback holds out her phone to show a photo of her and Whitlock. 

“Who the hell is this? I mean, Who is this?” he asks. Several times Smith states that he doesn’t believe it. She hands him her phone. “Bullshit!” he exclaims as he looks at the three photos. “Stop lyin’!” There is one of Whitlock kissing Dressback on the cheek, one with their faces cheek to cheek and one in which they are sitting at a bar with Dressback’s arms around Whitlock, their noses touching. Smith then says, “Wow, I’m sorry,” and pulls her into a hug. “Once you go Black, baby, you don’t go back,” he quips. She groans at his attempt at humor.  

Dressback’s lawyer said that an affidavit the district obtained from Smith “appears to be in conflict on several points with what the video shows,” including a claim that he was made uncomfortable by the encounter. When reached by phone, Smith insisted, “I made no type of statement” even as district officials were “coming at me” seeking to query him, he said. “I hadn’t talked to nobody about the incident.”  

(McGhee, the school district spokesperson, declined to provide answers to specific questions, including regarding the apparent affidavit from Smith.)  

Days after Dressback shared the photos, on the morning of Feb. 23, Meredith Hanson, the district’s director of personnel, and Aimee Rainey, the assistant superintendent who had given Dressback the positive write-up in December, arrived at Cahaba Heights for a surprise meeting. Dressback said they told her that someone had complained that she shared “explicit” details of her relationship at a meeting with teachers. Dressback knew that to be untrue. “I kind of relaxed because I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that absolutely did not happen,’” she recalled. 

They questioned her in a way she found confusing. She asked for details of the complaint, but was told, “You know, ‘explicit.’ And I’m like, I know what ‘explicit’ means. Like are you going to tell me what they said I said or what?” They asked if she showed Smith photos of her and her girlfriend. She said she did. Meanwhile, she observed to me later, “There is a picture of Shane and me kissing on our lips at our wedding on the bookshelf right behind them.” (Hanson and Rainey did not respond to interview requests or to a list of detailed questions for this story.) 

Dressback says she was then told to gather her belongings, and that she was being placed on “detached duty,” requiring that she work from home. She was barred from school property. She was escorted from the building, which she said made her feel “like a criminal.” She expected to be gone for a few days.  

But several days later, Dressback was informed of a new problem: timesheets. In January, she had met with staff to remind them about clocking in and out (everyone must clock in, and paraprofessionals must clock out during lunch).  

On March 4, while still barred from the Cahaba Heights campus, Dressback met with Freeman, Rainey and Hanson in the conference room at the central office to discuss timesheets. Two days later, she was told that the following morning, March 7, she was to fire two employees for irregularities on their timesheets. One, she knew, had an attendance problem. She said that she had already discussed with Hanson not renewing him at the end of the school year.  

The other was a close friend, Stefanie Robinson, a paraprofessional who worked with students with severe disabilities, including those requiring help with feeding and diapering. Robinson often stayed in the classroom during her lunch breaks to aid the special education teacher because one student had as many as 30 seizures a day. When I met Robinson at her home, she acknowledged to sometimes forgetting to clock out or in, or not being able to do so if she was attending to a child’s needs. “If I’m in a massive diaper situation, I’m not going to remember to clock out, or if I’m helping a kid that’s having a seizure or, you know, one that’s in crisis,” Robinson told me.  

What most upset Robinson, however, was that shortly after Dressback was escorted out of the school and placed on “detached duty,” requiring she work from home, Robinson faced 45 minutes of questioning by Hanson and Rainey about Dressback’s dating life that she says “felt like an interrogation.” After confirming that she and Dressback were close, Robinson says she was asked questions such as, “When Lauren goes on a date, what does she say happens? And I was like, ‘What do you mean? What do you want to know?” They pressed: “Well, when she goes on a date and the date ends, what does she say happens after that?” Robinson insisted, “I don’t ask her how her date ended.”  

Related: Rural principals have complex jobs – and some of the highest turnover 

On March 7 at 5:58 a.m., Robinson received a text from Hanson asking her “to start your day at the Board of Education” instead of Cahaba Heights. As soon as she arrived at the central office, she saw Dressback in the room; Dressback said Freeman had told her to fire Robinson. “I could tell she’d been crying,” said Robinson. “And I just smiled at her, I was like, ‘It’s OK.’” Robinson recalled Dressback saying, “in the most robotic tone, ‘It’s my recommendation to the board that your contract be terminated immediately.’” 

She hugged Dressback, told her she loved her, and left. Robinson texted the parent of one of her students, a second grade girl who is nonverbal, uses a wheelchair and has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. The girl’s mom, Payton Smith, no relation to Wesley, told me that she’d appreciated how Dressback had welcomed her child to the school a few years earlier. The principal had asked, “‘What do we need to do to make your kid feel comfortable?’ and recognized her as a child,” and not a set of legal educational requirements to meet, Smith recalled. Despite Robinson’s key role in her daughter’s education, Smith said she was not officially notified until March 19 — nearly two weeks later — via email that “Mrs. Robinson is no longer working at VHECH,” district shorthand for Cahaba Heights. 

Yet an email of district documentation shared with me states the date of Robinson’s leaving as April 5, and said that she had resigned. Nonetheless, the district continued to pay her for the rest of the school year, which she said felt “like I was being paid off because they knew what they did was wrong.” She is now a clinical research data coordinator for University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. (Neither McGhee, the district spokesperson, nor Hanson, in charge of HR, responded to email requests seeking comment on why Robinson was fired, the claim that she had resigned, or the discrepancy in her pay.)  

Meanwhile, on March 13, Dressback emailed Freeman asking to be reinstated to her position at Cahaba Heights, immediately. “I believe the action the system has taken against me is discrimination because of my sexual orientation, my interracial relationship, and my gender,” she wrote. The next day, Goldfarb, her lawyer, filed the EEOC complaint. (He later amended it to allege additional discrimination and that the district had retaliated against her for the filing.)  

On April 18, Dressback received a letter signed by Freeman officially placing her on administrative leave. It states that she is “not to contact any employees of the Vestavia Hills Board of Education related to your or their employment or relationship with the Vestavia Hills City Schools.” The letter does not state a reason for the action. 

As a result, to parents and some educators, Dressback seemed to have vanished. “I thought like, ‘Oh, I bet she’s sick. That’s really sad,’” said Lindsay Morton, a Cahaba Heights parent, a reaction echoed by others. Then, on April 27, two of Dressback’s classmates from high school posted videos on social media.  

“Where is Principal Dressback???” a schoolmate and friend, Karl Julian, titled a video on his YouTube channel. It has been viewed more than 11,000 times. Lauren Pilleteri Reece, who as laurenpcrna has 228.7K followers on TikTok, posted several videos narrating Dressback’s battle; the first has more than 313,000 views and 3,400 comments. Reece has known Dressback since high school. 

When the Vestavia Hills School Board called a meeting five days later, on May 2, to take up Dressback’s employment, everyone seemed to know about it. People rallied outside the district headquarters holding posters with messages such as “We Stand with Principal Dressback” and “Love is Love.” Many people wore green, Dressback’s favorite color, to signal support. Local TV and news reporters showed up.  

The room thrummed with emotion. There were angry, even tearful Cahaba Heights Elementary parents, teachers and retired teachers, students, former classmates and others who knew Dressback, plus some who didn’t know her. “I’ve never met her, I just know she had been wronged,” said Jim Whisenhunt, an advertising executive whose children, now grown, attended Vestavia Hills public schools.  

Dressback, fearing that she could not keep her composure, did not attend. Those who did attend had a lot to share. But before public comments were permitted or a vote was taken, Freeman read the prepared statement in which he said he wanted “to address, in general, personnel decisions made by the board.” He went on to say that they “have not, cannot, and will not make personnel decisions based on an individual’s race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, or disability” and that “all of our decisions are vetted thoroughly and thoughtfully.” He added that “district employees contribute to academic excellence and are committed to our mission to provide every child in our schools the opportunity to learn without limits.” Then, over the objections of many in the audience who demanded a chance to comment before a vote was taken, the board officially transferred Dressback from Cahaba Heights Elementary to the alternative school.  

When public comments began, the outrage was obvious. “We may color outside of your lines a little bit, but coloring outside of your lines at no point does that ever mean that we are unprofessional. Lauren did not become unprofessional overnight,” said a charged-up Reece, who also came out as an adult. “You started looking at her as unprofessional overnight.”  

Rep. Neil Rafferty, a Democrat who represents Birmingham, stated that he “felt compelled to drive straight here” after “a long week in Montgomery” even though it is not his district. “We are all watching this. It is not just a Vestavia Hills issue anymore,” said Rafferty, the only openly gay member of the Alabama Legislature. The action, he said, signals “to your students who might be LGBTQ that they don’t matter.” 

Rev. Julie Conrady, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Churches of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, and president of a local interfaith group, stood up to speak. “You are sending her a message that in Vestavia Hills it is not OK to be LGBTQ,” she told the board and superintendent. “You should not be punished in your job in 2024 because of who you love.” Conrady, in black liturgical robe and green stole, told the crowd “that there are consequences here for all these people. I want you to get pictures of every single name and vote them the hell out!” (The school board is appointed by the City Council, not elected.) 

Another speaker, Allison Black Cornelius, who said she was “a conservative Republican,” focused on what seemed to make this issue explode: the silence. The superintendent and board had given no explanation, even to Dressback, as to why she was removed and now demoted, she said. “When you wait this long,” said Cornelius, “it puts this person in this black cloud.” 

Her point underscored a question others raised at the meeting to a board that largely remained silent: If Dressback did something so egregious as to require she be escorted from school and barred from district property, why was she suitable to lead the alternative school? The district declined to answer this question. 

The division, so apparent at that meeting, seemed to only harden a few weeks later during the board’s annual meeting on May 28. A group supporting the board and superintendent appeared in blue T-shirts and applauded after the board gave Freeman a new four-year contract that included a raise to $239,500 (he was paid $190,000 when he was hired in 2018) plus perks. Dressback supporters in green again spoke, sharing their frustration.  

Related: Who wants to lead America’s school districts? Anyone? Anyone?  

This is not the first time Vestavia Hills City Schools have made unpopular personnel moves. In August 2020, Tyler Burgess, a well-loved bow-tied principal, was removed as head of the high school and assigned to oversee remote learning during Covid, when many classes were online; the board voted not to renew his contract in March 2021. Students organized a protest; 3,134 people signed a petition calling for his reinstatement. The board and superintendent did not provide an explanation for their decision. Burgess, who has a doctorate in education, is now director of learning and development at a large construction firm. He did not respond to multiple interview requests. 

Danielle Tinker came to Vestavia Hills after more than a dozen years in Birmingham and Jefferson County schools, first as assistant principal at Liberty Park Elementary. In spring 2021, she was selected as principal of Cahaba Heights. From the start, Tinker, who is Black, felt unwelcome at the school where the teaching staff was nearly all white, she told me when we met for lunch. The day she was introduced as the new principal, a staff member emailed her, saying that “Cahaba Heights is a family” and that “today was hard on this family,” according to a copy of the email that she shared with me. Tinker said she was told by staff that the faculty had wanted a different principal; a later inquiry confirmed that staff felt “blindsided” when she was selected over that individual. 

As principal, Tinker raised questions with Rainey, the assistant superintendent, over student articles in a fall 2021 newsletter, including two about race. They were titled “Anti-Racist Kids: Leading the Way to New Beginnings” and “Learning About Racism: How It Can Change Lives.” Tinker told me she feared those articles would be “more fluff than addressing the actual challenge” with claims such as “Racism is part of our lives, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing if we are the ones ending it.” Rainey agreed to pause publication of the newsletter, which she said upset several teachers who wanted it published.  

On Dec. 16, 2021, several hours after Tinker told teachers that publication was being paused, Tinker emailed Hanson raising an “employee concern” after one of the teachers “stormed down the hallway” and was “pointing at me and yelling,” according to a copy of Tinker’s email exchanges that she shared with me. The next day, Tinker received a letter from Freeman stating that he was recommending she be transferred to the alternative school, effective Jan. 3. In March, Tinker filed a complaint of racial discrimination with the EEOC and resigned, using her remaining personal time to cover her pay for the remainder of the school year. In February 2023, she and the district reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount. She is using the money to attend law school. (McGhee, the district spokesperson, did not answer questions about Tinker or Burgess; Rainey and Hanson also did not respond.) 

On my last day in town in early June, Dressback gave me a guided tour of Vestavia Hills. We met inside the Diplomat Deli; Reece, Dressback’s high school classmate with the large TikTok following, joined us. As we walked out, Dressback, wearing a Care Bears T-shirt, showed off a new tattoo on her left forearm. In typewriter font it reads, “Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.” 

I slid into the passenger seat of her car, a red Buick Encore whose license plate reads “DBACK.” Reece hopped in back. An order of fries from Milo’s, a favorite Dressback fast-food spot since high school, leaned in a cup holder. Soon, we passed places they hung out as kids, schools they attended, new neighborhoods and old, the spot at Vestavia Country Club with a panoramic view where kids still take prom photos.  

The discussion jumbled together past and present, reminding these childhood friends — both of whom came out as adults — how much has changed. And how much has not. When we reached Vestavia Hills High School, Dressback stopped near a small sign at sidewalk level that reads “Alternative Placement” with an arrow. I descended metal stairs that span a rocky embankment; the alternative school, Dressback’s new assignment, is subterranean, its entrance nearly hidden from view. If architecture can relay shame, it might look like this. 

Yet when I returned to the car, Dressback told me she saw the alternative school as an opportunity rather than an exit. The school has often operated without a principal (Tinker never stepped inside or interacted with students, partly because of the Covid pandemic). At that late May school board meeting, Freeman could not say how many pupils attend the school. But Dressback was struck by what DeMarco, her classmate, told her. As a student, he spent time at the alternative school; he could have used someone like her. 

“I’m not gonna just go and sit and read a book. I can’t do that,” Dressback said, as she pulled out of the high school driveway. She wanted to make it a place less about punishment and more about connecting with kids for whom the traditional school is not a fit. It should not be a dumping ground for educators or for kids, she said. “My mindset is I’m gonna go and I’m gonna make this the best damn alternative school in the state.” 

In other words, Dressback is not willing to let go or to disappear. Yet “the Dressback situation” is hardly resolved. A few days after my visit, in early June, Dressback met with Freeman to receive an official performance review for the 2023-24 academic year, a copy of which she shared with me. It was the first official yearly evaluation she had been given in her career in the district despite a stipulation in her contract that this occur annually, she said. It is searing. It finds that her “job performance is unsatisfactory.” The report was sent to the state Department of Education, per Alabama code requiring that personnel records and “investigative information” of employees placed on administrative leave for cause be reviewed by the department. 

Most damning are six bullet points of claims. One alludes to Robinson’s employment and the timesheet matter. The most explosive is cast as “failure to demonstrate moderation, restraint, and civility in dealing with employees” and includes salacious assertions, including “public displays of affection and of photographs which would not, for example, be tolerated even among high school students” — presumably a reference to the photos shown to Smith, the custodian. It includes a charge Dressback had never heard before: a claim of “remote activation by your husband of a sexual toy on your person while you were in a school meeting.”  

Related: Investigating why a high-performing superintendent left his job 

Dressback was floored by the charges, and countered each in her rebuttal, which she asked to have filed with the state Department of Education in response to Freeman’s report. Regarding the sex toy claim, Dressback wrote that it is “false. I have never done that, and I would never do that.” The very idea of “remote activation” of a sex toy by her husband was absurd, she said. “I wouldn’t think that I would need to remind you that my ex-husband and I are divorced, that I have recently come out as gay, and that I am now in a committed relationship with a woman,” she wrote. 

Such a thing never happened then, or in any school year, her rebuttal continued. She wrote that she “cannot imagine why you would credit this slanderous and irresponsible allegation” and include it in her personnel record, “other than to retaliate against me” for the EEOC filing.  

Her lawyer said in an email that the performance review “is further retaliation and an attempt to create further pretexts for the adverse employment actions the Board has already taken against her.”  

On Aug. 15, after the state Department of Education had reviewed the evaluation submitted by Freeman, the agency stated in a letter addressed to Dressback, cc’ing Freeman, that it had “examined information regarding an investigation in the Vestavia Hills City School System” and “decided to not take action against your Alabama Educator Certificate.” The same day, Freeman said in a letter to Dressback that she would “no longer be on administrative leave and may return to work” at the alternative school. 

It has been baffling and infuriating to some in the community as to how such charges surfaced so soon after Dressback was given a three-year contract extension last year.  The mystery that remains is why some people — people who were eager for her to continue leading the elementary school — now want her gone. The battle has been drawn up and is now readying to be fought. Dressback told me that beyond feeling driven to “defend my name and my integrity,” she wants to speak up for others who come after — or who are now silent.  

Of course, Dressback had hoped this could all be avoided. “I tried to just be the good employee,” she told me. “I thought if I just do what they ask me to do, this is gonna get wrapped up and I’ll go back to work” at Cahaba Heights.  

Notably, she still feels loyalty, even love, for Vestavia Hills and its school system.  

“Maybe I shouldn’t feel the allegiance I feel,” she said when we spoke over Zoom several weeks ago. “But I can’t just turn it off. It’s not like a water faucet. You know, it’s my home. It’s where I grew up and it’s where I chose to plant my career. As betrayed as I have felt, I just can’t turn my back on the system.” Rather, she wants to nudge it forward. 

*Correction: This story has been updated with the correct name of Millersville University.

This story about Vestavia Hills 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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We are still in the early days of understanding the promise and peril of using generative AI in education. Very few researchers have evaluated whether students are benefiting, and one well-designed study showed that using ChatGPT for math actually harmed student achievement. 

The first scientific proof I’ve seen that ChatGPT can actually help students learn more was posted online earlier this year. It’s a small experiment, involving fewer than 200 undergraduates.  All were Harvard students taking an introductory physics class in the fall of 2023, so the findings may not be widely applicable. But students learned more than twice as much in less time when they used an AI tutor in their dorm compared with attending their usual physics class in person. Students also reported that they felt more engaged and motivated. They learned more and they liked it. 

A paper about the experiment has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but other physicists at Harvard University praised it as a well-designed experiment. Students were randomly assigned to learn a topic as usual in class, or stay “home” in their dorm and learn it through an AI tutor powered by ChatGPT. Students took brief tests at the beginning and the end of class, or their AI sessions, to measure how much they learned. The following week, the in-class students learned the next topic through the AI tutor in their dorms, and the AI-tutored students went back to class. Each student learned both ways, and for both lessons – one on surface tension and one on fluid flow –  the AI-tutored students learned a lot more. 

To avoid AI “hallucinations,” the tendency of chatbots to make up stuff that isn’t true, the AI tutor was given all the correct solutions. But other developers of AI tutors have also supplied their bots with answer keys. Gregory Kestin, a physics lecturer at Harvard and developer of the AI tutor used in this study, argues that his effort succeeded while others have failed because he and his colleagues fine-tuned it with pedagogical best practices. For example, the Harvard scientists instructed this AI tutor to be brief, using no more than a few sentences, to avoid cognitive overload. Otherwise, he explained, ChatGPT has a tendency to be “long-winded.”

The tutor, which Kestin calls “PS2 Pal,” after the Physical Sciences 2 class he teaches, was told to only give away one step at a time and not to divulge the full solution in a single message. PS2 Pal was also instructed to encourage students to think and give it a try themselves before revealing the answer. 

Unguided use of ChatGPT, the Harvard scientists argue, lets students complete assignments without engaging in critical thinking. 

Kestin doesn’t deliver traditional lectures. Like many physicists at Harvard, he teaches through a method called “active learning,” where students first work with peers on in-class problem sets as the lecturer gives feedback. Direct explanations or mini-lectures come after a bit of trial, error and struggle. Kestin sought to reproduce aspects of this teaching style with the AI tutor. Students toiled on the same set of activities and Kestin fed the AI tutor the same feedback notes that he planned to deliver in class.

Kestin provocatively titled his paper about the experiment, “AI Tutoring Outperforms Active Learning,” but in an interview he told me that he doesn’t mean to suggest that AI should replace professors or traditional in-person classes. 

“I don’t think that this is an argument for replacing any human interaction,” said Kestin. “This allows for the human interaction to be much richer.”

Kestin says he intends to continue teaching through in-person classes, and he remains convinced that students learn a lot from each other by discussing how to solve problems in groups. He believes the best use of this AI tutor would be to introduce a new topic ahead of class – much like professors assign reading in advance. That way students with less background knowledge won’t be as behind and can participate more fully in class activities. Kestin hopes his AI tutor will allow him to spend less time on vocabulary and basics and devote more time to creative activities and advanced problems during class.

Of course, the benefits of an AI tutor depend on students actually using it. In other efforts, students often didn’t want to use earlier versions of education technology and computerized tutors. In this experiment, the “at-home” sessions with PS2 Pal were scheduled and proctored over Zoom. It’s not clear that even highly motivated Harvard students will find it engaging enough to use regularly on their own initiative. Cute emojis – another element that the Harvard scientists prompted their AI tutor to use – may not be enough to sustain long-term interest. 

Kestin’s next step is to test the tutor bot for an entire semester. He’s also been testing PS2 Pal as a study assistant with homework. Kestin said he’s seeing promising signs that it’s helpful for basic but not advanced problems. 

The irony is that AI tutors may not be that effective at what we generally think of as tutoring. Kestin doesn’t think that current AI technology is good at anything that requires knowing a lot about a person, such as what the student already learned in class or what kind of explanatory metaphor might work.

“Humans have a lot of context that you can use along with your judgment in order to guide a student better than an AI can,” he said. In contrast, AI is good at introducing students to new material because you only need “limited context” about someone and “minimal judgment” for how best to teach it. 

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at (212) 678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

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

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In the United States today, 9 out of 10 school superintendents are white and two-thirds are white men. When you think of a typical superintendent, the person you imagine probably doesn’t look like me. 

As a Latina, my leadership isn’t often expected, nor is it always welcome. 

Institutional biases block career advancement for educators of color, who constitute only 1 in 5 U.S. teachers and principals. We are promoted less often and experience higher turnover than our white colleagues. 

This is a serious problem: The caliber and stability of our educator workforce affects our education system’s quality and capacity for improvement. We must address these barriers: Educators of color enhance student learning and are key to closing educational gaps. 

Much has been written about why we need to break down barriers in order to diversify the educator workforce. Much less covered has been the formidable task of how to launch and sustain transformative solutions. I urge fellow superintendents from all racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to act now.

That’s what we are doing inWaukegan public schools in Illinois, which serve a diverse population of about 14,000 students from preschool through high school, near Lake Michigan, about 10 miles south of the Wisconsin border. I am using my leadership position to take strong, unapologetic action so that every student can graduate from high school prepared and supported to pursue their dreams. 

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

Since taking on the superintendent role, I’ve found that when it comes to the young men in our district, we’ve got serious work to do. 

After analyzing a wide range of data and engaging in deep reflection last year, we realized that our Black male students often lack the necessary resources and support to reach their full potential. This aligns with national trends through which these students typically face low expectations, inequitable discipline that fuels the school-to-prison pipeline and a shortage of effective, culturally responsive teaching.

We launched an ambitious, systemwide, data-driven initiative aimed at creating equitable opportunities to help our Black male students and educators. I believe our efforts can provide an example for any school system dedicated to closing opportunity and achievement gaps for all students. 

Research confirms the intertwined success of Black students and educators. Studies show that low-income Black male students are 39 percent less likely to drop out of high school if they had at least one Black male teacher in elementary school. Our goal is to convince more Black male educators to build a career in our district because we know that hiring and retaining Black teachers and leaders can measurably improve math scores for Black students.

Related: White men have the edge in the school principal pipeline, researchers say

Some key insights from our work stand out as essential tools for continued success. First is the indispensable role of broad support from executive leadership. My commitment to addressing education inequities is deeply personal. I relate to many of the challenges our Black male educators face and, as a mother to a Black teenage boy, the urgency of this effort pulses through my veins.

Our board of education’s steadfast support has been equally key to launching our initiative, with board members helping drive us toward significant, measurable achievements.

Community engagement and leadership are our foundational principles. I know that the solutions we need won’t come from me alone. This acknowledgment led us to launch a task force that includes Black male students, teachers, principals, students’ fathers and other family members and community partners. 

We’ve also hosted planning sessions involving diverse stakeholders to try to foster buy-in and accountability as we move forward. And we’ve engaged national partners with unparalleled expertise to help us guide professional learning for district officials using an inclusive, equity-focused lens. 

We are also dedicating staff to oversee the work. We created a new position to catalyze our multiyear initiative and are investing in our teachers and leaders while we pursue systemic transformation. In particular, we launched a local leadership chapter for Men of Color in Educational Leadership, where our educators can share experiences, seek guidance and grow professionally within a community of practice.

We rely on a framework that highlights skills vital for the success of education leaders of color and contributes to the broader goal of systemic change in education. I often turn to these resources myself when reflecting on my own leadership as a woman of color. 

Acknowledging the extent of the challenge is just the start to fostering inclusive, equitable education. We have begun the critical process of setting goals so we can transparently track and communicate our progress. We are also trying to see how this focused initiative advances broader efforts to strengthen and diversify our entire educator workforce, including paraprofessionals, teachers and school leaders. 

Other superintendents can do this too. Find your champions, allies, community leaders and partners. The time for brave, visionary leadership is now.

Theresa Plascencia is superintendent of Waukegan Public Schools in Waukegan, Illinois. She sits on the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents Advisory Policy Committee and on the Men of Color in Educational Leadership National Advisory Council. 

This story about diversifying the educator workforce 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 post SUPERINTENDENT VOICE: As a Latina, my leadership sets me apart and gives me a chance to set an example appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

College has become a new battleground in the culture wars, and it’s affecting where students enroll and what they’re learning. 

Divisive protests, police crackdowns, and a chilling backlash against free speech are among the reasons that a growing number of students say they don’t feel welcome on some college campuses. 

In this election year, we talk about the politics of higher education, how it affects you and how to pick a college where you’ll feel welcome.

Conflicts over abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and DEI, as well as what can and can’t be taught in classrooms, are stirring up campus life. 

A majority of students say abortion laws and restrictions around the discussion of race and gender would have at least some effect on where they go to college, according to a Gallup survey. 

It and other polls also find that some students at four-year universities feel as if they don’t belong or disrespected.

Students on the left and right alike say they’re increasingly reluctant to express controversial opinions, but that it’s okay to report on classmates or faculty who do. 

Hear more about this, against the backdrop of a contentious presidential election.

Listen to the whole series

TRANSCRIPT

Scroll to the end of this transcript to find out more about these topics.

Sound of promotional video: Congrats. Congrats. Congrats on getting into UC Davis! … Welcome to the friendliest. college campus!

Jon: This is a promotional video welcoming students to the University of California, Davis. 

Sound of violent protest

Kirk: And this is how welcoming the campus actually sounded when a conservative student group hosted a speaker who opposed abortion and disputed that there’s systemic racism in America. 

Jon: Protesters on one side said the speaker shouldn’t have been allowed to share his views at all. People on the other side wanted to hear him out. The event was canceled. 

Kirk: Welcome to college in America right now. 

Jon: More precisely, this is how unwelcoming college has become. Students and their parents say the breakdown of civility is affecting how they choose a school. And it’s gotten worse with the crackdowns on LGBTQ and reproductive rights and the conflict in Gaza. And we haven’t even discussed the looming presidential election. 

David Strauss is a partner in a consulting firm that conducted a survey about this. 

David Strauss: One out of four students told us that they had actually ruled out specific schools exclusively because of political considerations, and that proportion was basically equal whether a liberal student, a moderate student, or a conservative one. 

Kirk: So how do students and their families choose a college where they’ll feel they belong, where their views will be respected even by people who might disagree with them. Where they’ll hear both sides of an argument without someone trying to shut it down?

This is College Uncovered from GBH News and The Hechinger Report, a podcast pulling back the Ivy to reveal how colleges really work. 

I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH News

Jon: And I’m Jon Marcus at The Hechinger Report. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate. So GBH …

Kirk: … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you. In this election season, we’ll be exploring how deeply politicized higher education has become and what students and their parents can do to navigate these increasingly treacherous waters. 

Today on the show: “Unwelcome to College.”

Jon: So, Kirk, students used to pick a college based on its academic reputation and its social life. 

Kirk: Yeah, but the campus quad has become a battlefield in the culture war. 

Jon: There are assaults on speech and speakers from the left and the right, messy protests, new restrictions on abortion and LGBTQ rights, attacks on diversity and complaints about excessive wokeness. 

Kirk: Yeah. And for us as journalists, these conflicts have been hard to watch. But on a more human level, they’re affecting how welcome students from all backgrounds and points of view feel at many colleges and universities.

Jon: And how they pick a school. 

Lee Dunn: I want my child to be in a place that’s safe, that has a diversity of viewpoints and opinions, but doesn’t have, a situation that could feel unsafe, or where someone’s not open to my child being able to have an open debate. 

Kirk: That’s Lee Dunn. She’s the mother of a college-bound student, and I spoke with her at a Republican political rally. But she’s expressing a concern that extends pretty much across the political spectrum right now. 

Jon: That’s right, Kirk. Several national surveys show that a growing proportion of students and their families are picking colleges based on whether they’ll feel they belong. 

David Strauss: The liberal-leaning students tended to cite an array of issues that were mentioned by most respondents who had ruled out schools — reproductive rights, racial equality, LGBTQ+ restrictions, gun laws. Among the conservative students, it was more general: too Democratic, too liberal in terms of LGBTQ laws, conservative voices not welcome, and then too liberal on abortion and reproductive rights. 

Jon: That’s David Strauss again. He’s a partner in an education consulting group called Art & Science Group. And it did a poll that found a quarter of prospective students ruled out a college because of the political environment in the surrounding state. 

Strauss says abortion in particular has become a really polarizing issue for students since the Supreme Court decision two years ago allowing broad new state restrictions. 

David Strauss: Within a week, I received a call from a president of a client institution who told me that her state had moved very quickly to restrict reproductive rights. She heard from a mother asking, ‘How will you take care of my daughter when she returns to school?” She heard from several students — ‘I’m concerned about coming back.’ And she heard from a couple of prospective students saying, ‘I’m no longer coming.’ That phenomenon is probably playing out on the right as well. 

Kirk: And that’s just one issue, Jon. There are so many others. 

For example, since policies around diversity and equity started coming under attack, Black students are increasingly choosing to go to historically Black colleges where enrollments are up. And a national gay advocacy organization says young LGBTQ students who have been harassed are twice as likely to say they don’t plan to go to college at all. Lawmakers in several states have proposed more than 500 anti LGBTQ laws in recent years. 

Jon: Alyse Levine is a private college counselor in North Carolina, where she owns a company called Premium Prep. And she’s been seeing this a lot. 

Alyse Levine: We definitely have had students consider these policy changes, as well as just, like, the vibe of what they hear about on these campuses and who feels welcome and who feels like they can speak and who can’t speak. So I can think of a few LGBTQ students in particular, some transgender students who were feeling really uneasy and eliminating some schools because of their elimination of DEI policies. I would say we have an outspoken parent body, too. So it’s not just the students, it’s also parents drawing some lines of where they feel comfortable sending their students and where they feel comfortable sending their money. 

Jon: All kinds of students are experiencing this. Gallup finds that more than one in 10 students feel as if they don’t belong on campus. Even more than that reported feeling disrespected or unsafe, or they don’t think they can express their opinions freely. 

That’s one of the reasons Angela Amankwaah chose to enroll in an historically Black college, or HBCU — North Carolina Central University — where she’s a sophomore this fall. She’s a Black student from Denver. 

Angela Amankwaah: The political landscape really emphasized for me the importance of going to an HBCU, because I knew that I would be in a community of safe, welcoming both professors [and] peers, and just an institution that actually wanted me there. 

Jon: She says she’s felt welcome at the school compared to what she would expect to experience these days at a predominantly white institution. 

Angela Amankwaah: There’s not a single class where I’m the only Black student, or I’m the only Black woman. Like, there’s just Black students all around me. There’s nothing that I can do in terms of, like, my speech, the way I dress, or even things that happen on or off campus that are strange to other students. 

Jon: Javier Gomez left his home state of Florida after it restricted discussion in schools about sexual orientation. He went to college in New York instead. 

Javier Gomez: With the Don’t-Say-Gay bill that happened in 2022 and then expanded into higher education — I mean, some of those things make me feel unsafe as a student in the South. These policies are making it harder for us to speak our minds and also feel safe in our communities and in our schools. And I definitely felt unsafe because of the Florida policies have been implemented. It’s not easy, especially specifically being a queer and Latino and first-generation student. So it’s definitely been a hassle. 

Kirk: And now, since the conflict in Gaza, Jewish and Muslim students are reporting that they feel more uncomfortable on campus. Here’s college counselor Alyse Levine again. 

Alyse Levine: The biggest issue amongst our population this year was the rise in anti-semitism. And there was lots of hesitation among our students based on what was happening on particular campuses. 

Kirk: Maya Makarovskisays she heard chants she characterized as anti-semitic at MIT, where she’s a senior this year. She says fellow Jewish students are dropping out. 

Maya Makarovski: I know so many people that have taken semesters off or that are leaving MIT. And they’re, you know, grad students or postdocs, so they’re not going to go to another place. They’re just going to leave. It’s really heartbreaking. And I’ve seen it myself. You know, this semester and last semester, my academic performance and focus has just been completely shifted. It’s so difficult to maintain. 

Kirk: Surveys find conservative students feel especially unwelcome, and it’s liberal students who are much more likely to believe it’s okay to shut down a speaker who has opinions they don’t like, or report a professor or a fellow student for saying something they think is offensive. 

Here are a few more of the people I met at that Republican political rally: student Hayley Ebert and parents John DeMeritt and Jennifer Piacentini. 

Hayley Ebert: I didn’t want to take classes that I inherently disagreed with politically. 

John DeMeritt: It’s really something, as a parent, that you have to be mindful of. The people who claim to be the most tolerant are the least tolerant of anyone who doesn’t agree with their political views. If you’re not the right skin color or the right gender, all of this stuff plays into even admissions. 

Jennifer Piacentini: I don’t want them going to a small liberal school where it’s going to be all picketing and riots. 

Jon: Now, let’s put all this into context. Like a lot of political discussions these days, there’s a lot of heat. But part of what we do on this podcast is try to also bring some light. 

Colleges are really easy targets. They’re often accused of indoctrinating students into being woke leftists. But 18-year-olds already hold very liberal views. You remember being 18, right, Kirk? 

Kirk: It’s like it was yesterday. 

Jon: There’s a national survey from UCLA of incoming freshmen, and it finds that twice as many identify with the left as with the right. That’s before they ever set foot in a classroom. And even that Art & Science survey found that while politics might be affecting where students go to college, it’s not actually stopping them from going to college in the first place. 

David Strauss: It’s a striking observation you’re making, Jon. Given the volume of the discourse and the volume of concern we’re hearing from the right that colleges have become places of indoctrinating students, it was striking to us that only 2 percent of students who had told us they had been seriously considering going to a four-year institution, but had now decided not to do so — only 2 percent of those students told us that political considerations like those I’ve just described were even one of several factors. 

Jon: The proportion of conservative high school seniors who said they decided to not go to college for political reasons is a little higher. It’s around 5 percent. But that’s still lower than we might be led to assume. 

Kirk: So, okay, with that helpful context, how do you pick a college? How do you know where you’re going to feel like you belong? 

Jon: Colleges are all very different. Take it from Stephanie Marken, whose job is to study that as a senior partner at Gallup responsible for its work in higher education. 

Stephanie Marken: Some schools do a much better job of actually embracing the diversity of their student body and really making it a productive dialog between students, as opposed to a highly contentious and challenging culture, which is often where those experiences of disrespect set in. When a student actually reports that they went to an institution in which they were exposed to diversity, they’re more likely to say their degree is worth the cost. And that’s diversity in political ideology, party affiliation, religiosity, race, ethnicity — all types of diversity. 

Kirk: Of course, every college says it encourages intellectual diversity. But experts say you shouldn’t just rely on what they say or on the website or the campus tour. 

Carolyn Pippen: The thing about campus visits is that you really are just getting one perspective a lot of times. 

Jon: That’s Carolyn Pippen. She’s a private college counselor with the college counseling company IvyWise. 

Carolyn Pippen: So I also encourage students to do some more generalized research. So is there a multicultural center on campus? Is there an LGBTQ resource center on campus? And not just does it exist, but is it any good? Are they really doing things to support those students? Or reaching out to those offices, asking to connect with students who use those resources and getting information that way. There are also, I mean, you can Google college rankings and get a million useless websites, but there are also some really valid, reputable websites that will rank students based on friendliness towards LGBT students or, you know, how welcome do Black students feel on this campus? 

Jon: You can find a lot of those sources in The Hechinger Report’s “College Welcome Guide,” which tells you about laws and policies at universities and colleges in every state. We’ll post a link to it on this episode’s landing page, and to other resources. 

But to really get a sense of what it’s like on campus, Pippen says, you need to invest some time. 

Carolyn Pippen: Attend a class. If there’s an opportunity to stay overnight, stay in a dorm with another student. As much on-campus interaction as you can get, the better. Of course, that’s much more feasible further along in the process, when the schools that you’re looking at are more limited in number. You can’t do that with 30 different colleges. 

Jon: North Carolina college counselor Alyse Levine has another piece of advice: Don’t believe everything you read or see on TikTok. 

Alyse Levine: I think it is so important not to make sweeping generalizations about schools based on how a particular issue was mishandled. Going deeper means reaching out to a particular department. If it’s a larger university, you can reach out to a faculty member. Ask to sit in on a class and see what the dialog is like. Is there open discussion? Do conservatives feel like in these liberal bubbles they can’t speak their minds?

Kirk: Wherever students end up, Carolyn Pippen says they can usually find their own niche. 

Carolyn Pippen: Even if there is sort of an overarching feel, so to speak, to a campus or, you know, there’s one political stance or viewpoint or ideology that’s predominant, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a community within that campus for them. I always tell students, like, there are theater nerds at MIT. There is a group of students like you on just about every campus. It’s just a matter of finding them. 

Jon: The alternative is more polarization and more division, if students only interact with other students just like them. That’s the fear of everyone we talk to, regardless of politics. 

John Bitzan directs the right-leaning Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University. 

John Bitzan: You know, as a parent, I mean, I have sent four kids to universities myself. And I think about, well, what do I want students to get out of the experience? Well, one thing I want them to get is I want them to be exposed to different points of view and learn from people that are different from them and learn that not everybody sees the world the same way. And I think those are really an important parts of the college experience for students. I think that we want to teach students how to deal with people who have different points of view than them in the real world. And, again, if we put them in an echo chamber, that’s not going to happen. 

Jon: Alyse Levine worries about this, too. 

Alyse Levine: I love that college campuses can still be places where there can be discussion and disagreement, and that it’s a safe place to kind of have that, and to learn. I hope our institutions don’t become so polarized like our society has become. It’s scary to think we might be moving in that direction. 

Jon: And here’s another twist. Remember Javier Gomez, the student who left Florida after Florida passed the Don’t-Say-Gay Bill? He ended up going back to finish his associate degree. 

Javier Gomez: If I’m not there, then that’s one less voice who’s fighting the fight to dismantle these discriminatory policies. So, yes, it may feel unsafe. It may feel uncomfortable. But, as well, your voice is so important. And so that’s why it was important for me to be in Miami and be in the spaces where I was not welcome. Because if I’m not in those spaces, who else is going to be in them? 

Kirk: This is College Uncovered, from GBH News and The Hechinger Report. I’m Kirk Carapezza …

Jon: … and I’m Jon Marcus. 

We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email to GBHNewsconnect@wgbh.org, or leave us a voicemail at (617) 300-2486. And tell us what you want to know about how colleges really operate. 

This episode was produced and written by Kirk Carapazza and Jon Marcus, and it was edited by Jeff Keating. 

Meg Woolhouse is supervising editor. 

Ellen London is executive producer. 

Production assistance from Diane Adame. 

Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. 

Theme song and original music by Left Roman out of MIT. 

Mei He is our project manager, and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins. 

College Uncovered is a production of GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX. It’s made possible by Lumina Foundation.

Thanks so much for listening. 

The post College Uncovered: Un-welcome to College appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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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.”

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.

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