Until she was 9 years old, Aisha O’Neil grew up in Zion National Park, where her father was a ranger. “That place raised me just as much as my family,” she said. Her love of the park’s sandstone cliffs and caverns became the bedrock of her passion for the environment, and for securing a future where her own children could enjoy the same experiences that she did.

But O’Neil never learned much about climate change in school. What she did learn came from the news, and it was “dramatically horrifying,” she said. “I started seeing articles every day — this city’s on fire, these people were evacuated.”

As a senior in high school last year, in rural Durango, Colorado, O’Neil started a statewide climate action group called Good Trouble. She and fellow students campaigned for state legislation to create a “seal of climate literacy” that high school graduates across Colorado could earn.

Thanks in part to their lobbying, the bill passed with bipartisan support, and O’Neil became part of the first group of students to earn the seal on her diploma this spring. “An education without referencing climate change is not complete,” she said. “You can’t say you’re educating kids about our future without telling them what that future will look like.”

But just what is “climate literacy”? What are the ABCs, the grammar and vocabulary, of climate change?

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The U.N. and other leading global organizations have identified education at all levels and across disciplines as a key strategy for fighting the climate crisis. The world is going through a historically rapid transition to clean energy and sustainable infrastructure, and the workforce is thirsty for people with the skills to do the necessary climate mitigation and adaptation work. Communities also need empowered citizens to push back against fossil fuel interests. But as of now, few states have comprehensive climate education, and most of the lessons that exist are confined to science classes — lacking in areas like justice and solutions.

Colorado’s seal of climate literacy, which high school graduates can earn through a combination of coursework and out of school projects, is one attempt to build support for more comprehensive climate education. Another attempt was on display in late September. The U.S. Global Change Research Program, with input from agencies including the State Department, NASA and the Department of Transportation, released a document called “Climate Literacy: Essential Principles for Understanding and Addressing Climate Change.”

The definition of climate literacy its authors arrived at, after 21 months of work, includes eight essential principles that I’m summarizing here:

      1. How we know: climate science, interdisciplinary observations and modeling

      2. Climate change: greenhouse gases shape Earth’s climate

      3. Causes: burning fossil fuels and other human activities

      4. Impacts: threats to human life and ecological systems

      5. Equity: climate justice

      6. Adaptation: social, built, natural environments

      7. Mitigation: reducing emissions, net zero by 2050

      8. Hope and urgency: “A livable and sustainable future for all is possible with rapid, just, and transformational climate action.”

Related: One state mandates teaching climate change in almost all subjects — even PE

During Climate Week NYC, dozens of educators crowded into a basement room beneath the grand marble Museum of the American Indian, in downtown Manhattan, to hear about the new guide. Standing at the front of the room was Frank Niepold, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He has been engaged in climate education within the federal government for 30 years, and he’s been as involved as anyone in helping this effort see the light of day. “This is a guide for educators, communicators and decision makers,” he said. “We’re not just talking to classroom teachers.”

This guide is technically a third edition. The first one appeared in 2008, during the George W. Bush administration; it was rapidly updated in 2009 when President Barack Obama took office. Then came the Trump administration, and, in Niepold’s words, the thinking was, “Don’t try to do this really complicated thing at that time.” Efforts restarted after Joe Biden was elected president, many new staffers who came in as part of the Inflation Reduction Act provided input to the new guide— and now here we are.

Niepold said that since the 2000s, there’s been a lot of evolution in our collective understanding of both the problem and the solutions. “Before, the document was called ‘essential principles of climate science literacy,’” he said. “We knew that was too narrow. We wanted something that gets you into an action, not just an understanding orientation.”

Still, earlier editions of the document were influential: They informed the Next Generation Science Standards, some version of which is now in use in 48 states. The previous guide was also incorporated into K-12 and college curricula and into museum and park exhibits.

With the new edition, Niepold hopes to see even more impact. The guide is unusually clear and accessible for a government report. The pages are laid out like a textbook, featuring artwork that depicts some of the core themes of climate literacy — as defined in the report – like climate justice and traditional and Indigenous knowledges (the plural s is intentional).

“Success means it would activate all forms of education, all stages, across all disciplines,” and outside the United States as well as within it, Niepold said. He wants to see more prominent NGOs taking on climate education as part of their purview — such as Planet Ed at the Aspen Institute, where, disclosure, I’m an advisor. 

Related: The climate change lessons teachers are missing

Niepold would like to see community-based climate efforts take public communication and workforce development seriously, and to see media coverage promote a fuller picture of climate literacy as well. “Success is: People, regardless of where they’re coming from, understand [climate change] and address it.”

His concern is similar to that of Aisha O’Neil in Colorado: that young people are currently learning about climate change primarily through the media, in a way that’s not solution-oriented, emotionally supportive, or trauma-informed. “That opportunity to be blindsided is high,” Niepold said. That’s why the guideline’s eighth principle unites urgency with hope. Said O’Neil:

“Being taught about issues in a way that emphasizes solutions is telling our youth that they can be part of progress and that the world isn’t doomed.”

Upgrading lessons to meet the moment is taking time. Even in New Jersey, known as a national leader for its comprehensive state-level climate education standards, teachers have shared concern about a lack of resources for implementation and training. Mary Seawell, whose organization Lyra campaigned for the climate literacy seal in Colorado, said her group wanted to take a grassroots, student-led approach. “We want to show demand. What the seal really is doing is creating an opportunity for youth to direct their own learning.”

In order to earn the seal of climate literacy, Colorado students have to take at least one science class in high school — which currently is not a general graduation requirement — and at least one other class that satisfies principles of climate literacy. They also have to engage in some kind of out-of-school learning or action. “This is opt-in,” said Colorado state Sen. Chris Hansen, who co-sponsored the legislation. “The state can’t tell districts what classes to offer. This is for districts that want to have something that is easily recognizable across the state and beyond.”

O’Neil, now a freshman at University of Colorado Boulder, said it’s a good start. Her student group at the college is campaigning for new state curriculum standards. “This is the only logical next move. “ she said. Although the climate seal of literacy encourages climate learning, “we need everyone to be educated, not just the ones who go out of their way.”

O’Neil thinks students could especially use tutelage on taking climate action, something she has had to figure out on her own, with some mentorship from her debate coach and from a state legislator. Planet Ed, for one, has just released a Youth Climate Action Guide with the Nature Conservancy that engages many areas of climate literacy, from mitigation to adaptation to justice.

“I feel like in an ideal world we would learn how climate impacts every element of our lives,” O’Neil said. “Not just the science, but social justice. Policy positions that have created it, and policies that can get us out. My goal right now would be to have students get to a place where they feel like they aren’t terrified by the climate crisis, but empowered by it.”

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

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

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As a special education teacher, I often encountered students who struggled with solving math problems. Many would simply add all the numbers they saw without grasping what the problems were actually asking.

To help, I introduced keywords like “all together” for addition and “difference” for subtraction.

However, this approach fell short when students focused solely on the keywords, missing the problem’s context. Today, elementary school teachers share similar struggles with their students.

The issue isn’t just about teaching math; it also involves addressing gaps in literacy. Reading skills are closely related to children’s ability to solve math problems. And, as much as early literacy development plays a critical role in developing problem-solving abilities, early numeracy strongly predicts overall academic success, including literacy development: Research has found that literacy and math development are intertwined.

Yet, pre-K teachers spend an average of only 2.5 percent of their day on numeracy skills — a gap that underscores the need for teaching approaches that bridge math and literacy.

Teachers must do more to help students build foundational cognitive skills, such as logic and reasoning.

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

Integrated teaching can help students view math and English language arts as complementary disciplines that help them solve real-world problems. It could lead to better academic outcomes and a richer understanding of the world. Unfortunately, most elementary schools teach math and English language arts separately.

One way that teachers can address these comprehension gaps is to initially remove numbers from word problems and encourage students to read through the entire problems before they add or subtract. By solving “numberless word problems,” students can visualize and grasp the context before computing.

We can also use the power of storytelling. In my classroom, I incorporated engaging literature into math instruction to help my students better understand word problems. We used “Amanda Bean’s Amazing Dream,” a Marilyn Burns Brainy Day Book by Cindy Neuschwander, to explore multiplication concepts; the book’s illustrations helped students identify repeated addition and multiplication and allowed them to recognize similar scenarios in math problems. Incorporating math through storytelling helps children better understand and remember math concepts and also improves their confidence and reduces math anxiety. By building on the critical skills students need to excel in math and ELA, we can better equip them to apply math to real-world problems.

Here is what this approach encourages:

• Improved comprehension: Stories and real-world scenarios promote a better understanding of math concepts, making abstract ideas more accessible.
• Math visualization: Using descriptive writing and storytelling to explain math concepts, such as measurement and fractions, gives students a tangible reference for math principles as they exist in the world.
• Vocabulary development: Just as students learn new words in ELA, with math storytelling they learn math vocabulary to enhance their understanding of the math concepts needed to solve problems.
• Critical thinking skills: When students analyze problems from various perspectives and use language to describe them, they’re better equipped to apply problem-solving skills across disciplines.
• Contextualized problem-solving: By establishing context through literature, students are able to construct meaning to solve other problems.

Administrators should encourage training for teachers and provide resources that effectively blend math and ELA. Supporting a curriculum that encourages the teacher to be a facilitator — rather than a sage on a stage — will encourage more students to talk about math, draw upon their language skills and solve problems together.

Here are some approaches educators can use to blend instruction to challenge students and enhance math and ELA skills:

• Project-based learning: Assign hands-on projects that require mathematical analysis and language arts skills, such as reviewing datasets, creating infographics and writing interpretations.
• Collaborative learning environments: Ask groups of students to work together to solve complex problems that require mathematical reasoning and effective communication. Their work could include debates or reviews of written mathematical explanations.
• Literature-based mathematical discussions: Read books that incorporate mathematical themes or concepts and include a character who uses math to solve problems; such books can spark lively debate and serve as a springboard to discuss how math applies to real life.

These strategies strengthen the connection between math and ELA and promote deeper learning and engagement for all students.

Related: You probably don’t have your preschooler thinking about math enough

Using an integrated approach with literature also provides a level of comfort for teachers. Not surprisingly, most elementary school teachers didn’t choose their profession due to a deep love of mathematics — and some may suffer from math anxiety themselves. Teachers can model problem-solving beyond the classroom by expanding what it means to teach math through children’s books and hands-on activities.

Math instruction will only improve if administrators, educators, parents and policymakers push for integrated curricula. Doing so will not only help students’ math, but promote a more effective education system overall.

Thera Pearce is the learning services manager at ORIGO Education. She has experience in instructional design, curriculum consulting and professional development coordination. She has also worked as a special education teacher and coach for 15 years in North Carolina.

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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

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It’s a Sunday in June, and high school history teacher Chris Dier is poring over readings, lesson plans and other resources to put together next year’s curriculum for his Advanced Placement U.S. and World History classes. 

School doesn’t start until mid-August. But Dier, Louisiana’s teacher of the year in 2020, has followed this same routine for years. He spends part of his Sundays throughout the school year and summer preparing lessons for his classes. In his 14 years of teaching, Dier said he has never really had a curriculum provided by his school district that he can use without making significant adaptations. In fall 2020, he started teaching at Benjamin Franklin High School, in New Orleans, a top-performing charter school that doesn’t offer teachers any curriculum or materials. 

“For better or worse, essentially, we are responsible for creating our own curriculum,” Dier said. “The curriculum I teach is purely something that I create.” 

Every year, school districts across the country spend millions of dollars on curricula, the planned sequences of materials teachers use to guide instruction. Many buy off-the-shelf materials created by curriculum companies, while a few districts create their own.  

But many teachers say those materials don’t always work well — at least not without changes. Teachers say curricula aren’t culturally relevant or inclusive, don’t prioritize a student’s perspective, ability and experience and seem to be created by providers who are removed from the classroom. In some cases, teachers say a lack of professional development on how to implement a curriculum can make it hard to use.  

It’s long been common for teachers to write lesson plans and adapt instruction to their students, to a degree. Some districts and schools, like Benjamin Franklin, where Dier teaches, even expect it, asking educators to create their own curriculum using state standards and subject-specific frameworks from groups like the College Board as a guide. 

But teachers, regardless of where they teach, say that they often spend a significant amount of time and effort creating and refining curriculum materials. Experts and researchers warn that if teachers are provided with a high-quality district curriculum and mix it with materials from sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest, which some experts say have low-quality, unvetted resources, they dilute otherwise rigorous content, and create inequities among students. 

David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, said he thinks curriculum providers need to do a better job of offering curricula for students who have genuine challenges with grade-level materials and for English language learners. Steiner’s team at the institute surveys teachers nationally to determine what curriculum they use in the classroom, and how they use it. Based on some of those responses, Steiner said he worries that there’s also a “sort of resistance to a scripted curriculum” among teachers who say it doesn’t properly build on or connect to a student’s prior knowledge or experiences. 

“The research is against them,” Steiner said. “The research is heavily in favor of following a script — not necessarily every last letter of that script, but following a really good curriculum that’s standards-based and content-rich.” 

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A curriculum is meant to guide educators in what to teach students in particular subjects and grade levels, and should be aligned with a state’s standards on what knowledge and skills students need. How a curriculum is designed, rolled out and used in the classroom varies by state, district and teacher.  

Steiner, who has worked with several states to implement high-quality curriculum, said there has long been a tradition of school districts and state education leaders recommending, but not mandating, a particular curriculum. That creates a risk that inexperienced teachers might select materials that are below grade-level, according to Steiner, who referenced a recent report on the subject from the education nonprofit TNTP. 

There have been attempts to better align curriculum to learning standards. In 2017, the Council of Chief State School Officers created a network designed to help states implement high-quality, standards-aligned curricula. At least 13 states, including Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Texas, have signed on since then and have begun developing initiatives to review curriculum to ensure it is high-quality and to help districts use vetted materials.  

Louisiana has also served as a model of how to better align curriculum with state standards and provide teachers professional development, according to a 2019 survey by the group RAND. Louisiana’s use of standards-aligned materials was higher than other states, with 71 percent of math teachers in Louisiana and 80 percent of English Language Arts teachers reporting they used such materials and understood what their subject standards are. (The next-highest state for math was Delaware, where 51 percent of teachers of that subject reported using standards-aligned materials.) 

Alexandra Walsh, chief product officer at curriculum company Amplify, said that ultimately “it is the district’s responsibility” to determine how a curriculum is used. “We really try to put great materials in the hands of teachers and let them make informed and great decisions about what to do for their students,” she said. All of Amplify’s curricula include pacing guides, she added, so if a teacher needs to modify a lesson, there is room to do so. The company also tries to provide at least one day of professional development on each curriculum. 

Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at RAND and a co-author of the RAND report, said a high-quality curriculum should be standards-aligned, have built-in support and instructions for teachers, engage students in a meaningful way and include assessments that are tied to what a student is being taught. 

According to the survey and other research by Kaufman and her team, elementary and high school ELA and science teachers are the most likely to cobble together materials from several different comprehensive curricula. Math teachers are more likely to be what Kaufman’s research identified as “modifiers,” who make considerable changes to a single curriculum or supplement it to better address students’ needs. Only 19 percent of teachers surveyed were “DIY teachers,” meaning they use a completely self-created curriculum. DIY teachers also tend to be high school teachers of science and English (the survey did not look at history teachers). 

If teachers are coming up with their own curricula rather than relying on standards-aligned materials, chances are that every class is learning different things, Kaufman said.  

“Some modification feels healthy to me and important,” she said. But, she added, there should be some foundational content that is aligned with what the state says a student should learn in a particular grade. 

Related: Students with disabilities often left out of popular ‘dual-language’ programs 

Teachers of students in special education and of students learning English, in particular, complain that curriculum materials are not sufficiently attuned to those children’s needs. 

Simone Gordon, who teaches English as a new language to fourth and fifth graders at PS 361 in Brooklyn, said she has to adapt the district-provided curriculum to her students by using a different book than the one suggested or by breaking a lesson into parts that can be easily understood by her students. 

Gordon will often bring in books that offer more diverse characters or discuss current events that are not included in the curriculum but are “what students are seeing and witnessing,” she said. 

“I like being given the curriculum when there’s flexibility, and then the option to kind of say, ‘I’m going to use this part, but I won’t use that part,’” she said. “It’s nice to be able to say, ‘My students are really interested in what’s going on with climate change. I’m going to do a thematic study on that.’” 

Similarly, Sarah Said, who teaches English language learners in School District U-46 in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, said she sees pre-written curriculum as a starting point, then adapts it to what her students need.  

“When you have a curriculum that’s been researched and vetted — it’s okay to use it,” she said. “But you have to make it your own.” 

Kate Gutwillig, a special education teacher at PS 134 in New York, acknowledges that tension. In the past when teachers in her district and elsewhere had more freedom to create their own curriculum, she said it felt like a “double-edged sword” because “I know what my kids need but on the other hand, we’re teachers, we’re not curriculum writers.” 

Gutwillig, whose school was in the first cohort to roll out a new literacy program, NYC Reads, said the new curriculum is a welcome change from previous ones she’s been given because it was vetted to meet the diverse needs of students. Still, there are gaps when it comes to her students with disabilities. 

“Those curriculums were not written specifically for those kids,” she said; they need to be “adjusted or perfected.” 

PROOF POINTS: Many high school math teachers cobble together their own instructional materials from the internet and elsewhere, a survey finds 

The research on the value of a scripted curriculum is important — but teachers say so is the reality they face in the classroom every day. Dier, the teacher in Louisiana, said pre-written, district-provided curriculum materials often don’t cover local history or are not relevant for his students. Recent anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ legislation has also made it harder to teach history in schools, he said. 

“My goal is to ensure that the minoritized identities that are so often excluded from, in terms of curriculum, find their space,” he said. “I don’t see a robust curriculum, at the district or state level that ensures that, so that’s why I always want autonomy over my own materials.” 

Dier said he isn’t just picking random materials for his classes. He uses the A.P. U.S. history curriculum and Louisiana’s U.S. History state standards and what will appear on the state assessment, and mixes those with current events and history he thinks his students should know.  

“I look at the two curricula that I have to use, and then I try to teach the history that is usually pushed to the margins and not included in that framework,” Dier said.  

Still, he said that teachers who create their own curriculum must make it transparent and accessible to parents, students and administrators. Dier said he creates a public Google calendar at the start of every school year that includes the materials he’s teaching “so people know these are still materials of high caliber, quality and rigor.” 

In some districts, teachers are pushing for a bigger role in selecting or developing curriculum so they can provide better materials for their students. 

Petrina Miller is a transitional kindergarten teacher at the 116th Street Elementary School who has been teaching at Los Angeles Unified School District for 26 years. Her district is slowly rolling out the Core Knowledge Language Arts, a new curriculum based in research on how students learn to read. She said it doesn’t necessarily work for all students.  

The curriculum is split into two parts, skill-based and knowledge-based; the latter “is really not student-centered,” she said. “It is the strangest, most detached unit that makes no sense.” The unit includes lessons on kings and queens — but only “talking about the European kings” — and on Christopher Columbus, which was “just revisionist history, and it was just horrible,” she said.  

“I’m not teaching them that, it’s not even true. We just can’t do that,” she said. Instead of telling teachers to follow a curriculum as written, without review, administrators have to get teacher and student buy-in, she said. 

After her normal workday, Miller said she goes home and spends about two hours making worksheets and activities. She also spends hundreds of dollars of her own money to make the curriculum more engaging. For the unit on kings and queens, for example, Miller and other teachers hosted a ball and bought hats and crowns for students that featured favorite characters like the princess from Super Mario Bros.  

Walsh, of Amplify, said the company, which produces the Core Knowledge curriculum, tries to ensure that it contains materials that reflect and speak to students from many different backgrounds. She said the company also hopes it is “expanding their view of the world.” Units like the one on kings and queens, she said, “ignite students’ imagination about things they don’t know anything about.” 

In Los Angeles, Miller is part of a small educator-led campaign, informally launched this year at her school, to involve teachers in reviewing curriculum and other materials to ensure they are culturally relevant. The campaign got the attention of LAUSD school board members and the district, she said. Educators hope it will result in a bigger role for teachers in the buying process for new curriculum programs going forward. 

“My students are mostly Latino and African American, and they don’t see themselves in the curriculum,” she said. “It’s hard for them to connect with it.” 

“It’s teachers that are on the front lines,” she added. “They think of things that maybe someone who hasn’t been in the classroom for a while won’t think of.” 

This story about teacher curriculum 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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Before she got to the math in her lesson on linear equations last fall, Sydney Kealanahele asked her class of eighth graders on Oahu why kalo, or taro root, is so important in Hawaii.* What do you know about kalo, she asked them. Have you ever picked it?

A boy who had never spoken in class, and never seemed even slightly interested in math, raised his hand.

“He said, ‘I pick kalo with my grandma. She has a farm,’” Kealanahele recalled. “He was excited to tell us about that.”

Class discussion got animated. Everybody knew about poi, the creamy staple Hawaiian food made from mashed taro. Others had even noticed that there were fewer taro farms on Oahu.

That’s when Kealanahele guided the conversation to the whiteboard, plotting data on pounds of taro produced over time on a graph, which created a perfect descending line. The class talked about why there is less taro production, which led to a discussion about the shortage of farm labor.

Kealanahele had taught eighth-grade math for six years at a campus of the Kamehameha Schools, but this was the first time she had started a lesson with a conversation about farming. The idea came from professional development she’d just completed, in ethnomathematics, an approach that connects math to culture by embedding math in a story about something relevant to students’ lives.

Ethnomathematics isn’t new, but until recently it was limited to a niche area of educational and anthropological research on how different cultures use math. Over the past couple of decades, it has evolved into one of several efforts to create more engaging and inclusive math classrooms, particularly for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students, who tend to score lower on federal tests than their Asian and white peers. Ethnomathematics advocates say that persistent achievement gaps are in part a result of overly abstract math instruction that’s disconnected from student experience, and that there’s an urgent need for new approaches that recognize mathematical knowledge as it’s practiced outside of textbooks.

Many Black and Brown students don’t feel comfortable in math classes, said Shelly Jones, professor of math education at Central Connecticut State University. She said those classes tend to be “competitive” and that teachers “hone in on what Black and Brown students don’t know as opposed to honoring what they do know.” She added:  “We are trying to pull in students who have not traditionally felt they belonged in math spaces.”

That said, research on the impact of ethnomathematics is limited, and its practice is largely confined to individual classrooms — like Kealanehele’s — where the teacher has sought out the approach. And teachers who incorporate ethnomathematics without the right support and instructional tools risk stumbling into a cultural minefield, experts say. Most teachers in U.S. classrooms are white. If one of those white teachers decides their Hispanic students should learn base-20 Mayan numbers, and their students ask why, the teacher will have to come up with an answer, said Ron Eglash, a professor in the University of Michigan’s School of Information.

“Telling kids, ‘Because it’s your heritage,’ sounds really awkward from a white teacher,” Eglash said.

But experts say that high-quality ethnomathematics lessons boost student confidence and engagement when used by teachers (of any race) who have been trained and who allow students the time to explore the material on their own and through discussion.

Ethnomathematics falls under the same umbrella as culturally responsive math instruction. Experts say that teaching math this way requires teachers to get to know their students and create a learning environment where students can connect to math concepts. It involves developing lessons that reveal the math in everyday activities, like skateboarding, braiding and weaving. It can also include exploring the math involved in cultural practices, like beading.

“A lot of this work is about removing barriers or perceptions from a marginalized population that math is something the Greeks created and is imposed on me,” said Mark Ellis, a professor of education at California State University, Fullerton. He said that culturally responsive instruction takes other measures into account, besides academic outcomes, when determining impact. These include students’ attitude about math, sense of belonging in math classes and engagement in math discourses.

Related: Eliminating advanced math ‘tracks’ often prompts outrage. Some districts buck the trend

Traditional math instruction, Ellis said, is treated as if math were acultural, even though, as we know it in the U.S., math descended from the computational traditions of many places, including Mesopotamia (360-degree circles), ancient Greece (geometry and trigonometry), India (decimal notation, the concept of zero) and China (negative numbers). If these mathematical traditions are taught, Ellis and others ask, then why not Hawaiian calculations for slope, sub-Saharan fractal geometry and Mayan counting systems?

Eglash argues that ethnomathematics lessons aren’t just for students from the culture that the lessons draw from. It’s important that students explore math concepts from all cultures, including their own, he said.

Ethnomathematics, a term coined in the 1970s by Brazilian mathematician Ubiratan D’Ambrosio, first appeared in the U.S. about 25 years ago. That’s when Eglash and his wife, University of Michigan design professor Audrey Bennett, developed a suite of teaching modules by which students learn the history or context of a practice — braiding hair into cornrows, for example — and then use algebra, geometry and trigonometry to create their own cornrow designs with software.

Eglash and Bennett designed the teaching tools with the idea that students can use a module to create their work, which can mean mixing cultures. A Puerto Rican student used Eglash’s module about Native American beading to create a Puerto Rican flag simulation.

In 2009, Richmond City Public Schools asked Eglash and Bennett to teach a module called Cornrow Curves to a class of Black 10th graders. Eglash asked the class where cornrows came from. Their answer: “Brooklyn!” That led to discussion about the African origins of cornrows — where they indicated marriage status, religious affiliation and other social markers — and on through cornrows’ history during the Middle Passage, Civil Rights, hip-hop and Afrofuturism.

Only then did the students begin doing math, designing their own cornrows, noticing how the plaits get closer together or further apart depending on the values students enter in a simulation. One student created a design for straight-line cornrows by visually estimating how far to space them apart. In her presentation to class, Eglash recalled, she said that “there are 12 spaces between the braids on one side, which covers 90 degrees, so the braids are positioned every 7.5 degrees because 90/12 = 7.5.”

The Cornrow Curves module and other lessons like it have now been adopted by districts in 25 states. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, began offering a culturally responsive computer science curriculum in 2008 that incorporates ethnomathematics lessons that Eglash and Bennett developed. Some evidence indicates that this course helped boost student participation in computer science: An external evaluation found that enrollment in the classes rose by nearly 800 percent from 2009 to 2014.

In 2012, Chicago Public Schools adopted the same curriculum for an introduction to computer science course and invested in significant professional development for teachers. In 2016, the course became a graduation requirement for all Chicago high school students, and 250 teachers are trained each year on the curriculum.

An outside analysis of the Chicago program showed that students who took the course before taking AP computer science were 3.5 times more likely to pass the AP computer science exam than those who only took the AP course. A separate study in Chicago and Wisconsin showed that where the course was offered racial and gender achievement divides disappeared and that students were more likely to take another computer science class.

Related: Data science under fire: What math do high schoolers really need?

Keily Hernandez, 15, a first-year student at Chicago’s George Westinghouse College Prep High School, was happy to see the computer science course on her schedule this year, because she plans to major in computer science in college. At first, she found the cornrows module challenging — getting the designs to look the way she wanted them to look was difficult — but it was also fun, she said.

The class is collaborative, she said, and students often turn to each other or to the internet for ideas and help. Hernandez said that taking the class has relieved her doubts that she can be a computer scientist.

“The class made me reassured,” she said. “Math isn’t something that you just know, the same way that computer science isn’t something that you just know. You get better at it the more you do it.”

It’s students like Hernandez that Linda Furuto wanted to attract when she took the job as head of the math and science subdivision at the University of Hawaii West Oahu in 2007. At the time, student enrollment was so low that the school offered just two math courses. Furuto, who had grown up on Oahu and received her Ph.D. in math education from the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled thinking, “This isn’t working. We need to implement ethnomathematics here.”

Over the next six years, she began to integrate ethnomathematics into coursework, and student interest grew. By 2013, the university offered more than 20 math classes.

“Students would say things like, ‘I hated math. I felt no connection to it. But now I see that math is my culture and because of that I want to be a secondary math teacher,’” Furuto said. “Just knowing that the life of a student has in some way, shape or form been transformed speaks volumes.”

In 2018,  by then a professor of mathematics education at the University of Hawaii Manoa, Furuto established the world’s first ethnomathematics graduate certificate and master’s degree program.* So far, about 300 teachers have participated in the online program; about half are from Hawaii.

While teachers in Chicago get ongoing professional development in cohorts both before and while they teach the district’s ethnomathematics-based computer science course, educators who complete the University of Hawaii program are highly likely to be the only teacher at their school with this niche training.

Sydney Kealanahele, the teacher on Oahu, said that as inspired as she was by the ethnomathematics program, she doesn’t have time to teach using the method more than twice every three months.

“To create a really good lesson that feels authentic to me, and not just thrown together,” she said, “it takes time to do the research.”

For a teacher who doesn’t have colleagues in their school using the same approach, it can be hard to fit in something new like ethnomathematics, said Janel Marr, a math resource teacher in Oahu’s Windward School District. Marr was one of the first teachers to participate in the ethnomathematics graduate program, as an eighth-grade math teacher. Today she teaches in the graduate program.

“When you go back to the classroom, there are so many other things from all sides, from administration and curriculum to state tests,” she said. “It starts to get overwhelming. It’s not being implemented as much as we in the program would want it to be.”

Related: How one district diversified its advanced math classes — without the controversy

Ideally, said Eglash, ethnomathematics content should be related to real-world situations, even if that involves exploring painful periods of history. Where possible, content should connect with art, history, sports and math to provide multiple ways for students to interact. This is critical, he said, to address power dynamics and “identity barriers” in the classroom, like the race of the teacher. When teachers let students explore content individually and through group discussion, students gain control over their own learning.

“The teacher finds a way to use the tool that is authentic — which is something the kids pick up on and respect, even for white folks,” he said. “It’s when you are trying to be something you are not that teaching becomes awkward.”

Doing ethnomathematics right can also engage teachers, Marr said. She had been teaching eighth-grade math at Kailua Intermediate School for 13 years when she hit a wall. Her students would ask why they had to learn math, she said, and she didn’t have an answer. She was looking for inspiration when she heard about the University of Hawaii ethnomathematics program.

“My students would learn to work with the numbers and everything, but it wasn’t like they were making a connection of why there is slope,” Marr said.

After earning her master’s, Marr had the idea to approach linear equations in a new way. She showed her students a photo of a mountain with a long, bare line down its lush, forested side and asked if anyone knew what they were looking at. Most students didn’t.

She wrote a word on the whiteboard: holua. The path, students learned from research they did in class, was made of gravel pounded into lava rocks, and it ran down the side of the Hualālai Volcano on the east side of Hawaii. Elite members of ancient Hawaiian communities sledded down mountainside paths like this one as part of the extreme sport known as holua.

“We talked about those pictures and talked about, well what would the slope be? How fast might they be going? Because slope is really related to the rate of speed,” she said. “Math isn’t just theoretical. It’s having an experience of being part of the place.”

*Correction: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Sydney Kealanahele’s name, and to clarify Linda Furuto’s role when she started the ethnomathematics program.

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Imagine interacting with an avatar that dissolves into tears – and being assessed on how intelligently and empathetically you respond to its emotional display.

Or taking a math test that is created for you on the spot, the questions written to be responsive to the strengths and weaknesses you’ve displayed in prior answers. Picture being evaluated on your scientific knowledge and getting instantaneous feedback on your answers, in ways that help you better understand and respond to other questions.

These are just a few of the types of scenarios that could become reality as generative artificial intelligence advances, according to Mario Piacentini, a senior analyst of innovative assessments with the Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA.

He and others argue that AI has the potential to shake up the student testing industry, which has evolved little for decades and which critics say too often falls short of evaluating students’ true knowledge. But they also warn that the use of AI in assessments carries risks.

“AI is going to eat assessments for lunch,” said Ulrich Boser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he co-authored a research series on the future of assessments. He said that standardized testing may one day become a thing of the past, because AI has the potential to personalize testing to individual students.

PISA, the influential international test, expects to integrate AI into the design of its 2029 test. Piacentini said the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs PISA, is exploring the possible use of AI in several realms.

• It plans to evaluate students on their ability to use AI tools and to recognize AI-generated information.
• It’s evaluating whether AI could help write test questions, which could potentially be a major money and time saver for test creators. (Big test makers like Pearson are already doing this, he said.)
• It’s considering whether AI could score tests. According to Piacentini, there’s promising evidence that AI can accurately and effectively score even relatively complex student work.  
• Perhaps most significantly, the organization is exploring how AI could help create tests that are “much more interesting and much more authentic,” as Piacentini puts it.

When it comes to using AI to design tests, there are all sorts of opportunities. Career and tech students could be assessed on their practical skills via AI-driven simulations: For example, automotive students could participate in a simulation testing their ability to fix a car, Piacentini said.

Right now those hands-on tests are incredibly intensive and costly – “it’s almost like shooting a movie,” Piacentini said. But AI could help put such tests within reach for students and schools around the world.

AI-driven tests could also do a better job of assessing students’ problem-solving abilities and other skills, he said. It might prompt students when they’d made a mistake and nudge them toward a better way of approaching a problem. AI-powered tests could evaluate students on their ability to craft an argument and persuade a chatbot. And they could help tailor tests to a student’s specific cultural and educational context.

“One of the biggest problems that PISA has is when we’re testing students in Singapore, in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s a completely different universe. It’s very hard to build a single test that actually works for those two very different populations,” said Piacentini. But AI opens the door to “construct tests that are really made specifically for every single student.”

That said, the technology isn’t there yet, and educators and test designers need to tread carefully, experts warn. During a recent panel Javeria moderated, Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said any conversation about AI’s role in assessments must first acknowledge disparities in access to these new tools.

Many schools still use paper products and struggle with spotty broadband and limited digital tools, she said: The digital divide is “very much part of this conversation.” Before schools begin to use AI for assessments, teachers will need professional development on how to use AI effectively and wisely, Turner Lee said.

There’s also the issue of bias embedded in many AI tools. AI is often sold as if it’s “magic,”  Amelia Kelly, chief technology officer at SoapBox Labs, a software company that develops AI voice technology, said during the panel. But it’s really “a set of decisions made by human beings, and unfortunately human beings have their own biases and they have their own cultural norms that are inbuilt.”

With AI at the moment, she added, you’ll get “a different answer depending on the color of your skin, or depending on the wealth of your neighbors, or depending on the native language of your parents.”  

But the potential benefits for students and learning excite experts such as Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, where she helps develop online assessments. Huff, who also spoke on the panel, said AI tools could eventually not only improve testing but also “accelerate learning” in areas like early literacy, phonemic awareness and early numeracy skills. Huff said that teachers could integrate AI-driven assessments, especially AI voice tools, into their instruction in ways that are seamless and even “invisible,” allowing educators to continually update their understanding of where students are struggling and how to provide accurate feedback.

PISA’s Piacentini said that while we’re just beginning to see the impact of AI on testing, the potential is great and the risks can be managed.  

“I am very optimistic that it is more an opportunity than a risk,” said Piacentini. “There’s always this risk of bias, but I think we can quantify it, we can analyze it, in a better way than we can analyze bias in humans.”

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Last year, I began reporting on the growing interest in teaching young people about data science amid calls that Algebra II and other higher-level math classes are being taught in outdated ways and need to be modernized. Experts were already raising concerns about falling math scores before the pandemic, and those scores nationwide have only continued to worsen.

There’s no easy answer – math experts, STEM professors, high school educators, parents, advocates and even students have vastly different opinions on what math knowledge and courses should be required for students to succeed in college and careers.

Nowhere has this been clearer than in California. As I wrote in my latest story, co-published with The Washington Post, the state’s public higher education system has gone back and forth on whether data science (an interdisciplinary field that combines computer programming, math and statistics) and other statistics-based courses fit into existing math pathways and can serve as an alternative to Algebra II in admissions.

But missing from these debates was the voices of students and educators – those most affected by any decisions made by the state’s public university system. I wanted to see for myself what students were learning in high school data science classes, why they were signing up for the course and how decisions about which math classes to take were being determined.

In December, I visited Oxnard Union High School District, which launched a data science pathway in 2020. The class targeted students who didn’t plan to major in STEM fields in college, as well as those who planned to attend a community college or go straight into the workforce or military. A “math class for poets” was how the district’s superintendent, Tom McCoy, had jokingly described it.

From my visits to the district’s high school data science classes and my conversations with teachers and students, two things became clear: The course’s structure is very different than a traditional math class – it’s an applied, project-based learning course in which students collaborate closely as they learn the material. And the way different teachers and schools approach the class differs greatly, even within a single district. Some teachers emphasize data literacy (teaching students how to read and analyze data); others incorporate math concepts from algebra and statistics; and still others may inject more computer programming or coding.

That variation — both in how the classes are taught and their content – has added to concerns that data science courses are low quality and insufficiently rigorous. And it’s in part why there’s an emerging push to develop standards around the course, and tackle the question of what an effective data science course should look like.

Much of the concern around data science in California centers around three programs — Introduction to Data Science, Youcubed and CourseKata — that make up the majority of data science courses available there. According to a recent report from University of California committee that sets admissions standards, none of the courses “even come close to meeting the required standard to be a ‘more advanced’ course,” and are more similar to data literacy courses than advanced mathematics. (Oxnard Union uses a different curricula, one developed by ed tech vendor Bootstrap.)  

Mahmoud Harding is the instructional design director at Data Science 4 Everyone, a national initiative based at the University of Chicago. He co-developed a high school data science program at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and teaches a course  at North Carolina State’s Data Science Academy. He said a high school data science course should help students find more real-world applications for concepts they learn in algebra.

In addition, the class should build conceptual knowledge of statistical topics through computation, visualizations and simulations, and help students understand bias within data and ethical concerns in using flawed data. Data science courses also need to be substantively different from statistics or computer programing courses, he said, noting that data science is “inherently interdisciplinary.”

“I don’t think a data science course is the same as an Algebra II course,” Harding said. “But it doesn’t mean that a data science course isn’t rigorous, or it doesn’t mean that you can’t matriculate into higher forms of algebra because you’ve taken data science.”

Harding’s group, Data Science 4 Everyone, is helping to lead the new effort to develop standards for data science. Zarek Drozda, the group’s executive director, said this year it will convene a working group of experts, K-12 educators, STEM professors, curriculum providers, state and district leaders, students and industry and workforce professionals including those with tech companies, to help create a list of recommendations of baseline data science standards.

As career opportunities involving AI, computing and data increase, Drozda said it is “critical” that we think about the foundational knowledge students need by the time they graduate from college. The group is engaging people from all sides of the data science debate to look critically at the courses currently offered and identify how to create classes that will better meet the needs of students.

Drozda said he also hopes the working group will consider how exposure to data science classes can help more students get excited about STEM fields that don’t necessarily require a four-year degree.

“I think there’s a false perception that we are trying to replace fundamental mathematics,” Drozda said. “In reality, we are trying to modernize, add options and enhance the relevance of mathematics and prove to students that math matters in the 21st century.”

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“Mom, are there any more Earths?”

Angelique Hammack, a teacher in California, creates lesson plans about climate change for the website SubjectToClimate. She often starts from a question posed by one of her four children.

Her 7-year-old, who has autism, has been really interested in space lately. “He was asking me questions about the solar system and about black holes, and I started pulling out all these books I had on outer space,” she said. “He’s got a telescope for his birthday, he’s been looking at the moon.”

When he asked the question about whether there were more Earths, Hammack saw the opening to create a climate-related lesson that explains how Earth is a “Goldilocks planet,” with just-right conditions for life to thrive.

New York state is currently considering several climate education bills. If the proposed policies become law, the state will join California and New Jersey in mandating that climate topics be introduced across grade levels and subjects, not just confined to science class. A wide range of science and environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and Earthday.org back this interdisciplinary approach to climate education.

But as the movement for teaching climate grows, thanks to new standards and increasing student curiosity, teachers are on the hunt for materials and lessons they can rely on. “I think there’s a big disconnect,” said Lauren Madden, professor of elementary science education at The College of New Jersey. “Teachers really need materials that they can use tomorrow.”

For the last few years, Madden has been researching the experiences of teachers who are tackling this topic. She shared some of her results with The Hechinger Report. SubjectToClimate, a large free repository of climate change lessons, also shared some data on its most popular lessons and materials.

Madden said that what teachers need most are clear strategies that allow them to plug climate lessons into existing curricula, so that climate can be interwoven with existing requirements, rather than wedged into an already-packed schedule. “Teachers want and need straightforward starting points in terms of instructional materials,” she said.

Yen-Yen Chiu, director of content creation for SubjectToClimate, agreed. In response to demand, she said, the organization is beginning to create teacher pacing guides, like a middle school math pacing guide that maps specific climate resources from their database to math standards.

Here’s an overview of more key findings from Madden, and from Hammack and Chiu at SubjectToClimate.

• Younger learners have big questions: At SubjectToClimate, the most-searched lessons are for grades K-5; and there is unmet demand for grades 3-5. Hammack said it can be tough to find materials that are simple enough for the youngest students. “I created a unit on energy — I intended it for K-2 but we ended up changing it to 3-4,” she said. “Energy is so abstract for a K-2nd audience.” 
• Energy, extreme weather and humanities: Energy is the most popular topic on SubjectToClimate. There’s also growing interest in lessons related to extreme weather, and lessons that relate to non-science subjects, such as writing and public speaking. One art lesson — on “Energy and Art” is among the top 10 most popular on the site.
• Facts and evidence: Madden finds teachers (especially new ones) want to gain familiarity with facts they might not have learned in a general education curriculum. They also need to be able to clearly and simply attribute scientific findings to specific data: i.e., how we know that atmospheric carbon is rising, or that storms are getting bigger. This presents a bigger challenge, requiring the development of scientific literacy, Madden said: “I think it’s important that we explain what counts as evidence.”
• Debate, but not doubt: In the United States, climate change is still a highly politicized topic. Teachers need help to present debates in an evolving field of research without losing sight of the overwhelming scientific consensus. This also includes lessons that directly combat misinformation or disinformation that students might bring in from outside the classroom. “Teachers want to know where scientific debate is appropriate. For example, wind vs. solar is a topic that can yield productive discussion, while whether climate change is exacerbated by human activity is not,” said Madden. The New York Times recently reported that a Republican state representative wants to amend standards in Connecticut in a way that would obscure that consensus in the name of open debate.  
• Climate brings up feelings: While a lot of introduction of climate topics is happening in response to new state standards, Madden said students are also bringing up the topic, for example, in response to extreme or unseasonable weather. And that’s making some teachers nervous. “Teachers worry that they are not knowledgeable enough about the science of climate change to answer students’ questions appropriately,” she said. “There is also concern about inciting dread and anxiety in children, especially at the lower grade levels.” Hammack said that she finds herself wondering how deep to go: “Some of the videos I’ve been watching are scaring me and I’m 44!” And Madden said those climate emotions are, if anything, stronger among kids in higher grades. “In my experience, it’s preteens and teenagers who have that sense of understanding the scope of these problems,” she said. “They are very concerned.”
• English Language Learners: There’s a gap in resources for these learners. Madden points out that in Spanish, “clima” is the word for both “weather” and “climate,” which can at times cause confusion. SubjectToClimate lists 93 resources suitable for Spanish speakers and/or Spanish classes.
• Focus on solutions: Related to concerns about climate anxiety, is a clear desire for lessons that deal with solutions. Among the SubjectToClimate top 10 most-trafficked lesson plans are two that deal with renewable energy, one about conservation, one about reducing, reusing and recycling, and one about green transportation. Underscoring the demand, This Is Planet Ed (where, full disclosure, I’m an advisor) and The Nature Conservancy are currently collaborating on an initiative to create more short-form content for children focused on hope and solutions.

“I have to say that the message that comes across loud and clear to me has been — telling the truth is really important, and focusing on areas for solutions and optimism,” said Madden. “There are really great things happening at the edges of what humans are capable of right now.”

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There are few topics in college access and higher education that inspire as much conviction from opposing sides as standardized tests.

Over the last few years, many people have come to believe that such tests are at the root of education inequity.

Opponents of tests have argued that removing tests from college admissions is the primary way to expand access.

Those beliefs, combined with the banal reality that few people like the tests — whether it’s the students studying for them, the parents paying for test prep or institutions being called out for using them in admissions — have made tests a perfect target.

But tests are not the single source of inequity, their elimination is not the cure and likability is not the criterion upon which the future of American education should rest. While I did not like taking a Covid test or the unmistakably pink line it summoned right before my planned vacation, the test was a meaningful predictor of what was to come, as well as where I had been.

Related: PROOF POINTS: Test-optional policies didn’t do much to diversify college student populations

Today, because many colleges and universities across the country no longer require students to include SAT or ACT scores in their applications, there’s a perception among some students that including test scores adds no additional value.

And yet, in the class of 2023, 1.9 million students took the SAT at least once, while 1.4 million took the ACT. Millions of students still take the SAT and ACT and choose to include their scores as one more way to stand out in admissions.

However, fewer students from lower-income backgrounds are taking these tests than in years past. The College Board reported that in 2022 only 27 percent of test-takers who reported their family income were from families earning less than $67,084 annually — a steep decline from the 43 percent of test-takers from families earning less than $60,001 six years earlier. In contrast, from 2016 to 2022, the percentage of test-takers from wealthy households grew slightly or stayed about the same.

A clear pattern has emerged in which two groups — one wealthy and one not — have responded to test-optional policies in disparate ways. The middle and upper class opt in, and the others opt out. Publicly available information from various colleges compiled by Compass Education Group shows that students who submit scores have a higher rate of acceptance than those who don’t.

If these tests supposedly no longer matter, why are privileged students using them as a competitive advantage — while underrepresented students opt out?

We now have evidence that standardized tests in fact may help — not hurt — students from low-income families and underrepresented minority groups get into and persist in college. The latest research shows that not only are test scores as predictive or even more predictive than high school grades of college performance, they are also strong predictors of post-college outcomes.

Therefore, earning and reporting high test scores should boost acceptance odds for students from under-resourced high schools and communities, since admissions officers seek data that indicates a student can keep up with the academic rigor at their institutions. Reporting higher scores can be the difference between attending a two- or a four-year college, where chances of persistence and graduation are exponentially higher.

Furthermore, for thousands of high-schoolers, these tests are not optional — and this has nothing to do with the admission policies of colleges and universities.

Many states and school districts in the U.S. use the SAT and ACT tests as part of their high school graduation requirements, accountability and evaluation systems.

These states and systems rely on the tests because they are a standardized way to tell whether students across a variety of districts — rich, poor; big, small; urban, rural — are ready for postsecondary success.

Many educators believe that standardized tests flatten such variables by placing everyone on the same scale — that they are, in fact, more equitable than the alternatives.

Yes, there are score gaps by race and class. However, standardized tests did not cause these realities — the unfairness associated with them is symptomatic of the broader inequalities that permeate education and all aspects of our society.

Related: OPINION: The charade of ‘test-optional’ admissions

The SAT and ACT measure a student’s mastery of fundamentals, including the English and math skills they should be learning in K-12. The unfairness lies in the fact that wealthier students often attend better schools and can afford to pay for extracurricular test preparation, which reinforces their schoolwork and often comes with valuable counseling. In doing so, they increase their confidence as well their motivation. All these things also help prepare students for life, not simply a test.

Rather than target our rage at tests that consistently deliver bad news, let’s focus our energies on preparing all students to do well on these tests so that they know that college is within their reach, and they are prepared to succeed when they get there.

We must embed test preparation in the school day for all students, not just a select few, all across America. We should work with teachers to ensure they are prepared to deliver high-quality instruction that reinforces what students learn in class and enables them to achieve scores that will unlock a myriad of opportunities.

There are models for this. Advanced Placement classes, for example, prepare students for tests that specifically help them become more competitive in admissions and earn college credit, allowing them to save time and money in college. (Unsurprisingly and unfortunately, this advantage, too, is often unavailable in many under-resourced schools and districts.) We can and should create a similar but more equitable model for college entrance exams.

As we begin 2024, let’s adopt a fresh and nuanced perspective on standardized tests so that all students can use them to their advantage — to be prepared for and succeed on the tests and, ultimately, in college and beyond.

Yoon S. Choi is CEO of CollegeSpring, a national nonprofit that provides in-school test preparation to districts in high-poverty neighborhoods, working with and through teachers to ensure they can deliver high-quality instruction that prepares students for standardized tests.

Correction: An earlier version of this story did not include the qualifier that the percentage of test-takers from lower-income families was a percentage of those who reported their family income, not of all test-takers. It also misstated the 2022 figure. 

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The post OPINION: Standardized tests can be great predictors of college success and should not be seen as a cause of inequity appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In recent years, division over how social studies should be taught has plagued school districts around the country.

The irony, according to Lawrence Paska, executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies, is that in many places, the subject is “not being taught, period.”

Social studies is sometimes seen as an afterthought, left out of daily instruction, he said. But instead of strengthening social studies or helping more students engage with the subject, the focus in recent years has been on undermining or attacking it, he said.

The increasing politicization of social studies was a concern shared by many educators, education leaders, researchers and advocates at last week’s annual NCSS conference in Nashville. Sessions examined ways educators can navigate state laws that limit conversations on race and other difficult topics, as well as how they can develop the high quality materials and instruction those attending said was vital to preparing students for civic life.

About 3,500 people attended the conference, among them K-12 and higher ed educators who teach the subjects that constitute social studies — including history, civics, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, law and religious studies.

Last month, NCSS updated its definition of social studies as the “study of individuals, communities, systems, and their interactions across time and place that prepares students for local, national, and global civic life.” The revised definition is meant to emphasize an inquiry-based approach, in which students start by asking questions, then learn to analyze credible sources, said Wesley Hedgepeth, NCSS president.

The group also chose to set out guidance for elementary and secondary school social studies instruction, to emphasize that education in the topic must begin in the early grades, Hedgepeth said.

The inquiry-based approach is defined within the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards, a set of decade-old, Common Core-like guidance for social studies. The approach has received pushback from conservative politicians who want to see more “patriotic” social studies curriculums, experts at the conference said.

Critics say revisions, or attempted revisions, to social studies standards by policy makers in states such as Virginia and South Dakota remove inquiry-based learning. The new standards instead emphasize “rote memorization of facts that are deemed to help children become more patriotic,” said James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. Educators and researchers say these efforts are part of a pattern — deliberate or not — of flooding state standards and curriculums with so much content that it becomes impossible for teachers to spend the time needed to go in-depth on topics and for students to engage in critical thinking or questioning.

While it isn’t new for state legislatures and boards to step in to dictate what’s taught, what’s different now is that laws prohibit teaching certain histories rather than requiring them to be taught, according to Grossman.

While many educators at the conference seemed to want to avoid politics and focus on their instruction, they recognized that simply choosing to be a social studies teacher can be seen as taking a political side. Conservative politicians today increasingly see social studies teachers as targets, attendees said. Educators from Virginia, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky, among other states, said fights over social studies standards or anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been bruising. Some talked about receiving death threats and being doxxed, while others said they were increasingly fearful of losing their jobs.

In a workshop on how educators can get involved in advocacy efforts surrounding state revisions of history and social studies standards, Virginia teachers shared how they organized to fight a controversial social studies standards revision under the administration of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Sam Futrell, a middle school social studies teacher and president of the Virginia Council for the Social Studies, said educators organized their state professional organizations and local unions to push back against a draft revision that she said included several errors and omissions such as referring to Native Americans as “America’s first immigrants.”

Sessions at the conference also focused on how to strengthen and improve social studies materials and instruction. Educators from several states, including Maryland, Iowa and Kentucky, spoke about the need for curriculum and resources that don’t simply cater to big states like Florida, California and Texas. Social studies curriculum publishers from Imagine Learning, Core Knowledge and Pearson also talked about their efforts to update materials to make them relevant to kids from diverse backgrounds and to work more closely with educators in different states to meet their needs.

Some school leaders said they need high-quality resources that can help teachers who aren’t specialists in a particular subject or area of history to fill gaps in their knowledge. Others said the absence of a national approach to social studies instruction is an obstacle to ensuring that all students have a common framework for understanding the country and its history and participating in civic life.

Bruce Lesh, supervisor of elementary social studies for Carroll County Public schools in Maryland, said that while math, science and English have national frameworks for instruction, nothing equivalent exists in social studies. The C3 Framework discusses how to teach social studies, but it’s not like the Next-Gen science standards or Common Core English and math standards that lay the groundwork for what to teach and help all students gather a common set of knowledge and skills.

In those other disciplines, said Lesh, “There was an effort to take the inequity out of what was taught to students.”

This story about social studies was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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This story on math scores is the first in a series, The Math Problem, produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times. The series will explore the challenges schools face in helping kids make progress in math, a pre-pandemic problem that has snowballed into an education crisis, and highlight examples of success.

On a breezy July morning in South Seattle, a dozen elementary-aged students ran math relays behind Dearborn Park International School.

One by one, they raced to a table where a tutor watched them scribble down the answers to multiplication questions before sprinting back to high-five their teammate. These students are part of a summer program run by nonprofit School Connect WA, designed to help them catch up on math and literacy skills they lost during the pandemic. There are 25 students in the program hosted at the elementary school, and all of them are one to three grades behind.

James, 11, couldn’t do two-digit subtraction last week. Thanks to the program and his mother, who has helped him each night, he’s caught up.

“I don’t really like math but I kind of do,” James said. “It’s challenging but I like it.”

Across the country, schools are scrambling to get students caught up in math as post-pandemic test scores reveal the depth of kids’ missing skills. On average students’ math knowledge is about half a school year behind where it should be, according to education analysts.

Children lost ground on reading tests, too, but the math declines were particularly striking. Experts say virtual learning complicated math instruction, making it tricky for teachers to guide students over a screen or spot weaknesses in their problem-solving skills. Plus, parents were more likely to read with their children at home than practice math.

The result: Students’ math skills plummeted across the board, exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequities in math performance that existed before the pandemic. And students aren’t bouncing back as quickly as educators hoped, supercharging worries about how they will fare as they enter high school and college-level math courses that rely on strong foundational knowledge.

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the ‘Nation’s Report Card,’ showed that fourth graders and eighth graders’ math scores slipped to levels not seen in about 20 years. 

Students had been making incremental progress on national math tests since 1990. But over the past year, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” showed that fourth graders and eighth graders’ math scores slipped to the lowest levels in about 20 years.

“Another way to put it is that it’s a generation’s worth of progress lost,” said Andrew Ho, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.

Related: How can we improve math education in America? Help us count the ways

At Moultrie Middle School in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Jennifer Matthews has seen the pandemic fallout in her eighth grade classes.

Some days this past academic year, for example, only half of her students in a given class did their homework.

Matthews, who is entering her 34th year of teaching, said in the last few years, students seem indifferent to understanding her pre-Algebra and Algebra I lessons.

“They don’t allow themselves to process the material. They don’t allow themselves to think, ‘This might take a day to understand or learn,’” she said. “They’re much more instantaneous.”

And recently students have been coming to her classes with gaps in their understanding of math concepts. Working with basic fractions, for instance, continues to stump many of them, she said.

Because math builds on itself more than other subjects each year, students have struggled to catch up, said Kevin Dykema, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. For example, if students had a hard time mastering fractions in third grade, they will likely find it hard to learn percentages in fourth grade.

Math teachers will play a crucial role in helping students catch up, but finding those teachers in this tight labor market is a challenge for many districts.

“We’re struggling to find highly qualified people to put in the classrooms,” Dykema said.

Like other districts across the country, Jefferson County Schools in Birmingham, Alabama, saw students’ math skills take a nosedive from 2019 to 2021, when students not only dealt with the pandemic and its fallout, but also a new, tougher math test. Math scores plunged 20 percentage points or more across 11 schools that serve middle school students.

The district’s International Baccalaureate school had higher scores — about 30 percent of students were proficient — but that was a far cry from having 90 percent of students proficient in 2019.

It raised the inevitable question: What now?

Using federal pandemic relief money, some schools have added tutors, offered extended learning programs, made staffing changes or piloted new curriculum approaches in the name of academic recovery. But that money has a looming expiration date: The September 2024 deadline for allocating funds will arrive before many children have caught up.

Progress is possible in upper grades, said Sarah Powell, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose research focuses on teaching math. But she said it’s easy for students to feel frustrated and lean into the idea that they’re not a “math person.”

“As the math gets harder, more students struggle,” she said. “And so we need to provide earlier intervention for students, or we also need to think in middle school and high school, how are we supporting students?”

Related: Inside the new middle school math crisis

Jefferson County educators took that approach and, leveraging pandemic funds, placed math coaches in all of their middle schools starting in the 2021-2022 school year.

The math coaches work with teachers to help them learn new and better ways to teach students, while math specialists oversee those coaches. About 1 in 5 public schools in the United States have a math coach, according to federal data.

Jefferson County math specialist Jessica Silas — who oversees middle school math coaches — said she and her colleagues weren’t sure what to expect. But efforts appear to be paying off: State testing shows math scores have started to inch back up for most of the district’s middle schools.

Silas is confident they’re headed in the right direction in boosting middle school math achievement, which was a challenge even before the pandemic. “It exacerbated a problem that already existed,” she said.

“Stereotypically, math is that class that people don’t like. And I believe part of the reason is because for so many adults, math was taught just as memorization.”

Kevin Dykema, president of the National Council for the Teachers of Mathematics

Ebonie Lamb, a special education teacher in Pittsburgh Public Schools, said it’s “emotionally exhausting” to see the inequities between student groups and try to close those academic gaps. Her district, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, serves a student population that is 53 percent African American and 33 percent white.

But she believes those gaps can be closed through culturally relevant and differentiated teaching. Lamb said she typically asks students to do a “walk a mile in my shoes” project in which they design shoes and describe their lives. It’s a way she can learn more about them as individuals.

“We have to continue that throughout the school year — not just the first week or the second week,” she said.

Ultimately, Lamb said those personal connections help on the academic front. Last year, she and a co-teacher taught math in a small group format that allowed students to master skills at their own pace. By February, Lamb said she observed an increase in math self-esteem among her students who have individualized education plans. They were participating and asking questions more often.

“All students in the class cannot follow the same, scripted curriculum and be on the same problem all the time,” she said.

Related: Is it time to stop segregating kids by ability in middle school math?

Adding to the complexity of the math catch-up challenge is debate over how the subject should be taught. Over the years, experts say, the pendulum has swung between procedural learning, such as teaching kids to memorize how to solve problems step-by-step, and conceptual understanding, in which students grasp underlying math relationships, sometimes making these discoveries on their own.

“Stereotypically, math is that class that people don’t like. And I believe part of the reason is because for so many adults, math was taught just as memorization. You had to memorize exactly what to do, and there wasn’t as much focus on understanding the material,” said Dykema, of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “And I believe that when people start to understand what’s going on, in whatever you’re learning but especially in math, you develop a new appreciation for it.”

Powell, the University of Texas professor, said teaching math should not be an either-or situation. A shift too far in the conceptual direction, she said, risks alienating students who haven’t mastered the foundational skills.

“We actually do have to teach, and it is less sexy and it’s not as interesting,” she said.

“As the math gets harder, more students struggle. And so we need to provide earlier intervention for students, or we also need to think in middle school and high school, how are we supporting students?”

Sarah Powell, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin 

Diane Manahan, a mother from Summit, New Jersey, said she watched the pandemic chip away at her daughter’s math confidence and abilities. Her daughter, a rising sophomore, has dyscalculia, a math learning disability characterized by difficulties understanding number concepts and logic.

For years, Manahan paid tutors to work with her daughter, a privilege she acknowledges many families could not afford. But, Manahan said, the problems in math instruction are not limited to students with learning disabilities. She often hears parents complain that their children lack basic math skills, or are unable to calculate time or money exchanges.

Manahan wants to see school districts overhaul their curriculum and approach to emphasize those foundational skills.

“If you do not have math fluency, it will affect you all the way through school,” she said.

Related: Proof points: How a debate over the science of math could ignite the math wars

Halfway across the country in Spring, Texas, parent Aggie Gambino has often found herself searching YouTube for math videos. Giada, one of her twin 10-year-old daughters, has dyslexia and also struggles with math, especially the word problems. Gambino says she has strong math skills, but helping her daughter has proved challenging, given instructional approaches that differ from the way she was taught.

She wishes her daughter’s school would send home information to walk parents through how students are being taught to solve problems.

“The more parents understand how they’re being taught, the better participant they can be in their child’s learning,” she said.

It doesn’t take high-level calculations to realize that schools could run out of time and pandemic aid before math skills recover. With schools typically operating on nine-month calendars, some districts are adding learning hours elsewhere.

Lance Barasch recently looked out at two dozen incoming freshmen and knew he had some explaining to do. The students were part of a summer camp designed to help acclimate them to high school.

The math teacher works at the Townview School of Science and Engineering, a Dallas magnet school. It’s a nationally recognized school with selective entrance criteria, but even here, the lingering impact of Covid on students’ math skills is apparent.

“There’s just been more gaps,” Barasch said.

When he tried to lead students through an exercise in factoring polynomials — something he’s used to being able to do with freshmen — he found that his current group of teenagers had misconceptions about basic math terminology.

He had to stop to teach a vocabulary lesson, leading the class through the meaning of words like “term” and “coefficient.”

“Then you can go back to what you’re really trying to teach,” he said.

Barasch wasn’t surprised that the teens were missing some skills after their chaotic middle school years. His expectations have shifted since the pandemic: He knows he has to do more direct teaching so that he can rebuild a solid math foundation for his students.

Filling those gaps won’t happen overnight. For teachers, moving on from the pandemic will require a lot of rewinding and repeating. But the hope is that by taking a step back, students can begin to move forward.

This story on math scores is the first in a series, The Math Problem, produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times. The series will explore the challenges schools face in helping kids make progress in math, a pre-pandemic problem that has snowballed into an education crisis, and highlight examples of success.

The post How can schools dig out from a generation’s worth of lost math progress? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.