LOCKHART, Texas — Sometime last year, Alfonso Sifuentes was on a bus tour as part of a chamber of commerce’s efforts to map out the future of the bustling Central Texas region south of Austin where he lives and works.

There was chatter about why San Marcos, a suburb along one stretch of the Interstate 35 corridor, had little interest in a proposed expansion of Austin Community College into that area. Voters previously rejected the idea because of the property tax increase it would have required. As he swayed in his seat on the moving bus, Sifuentes, a businessman in the waste management industry who has long been involved in community development, thought about his hometown of Lockhart — like San Marcos just 30-some miles from Austin — and about the opportunities the college’s growing network of campuses could bring. Somewhere along the bus route, he made a declaration for all to hear. 

“Well, if San Marcos doesn’t want it,” Sifuentes said, “Lockhart will take it.”

This November, the college is coming to voters in the Lockhart Independent School District with a proposition to begin paying into the Austin Community College taxing district. In exchange, residents would qualify for in-district tuition and trigger a long-term plan to build out college facilities in this rural stretch of Texas, which is positioning itself to tap into the economic boom flowing into the smaller communities nestled between Austin and San Antonio.

Community colleges have long played a crucial role in recovering economies. But in Lockhart, ACC’s potential expansion could serve as a case study of the role colleges can play in emerging economies as local leaders and community members eye the economic growth on the horizon.

That is, if they can convince enough of their neighbors to help pay for it.

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At the edge of two massive metropolitan areas — Austin to the north and San Antonio to the south — Caldwell County is dotted by quaint communities offering small-town living. While the streets in other small rural communities are lined by shuttered storefronts or sit in the shadow of industry long gone, local leaders pitch this as a place “where undeniable opportunity meets authentic Texas community.”

Lockhart, the county seat, is revered as the barbecue capital of Texas with an established status as a day trip destination. About 30 miles southeast of Austin, its picturesque town square hosts a regular rotation of community events, including a summer concert series on the courthouse lawn and a series of pop-ups on the first Friday of the month featuring some mix of live music, receptions at a local art gallery, and sip and strolls and cheesecake specials at the antique store.

The county’s population of roughly 50,000 residents is dwarfed by the big cities and the nearby suburban communities that often rank among the fastest growing in the country. But what the county lacks in population it makes up for with a relatively low cost of living, space to make room for industry, housing and, potentially, Austin Community College.

The potential annexation is an example of how colleges are becoming more nimble and more responsive to both emerging economies and the needs of students, said Maria Cormier, a senior research associate for the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. But Cormier argues such expansions must be intentionally designed with equity in mind to envision multiple pathways for students so that, for example, students from marginalized backgrounds aren’t limited only to certificate-level programming. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

“These sorts of questions become important when colleges are proposing these kinds of expansions: To what extent are they thinking about longer-term pathways for students?” Cormier said.

ACC already partners with Lockhart ISD on an early college high school that allows students to complete transferable college credit hours while earning a high school diploma, and proponents of annexation highlight the affordable higher education opportunities it would generally provide students in the Lockhart area. But their sales pitch emphasizes what it would mean to leverage ACC for the whole community. While the share of adults with a high school degree within Lockhart ISD’s territory is roughly aligned with the state, the share who have a bachelor’s degree — just 16.8 percent — falls to about half of the state rate.

“An effort like this can never be wrong if it always is for the right reasons,” said Nick Metzler, an information technology manager and consultant who serves as the president of the Greater Lockhart for ACC political action committee, which formed to pursue the college’s expansion.

Related: Five community colleges tweak their offerings to match the local job market

First established in 1973, ACC has steadily grown its footprint in Central Texas through annexation. Though not commonly used, a provision of Texas education law grants a community college the ability to expand its taxing district by adding territory within its designated service area. Working within a service district roughly the size of Connecticut, ACC first expanded its reach in 1985 when voters in the territory covered by the Leander Independent School District, a northern suburb of Austin, agreed to be annexed.

In the years since, neighboring communities in the Manor, Del Valle and Round Rock school districts followed with large majority votes in favor of annexation. ACC’s expansion into Austin’s southern suburbs didn’t begin until 2010, when annexation passed in the Hays Consolidated Independent School District.

The collective initiative to bring ACC to Lockhart has been the topic of discussion for many years, but the current effort was formally triggered by a community-led petition that required locals to gather signatures from at least 5 percent of registered voters. Fanning out at youth sporting events, school functions and other community gatherings, PAC members met with neighbors who indicated their children would be the first in their families to go to college, if they could afford it. Others were adults excited by the prospect of trade programs and certifications they could pursue and the transformative change it could bring to their families as new industries move into Caldwell County.

“Those things would catch a lot of the individuals who couldn’t make it to four-year universities or couldn’t afford to go to four-year universities,” Metzler said. “That’s always been kind of where we as a community have kind of been lacking.”

Lockhart also has an incentive for partnering with ACC: A recent assessment commissioned by the city identified the need to partner with a postsecondary institution for job training if it wanted to meet its economic goals and compete in its target business sectors, namely large-scale auto and electronic manufacturing, food processing and tourism. It also identified the lack of skilled administrative workers along with computer and math specialists as a challenge to reaching those goals.

In the end, PAC members easily surpassed the threshold of the 744 signatures they were required to submit — they turned in 1,013.

Related: After its college closes, a rural community fights to keep a path to education open

On the ballot now is a proposal for homeowners to trade $232.54 a year on average — a rate of $.1013 per $100 in property value — for in-district services. That includes a steep discount for in-district tuition that comes out to $85 per credit hour compared with $286 for out-of-district residents, though high school graduates from Lockhart ISD would also qualify for free tuition under a recently adopted five-year pilot program going into effect this fall.

“We are very interested in providing access to high-quality, affordable education in our region because we think it’s a game changer for families,” Chris Cervini, ACC’s vice chancellor for community and public affairs, said in an interview. “We think it promotes affordability by providing folks a lifeline to a family-sustaining wage, so we are very bullish on our value proposition.”

The vote would also allow ACC to grow its tax base as it works to keep pace with its growing enrollment. When classes kicked off this fall, ACC was serving about 70,000 students across 11 campuses in the Central Texas region — an enrollment increase of 15 percent compared with a year earlier. The potential expansion comes as community colleges are adapting to a new state financing model based on student outcomes, including financial incentives for schools if students obtain workforce credentials in certain fields.

The college proposed a three-phase service plan that would begin with expanded offerings in the area, such as evening classes, and eventually work up to a permanent facility tailored to match workforce needs, including demand for certificate programs to “reskill and upskill” for various high-demand careers. Cervini, who has been a main liaison with the Lockhart community, previously said the college was considering whether it could quickly deploy its resources into the community through mobile training rigs for HVAC and welding.

Its timeline could be sped up now that the college has identified a historic building in the heart of downtown — the old Ford Lockhart Motor Company building — as its potential home. During a recent presentation to the Lockhart City Council, ACC Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart told city leaders he appreciated that the site would represent the community’s history juxtaposed to “what we think the future looks like.”

But ACC leaders said the issue ultimately has to play out in the community. There’s been no apparent organized opposition to the vote in Lockhart, and ACC officials say they’ve been engaged with local leaders who have been supportive in helping inform voters about the annexation process. The proposal recently picked up the endorsement of Lockhart’s mayor, Lew White, who commended ACC leaders for their outreach to the community about their offerings.

“I think that’s what a lot of people have been asking for, and I think you’re really shaping your proposal for this fall election very nicely,” White said. “And I think it’s something that our community needs to get together and get behind and support.”

Related: States and localities pump more money into community colleges than four-year campuses

Even Lockhart ISD leaders frame the college’s pitch as an initiative with potential benefits extending well beyond the increased access it would offer students in the region.

Overseeing a record 6,850 students in a district covering about 300 square miles, Superintendent Mark Estrada said education is essential to cultivating communities where residents can not only actively participate in the sort of growth Caldwell County is experiencing but benefit from it as well.

“I think the real conversation and consideration is how would this benefit the educational attainment of the entire community, which currently is one of the lowest in Central Texas,” Estrada said. “The mid-career switches, people’s opportunity to have access to education to pursue a passion or career they’ve always been interested in — that’s a major consideration for the community. It’s a narrow look if we’re only looking at high school graduates.”

Still, Caldwell County remains a conservative area in a conservative state where fighting property tax increases has become a favorite political calling card. Much of that debate has centered on funding for public schools, with the fight over school finance often falling to the question of whether older Texans, who are mostly white and less likely to have children enrolled in public schools, are willing to pay for the future of younger Texans, who are mostly Latino. Roughly 4 out of every 5 students enrolled in Lockhart ISD are Latinos.

Voters in the area have shown at least some unwillingness to foot the bill for education-related expansions. In 2019, they rejected a $92.4 million bond proposed to address the significant growth in student enrollment Lockhart ISD had seen in the prior decade. The bond package would have gone toward making more room for more students through the addition of a two-story wing to the local high school, two new school buildings and renovations throughout the district. It also would have backed improvements to the district’s workforce preparation efforts, including a new agricultural science facility and additions to the district’s career technology center to allow more students to participate in auto repair classes and hospitality training. Opponents of the measure, 1,632 voters, won with 55 percent of the vote compared with 1,340 who voted in favor.

This time around, proponents of annexation are hoping the eagerness they’ve felt in the community from those who signed onto the original petition — and those who come to see the broader benefits it could bring to the community — will translate to votes.

In recounting the interest they fielded in the early days of their efforts collecting signatures, PAC members described one canvas of a local gym in a portion of the county that’s seeing some of the biggest growth but trails in terms of income. Some of the gym-goers were enthusiastic about the possibility of pursuing technical certifications but realized they weren’t registered to vote, a requirement of the signature collection process.

They went out and got on the voter rolls. Then, they came back to put their names on the petition.

Contact the editor of this story, Nirvi Shah, at 212-678-3445 or shah@hechingerreport.org.

This story about Austin Community College 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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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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BROOKLINE, Mass. — It was a humid, gray morning in July, and most of their peers were spending the summer sleeping late and hanging out with friends. But the 20 rising 10th graders in Lisa Rodriguez’s class at Brookline High School were finishing a lesson on exponents and radicals.

As Rodriguez worked with two students on a difficult problem, Noelia Ames was called over by a soft-spoken student sitting nearby. Ames, a rising senior who took Algebra II Honors with Rodriguez as a sophomore, was serving as a peer leader for the summer class.

“Are you stuck on a problem?” Ames asked, leaning over to take a closer look.

The students in Rodriguez’s class were participating in a summer program created by the Calculus Project, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit. Founded at Brookline High near Boston in 2009, the group now works with roughly 1,000 students from 14 nearby districts beginning in the summer after seventh grade to help them complete advanced math classes like calculus before they finish high school.

It focuses on helping students who are historically underrepresented in high-level math classes — namely those who are Black, Hispanic and low-income — succeed in that coursework, which serves as a gateway to selective colleges and well-paying careers. While some states and districts are nixing advanced-math requirements, sometimes in the name of equity, the Calculus Project has a different theory: Students who have traditionally been excluded from high-level math can succeed in those courses if they’re given a chance to preview advanced math content over the summer and take classes with a cohort of their peers.

In recent years the Calculus Project’s work has taken on fresh urgency, as the pandemic hit Black, Hispanic and low-income students particularly hard. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action left even some college officials concerned that inequities in high school math would make it harder for them to fill their classes with students from diverse backgrounds. The Calculus Project’s national profile has grown — its staff advises the College Board on AP math exams and classes and have advised groups in a few other states — even as the organization has attracted some scrutiny from parents, due to its emphasis on students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“One out of 10 Black students in the eighth grade math scores were scoring basic or above,” saidKristen Hengtgen, a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit advocacy group EdTrust, referring to last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card. “When you see that, you need to throw certain student groups the life jacket,” she added. “We cannot combat a math crisis if we’re not helping the students who need it the most.”

Related: Widen your perspective. Our free biweekly newsletter consults critical voices on innovation in education.

The racial and socioeconomic gaps in math are stark: Only 28 percent of Black students and 31 percent Hispanic students nationwide took advanced math in high school compared with 46 percent of white students, according to a 2023 report from EdTrust. Just 22 percent of low-income students took advanced math. Experts say that’s because these students are less likely to attend high schools that offer higher-level math or to be recommended by their teachers for honors or AP classes, regardless of mastery.

They are also less likely to report feeling confident in math class or to enroll in calculus even when they are on a path to take the class early in high school, according to a report from EdTrust and nonprofit Just Equations. When it comes to Black and Hispanic students, Hengtgen blames what she calls “the belonging barrier.” “Their friends weren’t in the class,” she said. “They rarely had a teacher of color.”

As a math teacher at Brookline High in the early 2000s, Calculus Project founder Adrian Mims got firsthand experience in what the research was beginning to establish. Black and Hispanic students were largely absent from the high school’s honors and advanced math courses, he said, and the few Black and Hispanic students who did enroll often dropped out early in the year.

As a PhD candidate at Boston College, Mims was writing his dissertation on how to improve African American achievement in geometry honors classes. His findings — suggesting that Black students dropped out of the course because they lacked knowledge of certain foundational math content, spent less time studying and preparing for tests, and lacked confidence in their math ability — became the catalyst for the first iteration of The Calculus Project.

Mims’ idea was to introduce Black students over the summer to math concepts they’d learn in eighth grade algebra in the fall. Students would be able to take the time to really understand those concepts and to build their confidence and skills, learning both from district teachers and peer teachers who could provide individual support.

In the summer of 2009, Mims piloted his idea with a group of rising eighth graders. In addition to learning concepts they’d see in algebra that fall, they were exposed to the stories of famous Black and Latino figures who excelled in STEM, such as Black NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson and Mexican-American astronaut Jose M. Hernandez. When the school year arrived, they participated in after-school tutoring at Brookline High.

The next fall, 2010, the district opened the program to all interested students, regardless of race. Summer participants were placed into cohorts so they could advance through math classes in high school with peers they knew.

Teachers and administrators at Brookline say the project had an immediate — and lasting — impact. “It’s so much more than learning math,” said Alexia Thomas, a guidance counselor and associate dean of students at Brookline High.

In 2012, Brookline High saw more Black students score as advanced on the state Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System Math test than ever before; 88 percent of those students had participated in the Calculus Project. The highest-scoring student in the district was Black – and a program alum. Two years later, when the first cohort of students who participated in both the summer and year-long programs graduated from high school, 75 percent had successfully completed calculus.

Today, eight districts participate in the year-round program and another six send their students to the group’s summer programs, two three-week sessions that take place at Boston University, Emmanuel College and University of Massachusetts-Lowell. As of May 2024, 31 percent of students in the program identified as Black, 39 percent as Hispanic/Latino, 11 percent as Asian and 7 percent as white, according to program data. Mims has helped develop similar models in Florida and Texas.

In 2023, research consultancy group Mathematica, in partnership with the Gates Foundation, published findings from a two-year study on the effectiveness of the Calculus Project and two other math-oriented summer programs. (Disclosure: The Gates Foundation is one of the many funders of The Hechinger Report.) According to the report, students in the Calculus Project outperformed students who hadn’t participated by nearly half a grade point in their fall math classes, on average.

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

The project runs counter to a recent push to engage high schoolers in math by making the content more relevant to the real world and substituting classes like data science for algebra II and calculus. Justin Desai, the Calculus Project’s director of school and district support and a former Boston Public Schools math teacher and curriculum designer, said he sees risks in that approach. Students need subjects like calculus, he said, because “it’s the foundation of modern technology.” To replace advanced math classes in favor of less rigorous math courses keeps students from accessing and excelling even in some non-STEM fields like law, he said.

The project finds ways to show students how math skills apply in the professional world.  Every semester students take field trips to Harvard Medical School, Google and to university research centers and engineering companies, where they are introduced to careers and see how the math they are learning is used in society.

In late July, a group of rising eighth graders from Newton Public Schools’ summer program took a field trip to the sprawling campus of global software company MathWorks. In one room, an engineer showed students how a car simulation model is built and used, while a second engineer helped students test a robotic arm. Another group of students learned how to use a programming software to turn an image into music.

As the Calculus Project has grown, there has at times been friction. In July, simmering tension between teachers and students at Concord-Carlisle High School came to a head when some project participants learned they’d been placed in financial literacy or statistics courses instead of calculus.

Some students being placed into lower-level classes has been a pattern since the program started at Concord-Carlisle in 2020, Mims said. He threatened to pull the program from the high school, and the students were reassigned to calculus (and one to statistics).

Mims said “this is a clear example” of how teacher recommendations can lock students out of advanced math classes. School administrators and teachers often point to students and parents as the reason for a lack of diversity in high-level math. “When we destroy that myth and we show that students can achieve at that level,” said Mims, “they can no longer point the finger at the students and the parents anymore, because we’ve created a precedent that these students can thrive.”

Laurie Hunter, the Concord-Carlisle superintendent, wrote in an email that her district is committed to partnering with the Calculus Project and that it “works closely with individual students and families to ensure their success and path align with the outcomes of the project.” She did not respond to specific questions. 

Milton Public Schools, another district that works with the Calculus Project, was the subject of a 2023 federal civil rights complaint from national conservative group Parents Defending Education. The group accused the district of discrimination by partnering with the Calculus Project, which it said segregates students by intentionally grouping students of certain backgrounds together as part of cohorts.

Mims rejects the group’s claims, noting that the Calculus Project is open to students of all backgrounds including white and Asian students. He says he has not heard from the federal government or the group about the complaint since early 2023. Parents Defending Education did not respond to several interview requests. A spokesperson for the federal Department of Education said the Office for Civil Rights does not confirm complaints but pointed to its list of open investigations. At the time of publication, there were no open investigations against Milton Public Schools.

Art Coleman, a founding partner at legal group EducationCounsel LLC, said that he doesn’t expect such challenges to be successful. School districts have a legal obligation to address inequities in student performance, he said, and “there is nothing in federal law that precludes that targeted support, as long as in broad terms, all students, regardless of their racial or ethnic status, have the ability to tap into those resources and that support.”

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

This summer, the Calculus Project expanded its programming, including by adding a college advising class for rising seniors. It’s part of the group’s mission to help its students succeed not just in high school but in college and beyond, Mims said.

The group plans to help its graduates secure internships while they’re in college and network once they’re out, he said, and will soon begin tracking students to see how they do in college and the workforce. “It’s really about giving them every advantage that rich kids have,” Mims said.

Ames, the Brookline High senior and peer teacher, said she has found the program “totally life-changing,” in part because of the relationships she’s built with other students and teachers.

“You can be in the hardest class or the easiest class and every teacher will be there to support you,” said Ames, who is taking AP Calculus this fall and is considering studying finance after high school. “Whatever questions you have, they’ll answer.”

Quentin Robinson, a college junior who joined the Calculus Project as a rising seventh grader, said it taught him that he enjoyed math and also how to advocate for himself.

“My freshman year, they tried to put me in a lower-level math class because they didn’t think I was capable,” Robinson said. But his summer experience empowered him, and he persuaded the school to place him in Geometry Honors instead. He graduated from high school having completed both calculus and a college-level statistics course.

Now, Robinson is an accounting and data analytics major at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. The Calculus Project, he said, helped him realize the voices of naysayers can be used as “a fuel” to achieve what you want.

Contact staff writer Javeria Salman at 212-678-3455 or salman@hechingerreport.org.

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I’ve heard often in my reporting on rural education about the importance of school districts collaborating with one another to help more kids succeed after high school. So when my colleague Neal Morton had a chance to visit a rural alliance started by nine school districts in southwest Colorado for a recent story, I was eager to learn more. Here are some of my questions for Neal and his responses:

What surprised you most while reporting this story? 

Just how often I heard from rural educators in Colorado about how hard it is to compete with larger districts for money and other resources. An academic counselor in a tiny high school – if it has one – might not know how, or have the time, to apply for state grants that larger districts have full-time positions dedicated to securing. 

What are the pros and cons of rural school districts working so closely together? 

The biggest pro seemed to be everyone pulling together for a common goal. This southwest Colorado collaborative raised millions of dollars to put new college classes in high school and expand CTE courses for students. Even the largest school district, Durango, could have collected only a fraction of that money on its own. 

A con? Getting everyone on the same page. This collaborative spent a lot of energy just getting superintendents and principals from every school district to work together. Woodworking teachers who meet twice a month complained, briefly, about all the time it takes to build a community of peers that they now rely on. It also took money to pay for many, many meetings. There’s also the risk of meeting just to meet, and I think the nonprofit steering the collaborative’s work tries to focus those conversations on what’s happening to improve classrooms for kids.

Related: Widen your perspective. Our free biweekly newsletter consults critical voices on innovation in education.

One of the career pathways centered around climate-related careers. Did the school districts have difficulty getting buy-in or face any backlash for offering courses on climate change?

Yes. They’re trying these rural alliances in four different Colorado communities. In at least two, the very suggestion of introducing “climate change” into schools and planning for the “green economy” sparked some controversy.

In southwest Colorado, schools faced opposition when they started partnering with local colleges to teach ecology and environmental science courses in high school; teachers trying to recruit for a summer program – called an environmental climate institute – also got some pushback. Same thing near Yampa Valley: A shared calendar invite with mention of climate in the event name made one attendee worry about scrutiny from colleagues.

The alliance there decided instead to use words like “stewardship” and “sustainability,” which sounded familiar to rural residents working in agriculture.

Will models like this one spread? 

Most likely. Javeria, you already wrote about a regional collaboration growing in South Texas (where I got my start as an education reporter!) And we both attended a SXSW EDU panel in February to learn about this model taking off in three school districts near Indianapolis.

In Colorado, lawmakers next year must contend with the upcoming findings of a school finance task force. Fans of the rural alliance model hope legislation to reform the state’s K-12 funding formulas will add flexibility for rural schools to share costs, revenues and students. (Right now, rules around transportation and busing students between districts proved too thorny for the southwest Colorado collaborative, and it has since scaled back its ambitious growth plan.)

Did anything not make it into the story that you wanted to highlight?

I learned that a stand or cluster of aspen trees – they’re all over the San Juan mountains – is actually one single organism connected by an extensive network of roots. (An aspen tree is believed to be the largest organism ever found on Earth!)

Quick takes:

Students who attend a school with at least one anti-LGBTQ+ policy report higher rates of anxiety, bullying, depression, and increased thoughts of suicide, according to a new report from the nonprofit Trevor Project. The group warns that recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation at both the state and local level – including policies that require school staff to inform parents if a student is using different pronouns – will further affect the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. The report also found that students who attend a school with at least one anti-LGBTQ+ policy were less likely to have support groups such as a gay-straight alliance. Last year, I wrote about the chilling effect of anti-LGBTQ+ policies on gay-straight alliances in Kentucky.  

The Department of Homeland Security released a toolkit last week to help school districts educate teachers, parents and kids about dangerous behavior on the internet and social media. One in 5 children receive unwanted sexual solicitation online every year, according to the federal agency, and experts fear the problem will worsen as AI’s presence in schools and students’ use of social media continues to grow. The materials — part of Know2Protect, a DHS initiative to prevent and combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse — are meant to help parents know what not to post online about their kids during back-to-school season, and help educators learn how to identify when a child is being abused online. 

English language learners are less likely than their peers to have access to core subjects like English language arts, social studies, math and science in high school, but that gap may be shrinking as some states invest in multilingual teacher training and other practices, according to a new report. Researchers at the National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners studied the practice, known as “exclusionary tracking,” across Oregon and Michigan over several years. Among their key findings: Only 55 percent of English learners in Oregon were enrolled in the four core classes in a given year, compared with 67 percent of other students. In Michigan, 66 percent of EL students were placed in core subject classes compared to 71 percent of their peers who were not English learners.

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

The post What will it take for rural districts to compete with larger, better-resourced schools? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

It’s guys night out, and dinner is coming to an end. We’ve given our credit cards to the server, who returns and drops the stack of bills in the center of the table. As per usual, one of my oldest friends scoops them up and thrusts them to my side of the table.

“Lance can calculate the tips, he’s a math guy.”

The line elicits a huge laugh, as if my title as the group’s “math guy” is a comical one. We have our “movie guy,” our “soccer guy” and of course me, the one who can quickly compute reasonable tips because I’m “good at math.”

I’ve taught high school math in Texas for the last 16 years, and I wear the epithet of “math guy” proudly. What troubles me is the notion that being “good at math” is unique to those in my vocation. Often, when people find out that I teach Algebra, they quickly recite a plethora of bad experiences with math in all forms, without indicating that they could (or should) have gone down differently.

Equally troubling is the fixed idea among many of my friends that they are the opposite of me: inherently or irrevocably “bad at math,” and they believe that is totally OK.

In fact, my friends are more loath to admit that they’re bad at cooking than math. By contrast, when was the last time you heard an adult declare at a dinner table that they are bad at reading?

Illiteracy carries a large amount of stigma for many adults, whereas most seem to be far less self-conscious about having deficiencies in math. And that’s a problem we must solve as a society.

The solution to creating the next generation of strong “math people” starts early, and it involves families and schools working together to change mindsets.

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Math, along with reading, is one of the fundamental skills we work to teach kids from a very young age. As educators, we focus on math and reading as the twin flames of childhood development, as the two progress in tandem and pave the path to academic success.

Math and reading are frequently linked when we devise legislation, whether it comes from the right or the left. Last year the Texas Legislature passed a popular bill, which put in place a plan to help more students attain access to advanced math instruction. Research shows a clear link between students’ postsecondary success and the highest level of math they took in high school. The bill gets the ball rolling by requiring school districts to automatically enroll sixth graders in an advanced math course if they performed in the 60th percentile or better on their fifth-grade state assessment or a similar local measure.

This is because students tend to find success via a cascading effect. To achieve at the postsecondary level, they need to take advanced high school math courses. To be prepared for those courses, they need access to Algebra I in eighth grade, and to be prepared for that, they need to be enrolled in advanced math in sixth grade.

Putting this bill to work will expose many students to the satisfaction of higher math just before middle school.

I was lucky to have had tangible experiences with problem-solving even younger. My mother taught me how to calculate a 20 percent tip as a child, by showing me how to move the decimal over one place to the left and double the result. I delighted in this shared family activity any time we went out to eat. My joy was only further enhanced in the elementary school classroom, where I learned the formal arithmetic that guides this technique of calculating percentages.

Sadly, few students cite a positive formative memory like mine when it comes to their own history with math, especially outside the classroom. In fact, many experience the opposite.

Related: PROOF POINTS: How a debate over the science of math could reignite the math wars

We must focus on developing an excited “growth mindset” for the learning of math, no matter how old we are, so that our children will view the subject with pleasure rather than fear.

And we need to start now. By 2030, it is estimated that over 60 percent of jobs in Texas will require at least some level of post-high school education. To get students there, we will need even more than innovative legislation.

We can lay a foundation for success in higher levels of math by showing kids the fun of math problem-solving early and often. Some examples: Have your kids sort their Halloween candy into different shapes, count the beats in their favorite songs or guess how many total Legos are in the closet.

Let’s emphasize the ability to develop numeracy with the same fervor and positivity that we emphasize literacy. Let’s stop instilling in our kids that they are either “good” or “bad” at math when they are still in single digits.

Let’s continually promote the narrative that we can all be “math people,” from grade school all the way to adulthood. That way, the next time you need to calculate a tip, or double a recipe or take measurements for a house project, you won’t have to call on the local “math guy.”

You might even take delight in solving the problem yourself.

Lance Barasch is a high school math teacher at the School of Science and Engineering in Dallas ISD. He is a Teach Plus senior writing fellow.

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The other day, one of my students told me that she’d been assigned the lyrics of Kendrick Lamar for her high school English class. It was the first time I had encountered a high school English assignment involving an author with whom I was wholly unfamiliar.

But can we even call rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar an author, his lyrics literature? Call me a snob, but I would argue that we cannot and should not, especially at a level so introductory to the English literary canon as high school. High school curricula are meant to present a broad and foundational overview of the important tenets of each core field of knowledge: mathematics, science, literature, history and language.

Related: TEACHER VOICE: How the sad shadow of book banning shuts down conversations and lacerates librarians

Many high school students are already consuming Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift on a daily basis without the intervention of the education system. In my view, using course time to analyze the lyrics of these popular artists not only precludes students from uncovering new knowledge but also encourages them to consider the fleeting music of our time — most of which, I predict, will be forgotten in the span of a generation — as great literature.

So why have we swapped out Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens for figures who are — at best — ancillary to literary study? Shouldn’t we teach students about the works of the Shakespeares and the Chaucers that English literature is based on — rather than present them with the words of contemporary songwriters such as Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift, whose works might belong entirely to a different category?

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

As educators, the fate of tomorrow’s change-makers rests in our hands, and it is our goal to rear the next generation of successful thinkers. There is no better way to teach students to think than to encourage them to wrestle with the sort of complex ideas that we find in time-tested literature. We must not, therefore, alter our intellectual standards or deem literature unimportant and pretentious, especially for students who are at such a crucial period of their intellectual development. It is our job to guide students to aspire to intellectual mountaintops rather than confining them to more familiar valleys.

At a certain point, we do need to start distinguishing between foundational literature and the musical byproducts of our contemporary culture. New York University can offer as many Taylor Swift courses as it wants, and there might be nothing wrong with studying Taylor Swift as literature — but that should not happen until students have attained a robust understanding of the literary tradition.

At the high school level, we should challenge younger generations to understand the core facets of the humanistic tradition by presenting them with an accurate picture of what the field of literary study has always been: a profound exploration of the human condition through words and stories. These stories, expressed through vivid works of literature, will, in turn, compel them to think critically.

I teach writing to high schoolers through my college consulting firm. When preparing students to write their college essays, I always lead with literature — Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Fitzgerald, for instance — for I believe that developing strong communication skills lies in understanding the writing styles and messages of these great thinkers and writers.

Many of my students, who will soon be sending in applications to America’s elite educational institutions, can no longer string a coherent sentence together without using AI tools such as ChatGPT or Grammarly. While there might be nothing wrong with using these tools as guidebooks and coaches, doing so must not come at the expense of developing strong writing skills, which are the cornerstone of strong communication. A generation that has lost the ability to write will lose the ability to effect meaningful societal change, for great change lies in effectively sharing ideas with others.

The students I work with are our future doctors, engineers and lawyers, among many other professions. In diluting their high school English curricula, we are collectively abandoning humanistic study as a society, letting go of our dedication to creating strong thinkers and visionaries. While not all teachers have swapped out Shakespeare for Swift, the presence of rappers and songwriters on an English syllabus is a telling sign that we have begun to change the standards of critical thinking and no longer emphasize the value of enduring communication.

I always prompt my college-bound students to challenge themselves intellectually. Instead of endlessly scrolling through Taylor-Swift TikToks, why not pick up a copy of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”? As I send my students off to college every year, many of them look back and thank me for encouraging them to make it through this literary behemoth, for there is a certain ineffable satisfaction to challenging yourself to engage critically with ideas: It makes us all stronger thinkers and communicators.

And I guarantee you that any 15-year-old can comprehend serious literature with the right mindset and the right mentorship.

As English teachers, our goal is to challenge our students to think critically in order to create the strong communicators of tomorrow — and hope that in the process, they will view literature not as pretentious but as beautiful and profound.

Liza Libes founded her college consulting startup, Invictus Prep, in New York City. Her writing has appeared in The American Spectator, Kveller, Jewish Women of Words and elsewhere.

This story about high school English 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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DURANGO, Colo. — For three dozen high schoolers, summer break in this southwest Colorado city kicked off with some rock climbing, mountain biking and fly-fishing.

Then, the work began.

As part of a weeklong institute on climate and the environment, mountain researchers taught the students how to mix clumps of grass seed, clay, compost and sand for seedballs that they threw into burned areas of the Hermosa Creek watershed to help with native plant recovery. The students upturned rocks — and splashed each other — along the banks of the Animas River, searching for signs of aquatic life after a disastrous mine spill. They later waded through a wetland and scouted for beaver dams as part of a lesson on how humans can support water restoration.

Each task was designed to prepare them for potential careers connected to the natural world — forest ecologist, aquatic biologist, conservationist. Many of the students had already taken college-level environmental science courses, on subjects such as pollution mitigation and water quality, at local high schools and Fort Lewis College.

Other students in and around Durango were taking a summer crash course in the health sciences, and this fall can earn college credit in classes like emergency medical services and nursing. Still others were participating in similar programs for early childhood education and for teacher preparation.

“I like the let-me-work-outside model,” said Autumn Schulz, a rising sophomore at Ignacio High School. Every day this past school year, she rode a public transit bus, passing miles of high desert terrain, to take an ecology class at Bayfield High School, in another district. She’d already completed internships at a mountain research nonprofit and a public utility to explore environmental and municipal jobs in her preferred field.

“It’s my favorite subject,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite things.”

None of this would have been possible before 2020. Back then, the Bayfield, Durango and Ignacio school districts operated largely independently. But as the pandemic took hold and communities debated whether to reopen schools after lockdown, a newly formed alliance of nine rural districts in southwest Colorado attempted to extinguish their attendance boundaries and pooled staff and financial resources to help more students get into college and high-paying careers.

Across the United States, rural schools often struggle to provide the kinds of academic opportunities that students in more populous areas might take for granted. Although often the hub of their communities, rural schools tend to struggle with a shrinking teaching force, budgets spread too thin and limited access to employers who can help. Rural students have fewer options for advanced courses or career and technical education, or CTE, before entering the workforce.

But clustered near the Four Corners in Colorado, the coalition of nine rural districts has partnered with higher education and business leaders to successfully expand career and college pathways for their students. A nonprofit formed by the districts conducts job market analysis and surveys teenagers about their interests. Armed with that data, academic counselors can advise students on the array of new CTE and college-level classes in high-wage positions in the building trades, hospitality and tourism, health sciences, education and the environment.

Teachers working in classrooms separated by 100 miles or more regularly meet in-person and online to share curriculum and industry-grade equipment. More than five dozen employers in the region have created ways for students to explore careers in new fields, such as apprenticeships, job shadows and internships. And some students earn a job offer, workforce certificate or associate degree before they finish high school.

Collectively, the Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative has raised more than $7 million in private and public money to pay for these programs, and its work has inspired similar rural alliances across the state. The collaborative’s future, however, is uncertain, as federal pandemic relief funds that supported its creation soon expire. Advocates have started to campaign for a permanent funding fix and changes in state policy that would make it easier for rural schools to continue partnering with one another.

Jess Morrison, who stepped down at the end of July as the collaborative’s founding executive director, said the group — and others like it in Indiana and South Texas — demonstrates the strength of regional neighbors creating solutions of their own, together.

“It’s about our region not waiting on people to save us,” she said.

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Nationally, more than 9.5 million U.S. students — or about 1 in 5 students — attend a rural school. The National Center for Education Statistics has found that, compared with the U.S. average, students in rural schools finish high school at higher rates and even outperform their peers in cities and suburbs. But only 55 percent of rural high schoolers enroll in college, a much lower share than their urban and suburban counterparts. Rural students make less money as adults and, compared to suburban students, are more likely to grow up in poverty.

In this part of southwest Colorado, where about half of students qualify for subsidized meals at school, employers have struggled to find enough workers but also to provide a liveable wage. Hoping to steer more high schoolers into high-skill and high-wage jobs, educators and superintendents from five school districts — Archuleta, Bayfield, Durango, Ignacio and Silverton — started to meet with representatives from Fort Lewis College and Pueblo Community College. In early 2019, they began working with the nonprofits Empower Schools and Lyra Colorado to formally create a regional collaborative and visited a similar project in South Texas.

Covid briefly disrupted much of that work, but in June 2020, tapping federal relief dollars for education, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced a nearly $33 million fund to close equity gaps and support students affected by the pandemic. Already poised to work together, the collaborative secured the largest award — $3.6 million — from the governor’s fund to help students explore environmental science and the building trades, two areas in which the number of jobs was projected to increase.

Despite that demand for workers, none of the school districts offered a single class in HVAC, electrical or plumbing, according to Morrison, nor did any of the nearby higher ed institutions. “We were a complete desert,” she said.

In 2022, the collaborative began piloting summer institutes, employers started hiring students directly from those programs and Pueblo Community College began offering electrical certification at its southwest campus. Woodworking instructors from different districts started to gather monthly, comparing lesson plans and creating wish lists for new classes and equipment. New CNC routers, laser cutters and electric planers arrived at teachers’ classrooms. Soon, teachers will pilot an HVAC course for high schoolers.

Over time, the collaborative added four additional school districts: Dolores, Dove Creek, Mancos and Montezuma Cortez. It also formally partnered with two tribal nations, Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute, while expanding its college and career tracks to include education, the health sciences and hospitality/tourism.

As of 2023, nearly 900 students across the nine districts — of about 13,000 total for the region — had participated in environmental, agriculture and outdoor recreation courses, according to the collaborative’s annual report. Approximately 325 students have completed a building trades course, with 40 so far earning industry certificates. Another 199 students finished a welding course, and 77 students also took college-level classes in that field.

Joshua Walton just finished his 11th year teaching science at Bayfield High School. He’s seen the changes firsthand: His classroom today has clinometers, game cameras and soil-testing equipment on its shelves. Walton often reserves the collaborative’s mobile learning unit, a 14-passenger van converted into a traveling science lab, so students can run experiments along the Animas River. He also prepares students to get their certification in water science.

“We’re giving students the opportunity where they can be an aquatic biologist or get a job doing water testing pretty much right after they graduate,” said Walton.

Tiffany Aspromonte, who works as academic advisor at Mancos High School, grew up in town and has raised her two children there. Her oldest son, a rising senior at Mancos High, regularly changes his mind about his future, she said.

He already earned a mini-certification in welding, and he’s taken courses in drones and — when he wanted to become an eye doctor — medical terminology. Now, he’s in love with hands-on engineering classes, but hates the bookwork, Aspromonte said. This fall, her son will spend Friday nights at Pueblo Community College for a wildland fire class.

“He’s not the exception,” Aspromonte said. “Just in our small school, a lot of kids can go really in-depth so they can get an idea of what they do or don’t want to do.”

And, she added, the rural brain drain — of ambitious students leaving a small town for college or better jobs — seems less pressing.

“There’s no pressure to leave home, unless you really want to,” Aspromonte said.

Related: MIT, Yale and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students

Along the way there have been challenges. Since 2020, all but one of the founding five superintendents left their positions, reflecting the nationwide churn of school leaders during the pandemic. Deciding how to divide money among districts hasn’t always been easy, said Morrison, the collaborative’s former director.

Student enrollment in shared courses never reached a point that would justify added costs, such as transportation. This fall, the alliance will limit the classes that high schoolers can take across district lines to education and health sciences. (Students can still take the courses in the building trades, environment and hospitality/tourism in their own high schools and at the local colleges. Each track will continue to include work-based learning.)

“We needed to simplify our approach,” Morrison said. “We started grand with all five pathways across all nine districts.”

And working with local business leaders has at times been challenging too, said Patrick Fredricks, the collaborative’s deputy director. Employers often want to give students tours of their businesses but, with the collaborative’s nudging, they can create real-world lessons: A popular bar and grill in Cortez reopened on a day off so students could host a pop-up restaurant. Dove Creek schools sent 20 kids to practice with staple guns and X-ray machines in the paramedic wing of the regional hospital.

Today, the collaborative regularly hosts career fairs with local businesses, matches students with employers to shadow on half-day visits to the workplace and helps arrange longer-term internships as well. Last school year, more than 200 students shadowed business leaders at 16 different job sites, including the local hospital, ski resorts and a cattle ranch.

The Colorado Education Initiative, a Denver-based nonprofit, has studied the impact of the pandemic relief money on students and plans to release initial findings this fall. In an early review of the data, released last November, the nonprofit found that projects funded by the governor’s office, including those of the collaborative, generally improved academic and social emotional outcomes.

The collaborative model has started to spread. Three remote districts in eastern Indiana recently created a “rural alliance zone” to get students into IT, advanced manufacturing, marketing and other career clusters. Last year, the Texas legislature overwhelmingly approved the creation of an annual $5 million pot of money to incentivize the creation of rural alliances in that state.

Back in Colorado, political allies of the collaborative have pitched the idea of dedicating state money for such partnerships or reducing the amount of bureaucracy and paperwork needed to share funds among school districts. Eric Maruyama, spokesman for Gov. Polis, said in a statement that the Colorado governor “is committed to creating educational opportunities that give students the skills needed to thrive and fill in-demand jobs” but declined to say if he would take specific action.

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke, executive director of the Rural Schools Collaborative, a national network that operates in more than 30 states, said she’s optimistic that successful partnerships in rural communities like southwest Colorado will convince philanthropic and public funders to invest.

“It’s not very sexy to fund or make time and space for relationship building,” she said. “It’s also the right thing to do to benefit broader rural community vitality.”

In Silverton, an old mining town near the headwaters of the Rio Grande, kayakers called to the students sitting on rocks along banks of the Animas River. The teenagers circled around ice trays brimming with river water and tried to classify the swimming macroinvertebrates.

“Is that one squiggly like a worm?” BreAnna Bennet, a rising senior from Durango High School, asked her group.

At the start of the summer program, Bennet said she had no desire to do any job in the outdoors. By the third day, she often tailed the instructor and supplied a stream of questions about wetland restoration efforts and wildlife in the backcountry.

“This is fun. I like this,” Bennet said, looking up from the ice tray. “Your activity is my favorite so far.”

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

The post ‘Not waiting for people to save us’: 9 school districts combine forces to help students appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Education vaulted to the forefront of conversations about the presidential race when Democratic nominee Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz, the governor of Minnesota, worked for roughly two decades in public schools, as a geography teacher and football coach. He has championed investments in public education: For example, in March 2023, he signed a bill to make school meals free to all students in public schools.

Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general in California, has less experience in education than her running mate. But her record suggests that she would back policies to make child care more affordable, protect immigrant and LGBTQ+ students and promote broader access to higher education through free community college and loan forgiveness. Like Walz, she has defended schools and teachers against Republican charges that they are “indoctrinating” young people; she has also spoken about her own experience of being bused in Berkeley, California, as part of a program to desegregate the city’s schools.

So what would trump do?

What education could look like under Trump and Vance

Harris and Walz have been endorsed by the country’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which tend to support Democratic candidates.

We will update this guide as the candidates reveal more information about their education plans. You can also read about the Republican ticket’s education ideas.

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

Early childhood

Child care

Harris has been a vocal supporter of child care legislation during her time in the Biden administration, though the proposals have had a mixed record of success.

During the pandemic, the Biden administration provided $39 billion in child care aid to help keep programs afloat.

The administration lowered the cost of child care for some military families and supported raising pay for federally funded Head Start teachers to create parity with public school teachers.

Earlier this year, Harris announced a new federal rule that would reduce lower child care costs for low-income families that receive child care assistance through a federally funded program. That same rule also requires states to pay child care providers on a more reliable basis. In September, Harris highlighted affordable child care as a key issue on her campaign website and said she would ensure “that care workers are paid a living wage.” Harris also said she plans to cap child care costs at no more than 7 percent of a working family’s income, but did not elaborate on how that would be funded.

Walz has also supported child care programs as governor of Minnesota. Earlier this year, he announced a new $6 million child care grant program aimed at expanding child care capacity, which followed a 2023 grant program that cemented pandemic-era support so programs could increase wages for child care workers. — Jackie Mader

Family leave and tax benefits

As soon as she became the presumptive Democratic nominee in July, Harris reaffirmed her support for paid family leave, which also was part of the platform she proposed as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential contest. Harris provided the tie-breaking Senate vote that temporarily increased the child tax credit during the pandemic and has proposed making that tax credit permanent.

In mid-August, Harris unveiled an economic policy agenda that proposes giving a $6,000 child tax credit for a year to families with newborns. She also wants to bring back and expand a pandemic-era child tax credit that lapsed in 2021. Harris’ proposal would provide up to $3,600 a year per child. 

Walz also was behind Minnesota’s child tax credit increase in 2023, and successfully pushed forward a statewide paid family and medical leave law that takes effect in 2026. — J.M.

Pre-K

In 2021, the Biden administration proposed a universal preschool program as part of a multi-trillion-dollar social spending plan called Build Back Better. The plan ultimately failed to win backing from the Senate.

Earlier this year, Walz signed a package of child-focused bills into law. one of which expands the state’s public pre-K program by 9,000 seats and provides pay for teachers who attend structured literacy training. — J.M.

K-12

Artificial intelligence, education technology, cybersecurity

Harris has played a key role in leading the Biden administration’s AI initiatives, particularly since the launch of ChatGPT. Biden signed an executive order on AI in October 2023, which directed the Education Department to develop within a year resources, policies and guidance on AI and to create an “AI toolkit” for schools.

While Harris hasn’t specifically addressed education technology, in the Biden administration, the Education Department earlier this year released the National Education Technology Plan to serve as a blueprint for schools on how to implement technology in education, how to address inequities in the use and design of ed tech and how to offer ways to bridge the country’s digital divide.

In 2023, the current administration announced several new initiatives to tackle cybersecurity threats in K-12 schools, including a three-year pilot program through the Federal Communications Commission that will provide up to $200 million to help school districts that are eligible for FCC’s E-Rate program cover the cost of cybersecurity services and equipment. — Javeria Salman

Immigrant students

Harris has vowed to protect those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which delays deportation for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. The Biden administration has also used its bully pulpit to remind states and school districts that all children regardless of immigration status have a constitutional right to a free public education. As a senator in 2018, Harris sponsored legislation designed to reunite migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, although family separation has continued on a much smaller scale in the Biden administration. In Minnesota, Walz signed legislation that starting next year will provide free public college tuition to undocumented students from low-income families. — Neal Morton

LGBTQ+ students and Title IX

Harris and Walz have both expressed support for LGBTQ+ students and teachers. As a senator, Harris supported the Equality Act in 2019, which would have expanded protections in the Civil Rights Act on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in education, among other areas. In a speech to the American Federation of Teachers, Harris decried the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws passed by Florida and other states in recent years. Walz has a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ students in Minnesota, where he was the faculty adviser of Mankato West High School’s first Gay-Straight Alliance club in the 1990s. In 2021, Walz signed an executive order restricting insurance coverage for so-called conversion therapy for minors and directing a state agency to investigate potential “discriminatory practice related to conversion therapy.” Walz signed an executive order in 2023 protecting gender-affirming health care. Earlier this year, he signed a law barring libraries from banning books based on ideology; book bans nationwide have largely targeted LGTBQ+-themed books.

The Biden administration announced significant rule changes to Title IX in 2024 that undid some of the changes the Trump administration made, including removing a mandate for colleges to have live hearings and cross-examinations when investigating sexual assaults on campus. The current administration also expanded protections for students based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which had been temporarily blocked in more than two dozen states and in schools attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United. — Ariel Gilreath

Native students

As vice president, Harris worked in an administration that promised to improve education for Native Americans, including a 10-year plan to revitalize Native languages. The president’s infrastructure bill, passed in 2021, created a $3 billion program to broaden access to high-speed internet on tribal lands — a major barrier for students trying to learn at home during the pandemic. During his time as governor, Walz signed legislation last year to make college tuition-free for Native American students in Minnesota and required K-12 teachers to complete training on Native American history. Walz also required every state agency, including the department of education, to appoint tribal-state liaisons and formally consult with tribal governments.

Walz spent part of his early career teaching in small rural schools, including on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. — N.M.

School choice

Harris, who was endorsed by the nation’s largest public school teachers unions, has voiced support for public schools, but has said little about school vouchers or school choice. Walz does not support private-school vouchers, opposing statewide private-school voucher legislation introduced in 2021 by Republicans in Minnesota. — A.G.

School meals

One of Walz’s signature legislative achievements was supporting a bill that provides free school breakfasts and lunches to public and charter school students in Minnesota, regardless of household income. Walz, who signed the law in 2023, made Minnesota one of only eight states to have a universal school meal policy. The new law is expected to cost about $480 million over the next two years.

The Biden administration also expanded access to free school lunch by making it easier for schools to provide food without collecting eligibility information on every child’s family. — Christina A. Samuels

School prayer

The Biden administration has sought to protect students from feeling pressured into praying in schools. Following the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the federal Education Department published updated guidance saying that while the Constitution permits school employees to pray during the workday, they may not “compel, coerce, persuade, or encourage students to join in the employee’s prayer or other religious activity.” — Caroline Preston

Special education

As a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris released a “children’s agenda” in 2019 that, among other provisions, called for a large boost in special education spending.

When Congress first passed the federal law that is now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it authorized spending to cover up to 40 percent of the “excess costs” of educating students with disabilities compared to their peers. But Congress has never come close to meeting that goal, and today the federal government distributes only about 15 percent of the total cost of educating students with disabilities. The shortfall is “immoral,” Harris told members of the National Education Association at a 2019 candidates forum.

The Biden administration also has proposed large increases in special education spending, but proposals for full funding of special education have not made it through Congress.

In 2023, the Minnesota Department of Education created a grant program to help school districts “grow their own” special education teachers. The first round of funding awarded $20 million to 25 grantees. In August, a second round of funding provided nearly $10 million to benefit more than 35 districts and charter schools. — C.A.S.

Student mental health, school safety

As California attorney general, Harris created a Bureau of Children’s Justice to address childhood trauma, among other issues. She has spoken out about the mental health toll of trauma, including from poverty, and the need for more resources and “culturally competent” mental health providers. But a 2011 law she pushed for as attorney general allowing parents of chronically absent students to be criminally charged later drew criticism for its toll on families, particularly those who are Black or Hispanic. Harris has said she regrets the law’s “unintended consequences.”

The Biden administration’s actions on student mental health includes expanding the pipeline of school psychologists, streamlining payment and delivery of school mental health services and directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop new ways of assessing social media’s impact on youth mental health.

As vice president, Harris leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was created after lobbying by survivors of school shootings to support gun safety regulations. She has touted the administration’s efforts to prevent school shootings, including a grant program that has awarded roughly $500 million to schools for “evidence-based solutions,” including anonymous reporting systems for threats and training for school employees on preventing school violence. In September, the administration issued an executive order directing the surgeon general and several federal agencies to develop guidance for educational institutions on how to conduct active-shooter drills while minimizing student trauma.

In Minnesota, Walz’s 2022 budget called for $210 million in spending to help schools support students experiencing mental health challenges. “As a former classroom teacher, I know that students carry everything that happens outside the classroom into the classroom every day, and this is why it is imperative that our students get the resources they deserve,” he said. — C.P.

Teachers unions, pandemic recovery

The Biden administration has close ties to the nations’ largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the latter of which is the largest labor union of any kind in the country. First lady Jill Biden, who teaches community college courses, is a member of the NEA. Walz, a former teacher, is also an NEA member.

The administration was criticized for discussing with the AFT what kinds of safety measures should accompany the reopening of public schools after the pandemic.

Since 2021, the Biden administration has poured billions into helping public schools recover from the pandemic in various ways: to pay for more staff and tutors and upgrade facilities to improve air conditioning and ventilation, among other things. However, academic performance has yet to rebound, and the recovery has been uneven, with wealthier white students more likely to have made up ground lost during remote classes and Black and Latino students less likely to have done so.

The two unions, which had supported reelecting Biden, quickly threw their support to Harris and Walz. “Educators are fired up and united to get out and elect the Harris-Walz ticket,” NEA President Becky Pringle said after Harris named Walz as her running mate. “We know we can count on a continued and real partnership to expand access to free school meals for students, invest in student mental health, ensure no educator has to carry the weight of crushing student debt and do everything possible to keep our communities and schools safe.” — Nirvi Shah

Teaching about U.S. history and race

Both Harris and Walz have pushed back against Republican-led attacks on K-12 history instruction and efforts to minimize classroom conversations around slavery and race. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration dissolved President Donald Trump’s 1776 commission. In July 2023, Harris criticized a new history standard in Florida that said the experience of being enslaved had given people skills “for their personal benefit.”

As governor, Walz released an education plan calling for more “inclusive” instruction that is “reflective of students of color and Indigenous students.” It also called for anti-bias training for school staff, the establishment of an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion center at the Minnesota Department of Education, and the expansion of efforts to recruit Indigenous teachers and teachers of color. Walz also has advocated for educating students about the Holocaust and other genocides; state bans on teaching about “divisive concepts” in some Republican-led states have chilled such instruction. — C.P.

Title I

Harris’ 2019 “children’s agenda,” from when she was angling to be the Democratic nominee for president, proposed “significantly increasing” Title I, the federal program aimed at educating children from low-income families. The Biden administration also has proposed major increases to Title I spending, but Congress has not enacted those proposals. — C.A.S.

Higher Education

Accreditation

As California attorney general, Harris urged the federal government in 2016 to revoke federal recognition for the accrediting agency of the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges, which she had successfully sued for misleading students and using predatory recruiting practices. The accreditor’s recognition ultimately was removed in 2022. 

As vice president, Harris has said little about the accreditation system, which is independently run and federally regulated and acts as a gatekeeper to billions of dollars in federal student aid. But the Biden administration has sought to require accreditors to create minimum standards on student outcomes such as graduation rates and licensure-exam pass rates. — Sarah Butrymowicz

Affirmative action

Harris has long supported affirmative action in college admissions. As California attorney general, she criticized the impact of the state’s 1996 ban at its public colleges. She also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the University of Texas’ race-conscious admissions policy when the Supreme Court heard challenges to it in 2012 and 2015.

Last June, Harris criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action the same day it was handed down, calling the decision a “denial of opportunity.” Walz, referring to the decision, wrote on X, “In Minnesota, we know that diversity in our schools and businesses reflects a strong and diverse state.” — Meredith Kolodner

DEI

Harris has not shied away from supporting DEI initiatives, even as they became a focus of attack for Republicans. “Extremist so-called leaders are trying to erase America’s history and dare suggest that studying and prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion is a bad thing. They’re wrong,” she wrote on X.

As governor, Walz has taken steps to increase access to higher education across racial groups, including offering tuition-free enrollment at state colleges for residents who are members of a tribal nation. This spring, Walz signed a budget that increased funding for scholarships for students from underrepresented racial groups to teach in Minnesota schools. — M.K.

For-profit colleges

Harris has long been a critic of for-profit colleges. In 2013, as California state attorney general, she sued Corinthian Colleges, Inc., eventually obtaining a more than $1.1 billion settlement against the defunct company. “For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people — now they have to pay,” she said in a press release. As senator, she signed a letter in the summer of 2020 calling for the exclusion of for-profit colleges from Covid-era emergency funding. — M.K.

Free college

The Biden administration repeatedly has proposed making community college free for students regardless of family income. The administration also proposed making college free for students whose families make less than $125,000 per year if the students attend a historically Black college, tribal college or another minority-serving institution.

In 2023, Walz signed a bill that made two- and four-year public colleges in Minnesota free for students whose families make less than $80,000 per year. The North Star Promise Program works by paying the remaining tuition after scholarships and grants have been applied, so that students don’t have to take out loans to pay for school. — Olivia Sanchez

Free/hate speech

Following nationwide campus protests against the war in Gaza, Biden said, “There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, where it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.” His Education Department is investigating dozens of complaints about antisemitism and Islamophobia on K-12 and college campuses, a number that has spiraled since the start of the war. — O.S.

Pell grants

The Pell grant individual maximum award has increased by $900 to $7,395 since the beginning of the Biden administration, part of its goal to double the maximum award by 2029. Education experts say that when the Pell grant program began in the 1970s, it covered roughly 75 percent of the average tuition bill but today covers only about one-third. They say doubling the Pell grant would make it easier for low-income students to earn a degree. The administration tried several times to make Pell grants available to undocumented students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but has been unsuccessful. — O.S.

Student loan forgiveness

In 2019, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris proposed forgiving loans for Pell grant recipients who operated businesses in disadvantaged communities for a minimum of three years. As vice president, she was reportedly instrumental in pushing Biden to announce a sweeping debt cancelation policy.

The policy, which would have eliminated up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers under a certain income level, ultimately was blocked by the Supreme Court. Since then, the Biden administration has used other existing programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness, to cancel more than $168 billion in federal student debt.

Harris has regularly championed these moves. In April, for instance, she participated in a round-table discussion on debt relief, touting what the administration had done. “That’s more money in their pocket to pay for things like child care, more money in their pocket to get through the month in terms of rent or a mortgage,” she said of those who had loans forgiven.

But challenges remain. In August, a federal appeals court issued a stay on a Biden plan, known as the SAVE plan, which aimed to allow enrolled borrowers to cut their monthly payments and have their debts forgiven more quickly than they currently can. — S.B.

Workforce development

Last fall, the Biden administration sent nearly $94 million in grant funding to job training programs, including community colleges and programs that partner with high schools. Earlier this year, the administration also announced $25 million for a new Career Connected High Schools grants program to help establish pathways to careers. In addition, the administration invested billions in nine workforce training hubs across the country. 

The Democratic Party platform unveiled at the national convention in Chicago also mentions expanding career and technical education. “Four year college is not the only pathway to a good career, so Democrats are investing in other forms of education as well,” the platform says.

Walz’s education plan as governor of Minnesota also set a goal of increasing career and technical education pathways. In October 2023, he signed an executive order eliminating college degree requirements for most government jobs in the state, a growing trend in states looking to expand alternative pathways to careers. — A.G.

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

The post What education could look like under Harris and Walz appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

If we graded schools on how accurately they grade students, they’d fail. Nearly six out of 10 course grades are inaccurate, according to a new study of grades that teachers gave to 22,000 middle and high school students in 2022 and 2023.

The Equitable Grading Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to change grading practices, compared 33,000 course grades with students’ scores on standardized exams, including Advanced Placement tests and annual state assessments. The organization considered a course grade to be inaccurate if a student’s test score indicated a level of knowledge that was at least a letter grade off from what the teacher had issued. For example, a grade was classified as inaccurate if a student’s test score indicated a C-level of skills and knowledge, but the student received an A or a B in the course. In this example, a D or an F grade would also be inaccurate.

Inflated grades were more common than depressed grades. In this analysis, over 40 percent of the 33,000 grades analyzed – more than 13,000 transcript grades – were higher than they should have been, while only 16 percent or 5,300 grades were lower than they should have been.  In other words, two out of five transcript grades indicated that students were more competent in the course than they actually were, while nearly one out of six grades was lower than the student’s true understanding of the course content.

The discrepancy matters, the white paper says, because inaccurate grades make it harder to figure out which students are prepared for advanced coursework or ready for college. With inflated grades, students can be promoted to difficult courses without the foundation or extra help they need to succeed. Depressed grades can discourage a student from pursuing a subject or prompt them to drop out of school altogether. 

“This data suggests that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students in this study may have been denied, or not even offered, opportunities that they were prepared and eligible for,” the white paper said.

This analysis is evidence that widespread grade inflation, which has also been documented by the ACT, the National Center for Education Statistics and independent scholars, has persisted through 2023. In this transcript analysis, grade inflation occurred more frequently for Black and Hispanic students than Asian and white students. It was also more common for low-income students. 

Large discrepancies were documented. Almost 4,800 of the inflated grades were two letters higher than the student’s test score would indicate. An AP exam might have indicated a D-level of mastery, but the student earned a B in the class. On the flip side, more than 1,000 students received grades that were two letter grades lower than their assessment score. 

The report rejected the possibility that test anxiety is the main culprit for such widespread and large discrepancies, and laid out a list of other reasons for why grades don’t reflect a student’s skills and content mastery. Some teachers feel pressure from parents and school administrators to give high grades. Many teachers factor in participation, behavior and handing in homework assignments – things that have little to do with what a student has learned or knows. Meanwhile, grades can be depressed when teachers make deductions for late work or when students fail to turn in assignments. Group projects that are weighed heavily in the final grade can swing a student’s final transcript grade up or down. In the report, one superintendent described how teachers in his district awarded students points toward their grade based on whether their parents attended Back to School Night. 

Reasonable people can debate how much grades should be used to promote good behavior. The Equitable Grading Project argues that schools should use other rewards and consequences, and keep grades tied to academic achievement. 

However, solutions aren’t quick or easy. The organization worked with over 260 teachers during the 2022-23 school year to implement a version of “mastery-based grading,” which excludes homework, class assignments and student behavior from the final grade, but uses a range of assessments – not only tests and papers – to ascertain a student’s proficiency. Teachers were encouraged to allow students multiple retakes.  After five workshops and four coaching sessions, teachers’ grading accuracy improved by only 3 percentage points, from 37.6 percent of their grades accurately reflecting student proficiency to 40.6 percent. 

Part of the challenge may be changing the minds of teachers, who tend to think that their own grades are fine but the problem lies with their colleagues. In a survey of almost 1,200 teachers that accompanied this quantitative study, more than 4 out of 5 teachers agreed or somewhat agreed that their grades accurately reflect student learning and academic readiness. But nearly half of those same teachers doubted the accuracy of grades assigned by other teachers in their own school and department.

Grading practices are an area where schools and teachers could really use some research on what works. I’ll be keeping my eye out for solutions with evidence behind them. 

This story about the Equitable Grading Project 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 PROOF POINTS: Nearly 6 out of 10 middle and high school grades are wrong, study finds appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Nota de la editora: Este reportaje sobre las escuelas de Russellville fue producido por palabra, una iniciativa de la Asociación Nacional de Periodistas Hispanos,  The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente y sin fines de lucro que se enfoca en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y AL.com.

RUSSELLVILLE, Alabama — Lindsey Johnson y Yesenia de la Rosa estaban usando estrategias diferentes para impartir la misma lección de inglés sobre letras mudas, sentadas en extremos opuestos de ese salón de clases de primer grado en la Escuela Primaria West. En esa tarde de marzo, Johnson, la maestra del aula, estaba leyendo un cuento con niños de 6 y 7 años que dominaban el inglés. Los estudiantes de la asistente bilingüe, De la Rosa, aún estaban aprendiendo el idioma, así que, aunque les estaba leyendo el mismo cuento, iba más lento, traduciendo palabras, actuando emociones y mostrándoles fotos en su iPhone.

Valentina, de 6 años, que llevaba puesta una camiseta negra con un logo de Nike en dorado y mallas, había llegado hacía menos de dos semanas desde Guatemala. Sentada en el suelo, cerca de la silla de De la Rosa, su mejilla casi tocaba la pierna de su maestra. De la Rosa solía trabajar con ella de forma individual, ya que la niña no sabía letras ni números, ni en español ni en inglés. Cuando Valentina fue al kínder en su país natal, lo único que hacía era colorear. “Así que cuando llegó aquí, eso es lo que pensaba que iba a hacer. Solo dibujar”, dijo De la Rosa. “Pero aquí es distinto”.

El distrito escolar de la ciudad de Russellville creó el puesto de De la Rosa a principios de 2021, como parte de un esfuerzo más amplio por ayudar a educar a su creciente población de alumnos que hablan inglés como segundo idioma. Muchos de los estudiantes de inglés, como se les llama, tienen padres provenientes de México o Guatemala que trabajan en una planta avícola cercana y en empleos locales en la industria y la construcción. Hoy, el 60% de los niños del distrito son hispanos/latinos y aproximadamente un tercio son estudiantes de inglés.

Johnson dijo que, sin De la Rosa, no podría comunicarse con más de la mitad de sus alumnos, ni entender los desafíos a los que se enfrentan. Johnson sabía que Yeferson, un estudiante de inglés de Guatemala, era uno de los niños más inteligentes en la clase, ya que leía más de 100 palabras, muy por encima de la meta de 60. “Es una esponja. Lo absorbe todo”, dijo Johnson. Pero ella supo gracias a De la Rosa que Yeferson se estaba destacando a pesar de sus muchas responsabilidades en casa: su mamá trabajaba turnos nocturnos, por lo que Yeferson lavaba la ropa, fregaba los platos y cuidaba de sus hermanos menores. Dijo Johnson: “Tener un asistente bilingüe hace una gran diferencia”.

Russellville quizás no dé la impresión de ser una comunidad que va a invertir e innovar a favor de los estudiantes inmigrantes. Es una ciudad políticamente conservadora del noroeste de Alabama, con una población aproximada de 11.000 habitantes, y en la que un 72% de los votantes optó por Donald Trump en las últimas elecciones presidenciales. 

Cuando la planta de procesamiento avícola abrió, en 1989, la población hispana de Russellville era aproximadamente el 0,5% del total de habitantes. En 2000, había aumentado al 13% y, en 2020, era casi del 40%. Al principio, al distrito escolar, como a muchos otros del país, se le hizo difícil dar cabida al creciente número de estudiantes de inglés, que abandonaban los estudios en altos porcentajes, estos eran empujados a clases de educación especial y después mostraban escasos progresos académicos. Sin embargo, sus logros importan: hoy en Estados Unidos, más de uno de cada 10 estudiantes es un estudiante de inglés como segundo idioma y, en una época en la que la matrícula en los centros públicos en general está disminuyendo, se encuentran entre los grupos de estudiantes que más rápido están creciendo del país.

A principios de 2015, cuando el entonces superintendente anunció su retiro, el distrito reclutó para el puesto a Heath Grimes, que en aquel momento era el superintendente del sistema escolar del cercano condado de Lawrence. Grimes, de 48 años, quien se autodenomina sureño conservador y hombre de fe de la Alabama rural, se propuso abordar la reforma de la enseñanza para los estudiantes de inglés por completo, estableciendo actividades extracurriculares culturalmente relevantes y conectando con la comunidad hispana. Se sintió el impacto de dichos esfuerzos: la porción de estudiantes hispanos que tomaron clases de nivel avanzado (AP, por sus siglas en inglés), así como cursos de doble matrícula en el colegio comunitario local, aumentó. También lo hizo la participación de los padres. Y Grimes lideró un esfuerzo para convencer a los legisladores de que cambiaran la fórmula de financiación del estado de Alabama para los estudiantes de inglés como segundo idioma, multiplicando por más de ocho la asignación estatal, hasta llegar a los $18,5 millones. El distrito y Grimes recibieron el reconocimiento estatal y nacional por su labor con los estudiantes de inglés.

“Cualquier distrito con una población significativa de estudiantes de inglés ha acudido a Heath (Grimes) porque él se adelantó a los acontecimientos ”, dijo Ryan Hollingsworth, director ejecutivo de los Superintendentes Escolares de Alabama, que representa a los 150 distritos escolares del estado. “Es simplemente increíble ver lo que ha podido lograr en un distrito pequeño sin muchos recursos”.

Pero a medida que la figura de Grimes ascendía a nivel estatal, según los educadores y residentes locales, su relación con los dirigentes de la ciudad comenzó a desmoronarse. Luego, a mediados de mayo de 2023, un miembro de la junta escolar le informó a Grimes que su contrato, que terminaba en junio de 2024, no sería renovado. Grimes aceptó retirarse cuando terminara su contrato al año siguiente, a cambio de un aumento en el salario de su último año. A partir de noviembre, intenté hablar con miembros de la junta escolar, con el alcalde y con miembros del ayuntamiento acerca del distrito escolar y de Grimes, y en un principio no respondieron a mis reiteradas solicitudes de entrevistas. (Cuando me presenté ante al alcalde, David Grissom, sobre la calle en Russellville, me dijo “sin comentarios” y se marchó). Pero a  lo largo de los meses, sin embargo, pude hablar con más de 60 funcionarios estatales, administradores locales, docentes, exmiembros de la junta escolar, líderes comunitarios y residentes, incluyendo personas que conocí en negocios y en la calle, en Russellville. Dichas entrevistas indican que la decisión de forzar a Grimes a dejar el cargo como superintendente surgió de una maraña de políticas de pueblo pequeño, una antipatía profundamente arraigada hacia los inmigrantes y una añoranza de la ciudad que Russellville solía ser.

“Heath Grimes puso a los estudiantes primero. Y esto al final pudo haberlo perjudicado”, dijo Jason Barnett, superintendente del Consejo de Educación de la ciudad de Guntersville, en el norte de Alabama, y uno de las docenas de líderes de distrito en el estado que trabajaron de cerca con Grimes. Aproximadamente, 18 educadores y líderes comunitarios en Russellville, muchos de ellos con conocimiento de los acontecimientos, me dijeron que el apoyo de Grimes a la creciente población de estudiantes que aprenden inglés fue clave para que perdiera el apoyo entre los principales dirigentes de la ciudad. Muchos de los líderes pidieron no ser citados por temor a represalias o a tensar las relaciones en esta pequeña comunidad. Un administrador escolar, que no quiso ser identificado por miedo a perder su empleo, dijo de Grimes: “Muchas personas dijeron que el aumento en la población indocumentada se debía a que él hizo de las escuelas de Russellville (y por ende la ciudad) un lugar acogedor en el que los inmigrantes querían vivir. A la gente no le gustó eso”. 

A principios de julio volví a buscar a Grissom; a Daniel McDowell, al abogado de la junta escolar,  y a Greg Trapp, quien fue hasta hace poco el presidente de esa misma junta. Les compartí mis hallazgos tras meses de reportajes, junto con una lista detallada de preguntas para ellos. McDowell y Grissom respondieron con declaraciones por escrito en las que afirmaron que los estudiantes de habla hispana habían prosperado en el distrito mucho antes de que llegara el superintendente Grimes, y negaron que su dedicación a los estudiantes de inglés hubiera propiciado su partida. “Los inmigrantes de los países latinoamericanos han venido mudándose a Russellville durante los últimos 25 años y siempre han sido bienvenidos en la ciudad y al cuerpo estudiantil”, escribió Grissom. “Mirando hacia atrás, nuestra escuela preparatoria ha coronado a una reina latina de baile de bienvenida, votada por el cuerpo estudiantil, y ha reconocido al primer estudiante latino graduado con las mejores calificaciones. Esos eventos ocurrieron mucho antes de que el Dr. Grimes llegara a Russellville”.

Inmigrantes no bienvenidos 

Antes de que Grimes llegara a Russellville, los legisladores estatales aprobaron, en 2011, la ley HB 56, considerada ampliamente como la ley antiinmigrante más severa del país. Dicha ley daba a la policía la autoridad para detener a las personas que creían que no tenían documentos legales para vivir en Estados Unidos, y tipificaba como delito que las empresas contrataran a estas personas a sabiendas y que los propietarios alquilaran a quienes carecían de documentación. Además, las universidades públicas no podían admitir estudiantes sin documentos de inmigración y, aunque, según la ley federal, las escuelas K-12 están obligadas a acoger a los estudiantes sin importar su estatus de ciudadanía, la legislación de Alabama también exigía que los distritos escolares recopilaran información sobre el estatus de ciudadanía de sus estudiantes. Aunque partes de la ley fueron posteriormente anuladas por un tribunal federal, el mensaje era claro: los inmigrantes no eran bienvenidos.

Por todo eso, cuando Greg Batchelor, entonces presidente de la junta escolar de la ciudad de Russellville, buscaba un nuevo superintendente escolar, en el 2015, sabía que las cosas se volverían controversiales. La población hispana de la ciudad era del 22% y seguía creciendo. Algunos antiguos residentes “anglo”, como se autodenominaban los miembros de la población de raza blanca, se referían despectivamente al centro de la ciudad como “Pequeño México”, y se quejaban de oír hablar español y de ver las casas coloridas que asociaban con la comunidad hispana.

Batchelor y otro exmiembro de la junta escolar, Bret Gist, recordaron haber oído a antiguos residentes decir que estaban inscribiendo a sus hijos en escuelas privadas o marchándose de Russellville porque no querían que sus hijos fueran “la minoría”. A otros les preocupaba que los estudiantes de inglés hicieran bajar las calificaciones de los exámenes y dañaran la reputación de su distrito escolar. En aquel entonces, apenas cinco distritos del estado tenían una población de estudiantes de inglés superior al 10%; la de Russellville era la segunda más alta, con un 16%.

Batchelor, que también es presidente de la junta directiva de CB&S, uno de los bancos comunitarios más grandes de Alabama, dijo que sabía que la futura economía de la ciudad dependía del próximo líder escolar: “Si nuestra comunidad sobrevive y le va bien, solo podrá ser tan buena como eduquemos a nuestros niños”. También expresó que creía que los estudiantes hispanos de la ciudad merecían las mismas oportunidades que sus compañeros de clase, y que estaba profundamente influenciado por su padre, quien fue miembro de la junta escolar de Russellville durante 20 años. “Mi papá solía decir que todos se ponen los pantalones de la misma manera, una pierna a la vez”, recordó Batchelor.

En ese momento, Grimes, un exmaestro de educación especial  y entrenador de fútbol americano,  se encontraba en su sexto año como superintendente del condado de Lawrence. En su primer mandato de cuatro años, había cerrado tres escuelas secundarias debido a una caída de la matrícula y a un déficit presupuestario que heredó. “Es muy inusual en Alabama que un superintendente cierre escuelas en un condado y luego sea reelecto, y él fue reelecto”, dijo Batchelor. “Sentí como que él no temía tomar decisiones difíciles”. Gist, el exmiembro de la junta escolar, recuerda la emoción que sintieron los integrantes de la junta tras la entrevista con Grimes. “Yo estaba listo para que llegara y tuviera un gran impacto”, dijo Gist.

El 11 de mayo de 2015, Grimes fue votado por unanimidad como el nuevo superintendente escolar de Russellville. 

Nuevas estrategias

Kristie Ezzell, quien se jubiló de las escuelas de Russellville en 2022 después de 31 años en los que trabajó bajo cuatro superintendentes, presenció la transformación de primera mano. Como maestra de segundo grado en la década de 1990, enseñó a una de las primeras estudiantes de inglés del distrito. Ezzell recordó a una niña pequeña que intentaba una y otra vez comunicarse, pero a quien Ezzell no podía entender. “Comenzó a llorar y luego comencé a llorar yo, y las dos nos quedamos paradas ahí y nos abrazamos y lloramos”, recordó Ezzell. “La barrera idiomática entre nosotras era simplemente desgarradora”. 

El crecimiento rápido de la población de estudiantes de inglés había tomado por sorpresa a los educadores de Russellville. En todo el distrito, había apenas un maestro titulado para enseñar inglés como segundo idioma, ningún intérprete y muy poco desarrollo profesional. “Nos llegaban estudiantes que no hablan una pizca de inglés, sus padres no hablan una pizca de inglés, y se espera que nosotros los eduquemos”, me dijo una maestra, quien pidió no ser identificada para evitar consecuencias. “Y yo ni siquiera sabía si están pidiendo ir al baño o si tienen hambre”. La situación también era injusta para los estudiantes angloparlantes, que perdían tiempo de aprendizaje porque sus maestros tenían la mente en otras cosas, dijo . “Simplemente era un desorden en todos los sentidos”.

Grimes, que no habla español y tenía poca experiencia con estudiantes de inglés en sus roles anteriores, dijo que lo primero que escuchó fue: “¿Cómo vas a solucionar esto?”. “Creo que pensaban que yo iba a hacer, de alguna manera, que la población de estudiantes de inglés desapareciera”, me dijo. “Y mi actitud fue: ‘No, no vamos a hacer eso’”. En lugar de ello, les pidió a los educadores: “Aceptar, Acoger, Celebrar”. “Primero, tienen que aceptar que su distrito está cambiando. Y, cuando abracemos ese cambio, vamos a ver algunos cambios muy positivos que vamos a poder celebrar”, recuerda que les dijo. “Y todo eso se ha hecho realidad”.

Para entonces, Ezzell era directora de la Escuela Primaria de Russellville. Recordó la primera reunión que tuvo Grimes con maestros, en la que presentó las calificaciones de los exámenes de los estudiantes, desglosados por escuelas. “Me hundí en mi asiento y vinieron lágrimas a mis ojos porque nuestros resultados no eran muy buenos”, me dijo.

Su mensaje, según Ezzell, fue simple: “No más excusas. Nuestros maestros ya no van a decir: ‘Bueno, son estudiantes de inglés’. Eso no está bien. (Estos estudiantes) van a crecer igual que todos los demás”. Mientras exponía sus expectativas, los maestros comenzaron a mirar nerviosos a su alrededor, recordó. Algunos lloraron y uno tuvo que dejar el salón. A algunos les preocupaba que Grimes estuviera criticando sus competencias; otros lo desestimaron por forastero, dijo Ezzell. Pero, ella recordó, una cosa estaba clara: “Sabíamos que hablaba en serio”, dijo. “Era muy empático con todo lo que estábamos enfrentando, pero afirmó: ‘Esto no puede continuar’”.

Cuando Ezzell se fue a casa esa noche, no podía dejar de pensar en la reunión. Era consciente de lo duro que trabajaban sus maestros. “Nunca dejaron de enseñar”, dijo. Pero las pésimas estadísticas le demostraron que no se estaban enfocando en las cosas indicadas. Ezzell me dijo que, desde ese momento, ha comenzado una misión para encontrar mejores formas de educar a sus estudiantes: “Dediqué mi vida a ello”.

Grimes dijo que la actitud predominante era que los estudiantes de inglés eran una carga, una percepción similar a la que se tenía de los estudiantes de educación especial a los que él una vez enseñó. Entonces trajo a una profesora y asesora educativa, Tery Medina, que explicó que los niños inmigrantes eran estudiantes del distrito bajo la ley federal. Siendo ella misma refugiada cubana, dirigió debates con los docentes sobre las similitudes entre la cultura hispana y la sureña. “Aman a la familia. Son trabajadores y muchos tienen fe en Cristo. Eran todas esas cosas con las que todos se podían identificar”, recordó Grimes. Por su parte, Medina dijo que estaba impresionada con la apertura que Russellville tuvo con estos estudiantes. Durante el mandato de Grimes, “Russellville fue una pequeña joya”,  dijo, “allí no se veía a los estudiantes de inglés como una carga”.

El distrito también invirtió en el desarrollo profesional de los maestros, asegurándose de que tuviera lugar durante las horas de trabajo, dijo Ezzell. Expertos, libros, videos, planes de lecciones detallados… para los maestros, en ese momento, era como una maraña de aprendizaje continuo. Lentamente, los educadores comenzaron a compartir estrategias y a impartir clases juntos. “¿Conoces el dicho, ‘Cuando sabes más, haces mejor?’”, me preguntó Ezzell. “Eso fue lo que sucedió”. Los maestros experimentaron, hicieron sus lecciones más interactivas y se guiaron por las más recientes investigaciones. Algunos maestros incluso crearon lo que se convirtió en una premiada clase de ciencia en tres idiomas: inglés, español y q’anjob’al, un dialecto guatemalteco. “Les dedicábamos tiempo para que fueran a aprender las mejores prácticas. Y eso benefició a todos los estudiantes, no solamente a los estudiantes de inglés”, dijo Ezzell.

No todos en el distrito aceptaron el cambio. Grimes recordó haberse reunido con una maestra que estaba a cargo de una clase en la que el 30% de los estudiantes estaba reprobando. Ella no lo veía como un problema, dijo Grimes. “(Su actitud) era como: ‘Vengo haciendo esto durante 20 años y no vas a decirme lo contrario’”. Según Grimes, dicha maestra se jubiló poco después; algunos otros maestros renunciaron.

Pero los maestros que se quedaron dijeron que podían ver que los estudiantes empezaban a responder a los nuevos enfoques. Los estudiantes de inglés comenzaban a participar más en clase; ya no se sentaban al fondo del salón. Muchos más de ellos comenzaron a tomar clases AP, de nivel avanzado, así como también clases de doble inscripción en el Colegio Comunitario Northwest College. “Los motivamos. Y cuando motivas con amor, vas a tener éxito”, dijo Ezzell.

El distrito comenzó a acumular galardones. Varias de sus escuelas recibieron el codiciado Blue Ribbon School of Excellence (un premio a la excelencia). Desde 2021, la escuela secundaria Russellville ha sido nombrada una de las mejores 25 escuelas en Alabama por U.S. News & World Report. En 2022, fue el único distrito de Alabama en el que predominan las minorías que recibió una nota  “A” en el boletín de calificaciones del estado; en 2023, Russellville fue uno de los dos únicos en el estado nombrado como “Spotlight District” (Distrito destacado) en lectura y alfabetización, y su escuela secundaria fue reconocida como Escuela de Excelencia A+ College Ready, designación otorgada por una organización sin fines de lucro contratada por el departamento de educación estatal para maximizar la preparación para la universidad.

El núcleo de las estrategias de Grimes, además del fomento del conocimiento  cultural y del desarrollo profesional, eran los educadores bilingües. En un principio, Grimes colocó intérpretes en cada escuela para ayudar con las traducciones cotidianas, pero sabía que los maestros necesitaban aún más ayuda en los salones de clases. Sin embargo, una escasez nacional de educadores bilingües exigía creatividad. Grimes decidió enfocarse en contratar asistentes bilingües, que ganaban la mitad del sueldo de un maestro. Se comunicó con el reverendo Vincent Bresowar, de la Iglesia Católica del Buen Pastor de Russellville, para que lo ayudara a correr la voz sobre los puestos que se ofrecían.

El tamaño de la congregación de Bresowar había crecido a medida que habían ido llegando familias inmigrantes a Russellville; su iglesia había construido recientemente un nuevo edificio de $4,5 millones para adaptarse a ese aumento. 

Sus feligreses, mientras tanto, trabajaban largas e irregulares jornadas, tenían problemas económicos y a menudo cargaban con traumas. “El sufrimiento es muy intenso y puede ser muy difícil”, me dijo Bresowar. Además, sabía cómo la barrera idiomática podía exacerbarlos malos entendidos. El reverendo dijo que su propia comprensión y aprecio por la comunidad hispana cambió una vez que aprendió a hablar español y compartió tiempo con ellos. “Creo que mucha gente tiene miedo porque no puede comunicarse y eso hace más difícil acortar la brecha”, dijo Bresowar. 

Él puso a Grimes en contacto con feligreses y, en 2021, usando fondos destinados a la pandemia, Grimes contrató a una docena de asistentes bilingües de esa comunidad. Al mismo tiempo, puso a esos asistentes en contacto con un programa de aprendizaje, gestionado por la organización sin fines de lucro Reach University, para que ellos pudieran simultáneamente formarse como docentes. “Fue un punto de inflexión”, dijo Grimes sobre esa ayuda adicional en las escuelas. 

Elizabeth Alonzo fue una de esas asistentes bilingües. Se incorporó al plantel de la Escuela Primaria West, de Russellville, (la escuela de la maestra Johnson y de la asistente bilingüe De la Rosa), en 2021, donde trabajaba mayormente con estudiantes de segundo grado en pequeños grupos y también servía de intérprete durante actividades escolares y para comunicarse con los padres. Mientras caminaba por un pasillo en una reciente jornada escolar, niñas hispanas de otras clases dejaron sus filas y corrieron a darle un abrazo rápido.  “Al principio era como: “Oh, ¿tú hablas español? Sus rostros se iluminan, ¿sabes?”, dijo Alonzo, quien nació en Alabama y fue criada allí por padres inmigrantes. En el pasado mes de diciembre de 2023, completó los cursos para convertirse en maestra y espera quedarse en West. 

Si lo consigue, será la sexta maestra hispana del distrito, mientras que, cuando llegó Grimes, había solo una. El nivel de recursos para los estudiantes de inglés es muy distinto del que había cuando ella iba a la escuela. Cuando Alonzo estaba en el kinder de una escuela del condado, su prima fue retirada de su clase de primer grado para hacer de intérprete para ella, recordó. “Y, luego, cuando yo estaba en primer grado, me sacaban de clase para ayudar a mi hermano menor”. Alonzo asistió a las escuelas de Russellville de 2008 a 2013. 

Otro maestro de Russellville, Edmund Preciado Martínez, también recordó haberse sentido aislado cuando era estudiante en Alabama a fines de la década de 1990. A veces, confundía palabras en español y en inglés, dijo, por lo que a menudo se sentía demasiado avergonzado como para hablar en clase. “Eso me llevó a educación especial porque pensaban que algo andaba mal conmigo”, recordó.

Era maestro en un distrito cercano cuando se enteró de los cambios que Grimes estaba implementando en Russellville y decidió solicitar un empleo. Hace seis años, fue contratado para trabajar con estudiantes de inglés en la escuela secundaria de Russellville.

Cada año, dijo Preciado Martínez, los docentes eligen un lema alrededor del cual unirse, como #whateverittakes (lo que sea necesario) or #allin (completamente comprometidos). La camaradería allí es muy diferente a las historias que ha escuchado de sus colegas en otras partes del estado, quienes hablan de compañeros que se quejan de los estudiantes de inglés e incluso se refieren a ellos de manera despectiva y con insultos.

“Siempre que necesitamos algo, simplemente lo pedimos y ellos hacen su mayor esfuerzo por conseguírnoslo”, dijo Martínez refiriéndose a los líderes de su distrito. “E incluso, si no pueden, buscan alternativas que podemos utilizar”.

“Hay espacio para todos nosotros” 

Grimes también se enfocó en involucrar a los padres hispanos en la educación de sus hijos. Se dio cuenta de que muchos de ellos se sentían demasiado intimidados o avergonzados para hablar con los educadores; en sus países natales, a veces se consideraba una falta de respeto cuestionar a un docente o incluso preguntarle sobre el progreso de su hijo. Así que se dedicó a entablar relaciones, frecuentando comercios hispanos, reuniéndose con líderes comunitarios y traduciendo al español todos los anuncios en la página web y Facebook del distrito escolar.

Dichos esfuerzos cambiaron la experiencia escolar de la madre Analine Mederos. Ella había abandonado la escuela en México en séptimo grado y deseaba con desesperación que sus hijos recibieran una buena educación. Pero, dijo Mederos, cuando su hija mayor se inscribió en las escuelas del distrito de Russellville, en 2006, ella no estaba involucrada en su educación en absoluto. “No interactuaba con los maestros porque no hablaba mucho inglés. La mayor parte del tiempo me daba miedo hablar”, me contó. Sentía que los empleados de la escuela la miraban por encima del hombro por la barrera idiomática, y no le veía sentido a hablar. “Si tienes preguntas, ¿quién te va a ayudar?”, dijo. “Así que, dijeran lo que dijeran, yo decía: ‘Bueno, está bien’”.

Pero con su segundo hijo, que ahora está en el décimo grado, ha tenido una experiencia completamente distinta. “Grimes ha hecho un gran… no sé ni cómo decirlo… un gran impacto. Especialmente con la comunidad hispana”, me dijo. Y agregó que a su hija le encanta la escuela, y que a su hijo, que está en la enseñanza media, no ve la hora de hacer la prueba para el equipo de fútbol. Cuando ve a Grimes en la comunidad, dice que se siente lo suficientemente cómoda como para hablarle de sus hijos: “Te va a escuchar. No va a fingir que te está escuchando. No; realmente escucha”. 

Ahora, a Mederos se le hace más fácil seguir las reuniones escolares. Hace apenas unos años, en la escuela primaria, había apenas un intérprete para 600 niños, por lo que la escuela solamente podía programar reuniones con los padres cuando un niño estaba en problemas o reprobaba. Ahora, con seis asistentes bilingües, el personal de la escuela puede tener reuniones individuales con cada familia al menos una vez al año, y también ofrecen dos días completos de actividades para padres en inglés y en español. Los padres saben que habrá un intérprete presente y eso manda un mensaje claro. “Nuestros padres saben que los estamos acogiendo y que los valoramos”, me dijo la directora Alicia Stanford.

El evento Mes de la Herencia Hispana que Grimes inició en la escuela secundaria Russellville se ha convertido en una gran celebración para todo el distrito, en la que los estudiantes aprenden sobre distintas culturas y tradiciones, hacen presentaciones de baile, leen a autores célebres e investigan sobre figuras históricas. Pero quizás sea el programa de fútbol, que Grimes puso en marcha, el que  ha obtenido la mayor respuesta. Antes de la llegada de Grimes, los estudiantes habían hecho lobby por el programa, sin éxito, pero él comprendió que era una parte querida e importante de la cultura latinoamericana. “Querían algo que fuera suyo”, dijo Grimes. 

Grimes no tenía fondos para una nueva cancha de fútbol, por lo que mandó a reemplazar el césped del campo de fútbol americano, y los estudiantes comenzaron a jugar allí en 2017. En 2021, cuando el equipo de fútbol de Russellville, los Golden Tigers, jugó en las semifinales estatales, tanto familias hispanas como no hispanas acudieron en masa. “Todos estaban animando, ‘Sí, se puede’, ‘Yes, we can‘”, recordó Grimes cuando nos reunimos en su oficina en marzo. El logo de la escuela es una antorcha como la de la Estatua de la Libertad, y hay una tradición escolar de levantar los puños cerrados para mostrar unidad y orgullo. “Toda la comunidad latina se pone de pie con sus antorchas en alto ―añadió―, y están cantando: ‘Russ-ell-ville, Russ-ell-ville’. Eso fue muy, muy poderoso”.

La pared de la oficina de Grimes estaba adornada con trofeos deportivos de eventos como este, junto con credenciales académicas enmarcadas, incluido su título de doctorado. Fue el primer miembro de su familia en ir a la universidad. También había fotos familiares y de antiguos alumnos, junto con una Biblia desgastada en su escritorio.

Batchelor, el expresidente de la junta escolar, dijo que, aunque en algunas ocasiones el proceso fue difícil, gracias a los esfuerzos sostenidos de Grimes y a su ejemplo, familias de todos los orígenes poco a poco vieron que mejorar los resultados de los estudiantes de inglés significaba que todo el sistema escolar mejorara. “Creo que la comunidad ha aceptado que hay espacio para todos nosotros”, dijo Batchelor.

No todas las ideas de Grimes funcionaron. Al principio, separó a los estudiantes de inglés del resto de los alumnos durante las clases curriculares, pero luego abandonó la idea cuando los maestros le dijeron que no estaba funcionando. Ahora, las escuelas combinan la enseñanza a los alumnos de inglés en grupos pequeños, por un lado, y por otro, con lecciones junto a toda la clase. Luego de que un acto de “vuelta a clases” demorara más de lo previsto, porque Grimes pidió que cada frase fuera traducida, él decidió realizar reuniones escolares simultáneas donde los padres podían elegir entre escuchar en inglés o en español.

Y no ha sido fácil sostener todo lo conseguido. Entre 2019 (cuando los asistentes de educación bilingües fueron contratados) y 2021, los estudiantes de inglés de algunos grados registraron grandes avances en los exámenes para medir su nivel de dominio del idioma inglés. Por ejemplo, los niveles de desempeño de los estudiantes de segundo grado pasaron del 46% al 84% y, los estudiantes de tercer grado, del 44% al 71%. Pero el progreso desde entonces no ha sido consistente; los porcentajes de estudiantes que dominan el idioma en algunos grados cayeron en 2023 por debajo de las cifras de 2019. Los administradores dicen que se debe a que la cantidad de estudiantes de inglés como segundo idioma sigue aumentando mientras que el número de educadores no, lo que significa que los niños reciben menos atención individualizada.

Pero la buena disposición que Grimes género al abrazar a las familias hispanas dio sus frutos de maneras inesperadas. En 2018, el distrito necesitaba reparar los techos de los edificios escolares pero no tenía los fondos para completarlos, dijo Grimes. Alguien de la comunidad hispana llamó a Grimes, ofreciendo hacer el trabajo gratis, dijo. “Ofrecieron voluntariamente su tiempo, sus esfuerzos, su energía y sus materiales, y completaron esos edificios”, él me dijo.

Hoy en día, los comercios hispanos dominan el centro de la ciudad, un área de unas pocas manzanas que hasta hace poco estaba llena de edificios deteriorados y vacíos. Hay tres panaderías mexicanas, dos tiendas de comestibles atinas, tres barberías, salones de manicura y una carnicería. Los dueños de los comercios se esfuerzan por apoyar al sistema escolar, dijo Yaneli Bahena, quien hace cuatro años se graduó  en el distrito escolar de Russellville y ahora es propietaria de un negocio llamado The Ville Nutrition.

Un restaurante mexicano se encargó del catering para un evento de “vuelta a clases” de 200 personas, las panaderías suelen donar pan y dulces, y algunas peluquerías ofrecen cortes de pelo gratuitos antes del comienzo del año escolar.  El campo de fútbol está rodeado de carteles de negocios hispanos locales que han patrocinado al equipo. La propia Bahena patrocina comidas para eventos escolares, y dona mochilas y material escolar. “La escuela me dio un sentimiento de esperanza”, dijo. “Tuve muy buenos maestros. Todos se preocupaban por mi”. En la escuela secundaria, notó que, a diferencia de años anteriores, se incluía a los estudiantes en las excursiones y se los animaba a cursar materias optativas. Bahena dijo que algunos de sus compañeros de clase se quedaron en la escuela en lugar de abandonar los estudios para irse a trabajar gracias al “empuje de ayuda” de los educadores. Ella también le dio crédito a Grimes: “Todo lo que han puesto para estos niños no sería posible sin el superintendente”.

Abogando a nivel estatal 

En 2019, ansioso por encontrar socios y apoyo para su labor con los estudiantes de inglés, Grimes comenzó a hablar con otros líderes del distrito que enfrentaban desafíos parecidos, y a intercambiar sobre cómo sería abogar por esos estudiantes en todo el estado. A nivel nacional, aproximadamente cinco millones de niños son estudiantes de inglés y la mayoría de ellos hablan español en casa. Pero, aunque la mayoría son ciudadanos estadounidenses, rara vez reciben el apoyo que necesitan, en parte porque su educación ha sido politizada, según Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana, una exsuperintendente y secretaria auxiliar de educación K-12 de Estados Unidos en la administración de Barack Obama. “La gente ve el mundo (en términos de) una cantidad de recursos limitada. Entonces siente que, ‘si les estás dando tal cantidad a ellos, entonces me la estás quitando a mi’”, dijo.

En parte como consecuencia de dicha actitud, dicen los expertos, las calificaciones de lectura y matemática de estudiantes de aprendizaje de inglés a nivel nacional se encuentran entre las más bajas de todos los subgrupos de estudiantes, sus índices de graduación de la escuela secundaria van a la zaga y tienen menos probabilidades de ir a la universidad. “Necesitamos a estos niños, y los necesitamos que se eduquen”, dijo Patricia Gándara, codirectora del Proyecto de Derechos Civiles en la UCLA y experta en estudiantes de inglés como segundo idioma. “Representan una parte muy grande del futuro de este país”.

Al año siguiente, en 2020, Grimes fundó una coalición de superintendentes llamada Alabama Leaders Advocating for English Learners (Líderes de Alabama abogando por los estudiantes de inglés), bajo el paraguas de una operación estatal, el Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (Consejo de líderes de escuelas de Alabama). “Su pasión era evidente y no se iba a detener”, dijo Hollingsworth, de Superintendentes Escolares de Alabama. “Si sigues tocando la puerta, tocando la puerta, eventualmente alguien va a abrir la puerta. Y eso fue más o menos lo que pasó”.

La coalición de superintendentes encabezada por Grimes logró presionar a la legislatura para obtener más fondos para los estudiantes de inglés, hasta $150 por estudiante, frente a los $50 a $75 de 2015. Los distritos con una población de estudiantes de inglés superior al 10% reciben $300 por estudiante. Para Russellville, eso significó un aumento cuadruplicado de los fondos dedicados a los estudiantes de inglés, llegando a $400.000, en un momento en el que los fondos de la ciudad disminuyeron. Grimes recibió un premio estatal por sus “excepcionales aportes y defensa incansable de la financiación para los estudiantes de inglés en las escuelas de Alabama”. Gracias, en parte, a sus esfuerzos, el estado ahora tiene apoyo educativo para los distritos, 12 instructores y un director estatal de aprendizaje de inglés. Grimes también abogó por que las calificaciones de los estudiantes de inglés en los exámenes solo se tuvieran en cuenta en el boletín estatal de notas después de que hubieran estado matriculados por cinco años (aproximadamente lo que tardan los estudiantes en aprender un nuevo idioma). Esa ley, que tiene sus críticos, entró en vigor el año pasado.

Barnett, del Consejo de Educación de la ciudad de Guntersville, dijo que los esfuerzos de Grimes por los estudiantes de inglés ayudaron a persuadir a otros líderes de distrito de que ellos también podían hacer ese trabajo. “Russellville es un gran lugar, pero no hay nada especial allí que no pueda suceder en cualquier otro lugar”, dijo. “No hay nada en el agua. Definitivamente se puede replicar”.

Durante siete años, Grimes y la junta escolar de Russellville trabajaron bien juntos, dijeron tanto él como exmiembros de la junta. Pero el disgusto de otros líderes de la ciudad surgió pronto, me dijeron varias personas. Grimes había comenzado a chocar por cuestiones de financiamiento con el alcalde de la ciudad, David Grissom, quien fue electo por primera vez en 2012. Un residente de Russellville cercando al funcionamiento del gobierno de la ciudad ―que pidió no ser identificado por temor a represalias― dijo que Grimes había hecho enojar a Grissom y a algunos miembros del ayuntamiento desde el principio, cuando señaló públicamente que su presupuesto para las escuelas era de $200.000 menos que el de su predecesor. (McDowell, escribió un correo electrónico en el que me decía que antes de ocupar el puesto se le informó a Grimes sobre el recorte y que había estado de acuerdo con el mismo). Los miembros del ayuntamiento “no tomaron bien que se les pusiera contra la pared o que se les hiciera quedar mal. Así que, desde ese momento, Grimes estuvo marcado”, me dijo el residente. Grimes también enfureció a Grissom cuando se negó a apoyar públicamente al candidato preferido del alcalde para un puesto en el ayuntamiento, en 2020, prefiriendo mantenerse neutral, me dijeron varias personas. 

Al responderme, Grissom no hizo comentarios sobre esos detalles específicos, pero escribió que “había entrevistado y había sido entrevistado por varias cientos de personas de todas las razas y etnias” sobre el desempeño de Grimes y que algunas de las personas con las que habló estaban insatisfechas con el superintendente. Planteó preguntas sobre si Grimes había estado en su oficina a diario, si trataba a los empleados de manera diferente y si gastaba demasiados fondos del distrito en conferencias. Grimes dijo que a veces viajaba por todo el estado por su trabajo, que las conferencias eran para el desarrollo profesional y (estaban) aprobadas por la junta, y que, como líder, a veces tenía que tomar decisiones que desagradaban a la gente, porque estaba sopesando diferentes perspectivas y necesidades. Dijo que estaba asombrado por las declaraciones del alcalde, porque ni el alcalde ni nadie más le había mencionado tales preocupaciones anteriormente. Gist y Batchelor, antiguos miembros de la junta escolar, dijeron que nunca habían escuchado semejantes quejas de nadie en los casi ocho años que llevaban trabajando con Grimes. “Ni una sola palabra”, dijo Gist. El expediente laboral de Grimes no contenía información alguna que indicara que había preocupaciones con el desempeño del superintendente. Ni el alcalde ni el abogado de la junta escolar ofrecieron aclaraciones sobre por qué, si existían tales quejas, no fueron comunicadas a Grimes. 

Mientras tanto, a medida que Grimes seguía invirtiendo esfuerzos para ayudar a los estudiantes de inglés, sus números aumentaban todos los años, duplicándose durante su mandato, hasta alcanzar el 33% de los estudiantes.

Después de aquella elección para miembros del ayuntamiento de 2020, en un esfuerzo ampliamente visto como destinado a destituir a Grimes como superintendente, Grissom e integrantes del ayuntamiento comenzaron a reemplazar a los cinco miembros de la designada junta escolar que había apoyado a Grimes. (En su correo electrónico, el alcalde Grissom escribió que los miembros del ayuntamiento tienen el derecho a reemplazar a los integrantes de la junta escolar y que lo habían hecho también previo al mandato de Grimes). En mayo de 2023, Greg Trapp, el miembro de la junta escolar, le informó al superintendente que no iban a renovar su contrato al expirar el año siguiente.

Gist, el exmiembro de la junta escolar, dijo que, aunque en un principio quedó sorprendido por la decisión del Ayuntamiento de reemplazarlo a él y a otros, tenía lógica dada la antipatía que tenía dicho organismo hacia Grimes. “Así es la política en un pueblo pequeño. Para que ellos pudieran controlar el sistema, tenían que deshacerse de los miembros de la junta escolar que estaban haciendo las cosas bien”, dijo. Y agregó: “Esa era la única manera en la que podían sacarlo”. Lo que les disgustó fue saber que la decisión no estaba motivada por lo que era mejor para los estudiantes. “Si hubieran querido reemplazarme por alguien mejor, eso está bien”, me dijo Gist. “Pero cuando lo hicieron por razones personales, eso me molestó”.  (Intenté comunicarme con Trapp por lo menos tres veces, y también traté de contactar a otros miembros de la junta, y no respondieron a mis solicitudes de comentarios.) Batchelor, quien fue reemplazado poco después de que votó a favor de mantener a Grimes, también dijo que la decisión mayoritaria de la junta fue un error: “Creo que es el mejor superintendente en el estado de Alabama”.

En marzo de 2024, el distrito nombró a un nuevo superintendente, Tim Guinn, un exdirector de la Preparatoria de Russellville, quien también había sido candidato a superintendente cuando Grimes fue electo. Más recientemente, había trabajado como superintendente del distrito de Satsuma. Guinn no respondió a repetidas solicitudes de entrevista.

Programas se desmoronan

Algunos de los programas y las prácticas que Grimes implementó parecen estarse desmoronando. A partir de junio, la mayoría de los asistentes bilingües, cuyos salarios se pagan con dinero de la asistencia por la pandemia y expira en septiembre de 2024, no habían sido contratados de nuevo. Además, los contratos de algunos docentes bilingües no fueron renovados. La junta escolar no ha dicho si tiene previsto seguir adelante con las mejoras que Grimes había planificado para los estudiantes de inglés de secundaria y preparatoria. Una escuela chárter de inmersión en dos idiomas, por la que Grimes había abogado y la junta había aprobado, estaba programada para abrir en 2025. Sin embargo, el proyecto ha sido descartado. (McDowell no comentó en un correo electrónico sobre los planes del distrito para los estudiantes de inglés. En cuanto a los asistentes bilingües, escribió que algunos de ellos no habían sido recontratados de nuevo porque los subsidios federales habían expirado. Grimes dijo que tenía previsto pagar por sus salarios mediante una combinación de fondos de las reservas del distrito escolar y fondos resultantes de la jubilación de algunos docentes: “Tomas decisiones con base a tus prioridades”, comentó. 

Grimes y la junta escolar habían acordado que él permanecería en su cargo hasta el final del año escolar de 2023-2024, mientras el distrito buscaba un reemplazo. Pero una semana después de mi visita a Russellville, McDowell acusó a Grimes de intimidar a la gente que hablara conmigo, según Grimes, y le dijo al superintendente que no podía pisar propiedad escolar o hablar con empleados del distrito fuera de su papel de padre, según Grimes. En ese momento, Grimes dejó las responsabilidades cotidianas de su cargo, pero seguirá en la comunidad hasta que su hija de 14 años termine la secundaria. Su esposa también sigue siendo maestra en el distrito. (En un correo electrónico y en una entrevista, McDowell dijo que nunca había acusado a Grimes de intimidar a nadie y que tampoco le prohibió al superintendente pisar terreno escolar.)  Fue también después de mi visita que más de una docena de educadores con los que hablé en Russellville me dijeron que ya no se sentían cómodos siendo identificados, por temor a perder sus empleos. The Hechinger Report y palabra acordaron retrasar la publicación de este artículo hasta que Grimes recibiera su último sueldo el 30 de junio.

En julio de 2024, Grimes empezó a trabajar a tiempo completo en Reach University, la organización sin fines de lucro que forma a asistentes bilingües para que se conviertan en docentes, como su director regional de asociaciones en Alabama, Misisipi y Tennessee. 

Los últimos seis meses han pasado factura. Grimes ha dicho poco públicamente sobre su partida y le ha dicho a la mayoría de las personas de la comunidad que se está jubilando. Cuando estuvimos almorzando juntos en un restaurante local, El Patrón, otros comensales se acercaron una y otra vez para desearle lo mejor. Dos de ellos le dijeron en broma que se veía demasiado joven para jubilarse. Grimes se rió y les siguió la corriente pero, una vez que se fueron, sus hombros se hundieron y parpadeó para contener las lágrimas.

“He pasado mi carrera muy entregado, muy comprometido en hacer lo que era mejor para los niños”, me dijo en voz baja. “No sentía que yo mereciera acabar de esta manera”. 

Afirmó que no se arrepiente de los cambios que hizo por los estudiantes de inglés de la ciudad. “Jesús amaba a la gente que los demás no amaban. Y ese fue parte de su mensaje: amas a tus enemigos, amas a tus vecinos, amas a los extranjeros y amas al pecador”, dijo. “Yo veo a Dios en esos niños”.

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