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.”

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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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What you need to know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What we are reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Characteristics associated with English Learners’ academic performance

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

A framework for digital equity

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

How Americans feel about hot-button education issues

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

From the vault

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

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

Et cetera

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, are persistent critics of public K-12 schools and higher education and want to overhaul many aspects of how the institutions operate. On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly called for the elimination of the federal Education Department, arguing that states should have full authority for educating children. (Abolishing the department has been a long-standing goal of many Republicans, but it’s highly unlikely to win enough support in Congress to happen.)

Trump also supports efforts to privatize the K-12 school system, including through vouchers for private schools. Both he and Vance have launched repeated attacks on both K-12 and higher education institutions over practices that seek to advance racial diversity and tolerance and policies that provide protections to transgender students, among other issues. The candidates have also argued that higher ed institutions suppress the free speech of conservative students; as president, Trump took at least one action to tie funding to free speech protections. 

“Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we’re doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work,” Trump said in a September 2023 video describing his education proposals.

We will update this guide as the candidates reveal more information about their education plans. You can also read about the Democratic 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

Even though Trump launched his first campaign for president with a child care policy proposal to expand access to care through tax code changes, child care largely took a back seat during his presidency. That said, there were some notable actions: Before the pandemic, Trump signed a tax law that increased the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child, although research found higher-income families benefited significantly more from the change than low-income families. In 2018 he proposed cuts to the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a federal program that helps low-income families pay for child care, but ultimately approved funding increases passed by Congress in both 2018 and 2020.

In 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act, which allotted an additional $3.5 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. The supplemental fund was also meant to support the child care needs of essential workers. The CARES Act also provided supplemental funding to Head Start. —Jackie Mader

Family leave and tax credits

Also in 2020, Trump supported a bipartisan paid family leave bill, although it was more limited in scope and benefits than other paid leave proposals. Trump’s 2021 budget proposal called for eliminating the federal Preschool Development Grant program and decreased funding for a federal program that helps low-income college students pay for child care.

Vance has focused on legislation that encourages and supports parents to stay at home with their young children. In 2023, he co-sponsored a bill that would prevent employers from clawing back health care premiums the employers paid during a parent’s time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act if the parent chose not to return to work. He has been a vocal opponent of universal child care and instead has expressed support for more tax credits for parents. In mid-August, Vance expressed support for a $5,000 per child tax credit, an increase from the current maximum of $2,000 per child.— J.M.— J.M.

K-12

Artificial intelligence

In 2019, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to focus on research and development around AI, and a year later his administration announced that $140 million would be awarded to several National Science Foundation-led programs to conduct research on AI at universities nationwide.

On the campaign trail this year, however, Trump said he will reverse the executive order on artificial intelligence signed by Biden last October, calling it a hindrance to AI innovation. Both Trump and his running mate, Vance, have disagreed with the Biden administration on what AI regulations should look like. While education leaders have called for regulations and guardrails around AI use and development, Vance has called for less regulation. — Javeria Salman

Immigrant, Native and rural students

The Republican presidential ticket and official party platform espouse anti-immigrant positions, advocating for mass deportations of anyone who entered the country without legal documentation. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank behind Project 2025, earlier this year released a set of policy recommendations on undocumented immigrants in U.S. public schools that would directly challenge a long-standing Supreme Court decision requiring states to provide a free education to all students regardless of their immigration status. While Trump has tried to distance himself from Heritage and its policy proposals, his running mate wrote the forward to an upcoming book from Project 2025’s former leader and many former Trump administration officials were involved in crafting the plan.

With respect to Native students, Trump as president released a “Putting America’s First Peoples First” brief outlining his promises to Indian Country, including access to college scholarships for Native American students, creating new tribally operated charter schools and improving the beleaguered agency that oversees K-12 education on reservations. Trump also pitched a 25 percent boost in funding for Native language instruction.

Vance, in an interview before Trump took office in 2017, encouraged the new administration to focus on education as a tool to help struggling rural communities. He said increasing options for students after high school would prepare them for jobs in a “knowledge economy” and give them more choices beyond pursuing a minimum-wage service sector job or going to a four-year college. “There’s no options in between and consequently people don’t see much opportunity,” Vance said. — Neal Morton

LGBTQ+ students and Title IX

In 2017, Trump rolled back Obama-era guidance that offered protections for transgender students to use school bathrooms based on their gender identity. His campaign website says he plans to reverse any gender-affirming care policies implemented by President Joe Biden, who  signed an executive order in 2022 encouraging the Departments of Education and of Health and Human Services to expand access to health care and gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ students. He has also warned schools that, if reelected, he would cut or eliminate federal funding if teachers or school employees suggest “to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.” Vance sponsored a Senate bill last year that would ban medical gender-affirming care for minors, but it has not advanced.

The Trump administration significantly changed how colleges handle sexual assault allegations through Title IX during his time in office, adding a requirement for colleges to conduct live disciplinary hearings and allow cross-examinations in sexual assault cases; this was largely undone by the Biden administration. Trump said he plans to roll back Title IX rules the Biden administration implemented that expanded protections against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Trump has also said he would prevent transgender athletes from participating in sports teams based on their gender identity; school rules on this issue are now decided at the state- or school-level with a Biden administration proposal stalled. — Ariel Gilreath

School choice

Expanding school choice through private-school vouchers has been a key part of Trump’s education policy, but he had little success in getting his most ambitious efforts passed by Congress. One early accomplishment came via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. His administration made it possible for parents to use their children’s 529 college savings plan to pay for up to $10,000 annually in private school tuition.

His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a longtime school-choice supporter in her home state of Michigan, made several high-profile attempts to support charter schools and expand private- school voucher expansion. DeVos attempted to set aside $400 million for charter schools and private-school vouchers in the 2018 federal budget, and in 2019, she promoted a $5 billion tax credit program for private-school vouchers, but neither proposal cleared Congress. During a speech in June 2020, Trump called school choice the “civil rights statement of the year.” Later that year, after widespread school closures, Trump issued an executive order allowing states to use money from a federal poverty program to help low-income families pay for private schooling, homeschooling, special education services or tutoring. His campaign website says he supports state and federal level universal school choice, and it highlights programs in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. — A.G.

School meals

The Trump administration made several attempts to roll back lunch nutrition standards that had been championed by Michelle Obama, arguing that schools needed more flexibility and the standards were leading to wasted food.

However, in 2020, a federal judge ended the Trump administration’s efforts to ease requirements for whole grains and to allow more sodium in school meals, among other changes. The administration did not follow proper procedures in easing those nutrition mandates, the court ruled. — Christina A. Samuels

School prayer

Trump has been an advocate for what his campaign calls “the fundamental right to pray in school.” As president, he issued guidance intended to protect students who want to pray or worship in school. The outcome of Kennedy v. Bremerton, the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that a football coach had a constitutional right to pray on the field after games, was shaped by the three justices that Trump appointed to the court. Some nonprofit and legal groups have criticized Trump’s positions, arguing that he muddies the separation of church and state and that the real problem is not suppression of religious freedom in schools but children who feel pressured into religious expression. — Caroline Preston

School safety, student mental health

When it comes to school safety, Trump has supported policies that prioritize the “hardening” of schools and strict disciplinary approaches. According to his 2024 campaign website, if reelected, Trump would “completely overhaul federal standards on school discipline to get out-of-control troublemakers OUT of the classroom and INTO reform schools and corrections facilities.” He would also support schools that allow “highly trained teachers” to carry concealed weapons in classrooms and hire veterans and others as armed guards at schools. Regarding youth mental health, his campaign says he would direct the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate the effects of “common psychiatric drugs” and gender-affirming hormone therapy on young people.  

Vance has taken similar positions. During his 2022 Senate run, he said he supported Ohio’s new law that lowered the amount of training required for teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms. In Congress, he raised concerns about elements of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the gun safety law passed in 2022 after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and co-sponsored two bills that would have altered language in the bill to permit schools to buy weapons for use in archery, hunting and sharp-shooting programs. (A similar bill introduced in the House ultimately passed.) Vance also sponsored a bill that would direct the education secretary to study the use of mobile devices in K-12 schools — a mental health concern — and establish a pilot program to support schools’ efforts to become device-free. — C.P.

Special education

The Trump administration attempted to roll back a rule that requires districts to track students in special education by race and ethnicity in order to determine if minority students are more likely to be identified for special education, face harsher discipline, or be placed in classrooms separate from their general-education peers. A judge dismissed the administration’s efforts to eliminate this policy on procedural grounds. — C.A.S.

Teachers unions, pandemic recovery

Teachers unions, unlike some other labor groups, did not work well with the Trump administration and do not back the Trump/Vance ticket. Trump’s 2024 platform advocates undercutting some of the protections teachers unions support. It says, “Republicans will support schools that focus on Excellence and Parental Rights. We will support ending Teacher Tenure, adopting Merit pay, and allowing various publicly supported Educational models.”

His administration pushed schools to reopen ahead of the 2020-21 school year but without the kinds of safeguards Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said were essential to get teachers and kids back together, in person. Trump signed two broad relief packages passed by Congress in 2020 that included more than $100 billion in aid for K-12 schools to recover from the pandemic. — Nirvi Shah

Teaching about U.S. history and race

Both Trump and Vance have attacked critical race theory and advanced concerns that K-12 teachers are stirring anti-white bias among students. As president, Trump criticized the 1619 Project, a New York Times history document arguing that the enslavement of Black Americans was central to U.S. history. He established the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission as a rebuke to the project; its January 2021 report called for “restoring patriotic education” and railed against “identity politics.” The Biden administration rescinded the commission, but Trump has pledged to reinstate it if reelected.

Vance, meanwhile, made education culture war issues central to his 2022 run for Senate. On his campaign website, he pledged to cut funding for state universities in Ohio that teach critical race theory and “to force our schools to give an honest, patriotic account of American history.” — C.P.

Title I

During each of his four years in office, Trump submitted budget proposals that would have consolidated more than two dozen programs, including Title I, the largest source of federal funding for schools. The program is intended to support services at schools that educate children from low-income families. Congress rejected the administration’s efforts to consolidate the programs — C.A.S.

Higher education

Accreditation

The Trump campaign has gone after college accrediting agencies, which serve as the gatekeepers for billions of dollars in federal student aid, claiming that the entities are part of the “radical Left” and have “allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” (The fact that some accrediting agencies have added or considered standards related to diversity, equity and inclusion also has drawn ire from many on the right.)

In a video posted to his campaign site, Trump pledges to “fire” existing accrediting agencies. The government does have regulations that these entities must follow, but revoking their recognition would require a lengthy Education Department review.

Trump goes on to say that he would open applications for new accreditors to impose standards that include “defending the American tradition and Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly,” and “implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money’s worth.” — Sarah Butrymowicz

Affirmative action

Both Trump and Vance have taken a hard stance against affirmative action and diversity initiatives. Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning affirmative action in college admissions, calling it a “great day for America.” “We’re going back to all merit-based — and that’s the way it should be,” he wrote on TruthSocial.

Following that decision, Vance wrote a letter to college presidents warning, “The United States Senate is prepared to use its full investigative powers to uncover circumvention, covert or otherwise, of the Supreme Court’s ruling.” Last December, he introduced a bill to create an inspector general’s office to investigate discrimination in college admissions and financial aid, which would take federal aid away from colleges found in violation. — Meredith Kolodner

Community college

Trump has said people don’t understand what community colleges are and suggested they be renamed vocational or technical colleges (though they are not the same thing). He has not supported tuition-free community college, but last year, he pitched the idea of a free online college he called American Academy, be paid for by taxes on private universities. Experts have said this plan is unlikely to take hold. — Olivia Sanchez

DEI

As the agitation about DEI initiatives intensified in 2020, Trump issued an executive order that banned diversity training that was “divisive,” which applied to federal agencies and recipients of federal grants, including universities.

Vance has also criticized DEI initiatives, calling them “racism, plain and simple.” Last December, he wrote a letter to the president of Ohio State University, probing its hiring practices and its curriculum. “If universities keep pushing racial hatred, euphemistically called DEI, we need to look at their funding,” he wrote on X. — M.K.

For-profit colleges and universities

Trump has long been seen as a friend of the for-profit college sector. Before he became president, he ran the for-profit Trump University, which trained students for careers in real estate. He was subsequently sued by former students who claimed the college had misled them; the case was settled with a $25 million payout. While in office, he took several steps to make it easier for for-profit colleges to thrive, and enrollment at those institutions began to rise in 2020. His administration rolled back the Obama-era gainful employment rule, which required for-profit colleges to meet certain benchmarks to ensure that a majority of graduates were making enough to pay back their loans. As president, Trump vetoed a bill that would have provided debt forgiveness to veterans defrauded by for-profit colleges.— M.K.

Free/hate speech

Trump considers himself an advocate of free speech, but he has attacked the speech of others and drawn criticism for comments about immigrants and other groups that some argue amount to hate speech.

In 2019, Trump signed an executive order requiring that colleges and universities commit to promoting free speech and free inquiry to continue receiving research funding from 12 federal agencies. He said this was to protect conservative students from being silenced and discriminated against. “Under the guise of ‘speech codes’ and ‘safe spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings,’ these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity, and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today,” he said when signing the order.

Vance also has argued that conservative students are being silenced on college campuses. When he was running for Senate, Vance gave a speech entitled “Universities are the enemy” in 2021, calling the institutions corrupt and arguing they disseminate lies rather than truth and knowledge.

In the same speech, he called his alma mater, Yale University Law School, “clearly a liberal-biased place” at the time he graduated in 2013, adding that when he returned five years later to promote his book, “it felt totally totalitarian.” “It felt like the sort of place where if you were a conservative student who had conservative ideas you were terrified to utter them,” Vance said. — O.S.

Pell grants

The Trump administration proposed cutting the Pell grant surplus fund twice, including a proposed $3.9 billion diversion that would have funded several unrelated initiatives, including a NASA plan to take astronauts back to the moon. Though dipping into the Pell reserves wouldn’t have affected students already awarded Pell grants, education advocates argued that it would have imperiled funding for future students. None of these proposals were approved by Congress. A Trump plan to allow students to use Pell grants on short-term programs was unsuccessful.

Trump proposed formalizing an Obama-era pilot program that made incarcerated people eligible for Pell grants. Congress approved this expansion in the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in December 2020. — O.S.

Student loan forgiveness

As president, Trump proposed eliminating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which wipes out loan debt for people who work in the public sector or nonprofits. During his tenure, the Department of Education also stopped enforcing a regulation that provided an avenue for debt relief to students who had been defrauded by their colleges.

Trump praised the three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court for their votes to strike down Biden’s broad debt forgiveness plan. He has attacked the Biden administration’s continued efforts to cancel debt as “vile” and “not even legal.”

Vance has taken a similar stance on large-scale loan forgiveness, saying on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America.” But he did co-sponsor a bipartisan bill earlier this year that would allow parents to get loans discharged if their child became permanently disabled. — S.B.

Workforce development

Federal funding for career and technical education, which had been stagnant for more than a decade before Trump came into office, rose significantly during his administration. In 2018, Trump renewed the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act — one of states’ primary sources of federal funding for CTE programs – and reduced regulations on how states are required to spend the money. In 2020, he proposed one of the largest-ever increases in funding for career and technical education, even as he sought to cut the overall budget for the Department of Education. 

Trump also established an advisory council tasked with developing a national strategy to train people for high-demand jobs. His campaign website says he plans to provide “funding preferences” for schools that help students find internships and jobs and for schools that have career counselors for students. His website also highlights the Cristo Rey Network — a group of Catholic schools across the country where students are required to work at part-time, entry-level jobs one day a week during the school year throughout high school. — A.G.

This story about Republicans 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.

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A few months ago, my colleague Jill Barshay wrote about a survey that found that many high school math teachers cobble together curriculum from the internet and other sources.

Readers reacted, particularly teachers who were angry about how researchers characterized them as going “rogue” for pulling together their own resources. 

After reading Jill’s article, I decided to dig a little deeper and speak to some of those teachers. I wanted to know why they would willingly spend hours of their time to create a curriculum when one was already provided by their district. I was also curious if this was more widespread than just math teachers,

What I found was that this is a very common practice. In my article, which published recently with our partners at Chalkbeat, teachers argued that off-the-shelf curriculum often doesn’t meet the needs of their students — because it doesn’t engage students in a meaningful way; it isn’t culturally relevant and inclusive; or it’s not designed to support students with disabilities or English language learners. For some subjects, like history, teachers say it’s hard to find comprehensive curricula that not only includes histories of marginalized communities but also includes a state’s local communities. 

Is deviating too far from a scripted curriculum provided by a school district really so bad?

The researchers and curriculum experts I spoke with said that for the most part, teachers should use a high-quality curriculum that is grade-appropriate and aligned to a state’s standards. But, they also acknowledge that some modification of a curriculum is “healthy.” In some cases, a school district might actually expect teachers to create their own curriculum, using state standards — and those teachers say they like having the freedom and flexibility to do so. 

What do you think about a do-it-yourself approach to curriculum resources? Does it potentially cause more harm than good? 

Delving into the downward trend in math scores around the world: When the Program for International Student Assessment released its results from 2022, it showed that math scores had fallen steeply. But for many countries, including some of the largest and wealthiest in the world, the slide in mathematics scores has been going on for years. My colleague Christina A. Samuels explores possible causes, and how countries are responding. If you’re interested in more in-depth math reporting, sign up for our new limited-run newsletter that will be devoted to mathematics teaching and learning. 

In other news: I was struck by a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau showing how financial companies profit off of school lunches. Companies that contract with school districts to process lunch payments charge fees of $2.37, or 4.4 percent of the total transaction, on average, every time money is added to a student’s account. That’s costing families about $100 million collectively each year, the report found.

More on the Future of Learning

 “As climate changes fuels hotter temperatures, kids are learning less,” The Hechinger Report

“How could Project 2025 change education?,” The Hechinger Report

“Billions of dollars for ed tech in schools are now in jeopardy. Here’s why,” Education Week

“American students are losing ground in reading and math as COVID relief dollars run dry,” USA Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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There’s little doubt that artificial intelligence will fundamentally alter how classrooms operate. But just how much bot-fueled instruction is too much? I chatted with Hechinger contributor Chris Berdik about his recent story, co-published with Wired, that explores these themes and how some schools are deploying AI assistants in the classroom. 

Q: Why did you want to explore this question of how, and in what ways, AI can replace teachers? 

From the first exploratory interviews I did on this topic, I was surprised to learn how deep the history of AI trying to teach went. There’s so much hype (and doom) currently around generative AI, and it really is remarkable and powerful, but it puts things into perspective to learn that people have tried to harness AI to teach for many decades, with pretty limited results in the end. So, then I heard the story of Watson, an AI engine that quickly and easily dispatched Jeopardy! champions, but couldn’t hack it as a tutor. It clearly had the necessary knowledge at its beck and call. What didn’t it have? If we got beyond the hype of the latest generative AI, could it muster that critical pedagogic component that Watson lacked? And, finally, if the answer was no, what then was its best classroom use? Those were my starting points.

Q: How hesitant or eager were teachers like Daniel Thompson, whose classroom you visited, to use AI assistants? 

Thompson was cautiously optimistic. In fact, he was pretty eager to use the tool, precisely because it could make the other apps and multimedia he used less cumbersome, and navigating them less onerous. But Thompson did a few quick stress tests of the assistant, by asking it to answer questions about the local Atlanta sports teams that had nothing to do with his curriculum, checking the guardrails by asking it to compose a fake message firing a colleague. The assistant declined those requests, showing once again that occasionally the most useful thing AI can do is gently tell us we’ve asked too much of it.

Q: You wrote that students weren’t interested in engaging with IBM Watson. Why not? 

As more than one source explained to me, the process of learning includes moments of challenge and friction, which can be “busy work” drudgery, but is often times at the heart of what it means to learn, to puzzle over ideas, to truly create, to find one’s own way through to understanding. And I think that students (like a lot of us) see AI as a tool that can take care of some onerous, time consuming, or tedious task on our behalf. So, it’s going to take a lot more for AI to engage students when its job is to guide them through the friction of learning rather than just be an escape hatch from it. 

Q: As more of these tools enter the classroom this school year, what will you be watching for? 

I may have a somewhat esoteric interest in what’s next with AI in classrooms. I’m personally really interested in how schools will handle critical AI literacy, where both students and educators devote the time and resources to think critically about what AI is, the wonderful things it can do, and just as importantly what it can’t, or shouldn’t do on our behalf.

Here are a few key stories to bring you up to speed:

PROOF POINTS: Teens are looking to AI for information and answers, two surveys show

My colleague Jill Barshay wrote about two recent surveys on how teens are using AI to brainstorm ideas, study for tests or get answers for questions they might be too embarrassed to ask their parents or friends. Barshay pointed out that both surveys indicate that Black, Hispanic and Asian American youth are often quick to adopt this new technology.

How AI could transform the way schools test kids

Back in the spring, my colleague Caroline Preston and I explored what AI advancements means for the future of assessments and standardized testing. Many experts believe that AI has the potential to better evaluate a students’ true knowledge and personalize tests to individual students. However, experts also warn that schools and test designers should proceed cautiously, keeping in mind the disparities in access to AI and technology and concerns of biases embedded into tools.

AI might disrupt math and computer science classes – in a good way

Last year, as part of a series on math instruction, we published a story by Seattle Times writer Claire Bryan about how some math and computer science teachers are embracing AI. Teachers say that AI can help them plan math lessons and write a variety of math problems geared toward different levels of instruction. The story was produced in partnership with The Education Reporting Collaborative, an eight-newsroom effort.

More on the Future of Learning

“PROOF POINTS: Asian American students lose more points in an AI essay grading study — but researchers don’t know why,” The Hechinger Report

“An education chatbot company collapsed. Where did the student data go?,” EdSurge

“More than 378,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine,” The Washington Post

“It takes a village: A Brooklyn high school and NYC nonprofits team up to enroll older immigrants,” Chalkbeat

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

The post AI vs. humans: Who comes out ahead? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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I’ve been reporting on data science education for two years now, and it’s become clear to me that what’s missing is a national framework for teaching data skills and literacy, similar to the Common Core standards for math or the Next Generation Science Standards.

Data literacy is increasingly critical for many jobs in science, technology and beyond, and so far schools in 28 states offer some sort of data science course. But those classes vary widely in content and approach, in part because there’s little agreement around what exactly data science education should look like. 

Last week, there was finally some movement on this front — a group of K-12 educators, students, higher ed officials and industry leaders presented initial findings on what they believe students should know about data by the time they graduate from high school. 

Data Science 4 Everyone, an initiative based at the University of Chicago, assembled 11 focus groups that met over five months to debate what foundational knowledge on data and artificial intelligence students should acquire not only in dedicated data science classes but also in math, English, science and other subjects. 

Among the groups’ proposals for what every graduating high schooler should be able to do: 

• Collect, process and “clean” data
• Analyze and interpret data, and be able to create visualizations with that data
• Identify biases in data, and think critically about how the data was generated and how it could be used responsibly 

On August 15, Data Science 4 Everyone plans to release a draft of its initial recommendations, and will be asking educators, parents and others across the country to vote on those ideas and give other feedback. 

Here are a few key stories to bring you up to speed:

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

Earlier this year, I reported on how a California school district created a data science course in 2020, to offer an alternative math course to students who might struggle in traditional junior and senior math courses such as Algebra II, Pre-Calculus and Calculus, or didn’t plan to pursue science or math fields or attend a four-year college. California has been at the center of the debate on how much math, and what math, students need to know before high school graduation. 

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

Hechinger contributor Steven Yoder wrote about how districts that try to ‘detrack’ — or stop sorting students by perceived ability — often face parental pushback. But he identified a handful of districts that have forged ahead successfully with detracking.

PROOF POINTS: Stanford’s Jo Boaler talks about her new book ‘MATH-ish’ and takes on her critics

My colleague Jill Barshay spoke with Boaler, the controversial Stanford math education professor who has advocated for data science education, detracking and other strategies to change how math is taught. Jill writes that the academic fight over Boaler’s findings reflects wider weaknesses in education research.

What’s next: This summer and fall I’m reporting on other math topics, including a program to get more Black and Hispanic students into and through Calculus, and efforts by some states to revise algebra instruction. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics and other math ideas you think we should be writing about.  

More on the Future of Learning

“How did students pitch themselves to colleges after last year’s affirmative action ruling?,” The Hechinger Report

“PROOF POINTS: This is your brain. This is your brain on screens,” The Hechinger Report

“Budget would require districts to post plans to educate kids in emergencies,” EdSource

“Turmoil surrounds LA’s new AI student chatbot as tech firm furloughs staff just 3 months after launch,” The 74

“Oklahoma education head discusses why he’s mandating public schools teach the Bible,” PBS

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

The post Do we need a ‘Common Core’ for data science education?  appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

An AI chatbot that walks students through how to solve math problems. An AI instructional coach designed to help English teachers create lesson plans and project ideas. An AI tutor that helps middle and high schoolers become better writers.

These aren’t tools created by education technology companies. They were designed by teachers tasked with using AI to solve a problem their students were experiencing.

Over five weeks this spring, about 300 people – teachers, school and district leaders, higher ed faculty, education consultants and AI researchers – came together to learn how to use AI and develop their own basic AI tools and resources. The professional development opportunity was designed by technology nonprofit Playlab.ai and faculty at the Relay Graduate School of Education.

For many of the educators, the workshop was their first exposure to generative AI models and writing code. Educators say they want opportunities like this one: According to a recent report from nonprofit Educators for Excellence, many teachers say they are hesitant to use AI in the classroom but would feel more comfortable with training about it.

During the workshop, Karen Zutali, an English teacher who works in the Canton City School District in Ohio, created a chatbot to help English teachers design lesson plans and projects that integrate other subjects into lessons.

Using the Playlab platform builder, Zutali started by creating a “background” for her AI chatbot – telling the bot that it was an expert in project and problem-based learning skilled at helping English and language arts teachers create lessons and unit plans. Then she wrote step-by-step directions for the chatbot to follow in conversations with users: For example, if a teacher expressed interest in more detailed lesson plans, the AI would ask which subject the plans should cover.

Most of the apps were designed to help students in specific subjects like math or English, or to provide instant feedback on projects and assignments. Others were meant to lessen teacher workload by helping with lesson planning or project ideas; several were designed to assist English language learners.

Nkomo Morris, a special education teacher at The James Baldwin School, a public school in New York City, said education technology companies often pitch products to schools without a real understanding of what teachers and students need.

“We know our students, we know the capability of the building and the tech we have, and so we can make stuff that is very tailored to the needs that we have,” said Morris, who created an AI chatbot that helps social studies teachers create activities and games to supplement their lessons. With so many AI tools out there, she said it can be difficult to find one that meets exactly what you need, but “it’s so easy to just create your own” with coaching and platforms such as Playlab.ai.

Playlab.ai co-founder Yusuf Ahmad said school districts should provide professional development opportunities for teachers on AI, teaching them to ask tough questions about the technology in their classrooms. The most important question, he said, is: “How does this advance their work and student learning?”

“I think one of the mindset shifts that’s really cool is, actually, you can also create,” he added. “You can bend this technology, you can adapt it to meet your needs.”

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

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