tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/us-students-13711/articles
US students – The Conversation
2023-12-18T13:20:32Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218874
2023-12-18T13:20:32Z
2023-12-18T13:20:32Z
Students could get more sleep and learn better if school started a little later
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564471/original/file-20231208-27-k39utf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C11%2C3916%2C2280&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">About 58% of middle schoolers and 73% of high schoolers do not get enough sleep.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/girl-is-tired-and-sleeping-at-the-desk-in-classroom-royalty-free-image/1503343198?phrase=students+sleeping+in+class">JackF via iStock / Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly three-quarters of high school students do not get enough sleep on school nights, according to the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/features/students-sleep.htm">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>.</p>
<p>The National Sleep Foundation recommends that teens sleep for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010">eight to 10 hours per night</a>. But various factors hinder this, including early school start times and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/16.3.258">shifts in adolescents’ circadian rhythms</a> – the biological internal clock that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-start-times-and-screen-time-late-in-the-evening-exacerbate-sleep-deprivation-in-us-teenagers-179178">Healthy sleep is crucial</a> for teens’ physical, cognitive and emotional development. When teens don’t get enough sleep, it can have lifelong impacts. They range from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2011.00934.x">poor mental health</a> to <a href="https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.10156">lower attendance and graduation rates</a>.</p>
<p>As a neurologist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sTqquL0AAAAJ&hl=en">specializing in sleep disorders</a>, I have studied the profound importance of sleep in optimizing the body and mind. I believe insufficient sleep among adolescents is a public health crisis. This is why I reached out to my local state representative in Pennsylvania, <a href="https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/house_bio.cfm?id=1951">Rep. Jill Cooper</a>, a member of the House Education Committee, in October 2023 and pushed for legislative change. The resulting <a href="https://legiscan.com/PA/bill/HB1848/2023">proposed bill</a> would mandate that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:15 a.m. by the 2026-27 school year.</p>
<p>While parents, educators and school administrators cannot alter biology, they can change school start times to allow students to obtain sufficient sleep for academic success and physical and mental well-being. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014-1697">recommends pushing back school start times</a> to 8:30 a.m. or later.</p>
<p>Around the world, <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-school-day-length-by-country">school start times vary considerably</a>, from 7 a.m. in Brazil to 9 a.m. in Finland. While I’m not aware of any global dataset or research on the relationship between school start times and academic performance, Finland was ranked No. 2 on the list of <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by-country">best educational systems</a> in the Global Citizens for Human Rights report in 2020. Canada, where the average school day begins at 8:30 a.m., was ranked No. 4.</p>
<h2>Sleep and the teenage brain</h2>
<p>Parents may notice that their kids, who were once early birds, start to sleep later and later as they hit their teen years. This is not just due to typical teen behavior like playing video games late at night, but rather it’s a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/16.3.258">biological response</a>.</p>
<p>During adolescence, changes in hormone levels, along with physical and brain maturation, lead to natural shifts in the circadian rhythm. The body tends to delay the release of melatonin, the hormone responsible for bringing on drowsiness at night. </p>
<p>Consequently, teens often find it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pcl.2011.03.003">challenging to fall asleep early</a>, leading to a later bedtime. This delayed circadian rhythm also results in a preference for waking up later in the morning. These changes clash with societal and cultural expectations such as early school start times, often contributing to sleep deprivation among teenagers.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/694426344" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Changes in hormones and the circadian rhythm make it difficult for teens to fall asleep and wake up early. Healthy Hours via Vimeo</span></figcaption>
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<p>More than 80% of public middle and high schools across the United States <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020006/index.asp">start before 8:30 a.m.</a>, with 42% starting before 8 and 10% before 7:30. Consequently, bus pickup for some children can be as early as <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2015/04/18/5-am-bus-rides-630-walks-to-school-all-too-early/">5 a.m. in some districts</a>. What follow are four negative outcomes associated with early school start times.</p>
<h2>Hindered academic success</h2>
<p>Numerous studies have linked early school start times to poorer performance on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014-1697">academic tests</a>. </p>
<p>One study looked at <a href="https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.10156">school start times, graduation rates and attendance rates</a> for 30,000 students in 29 high schools across seven states. It found a significant improvement in attendance rates, from 90% to 93%, and graduation rates, from 80% to 90%, four years after delaying school start times to 8:30.</p>
<p>Sleep deprivation has been shown to worsen <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsab051">memory, learning ability, attention span</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53702-7.00007-5">creativity</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/019263650208663302">school attendance</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2010.96">first-period tardiness</a> – a perfect storm for poor academic performance. </p>
<h2>Poorer mental health</h2>
<p>A recent <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf">advisory from the U.S. surgeon general</a> raised the alarm on the harmful impacts of social media on youth mental health. Researchers have unearthed mounds of evidence on the negative effects, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-documents-the-harmful-effects-of-social-media-use-on-mental-health-including-body-image-and-development-of-eating-disorders-206170">poor body image</a>. In these discussions, however, a simple yet powerful solution for improving mental well-being is often overlooked – the profound impact of sleep. </p>
<p>During REM sleep – or the dream state – our memories consolidate and we process emotions. Insufficient sleep increases the risk of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2011.00934.x">depression</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014-1696">anxiety</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/27.7.1351">suicide</a> among adolescents. One study showed that for every extra hour of sleep among adolescents, their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2018.07.003">risk of suicide decreased</a> by 11%. </p>
<h2>Impaired physical health and social behavior</h2>
<p>Sleep is fundamental for physical well-being. For both children and adults, it plays a key role in essential bodily functions. During slow-wave sleep – or deep sleep – our bodies restore themselves: Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00424-011-1044-0">immune system strengthens</a> to keep us healthy. And our waste-clearing glymphatic system <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.639140">eradicates neurotoxic proteins</a>, which are linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s. </p>
<p>Sleep deprivation is associated with higher rates of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/476914">obesity</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.6288">diabetes, cardiovascular problems, chronic health conditions</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2019.03.008">physical injuries</a> and weakened immune function. Sleep-deprived students are more likely to fall asleep when sedentary, such as when driving a car. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2603528/">Motor vehicle accidents</a> related to driving while drowsy are especially prevalent among teen drivers.</p>
<p>Sleep-deprived students are also more likely to demonstrate aggression, struggle with social communication and engage in risk-taking behaviors. One study found that the amount of sleep that high school students get is directly related to their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.2777">engagement in unsafe behaviors</a>, such as substance abuse, risky driving, aggressive behavior and tendency toward self-harm. </p>
<h2>An economic cost</h2>
<p>The economic ramifications of this crisis may not be immediately obvious, but they are undeniable. Contrary to <a href="https://lacomadre.org/2019/10/beyond-students-late-school-start-times-could-impact-parents-and-transportation-budgets/">concerns that delayed school start times might increase transportation costs</a> by changing bus schedules, a 2017 study conducted by the nonprofit RAND Corp. found that the economic benefits <a href="https://doi.org/10.7249/RR2109">far outweigh the expenses</a>. </p>
<p>The study showed that a universal shift to 8:30 a.m. school start times would result in an $8.6 billion gain in the U.S. economy over two years. Investing in delayed school start times, therefore, isn’t a drain on resources. Instead, it contributes to a healthier future for generations to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Most teens aren’t getting enough sleep, leading to poorer academic performance. Early school start times combined with natural changes in hormones and the circadian rhythm could be to blame.
Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse, Associate Professor of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209771
2023-08-17T12:35:12Z
2023-08-17T12:35:12Z
Potentially faulty data spotted in surveys of drug use and other behaviors among LGBQ youth
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541296/original/file-20230804-26-63jilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=202%2C166%2C7737%2C5130&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new study found that youth were providing extreme or untruthful responses to CDC surveys on LGBQ student health. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/female-hands-of-a-student-taking-a-test-royalty-free-image/1305362771?phrase=students+taking+a+survey&adppopup=true">FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Federal data on LGBQ student health <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13957">contain a significant amount of potentially exaggerated or untruthful responses</a>, raising questions about how they might skew people’s understanding of risky behavior among teens. These inaccuracies affect some responses more than others. That’s according to an analysis my colleagues and I did of high school surveys administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, better known as the CDC.</p>
<p>Without accounting for this invalid data, the CDC results suggest that for every heterosexual boy who uses steroids, three LGBQ boys use steroids. After accounting for the invalid data, neither group is shown to use steroids more. In contrast, disparities for being bullied or considering suicide were not affected by potentially invalid data.</p>
<p>Over 12,800 high school students during the 2018-2019 school year reported whether they identified as LGBQ – that is, lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning – or heterosexual on the national <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/data.htm">Youth Risk Behavior Survey</a>. They also responded to items related to their health and well-being. </p>
<p>We first estimated what the risk disparities between LGBQ and heterosexual youth were before accounting for potentially invalid data. We then used a machine-learning algorithm to detect response patterns that suggested when youth were providing extreme or untruthful responses.</p>
<p>For example, we treated their responses with suspicion if they reported eating carrots four or more times every day and said they were impossibly tall. That means we gave less weight to their responses when we re-estimated all of the disparities. We then saw how the disparities changed after the potentially invalid responses were taken into account.</p>
<p>After accounting for invalid data, disparities in drug use – including steroids – injected drugs, cocaine, ecstasy and pain medication without a prescription were not as pronounced. LGBQ boys appeared to use injected drugs four times as often as heterosexual boys. But after accounting for the likely invalid data, neither group was more likely to use injected drugs. </p>
<p>Yet, while some outcomes were susceptible to invalid data, others were not. For example, LGBQ boys and girls were about twice as likely to be bullied at school and two to three times as likely to consider suicide. This shows that not all outcomes are equally affected by invalid data. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>The Youth Risk Behavior Survey provides vital information on the health and behaviors of high school students. It informs research regarding <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/yrbs_data_summary_and_trends.htm">teen sexual behaviors, drug use and suicide risk</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13957">Our study</a> and others using different methods to account for invalid data <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X11422112">consistently</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304407">find</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419888892">that</a> LGBQ students are at a much higher risk for being bullied and for suicide, consistent with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/yrbs_data_summary_and_trends.htm">CDC reports</a> on these outcomes. </p>
<p>It is critical to address the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights">ongoing stigmatization that LGBTQ+ people face</a> to reduce these mental health disparities. Yet, when researchers don’t check for invalid data, they might conclude that other differences are larger and more deserving of attention and resources than they are.</p>
<p>Policymakers and researchers must ensure that large-scale data collection efforts have safeguards for data quality.</p>
<p>We asked the CDC for a comment on our study’s findings. In response, they directed our attention to an <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/faq.htm">FAQ page</a> that discussed validity and reliability in a general sense. The CDC’s response did not specifically address the issue of how invalid data can have a disproportionate effect on minorities, which is a significant concern raised by our research.</p>
<h2>What other research is being done</h2>
<p>Other studies have found that invalid data can disproportionately influence <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13957">low-incidence outcomes like heroin use</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000479">minority populations</a>, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J145v06n02_02">adoptees</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/152822X06289161">disabled</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X14534297">individuals</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024824">racial or ethnic minorities</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/152822X06289161">immigrants</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X14534297">transgender individuals</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, the issue of invalid data is not confined to youth surveys. Studies examining <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287837">public health behaviors</a> during the COVID-19 pandemic and surveys on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617698203">sexual orientation among adults</a> have also encountered invalid responses, raising further questions about their accuracy.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Cimpian receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>
Potential inaccuracies in CDC high school surveys may have created an exaggerated perception that LGBQ youth engage in risky behaviors, new research shows.
Joseph Cimpian, Professor of Economics and Education Policy, New York University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208551
2023-06-30T23:08:24Z
2023-06-30T23:08:24Z
Now that President Biden’s student loan cancellation program has been canceled, here’s what’s next
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535057/original/file-20230630-17-t6th2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C91%2C5501%2C3609&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s plan to eliminate $430 billion in student loan debt</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-of-student-debt-forgiveness-demonstrate-outside-news-photo/1364662050?adppopup=true">Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan. In <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-506">Biden v. Nebraska</a>, the court ruled 6-3 on June 30, 2023, that the secretary of education <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf">does not have the authority</a> to forgive US$430 billion of student loans under the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/02/28/student-debt-forgiveness-at-supreme-court-tuesday-heres-what-you-need-to-know/">Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act</a>. </p>
<p>That kills the president’s proposed plan to forgive <a href="https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-affirmative-action-student-loans-gay-rights-elections-a3007709350cd1606d5ce9ac4de957a6">up to $10,000</a> in student loans per borrower for those with incomes under $125,000 per year, or $250,000 per year for couples. Under the president’s plan, those who <a href="https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief-announcement">received Pell Grants</a> would have been eligible to cancel up to an additional $10,000 in student loans.</p>
<p>Just hours after the decision, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/30/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-provide-debt-relief-and-support-for-student-loan-borrowers/">President Biden announced a new effort</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/us/politics/higher-education-act-student-loans-biden.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20Politics">forgive student loans under the Higher Education Act of 1965</a>.</p>
<p>To give borrowers time to “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/30/us/student-loans-supreme-court-biden/63644601-96e5-50cb-85d5-ef0a657c09d3?smid=url-share">get back up and running,</a>” Biden stated that the Education Department won’t refer borrowers who don’t pay their student loan bills to credit agencies for 12 months.</p>
<h2>Secretary lacks authority</h2>
<p>In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts – joined by his five other conservative colleagues – stated “The HEROES Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing … financial assistance programs under the Education Act, but <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-506">does not allow the Secretary to rewrite that statute</a> to the extent of canceling $430 billion of student loan principal.” </p>
<p>Currently, <a href="https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/fsawg/datacenter/library/PortfolioSummary.xls">over 43 million Americans owe $1.64 trillion</a> in federal student loans, with an <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/student-loan-payments-resume-impact-on-credit">average balance of $46,000</a>. Student loan borrowers haven’t had to make payments on their federal loans – or accrue interest on those loans – <a href="https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/covid-19/payment-pause-zero-interest">since March 2020</a>, when the Trump administration put the payments on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Supporters of student debt forgiveness demonstrate outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535060/original/file-20230630-29-e4vl0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535060/original/file-20230630-29-e4vl0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535060/original/file-20230630-29-e4vl0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535060/original/file-20230630-29-e4vl0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535060/original/file-20230630-29-e4vl0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535060/original/file-20230630-29-e4vl0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535060/original/file-20230630-29-e4vl0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roughly 1 in 8 Americans will have to restart loan payments as soon as September 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/activists-and-students-protest-in-front-of-the-supreme-news-photo/1247556593?adppopup=true">Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that will change on <a href="https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/covid-19">Sept. 1, 2023</a>, when interest will once again begin to accrue on outstanding student loans. Payments on the actual loans is set to resume in October 2023.</p>
<p>When payments resume, the average student loan payment is expected to be between <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-could-be-left-behind-in-the-supreme-courts-student-loan-ruling-in-six-charts-d5d3d637">$200</a> and <a href="https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-payment">$500 per month</a>. For those that resume making their federal student loan payments on time, this may lead to an <a href="https://www.vantagescore.com/major-credit-score-news-new-federal-debt-ceiling-law-ending-student-loan-forbearance-to-impact-credit-scores/">increase in their credit score</a>, while those that miss the first payment after payments resume can expect their credit score to fall.</p>
<p>Prior to the student loan pause, approximately <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/fresh-start-what-student-loan-borrowers-in-default-need-to-know">7.5 million borrowers</a> – out of 43 million – were in default on their federal student loans.</p>
<p>These borrowers can apply for the <a href="https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/default-fresh-start">Fresh Start program</a>. For borrowers who are behind on their federal student loan payments, this program allows student loan borrowers to reset their loan so they won’t be considered past due anymore. </p>
<p>In addition, any negative entries on their credit report due to being behind on their student loans will be removed. About 80% of Fresh Start borrowers enroll in an <a href="https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/repayment/plans/income-driven">income-driven repayment plan</a>. Such a plan calculates a borrower’s monthly federal student loan payment <a href="https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/default-fresh-start#questions">based on the borrower’s income, spouse’s income and family size</a>. Monthly payments under this plan will not exceed 20% of the borrower’s income. Those with <a href="https://www.debt.org/students/income-based-repayment-loans/">larger families and lower incomes</a> have lower monthly payments. Currently, about half of the Fresh Start borrowers pay $0 a month.</p>
<p>It is estimated that student loan borrowers pay about <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2023/06/29/resuming-student-loan-payments-may-slow-economic-growth/">$70 billion a year</a> on their federal student loans. Any economic benefit that borrowers may have gotten from the suspension of student loan payments is likely to have already been <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-benefits-from-a-break-on-federal-student-loan-payments-an-economist-answers-3-questions-174228">absorbed into the economy over the past three years</a>. In other words, any money borrowers had to spend as a result of the student loan pause has already been spent. </p>
<p>With the resumption of student loan payments, there will likely be a small but <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2023/06/29/resuming-student-loan-payments-may-slow-economic-growth/">negative impact on the economy</a>. This reduction in spending on goods and services is estimated to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2023/06/29/resuming-student-loan-payments-may-slow-economic-growth/">reduce economic growth by about 0.4%</a></p>
<p>When student loan borrowers begin to repay their loans in October, those dollars will no longer be available to pay for other things like food, rent, clothing or gas. So it won’t only hurt the economy, but it will hurt people, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Chittenden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s student loan program that aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief per borrower.
William Chittenden, Associate Professor of Finance, Texas State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202691
2023-03-31T18:15:47Z
2023-03-31T18:15:47Z
Declines in math readiness underscore the urgency of math awareness
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518595/original/file-20230330-1139-7yolln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C73%2C6134%2C4000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Math scores plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic. What will it take to raise them back up?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/girl-solving-mathematical-addition-royalty-free-image/950609102?phrase=math%20classroom&adppopup=true">Ridofranz / iStock / Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When President Ronald Reagan <a href="https://ww2.amstat.org/mam/98/what.is.maw.html">proclaimed the first National Math Awareness Week</a> in April 1986, one of the problems he cited was that too few students were devoted to the study of math.</p>
<p>“Despite the increasing importance of mathematics to the progress of our economy and society, enrollment in mathematics programs has been declining at all levels of the American educational system,” Reagan wrote in his proclamation.</p>
<p>Nearly 40 years later, the problem that Reagan lamented during the first National Math Awareness Week – which has since evolved to become “<a href="https://ww2.amstat.org/mathstatmonth/aboutmathstatmonth.html">Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month</a>” – not only remains but has gotten worse.</p>
<p>Whereas 1.63%, or about <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_325.65.asp">16,000</a>, of the <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_310.asp">nearly 1 million</a> bachelor’s degrees awarded in the U.S. in the 1985-1986 school year went to math majors, in 2020, just 1.4%, or about <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_325.65.asp">27,000</a>, of the <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_310.asp">1.9 million</a> bachelor’s degrees were awarded in the field of math – a small but significant decrease in the proportion.</p>
<p>Post-pandemic data suggests the number of students majoring in math in the U.S. is likely to decrease in the future.</p>
<p>A key factor is the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/math-reading-scores-pandemic.html">dramatic decline in math learning</a> that took place during the lockdown. For instance, whereas 34% of eighth graders were proficient in math in 2019, test data shows the percentage <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/math-reading-scores-pandemic.html">dropped to 26% after the pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>These declines will undoubtedly affect how much math U.S. students can do at the college level. For instance, in 2022, only <a href="https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2022/2022-National-ACT-Profile-Report.pdf">31% of graduating high school seniors were ready for college-level math</a> – down from 39% in 2019.</p>
<p>These declines will also affect how many U.S. students are able to take advantage of the growing number of <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/home.htm">high-paying math occupations</a>, such as <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/data-scientists.htm">data scientists</a> and <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/actuaries.htm">actuaries</a>. Employment in math occupations is projected to <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/home.htm">increase by 29%</a> in the period from 2021 to 2031.</p>
<p>About <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/home.htm">30,600 math jobs</a> are expected to open up per year from growth and replacement needs. That exceeds the 27,000 or so math graduates being produced each year – and <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/mathematics/mathematics-field-of-degree.htm">not all math degree holders</a> go into math fields. Shortages will also arise in several other areas, since math is a gateway to many STEM fields.</p>
<p>For all of these reasons and more, as a <a href="https://manilsuri.umbc.edu/">mathematician</a> who thinks deeply about the <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324007036">importance of math</a> and what it means to our world – and even to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=lFWFsSkAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=lFWFsSkAAAAJ:j3f4tGmQtD8C">our existence as human beings</a> – I believe this year, and probably for the foreseeable future, educators, policymakers and employers need to take Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month more seriously than ever before.</p>
<h2>Struggles with mastery</h2>
<p>Subpar math achievement has been endemic in the U.S. for a long time. </p>
<p>Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/nation/achievement/?grade=12">no more than 26% of 12th graders</a> have been rated proficient in math since 2005.</p>
<p>The pandemic <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/nation/groups/?grade=4#nation-gaps-gaps">disproportionately affected</a> racially and economically disadvantaged groups. During the lockdown, these groups had <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/2022/#student-experiences">less access to the internet and quiet studying spaces</a> than their peers. So securing Wi-Fi and places to study are key parts of the battle to improve math learning.</p>
<p>Some people believe math teaching techniques need to be revamped, as they were through the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/4/20/5625086/the-common-core-makes-simple-math-more-complicated-heres-why">Common Core</a>, a new set of educational standards that stressed alternative ways to solve math problems. Others want a return to more traditional methods. Advocates also argue there is a need for colleges to <a href="https://www.nctq.org/publications/Teacher-Prep-Review:-Building-Content-Knowledge">produce better-prepared teachers</a>.</p>
<p>Other observers believe the problem lies with the “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/44330/mindset-by-carol-s-dweck-phd/">fixed mindset</a>” many students have – where failure leads to the conviction that they can’t do math – and say the solution is to foster a <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2021.784393/full#B21">“growth” mindset</a> – by which failure spurs students to try harder.</p>
<p>Although all these factors are relevant, none address what in my opinion is a root cause of math underachievement: our nation’s ambivalent relationship with mathematics.</p>
<h2>Low visibility</h2>
<p>Many observers worry about how U.S. children fare in <a href="https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm">international rankings</a>, even though math anxiety makes <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED536509.pdf">many adults in the U.S.</a> steer clear of the subject themselves.</p>
<p>Mathematics is not like art or music, which people regularly enjoy all over the country by visiting museums or attending concerts. It’s true that there is a National Museum of Mathematics in New York, and some science centers in the U.S. devote exhibit space to mathematics, but these can be geographically inaccessible for many.</p>
<p>A 2020 study on media portrayals of math <a href="https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/8260">found an overall “invisibility of mathematics</a>” in popular culture. Other findings were that math is presented as being irrelevant to the real world and of little interest to most people, while mathematicians are stereotyped to be singular geniuses or socially inept nerds, and white and male. </p>
<p>Math is tough and typically takes much discipline and perseverance to succeed in. It also calls for a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/947/1/012029">cumulative learning approach</a> – you need to master lessons at each level because you’re going to need them later. </p>
<p>While research in neuroscience shows almost everyone’s brain is <a href="https://blogs.ams.org/matheducation/2019/02/01/everyone-can-learn-mathematics-to-high-levels-the-evidence-from-neuroscience-that-should-change-our-teaching/">equipped to take up the challenge</a>, many students balk at putting in the effort when they don’t score well on tests. The <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2018.00026/full#B6">myth that math is just about procedures and memorization</a> can make it easier for students to give up. So can <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1304392.pdf">negative opinions</a> about math ability conveyed by peers and parents, such as declarations of not being “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/well/family/fending-off-math-anxiety.html">a math person</a>.”</p>
<h2>A positive experience</h2>
<p>Here’s the good news. A 2017 Pew poll found that despite the bad rap the subject gets, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/01/09/many-americans-say-they-liked-math-and-science-in-school-thought-about-a-stem-career/">58% of U.S. adults enjoyed their school math classes</a>. It’s members of this legion who would make excellent recruits to help promote April’s math awareness. The initial charge is simple: Think of something you liked about math – a topic, a <a href="https://www.mathsisfun.com/puzzles/">puzzle</a>, a fun fact – and go over it with someone. It could be a child, a student, or just one of the many adults who have left school with a negative view of math.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three seashells are shown under the words " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518209/original/file-20230329-24-bfj94q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518209/original/file-20230329-24-bfj94q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518209/original/file-20230329-24-bfj94q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518209/original/file-20230329-24-bfj94q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518209/original/file-20230329-24-bfj94q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518209/original/file-20230329-24-bfj94q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518209/original/file-20230329-24-bfj94q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Math exercise for shells can be downloaded at https://www.manilsuri.com/assets/shell_patterns.pptx.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Manil Suri</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Can something that sounds so simplistic make a difference? Based on my years of experience as a mathematician, I believe it can – if nothing else, for the person you talk to. The goal is to stimulate curiosity and convey that mathematics is much more about <a href="https://theconversation.com/pi-gets-all-the-fanfare-but-other-numbers-also-deserve-their-own-math-holidays-200046">exhilarating ideas that inform our universe</a> than it is about the school homework-type calculations so many dread.</p>
<p>Raising math awareness is a first step toward making sure people possess the basic math skills required not only for employment, but also to understand math-related issues – such as gerrymandering or climate change – well enough to be an informed and participating citizen. However, it’s not something that can be done in one month.</p>
<p>Given the decline in both math scores and the percentage of students studying math, it may take many years before America realizes the stronger relationship with math that President Reagan’s proclamation called for during the first National Math Awareness Week in 1986.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manil Suri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Nearly four decades after President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the first National Math Awareness Week, math readiness and enrollment in college math programs continue to decline.
Manil Suri, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198644
2023-02-06T13:29:53Z
2023-02-06T13:29:53Z
Rights of transgender students and their parents are a challenge for schools, courts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507694/original/file-20230201-17339-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5852%2C3291&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The rights of transgender people are often in dispute, including in schools.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TransgenderYouthUtah/c0c366c44c6343c8915f5fd59c22a34d/photo">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/10/science/transgender-teenagers-national-survey.html">increasing number</a> of elementary, middle and high school students in the U.S. have begun to identify as transgender, school leaders have struggled to figure out how to respond, and how – and whether – to communicate about their actions to parents. </p>
<p>In Maryland, for instance, <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/maryland/mddce/8:2020cv03552/487743/60/">three sets of parents filed a federal lawsuit</a> in 2020 that challenged school guidelines allowing students to express their gender identities at school. In some situations teachers and other school staff are asked not to notify parents they are doing so.</p>
<p>The federal trial court ruling, which has been appealed, determined that parents did not have a fundamental right to be informed promptly if their children chose to identify as another gender while at school.</p>
<p>The judge tried to balance both parents’ rights under the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/due_process">due process clause</a> of the Constitution and states’ <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/2014_vol_40/vol_40_no_2_civil_rights/educational_rights_states/">rights to regulate public education</a>, even if they conflict with parental wishes.</p>
<p>The judge found that while school board officials intended to ultimately inform parents, if educators had concerns about a child’s safety they would hold off on doing so.</p>
<p>The board’s rules, the judge wrote, “<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23201110-parents-v-montgomery-county_opinion#page=11">keep a student’s gender identity confidential</a> … out of concern for the student’s well-being.” The rules also call for a “comprehensive gender support plan that anticipates and encourages eventual familial involvement wherever possible.”</p>
<p>In short, parents have a general right to know about their children’s activity in school. However, parental rights can be limited by students’ rights to privacy and personal safety.</p>
<p>The Maryland case is by no means the only case in which school officials have been caught between students’ right to privacy and parents’ right to know. As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=T3b-g5YAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">researchers</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=k_GuRaYAAAAJ">who</a> specialize in education law, we have analyzed similar cases in <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/iowa/iandce/1:2022cv00078/62349/38/">Iowa</a>, <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Foote-v.-Ludlow-School-Committee-%20Complaint.pdf">Massachusetts</a>, <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/wisconsin/supreme-court/2022/2020ap001032.html">Wisconsin</a> and <a href="https://www.whsv.com/2022/12/08/pieces-lawsuit-against-harrisonburg-city-schools-dismissed/">Virginia</a>. </p>
<p>Regardless of how the cases from Maryland and elsewhere play out, this issue is likely to continue to generate additional controversy and litigation.</p>
<h2>Parents’ rights vs. schools’ obligations</h2>
<p>Disagreements between parents and schools over education are not new. In 1925, in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/268/510">Pierce v. Society of Sisters</a>, a dispute from Oregon, the Supreme Court upheld the rights of parents to send their children to schools run outside the public education system.</p>
<p>The justices famously wrote: “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” This signaled clearly that parents have rights over how their children are raised and educated. </p>
<p>But the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet decided clearly where the rights of parents end and the rights of their children begin. As a result, an appellate court in New Jersey observed that courts have held that “<a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/nj-superior-court-appellate-division/1473672.html">in certain circumstances</a> the parental right to control the upbringing of a child must give way to a school’s ability to control curriculum and the school environment.”</p>
<p>Courts have even decided that there may be times when school or other public officials have legitimate interests in intervening where parents would typically have free rein, to assist or protect children. For example, educators might choose to keep information about students’ gender identity from parents if school staff members have reason to believe the students would be kicked out of their houses, physically abused, or forced to participate in abusive counseling programs, such as <a href="https://www.aacap.org/aacap/Policy_Statements/2018/Conversion_Therapy.aspx">conversion therapy</a>.</p>
<h2>The role of students’ rights</h2>
<p>At the same time, school officials must ensure protection of students’ rights. In particular, many states have laws requiring school board officials to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/gender-identity-students-parents.html">protect their students from discrimination</a> and violations of privacy.</p>
<p>In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/17-1618">Bostock v. Clayton County</a>, interpreting <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-1964">Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964</a> as applying to people who are gay or transgender, the U.S. Department of Education told school boards across the country that they <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-confirms-title-ix-protects-students-%20discrimination-based-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity">cannot allow discrimination</a> on the basis of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.</p>
<p>School staff members have legal obligations to protect students’ privacy. According to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “<a href="https://casetext.com/case/sterling-v-borough-of-minersville">It is difficult to imagine a more private matter than one’s sexuality</a> and a less likely probability that the government would have a legitimate interest in disclosure of sexual identity.”</p>
<p>Even so, schools often want <a href="https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/training-technical-assistance/education-level/early-learning/family-school-community-partnerships">parents to be involved</a> in their children’s education and the wider school community. This regularly puts educators in the sensitive position of having to protect student privacy while respecting parental rights to raise their children in accordance with their values.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen how courts will balance parental rights to direct the lives of their children and the role of educators in safeguarding the privacy rights of students – and whether the Supreme Court can, or will, ever set clearer rules in this important topic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Parents have a general right to know about their children’s activities in school, but that can be limited by students’ rights to privacy and personal safety.
Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the School of Education and Health Sciences and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton
Maggie Paino, Ph.D. Student in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Suzanne Eckes, Susan S. Engeleiter Professor of Education Law, Policy and Practice, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190814
2022-12-08T13:33:02Z
2022-12-08T13:33:02Z
White teachers often talk about Black students in racially coded ways
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492368/original/file-20221028-13-t8n33a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C68%2C5084%2C3427&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Educators stereotype Black students in subtle ways.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/fourth-grade-girls-on-computers-royalty-free-image/608899871?phrase=black%20students%20classroom&adppopup=true">Jonathan Kirn via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a white Texas middle school teacher <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/local/pflugerville/pflugerville-teacher-who-made-inappropriate-comments-no-longer-employed-by-district/">told his students</a> in November 2022 that he was “ethnocentric” and thought his race was “superior,” he attempted to explain his position by arguing that he was hardly the only person who held such a view.</p>
<p>“Let me finish …” the teacher is seen telling his students on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxMM-WwrNWs">now-viral video</a> as they began to push back against his remarks. “I think everybody thinks that; they’re just not honest about it.”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uxMM-WwrNWs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Texas teacher tells his students he is racist.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The teacher in question has <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-teacher-at-bohls-middle-school-in-pflugerville-benched-over-viral-rant-on-superior-race">since been fired</a>. His termination is hardly surprising given that he was captured on video making blatantly racist remarks in a public school classroom. But as we discovered while performing a study at a predominantly Black school with mostly white teachers, many of them – whether consciously or unconsciously – often harbor negative racial views and stereotypes about Black students and their families. The key difference is they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221119115">verbalize those negative views in less obvious ways</a> than the Texas teacher.</p>
<p>At the school we studied, the negative views were not isolated occurrences, but rather a part of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221119115">culture of coded racial stereotypes</a>, which we argue encourages the disciplining of Black students at disproportionately higher rates.</p>
<p>Our findings were published in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221119115">peer-reviewed study</a> that appeared in Urban Education in 2022. They are based on a study that began in 2015 when administrators at a predominantly Black high school asked our research team for help understanding why the predominantly white teaching staff was struggling to form positive relationships with the students. In the first part of our partnership with the school, we found that while Black students made up 89% of the student body, they represented 97% of all disciplinary infractions. Conversely, while white students made up 8% of the student population, they received only 1% of the disciplinary referrals. This early quantitative finding confirms studies from across the nation that showed that, even when controlling for rates of misbehavior and poverty, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214541670">Black students are still disproportionately</a> disciplined compared to their white peers.</p>
<p>We are education researchers who specialize in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PkC_OxQAAAAJ&hl=en">cultural</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Olivia-Marcucci-2156367933">racial justice</a> issues. We believe our findings shine light on how often educators hold racial biases against the students they’ve been entrusted to teach.</p>
<h2>Stereotyping was prevalent</h2>
<p>The racial biases came to light as we conducted focus groups with teachers and students to ask them about their school’s culture and experiences with classroom discipline.</p>
<p>Of the teachers who participated in the focus groups, 84% were white. During focus group discussions, 36 out of 38 teachers voiced a stereotype at least once, though some did so up to 10 times. While some teachers pushed back against stereotypes they heard, and even more often acknowledged systemic racism in the lives of their students, the teachers still frequently used stereotypes when discussing their students and families.</p>
<p>In a series of focus groups, we asked educators from the school to reflect on their experiences in the school, interacting with students, and their thoughts on the school discipline practices. We were particularly interested in hearing their thoughts on the types of infractions for which students were disciplined and how specific punishments were decided on. For example, why were some students who disrupted class sent back from the office to the classroom immediately, but others received 10 days of in-school suspension? </p>
<p>The majority of the focus group questions were not focused on race explicitly. Even so, we still noticed an undercurrent of racially coded stereotypes as the teachers reflected on the statistical trends in school discipline and on their school culture as a whole. </p>
<p>For example, in one focus group, a white teacher notes that when the then-vice principal, a Black man, went to the school as a student, “we had a much more diverse student body. So, he had an opportunity to see different types of behavior. And I think a lot of these kids that we have, the chronic misbehaviors, they don’t have that option. They’re in a class, class by class where they’re all very similar socioeconomic background, and that really makes a difference, I think. Their parents are working and are unable to monitor them. Maybe they didn’t have such a successful high school experience, so they don’t have the tools that some of the other kids – we still have a few of them, fortunate to have a number in my classes.”</p>
<p>The teacher directly connects the presence of “chronic misbehaviors” with a change in the school’s demographics. The teacher opines that in the past, when the student body was nearly equally Black and white, that Black individuals, such as the then-vice principal, in his example, could observe better behavior in school. The teacher therefore communicates an anti-Black stereotype in a coded way, implying that Black students needed white students to “see different types of behavior.”</p>
<p>In a different example, two white teachers began talking about how parents at their school didn’t care about their children. At one point, they pretended to be parents, with one of the teachers even making a joke that one of the parents completely forgot they even had a child: </p>
<p>Teacher 1: Yeah, just somebody saying, ‘Hey, you know you have a baby, right?’
Teacher 2: I do?
Teacher 1: Yeah.
Teacher 2: Oh.
Teacher 1: Oh, wooord.</p>
<p>Nothing about this interaction is racially explicit. But the teacher’s joke invokes a stereotype of Black parents as disengaged from their children’s lives by using a stereotypical African American vernacular – “wooord.” When white teachers at a predominantly Black school make statements like these, they are upholding the stereotype that Black parents lack concern for their children – even if that is not the teachers’ intention.</p>
<h2>A way of bonding</h2>
<p>Using <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691123899/interaction-ritual-chains">a theory</a> that measures the speed of bonding, we found that when teachers used anti-Black stereotypes, they often bonded with each other more quickly and effectively. Certain types of communication — often ones that happen nonverbally — can <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691123899/interaction-ritual-chains">help individuals bond with each other</a>. These bonds then make individuals feel better about themselves and their community. In the data, teachers often used nonverbal communication or noises like “uh-huh,” laughter, and conversational rhythm, while stereotyping their students. </p>
<p>For example, in the “Hey, you know you have a baby, right?” joke, both teachers laughed as a result of the joke. Just as importantly, the rest of the teachers in the room also laughed. Laughter is an important display of bonding. In other interactions, teachers used verbalizations like “mhmmm” or “This is it” to support each other as they engaged in stereotyping their students.</p>
<h2>Reform through reflection</h2>
<p>Based on what <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Dual-Process-Theories-of-the-Social-Mind/Sherman-Gawronski-Trope/9781462514397/contents">social psychologist Russell Fazio</a> has found, if teachers are given time to reflect on their potential biases, they have a better chance of removing those biases from their teaching. Through <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED521618">systematic and sustained professional learning</a>, teachers can become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0299-7">aware of their implicit and explicit biases and how those biases may impact their behavior</a>. This type of professional learning must be coupled with structural reforms to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1579743">re-professionalize teaching</a> to achieve lasting, anti-biasing results. </p>
<p>Since our study was completed, the educators, school and district have sought to revamp their disciplinary policies and school culture, including deep discussions about how their biases might affect how they discipline students. The school has begun to use <a href="https://www.wested.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/resource-restorative-justice-in-u-s-schools-an-updated-research-review.pdf">restorative justice practices</a>, an alternative approach to discipline that focuses on humanizing individuals and repairing harm after a wrong occurs. The school hired a full-time staff person to support restorative justice. According to the current principal, in the year following, suspensions dropped by 47% in one year and chronic absenteeism dropped by 7%.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>ROWHEA ELMESKY received an internal university grant which helped fund this study. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Marcucci does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Though difficult to pinpoint, white educators often put forth stereotypes when they discuss Black students among themselves, new research has found.
Rowhea Elmesky, Associate Professor of Education, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
Olivia Marcucci, Assistant Professor of Education, Johns Hopkins University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193060
2022-11-16T13:27:38Z
2022-11-16T13:27:38Z
Math teachers in virtual classes tend to view girls and Black students as less capable
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494491/original/file-20221109-16841-a4qjc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C125%2C6970%2C4387&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black boys are more likely than white students to be identified as potentially in need of special education.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/growing-his-mind-royalty-free-image/1159785349?phrase=remote%20learning%20kids&adppopup=true">Hiraman via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>In virtual classrooms, math teachers deem Black students as less capable than white students. They also view girls as less capable than boys. That’s what we found after we <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2022.104627">conducted an experiment</a> with 1,000 teachers in schools throughout the United States. </p>
<p>For our experiment, we had teachers evaluate student answers to various math problems. Those answers were accompanied by images of different students online. We asked them to tell us how correct the students’ answers were. We also asked them to tell us how capable they thought the student was and how likely they would be to refer the student to be tested for a special education program to get extra help, or a gifted program, which would enable them to do more advanced work. We randomly changed the images of students presenting their solutions in Zoom classes to show Black and white girls and boys. However, the solutions stayed the same. </p>
<p>We found that teachers more often thought the student needed to be tested for special education when they saw a screenshot of a Black student explaining their answer rather than a white student. The teachers more often thought the student was gifted if the screenshot showed a boy rather than a girl. </p>
<p>Furthermore, our study showed that when teachers work in schools that serve higher concentrations of Black students, they often assumed that Black students had less math ability than white students. They also considered them more in need of instructional support. But in schools with virtually no Black students, teachers were more likely to say that white boys should be tested for a gifted and talented program than white girls. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Our experiment suggests teachers are identifying Black students as potentially having disabilities more often than white students who produced the same answers to math problems. Further, girls are not being given equal chances to be placed in gifted programs even when they give answers identical to those given by boys.</p>
<p>As virtual instruction is expected to become <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA956-1.html">more commonplace</a> than before the pandemic, our study warns that virtual classrooms may perpetuate the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X19890577">same biases</a> that exist in traditional school settings. </p>
<h2>What other research is being done</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X16644606">Researchers</a> are still trying to understand whether the overrepresentation of minority students in special education is the result of systematic racial bias.</p>
<p>As we found in this study and in <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X19890577">our prior work</a>, teachers assumed boys had a higher ability than girls when both gave answers that were not fully correct. Such blind trust in boys’ math ability can boost their confidence and may <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba7377">embolden them to pursue math-intensive fields at a higher rate</a> than girls, who are not seen by teachers as having as high a math ability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193060/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yasemin Copur-Gencturk receives funding from the Joan Herman and Richard Rasiej Mathematics Initiative. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Cimpian receives funding from the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Thacker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Researchers found that students are being judged by their race and gender, not how well they do math.
Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, Associate Professor of Education, University of Southern California
Ian Thacker, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Joseph Cimpian, Professor of Economics and Education Policy, New York University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188710
2022-09-13T12:32:40Z
2022-09-13T12:32:40Z
Student enrollment falls at colleges and universities that are placed on probation
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482156/original/file-20220831-23-n3am3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C0%2C6689%2C4466&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colleges must notify students when they get in trouble with accreditors. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/partially-filled-lecture-hall-on-college-campus-royalty-free-image/1213739031?adppopup=true">SDI Productions via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Whenever a college or university gets sanctioned by the agency that provides its accreditation, fewer students enroll in that school. That’s what I found in a study in which I <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904820983034">examined whether the sanctions influence how students decide</a> which schools to attend.</p>
<p>In my analysis, I looked at whether schools given a warning or placed on probation had lower enrollment over the next six years. Using 13 years of data from 847 colleges and universities accredited by the <a href="https://sacscoc.org/">Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges</a>, I found between 5% and 10% lower enrollment after the schools were sanctioned. Additionally, the lower enrollment occurred in the second, third and fourth years after the sanction. </p>
<p>My study looked at two types of sanctions a school can face: <a href="https://sacscoc.org/app/uploads/2019/07/sanctionpolicy.pdf">warning or probation</a>. Warning is the less serious of the two and means that the school needs to address whatever concerns were identified, or risk probation. Probation means that the institution is at risk of losing accreditation without improvement.</p>
<p>There were key differences in the enrollment declines depending on the type of school. Four-year private nonprofit universities had an enrollment drop of around 7.7% two years after the less severe sanction of warning. Even though student enrollment fell after the lesser sanction, it took two years for the change to be seen. </p>
<p>In order to see if the enrollment declines were related to the sanctions, as opposed to something else, I examined the time that lapsed between those two events. Enrollment fell after the sanction, but not before it. I also explored other possible causes, such as graduation rates, which are seen as indicators of quality, but the relationship with sanctions held.</p>
<p>Public colleges and universities, on the other hand, only experienced declines after the more serious sanction of probation. Four-year public universities’ enrollment dropped by around 5.5% after probation. As with their private counterparts, the decline took two years. Two-year public colleges had a larger and more rapid enrollment reduction of around 9.4% after probation.</p>
<p><iframe id="lTdw0" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lTdw0/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Agencies that accredit colleges and universities <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED569225">play a unique role</a> in U.S. higher education: They are meant to assure federal and state governments, as well as employers, students and the general public, that colleges are <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED569225.pdf">meeting certain threshold standards for things like faculty, curriculum, student services and libraries</a>.</p>
<p>My study shows that sanctions by an accrediting organization lead to lower enrollment. While it isn’t clear if students are using the sanctions in their enrollment decisions, the relationship demonstrates that colleges that do not comply with accreditation standards risk enrollment declines, which could lead to additional financial challenges.</p>
<p>This is particularly noteworthy given the <a href="https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-enrollment-decline/#:%7E:text=The%20college%20enrollment%20decline%20has,spring%202020%20and%20spring%202022.&text=Financial%20concerns%20stemming%20from%20the,students%20to%20change%20their%20plans.">rapid enrollment declines</a> experienced nationally since COVID-19 hit in spring of 2020 – <a href="https://www.studentclearinghouse.org/nscblog/undergraduate-enrollment-falls-662000-students-in-spring-2022-and-1-4-million-during-the-pandemic/">especially among community colleges</a>. This is consistent with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.20480">other research</a> in which I found that nationally, community colleges are particularly prone to enrollment drops after sanctions.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>When colleges are placed on probation by their accrediting agency, they are required by federal law to <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/34/602.26">notify current and prospective students within seven business days</a>. But whether students are actually being notified – and whether they understand the notice – is a separate issue. Without knowing the degree to which students are getting notice, and understanding what it means, it’s difficult to say if students are consciously avoiding schools they know have been placed on probation, or if something else – such as bad press related to a scandal of some sort – might be driving their decision.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188710/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Burnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Colleges must notify students when the school is placed on probation by its accrediting agency. Do students respond by staying away?
Christopher Burnett, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Institute for Educational Policy Research and Evaluation, University of Houston
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188561
2022-08-16T12:28:52Z
2022-08-16T12:28:52Z
1 in 10 teachers say they’ve been attacked by students
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479042/original/file-20220814-25-pk88p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C16%2C5590%2C3715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Physical assaults against educators are on the rise.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/silhouetted-man-in-the-building-royalty-free-image/92297581?adppopup=true">Hal Bergman Photography via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478563/original/file-20220810-4746-sp7eo9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478563/original/file-20220810-4746-sp7eo9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478563/original/file-20220810-4746-sp7eo9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478563/original/file-20220810-4746-sp7eo9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478563/original/file-20220810-4746-sp7eo9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478563/original/file-20220810-4746-sp7eo9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478563/original/file-20220810-4746-sp7eo9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>Ten percent. That’s the portion of K-12 teachers in the United States who say they’ve been physically attacked by a student, a <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/how-many-teachers-have-been-assaulted-by-students-or-parents-we-asked-educators/2022/08">new survey has found</a>.</p>
<p>Various <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/threats-of-student-violence-and-misbehavior-are-rising-many-school-leaders-report/2022/01">news outlets</a> have <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/27/22691601/student-behavior-stress-trauma-return">reported</a> what has been described as a “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/schools-student-misbehavior-remote-learning-covid-11639061247">wave of student misbehavior</a>” since students returned from remote learning to in-person instruction. The purported surge in student misconduct is part of an upward trend in student assaults on teachers. The percentage of teachers who have been attacked by students has <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/a05/teacher-attacked-by-students?tid=4">increased from 6% to 10%</a> over the past decade, federal data shows.</p>
<p>As school districts across the country report critical <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/03/school-teacher-shortage/">shortages</a> in teaching staff, some people worry that the attacks on teachers <a href="https://www.theedadvocate.org/the-lasting-effects-after-a-student-assaults-a-teacher/">might push qualified candidates away from the profession</a>. Such concerns are well founded. </p>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/video/teachers-must-often-face-student-121206767.html">research interviews with high school teachers who were attacked by students</a>, I learned from teachers firsthand that these assaults <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.22030">have a negative effect on their morale</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2017.1368394">make them want to leave their jobs</a>.</p>
<p>As I point out in my book “<a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12635/suspended">Suspended: Punishment, Violence, and the Failure of School Safety</a>,” attacks are leaving teachers traumatized. In some cases, educators told me they started illegally carrying guns to school after they were attacked.</p>
<p>Teachers also told me they feel as if principals don’t have their backs. In fact, several teachers who have been attacked by students expressed <a href="https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/threatened-and-attacked-students-when-work-hurts">fear of retribution from administrators</a>. </p>
<p>Why would a principal not support a teacher for reporting being attacked? Teachers informed me the principals were worried about their schools getting a bad reputation, which could make it harder to recruit new teachers and students. At least one school in my study could not recruit substitute teachers because the school had a reputation for violence between students and staff.</p>
<p>When teachers reported to principals they had been victimized by students, the principals would minimize their concerns, according to the teachers. The principals would also shift the focus to what the teacher did or didn’t do leading up to the attack.</p>
<h2>Call for tougher laws</h2>
<p>Over the past decade, teachers have urged policymakers to create legislation that addresses violent student behavior. Teachers have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fjAtYES-wA">spoken publicly</a> about how being attacked by students hampered their ability to teach effectively.</p>
<p>Lawmakers have tried to come up with tougher laws to deter violence against teachers. However, many bills fail because of concerns that the bills would erode students’ right to due process. In turn, as I found in my book, many teachers feel powerless because violent students are being allowed to stay in their classes. </p>
<p>For example, in Connecticut, <a href="https://www.cga.ct.gov/2018/ACT/pa/pdf/2018PA-00089-R00SB-00453-PA.pdf">Public Act 18-89</a> would have allowed teachers to have students removed from their classroom if those students engage in violent acts. It would have also allowed teachers to set the standards for the student’s return to the classroom.</p>
<p>Although this proposal received substantial support in the Connecticut House and Senate, then-Gov. Dannel Malloy <a href="https://cea.org/governors-veto-denies-support-for-classroom-safety-and-resources-for-students-in-need/">vetoed the bill</a>, arguing that it <a href="https://www.cga.ct.gov/olr/Documents/year/special/2018VP-20180618_2018%20Veto%20Package.pdf">ran counter to his efforts to reduce exclusion from the classroom and to cut off the school-to-prison pipeline</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=SF2323&session=ls89&session_year=2016&session_number=0&version=latest&format=pdf">Teacher Protection Act</a> in Minnesota would have compelled public schools to expel students who assaulted teachers. But the legislation <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/education/2016/03/legislature-lawmakers-debate-vastly-different-approaches-student-discipline-minnes/">failed to gain much traction</a> because of fierce opposition from <a href="https://educationminnesota.org/">Education Minnesota</a> – a nonprofit organization that represents educators. This particular organization wanted to <a href="https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/threatened-and-attacked-students-when-work-hurts">prioritize restorative justice initiatives</a> that seek to keep students in school to make amends rather than have students be suspended or expelled.</p>
<p>Thus, the challenge for policymakers and administrators is to find a way to protect teachers without jeopardizing students’ right to due process. The well-being and stability of America’s teaching force depends on finding the right balance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Calls for tougher laws against assaults on teachers have been thwarted by efforts to keep kids in school.
Charles Bell, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183958
2022-06-02T12:16:36Z
2022-06-02T12:16:36Z
Teachers often struggle to address mass traumatic events in class
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466561/original/file-20220601-48861-2t0r5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C7340%2C4897&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Educators get little to no training in how to deal with traumatic events.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/business-woman-on-chalkboard-background-royalty-free-image/1273555667?adppopup=true">Pixelimage / Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Paris-attacks-of-2015">Paris attacks of 2015</a> – a series of attacks in which gunmen opened fire on nightspots and a concert hall in Paris – a U.S.-based high school teacher of French described her failure to discuss the attacks in class as a “lost opportunity.”</p>
<p>“I was working through my own feelings and did not know how to approach it,” she told us in a survey after the attacks. “I only talked about it when the students brought it up and I kept conversations short.</p>
<p>"I think I should have been more open, honest, and offered more opportunities for students to process and take some action, even if it was a moment of silence, to honor the victims and help the families and survivors,” the teacher continued. “I let my fear of not knowing what to do guide me and I regret it.”</p>
<p>Such feelings are by no means uncommon among schoolteachers after a mass traumatic event has occurred, as we have learned as researchers who specialize in student <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9NARJzgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">mental health</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rStmGIoAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">well-being</a>.</p>
<p>This teacher was just one of <a href="https://istss.org/ISTSS_Main/media/Documents/ISTSS-Final-Program.pdf">almost 100 U.S.-based teachers of French</a> whom we surveyed after the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/bataclan-attack-survivors-and-victims-loved-ones-on-resulting-hate-compassion">2015 Paris attacks</a>. We also surveyed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-014-9140-x">about 150 Massachusetts teachers</a> following the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/03/us/boston-marathon-terror-attack-fast-facts/index.html">2013 Boston Marathon bombing</a>. </p>
<p>The National Association of School Psychologists recommends that teachers <a href="https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-safety-and-crisis/school-violence-resources/talking-to-children-about-violence-tips-for-parents-and-teachers">make time to talk</a> to students about high-profile acts of violence, including attacks against schools, such as the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/27/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-timeline/">May 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School</a> in Uvalde, Texas. However, the teachers whom we surveyed regularly told us that initiating these conversations is difficult.</p>
<p>In response to our surveys, the teachers wrote about the challenges of entering their classroom the morning after a crisis. Here is what they told us:</p>
<h2>1. There is no typical way that students will respond</h2>
<p>Psychologists are clear that, after a mass trauma, a <a href="https://www.nctsn.org/resources/talking-children-about-shooting">wide range of feelings and responses</a> is normal.</p>
<p>For teachers, this means that in a classroom of 25 students, there might be 25 different reactions. Students may also differ in their knowledge and understanding of what happened in the event. Whereas parents can focus on just their own children, teachers need to navigate complex conversations with many students at once, realizing that some students may be deeply affected, while others have little reaction.</p>
<p>For example, after the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/boston-marathon-bombings">Boston Marathon attack</a> in April 2013, a teacher wrote about the challenges of anticipating how her students would respond: “Because the students I serve have trauma histories and emotional disabilities, it is very difficult to determine the impact of the events in April on students, as so many other factors play a role.”</p>
<h2>2. There is no script to address trauma</h2>
<p>Conversations about crises are unpredictable. Teachers don’t know what topics and questions students will raise and are often left to find their own materials. One teacher wrote about preparing to return to school following the Boston Marathon attack: “I spent a lot of time and energy working on a plan for my class on my own, but I know that other teachers who did not have the luxury to do so, or who were less experienced teachers, were much more worried about going into school than I was.”</p>
<p>Other teachers commented on their uncertainty entering the classroom. A teacher of middle and high school French wrote after the Paris attacks: “[I] had many students ask me about the attacks and I spoke with them privately about the tragedy but said that I didn’t feel comfortable discussing the events as an entire class. If I had more resources or time or training to address these events with teens I would love to be able to without the fear of offending someone or having a student say something insensitive.”</p>
<h2>3. Students are not the only audience</h2>
<p>While students are the focus of teachers’ attention, families may have strong opinions about if or how schools talk about mass trauma. Even when school staff members know how to navigate conversations with students based on best practices and developmental considerations, families may have their own opinions about what is appropriate to discuss in school. </p>
<p>An elementary school French teacher wrote about her concern that she would provide more information than parents would like: “I told them that if they had questions, they should talk to their parents, because I wanted to respect the parents’ wishes as far as how much the kids knew.”</p>
<p>An elementary school science teacher wrote a similar response after the Boston Marathon attack: “I was also always fearful that one student who knew all about the attacks would start talking about it with students who had no idea what had happened and I would be stuck trying to mediate the situation, wary of what parents would say if students come home talking about the event after parents had decided not to expose their child to it.”</p>
<h2>4. Events are linked to broader social, political and cultural contexts</h2>
<p>As teachers prepared to discuss a traumatic event, they said they also needed to be ready to discuss the context of the event. For example, a middle and high school teacher of French wrote that she “experienced strong conservative political reactions from students,” which she said she wasn’t expecting. “I expected to help them grieve, but I felt unprepared to navigate a debate on gun control in one class and bombing Syria in another. … I tried to offer counterpoints while simultaneously being unaware of how far I can push before getting into hot water.”</p>
<h2>5. Teachers are affected, too</h2>
<p>Often teachers live and teach in communities directly affected by traumatic events. Or, as with the Uvalde, Texas massacre, teachers may themselves feel scared or affected by <a href="https://violence.chop.edu/school-shootings">events</a>. For example, an eighth and ninth grade French and Spanish teacher wrote after the Paris attacks that she, “as an adult, was much more traumatized than the kids.” “To me it was another 9/11 moment,” she said. “I was the one feeling lost, shocked and upset.” A first grade teacher similarly wrote after the Boston Marathon attack: “Most of the students wanted school to resume as normal – they wanted consistency and something familiar. It was the adults that needed the most help comprehending, processing and dealing with the events.”</p>
<p>When we asked teachers how their schools can better support them, two messages came across clearly. First, leadership is essential. Several teachers noted the importance of school leaders meeting with staff to discuss their feelings and prepare to respond before resuming school. They also discussed the importance of school leaders sending out communications to educators and families, explaining how the school will respond. </p>
<p>Second, teachers want to know what to say. An April 2022 study found that only five states required future teachers to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2022.2066547">receive training in how to respond to trauma</a>. Teachers expressed that they want training and guidance in how to discuss traumatic events with students, including how to open the conversation, how to respond to difficult questions, and how to support students throughout the discussion. For example, a fifth grade teacher wrote after the Boston Marathon attack: “Training! We have no training on this. We get emails from our superiors that tell us to address the events, with not much training on how to do it. I feel like I’m good at this type of thing – but not all teachers in my school are. … The result is that some kids get their needs met by their teacher and some don’t.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Schoolteachers routinely report feeling ill-prepared to guide their students through difficult conversations about high-profile violent events.
Jennifer Greif Green, Associate Professor of Special Education, Boston University
Jonathan S. Comer, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Florida International University
Melissa Holt, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, Boston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183965
2022-06-02T12:16:00Z
2022-06-02T12:16:00Z
5 ways to reduce school shootings
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466681/original/file-20220601-48537-yx23wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C12%2C2032%2C1345&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Restrictive gun laws bring down the murder rate.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-a-candlelight-vigil-in-uvalde-texas-united-news-photo/1241011278?adppopup=true">Anadolu Agency / Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, psychology professor <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=70eLrWwAAAAJ">Paul Boxer</a> and his colleagues reviewed research to see what could be learned from what they refer to as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21766">science of violence prevention</a>.” In the wake of the May 24, 2022, massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Boxer has revisited that research anew – and other research conducted since then – for insights on what can be done to reduce the risk of school shootings in the future. Here he offers five policy changes – based on his findings – that can be implemented to achieve that end.</em></p>
<h2>1. Dramatically limit access to guns</h2>
<p>Gun regulation matters.</p>
<p>When my colleagues and I looked at gun regulations on a state-by-state basis, we found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdab047">more restrictive gun laws are associated with lower rates of homicides by guns</a>. </p>
<p>This relation held even after we took demographic, economic and educational factors into account. Others researchers have found that “permissive firearm laws and higher rates of gun ownership” were linked with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2021.2018332">higher rates of school shootings</a>. </p>
<p>What these results essentially mean is that in states where it is more difficult to acquire a gun, fewer people are killed by guns. Examples of these restrictions are raising the age for legal purchase, imposing lengthy waiting periods before access, requiring meaningful background checks, and more. These and similar measures – for example, eliminating access for individuals at a high risk of committing violence, such as the perpetrators of domestic violence – all move toward making it significantly harder to access guns, which would reduce gun violence substantially.</p>
<p>Placing meaningful restrictions or outright bans on firearm equipment associated with greater lethality, such as assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, should also lower the number of people being killed by firearms. Research <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2021.106599">already has shown</a> that greater access to guns is associated with higher numbers of gun deaths.</p>
<h2>2. Use more violence risk assessments in schools</h2>
<p>In the years since the Columbine shooting in 1999, researchers and federal law enforcement agencies have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.1007">studied school shootings</a> and developed <a href="https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Ftam0000038">risk assessments</a> to gauge the likelihood of actual violence by a young person identified as a possible risk.</p>
<p>These assessments are conducted by professionals that include police officers, school officials and teachers. They also involve mental health professionals, such as school counselors and psychologists. Together, these professionals all consult with one another to determine a young person’s risk for violence.</p>
<p>These teams may not be able to prevent every possible incident. Still, this sort of approach is critical to improving the process of identifying and stopping potential shooters overall. Guidance on how to use these assessments is <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/making-prevention-a-reality.pdf/view">freely available</a> and based in extensive applied research. For example, in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/tam0000038">one 2015 study</a>, the <a href="https://dev.curry.virginia.edu/faculty-research/centers-labs-projects/research-labs/youth-violence-project/virginia-student-threat">Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines</a> – a set of guidelines for the investigation of a reported threat, thorough assessment of the individual making the threat, and preventive or protective measures to be taken in response – were shown to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/tam0000038">reduce rates of student aggression</a>. They were also shown to lower out-of-school suspension rates while improving teacher and student perceptions of safety. </p>
<h2>3. Expand evidence-based strategies to reduce violent behavior</h2>
<p>To help reduce the number of youths who grow up to become violent, governmental agencies could increase the availability and use of evidence-based interventions in schools. </p>
<p>Aggressive and violent behavior has been shown by research to emerge from a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01233.x">mix of personal and environmental risk factors</a>. The factors include impulsivity, callousness, exposure to violence and victimization. </p>
<p>In light of this research, effective approaches were developed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9576-4">prevent</a> aggression by teaching students to problem-solve for better responses to peer conflict. They also teach students to think carefully about others’ motivations when they feel provoked.</p>
<p>Programs shown to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.72.4.571">reduce</a> aggressive behavior typically train youths who already have exhibited some aggression on new and better coping skills for managing stress and anger. And for youths who have become seriously violent, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.73.3.445">treatments</a> teach new, constructive behavioral and communication skills to youths and their caregivers. The treatments also help young people develop better relationships with family members and school personnel.</p>
<h2>4. Make school buildings safer</h2>
<p>The Robb Elementary School shooter entered the school building through a door that reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/31/uvalde-teacher-door-closed/">malfunctioned</a>. This highlights the absolute importance for schools to take and maintain physical security measures.</p>
<p>In the wake of school shootings, schools often turn to solutions such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/30/1102035766/u-s-schools-increase-security-after-uvalde-shooting-texas">upgraded camera surveillance or increased law enforcement</a>. </p>
<p>These measures can have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.06.008">mixed effects</a> on students’ perceptions of safety and support – cameras posted outside appear to increase felt safety, whereas cameras posted inside seem to promote unease. </p>
<p>Increased law enforcement presence might make <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1844547">teachers feel safer</a> in school. But it also might <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12512">criminalize student misbehavior</a> without <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1846458">actually making schools safer</a>.</p>
<p>Still, there are number of ways for schools to <a href="https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10614">improve physical security</a> without increasing student anxiety or needlessly deploying law enforcement. For example, in one large study, students were less likely to skip school because of safety concerns when metal detectors were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904816673735">used at school entry points</a>. In that study, those metal detectors also reduced the likelihood of weapons being brought into schools.</p>
<h2>5. Reduce exposure to violence through media and social media</h2>
<p>Entertainment media and social media are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.1">saturated with violent images</a> of physical assaults, gun violence and gore. Exposure to and participation in virtual violence might not lead to aggressive behavior for all children and adolescents. But watching violent programs and playing violent video games can lead to increased <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21655">hostility</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21427">aggressive feelings</a>, emotional <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021711">desensitization to violence</a> and ultimately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.160.4.348">aggressive behavior</a>. These effects can potentially be lessened by reducing the amount of screen violence to which children and adolescents are exposed over time, particularly early in development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Boxer receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control. </span></em></p>
Risk assessments and rigid gun laws are among the tools that can help prevent school massacres, a specialist in youth aggression says.
Paul Boxer, Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University - Newark
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/174684
2022-04-06T12:25:10Z
2022-04-06T12:25:10Z
Shame and secrecy shroud culture of sexual assault in boys’ high school sports
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456448/original/file-20220405-24-dalaeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C22%2C4905%2C3638&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sports-related sexual assaults often take place in the locker room.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teenage-football-player-hanging-head-in-locker-room-royalty-free-image/200193319-001?adppopup=true">Thomas Barwick/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A coat hanger. A broomstick. A pool cue.</p>
<p>All these objects were used in a series of sexual assaults in recent years in which the perpetrators allegedly targeted high school boys who play sports.</p>
<p>The perpetrators always had easy access to their alleged victims. That’s because they were teammates.</p>
<p>In the world of education, sexual assault is often <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/10/campus-sexual-assault-survey/">seen</a> or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4185572/">portrayed</a> as something that men do by overpowering women or girls. But as a <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/sociology/small_jamie.php">sociologist</a> who studies <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rQvXPboAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&authuser=2&gmla=AJsN-F5zLYUe63g3_3Wu7hcoTdNWfudT5Qb1k6viTrKiMf-pY0e_4JdLXlkiU6W2Txac-jiofydp9qLXhYtz7CXE49xk5sKphEqBJnqrdEmkNwiufZkb_w4">sexual violence and masculinity</a>, I know there’s another form of sexual assault taking place at America’s schools that is just as harmful but which seems to get far less attention, perhaps because it’s seen as ritualistic “<a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED529622">hazing</a>” or characterized as “<a href="https://www.news9.com/story/5e3682142f69d76f620968d9/assault-or-horseplay">horseplay</a>.”</p>
<p>It’s a form in which high school boys athletes – and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2017/10/22/these-middle-school-students-pretended-to-rape-black-classmates-on-snapchat/">sometimes middle school boys, too</a> – assault other boys who are members of their team.</p>
<p>In peer-reviewed research published in Social Problems in 2021, I examine this issue by taking <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spab030">a close look at how a small American community responded</a> to allegations that boys on the high school wrestling team had sexually bullied other boys on the team.</p>
<p>Prosecutors filed misdemeanor and felony charges against five defendants, which focused mostly on sexual assault and physical restraint. Some of the boys were facing up to life imprisonment. However, a conviction would prove difficult, as the allegations were portrayed as boys just horsing around, and many members of the community expressed concerns that its reputation was on trial.</p>
<h2>Reputation at stake</h2>
<p>To examine the case, I conducted in-depth interviews with one prosecutor and two defense attorneys; examined news accounts of the incident; and listened to audio recordings of police interviews with 21 witnesses.</p>
<p>What I found is that the community – mainly the boys’ school administrators, coaches and the boys themselves – were more concerned about whether what the perpetrators did was “gay” than they were with the effect it had on the victims. </p>
<p>No one disputed the facts of the case, only whether or not the actions were criminal.</p>
<p>They also expressed anxiety about how it would affect the community’s reputation as a whole if what the boys did was seen as a homosexual act.</p>
<p>One defense attorney told me that if the defendants had been accused of sexually assaulting girls, “they’d go along with” being referred to as accused rapists. But the dynamics were different, the defense attorney said, when the boys were accused of sexually assaulting other boys – an accusation they resented because it implied sexual behavior with another male.</p>
<p>Thus, what made these criminal charges so egregious – at least to some members of the community – was the fact that they called into question the presumed heterosexuality of the community’s star high school athletes.</p>
<p>The perpetrators, victims and male authority figures in the school community felt like the boys’ masculinity itself was threatened.</p>
<h2>Attacks mirror others</h2>
<p>In the attacks that I examined, groups of boys from the high school wrestling team targeted individuals in dark spaces with little adult supervision, such as the locker room and on bus rides. The attacks were rapid. They typically lasted less than a minute. They usually involved several boys pinning down the victim, restraining his arms and legs, covering his face, punching his genitals and attempting to stick their bare fingers in his anus. Targeted boys, especially those who were assaulted multiple times, were often younger and smaller than the aggressors. The targeted boys reported different reactions in their interviews with police investigators. Some became fearful, agitated and reluctant to stay on the team. But others brushed it off as annoying but not a big deal.</p>
<p>In this case, coaches and other school officials reported they knew there was ordinary horse play – as they named it – but they didn’t know that it involved sexual assault.</p>
<p>The attacks that I studied are in no way isolated. In many ways, they mirror other sexual assaults throughout the nation that have involved high school sports teammates as perpetrators and victims.</p>
<p>For instance, at Plainfield Central High School in Plainfield, Illinois, varsity football players <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/coaches-knew-about-violent-code-blue-hazing-rituals-at-plainfield-central-high-school-lawsuit/2596579/">targeted two players</a> for what the boys referred to as a “Code Blue” in the locker room after practice in October 2019.</p>
<p>“When one of the plaintiffs tried to run away, the players grabbed him and pinned him to the ground,” states a <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/coaches-knew-about-violent-code-blue-hazing-rituals-at-plainfield-central-high-school-lawsuit/2596579/">news account</a> describing a lawsuit filed in the case. “They then allegedly pushed a broom stick between both students’ buttocks, resulting in penetration, according to the suit. The assault was so violent that the broom stick snapped in half.”</p>
<p>The lawsuit alleged that the school “had ‘longstanding issues’ involving hazing, and coaches allegedly knew about the hazing ritual and failed to act to stop it,” according to the news account.</p>
<p>It’s common for perpetrators to view their assaults as something other than sexual.</p>
<p>For instance, on the last day of practice in 2018, four junior varsity players at Damascus High School in Damascus, Maryland, turned out the lights in the locker room and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/broomstick-hazing-lawsuit-damascus/2021/08/12/fb45fe90-df2b-11eb-b507-697762d090dd_story.html">attacked several teammates</a>. The attackers pulled down the pants of one boy and shoved a broom handle into him through his underwear as he screamed. They did similar things to two other boys and stomped another as he fought off the broom attack.</p>
<p>At court proceedings in 2019, a judge said the alleged attackers <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/broomstick-hazing-lawsuit-damascus/2021/08/12/fb45fe90-df2b-11eb-b507-697762d090dd_story.html">“didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the attacks”</a> and seemed to view their attack “as a prank or some kind of team-building exercise.”</p>
<h2>Scope of problem unknown</h2>
<p>As a researcher, I’ve found it difficult to pin down just how prevalent is the problem of adolescent athletes who sexually assault their peers in the same manner as the perpetrators in the case I examined.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.publicjustice.net">Public Justice</a> is a non-profit legal advocacy organization that tracks lawsuits involving sexual bullying, harassment and assault in K-12 schools. In its <a href="https://www.publicjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2022.03.18-Winter-2022-Edition-SCRP-Verdicts-and-Settlements-List-FINAL.pdf">January 2022 compilation of jury verdicts and settlements</a>, which includes cases from the past 20 years, 21 out of 334 of these lawsuits involved groups of boys sexually harassing and assaulting other boys, mostly in sports settings. Yet civil and criminal proceedings do not really reveal the scope of the problem.</p>
<p>The Department of Education <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/sexual-violence.pdf">tracks sexual violence in K-12 schools</a>, but not specifically cases that involve athletes who attack their teammates. There’s a <a href="https://www.stopbullying.gov">federal government campaign to stop bullying</a>, but sports-related sexual assaults <a href="https://www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/other-types-of-aggressive-behavior">fall outside of what the campaign considers bullying</a>.</p>
<p>There’s another barrier to getting an accurate picture of the prevalence of boy-on-boy sexual assault. Although victims of all genders may be reluctant to report that they’ve been sexually assaulted due to the stigma of being a rape victim, men and boys face a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X16652656">different type of stigma</a> in disclosing experiences of sexual victimization because men are expected to be strong and fight off physical attacks. For that reason, male victims of sexual assault may be reluctant to report their experiences of victimization.</p>
<h2>A focus on prevention</h2>
<p>In the case I examined, the prosecution was largely unsuccessful. The defendants pleaded guilty to minor misdemeanor charges, which were substantial reductions from the original felony charges. The defense attorneys had effectively portrayed the assaults as funny, ordinary and a normal part of friendship among boys.</p>
<p>Preventing sexual violence in high school sports requires a multi-pronged approach. I see three things that merit priority status. First, federal agencies, such as the Department of Education, the Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control, could collect better data on the scope and nature of the problem. Second, prevention efforts can engage men and boys in promoting healthy forms of masculinity. <a href="https://www.acalltomen.org/about/team/tony-porter/">Tony Porter’s advocacy</a> with the NFL to prevent gender-based violence serves as a good model because it shows that prevention efforts are not just women’s issues. Finally, the forthcoming <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/03/08/executive-order-on-establishment-of-the-white-house-gender-policy-council/">U.S. National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence</a> could prioritize sexual violence in sports as a key issue. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie L. Small received funding from the National Science Foundation (Dissertation Improvement Grant #1122312). Currently, she is a Science & Technology Policy Fellow through the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Through this fellowship program, she is on a two-year rotation as a Gender-Based Violence Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development. The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not reflect those of the U.S. government.</span></em></p>
Often dismissed as ‘horseplay,’ sexual assaults perpetrated by boys athletes against their teammates persist in high school sports, a researcher observes.
Jamie L. Small, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/172939
2021-12-17T13:27:50Z
2021-12-17T13:27:50Z
Taking out a student loan for your child can hurt your own financial well-being
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436284/original/file-20211208-159504-1mc3k0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5751%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Parents who borrow for their children's college education say finances control their lives.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/senior-man-and-adult-daughter-working-on-home-royalty-free-image/926397676?adppopup=true">kali9/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When people take out student loans for themselves, certain risks are involved. The debt can <a href="https://theconversation.com/student-loan-debt-is-crushing-americans-4-essential-reads-166338">negatively affect</a> a person’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.11.027">mental</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-489">emotional</a> and even <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.11.027">physical well-being</a>. It can also harm a person’s <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/financial-well-being-scale/">financial well-being</a>.</p>
<p>But when taking out a student loan for one’s child, the risk is even higher that the loan could be associated with lower financial well-being.</p>
<p>This is what economics scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=NI6MYXsAAAAJ">Charlene Kalenkoski</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=2WdRXvAAAAAJ">I</a> found <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/1894/2021._Korankye___Kalenkoski._Student-Loan_Debt_and_Financial_WB.pdf?1639154013">in our peer-reviewed study</a> published in the <a href="https://www.iarfc.org/publications/journal-of-personal-finance">Journal of Personal Finance</a>. The study – which used a nationally representative <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/shed.htm">federal dataset on household economics and decision-making</a> – involved nearly 12,500 American adults ages 18 and over, with an average age of 48. It is not known whether the parents had taken out private or <a href="https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/plus/parent">government loans</a> for their children.</p>
<p>By lower <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/financial-well-being-scale/">financial well-being</a>, we mean that these parents were more likely to report feeling as if they will never be able to have the things they want in life or that they are “just getting by financially.” They also report feeling a lack of control over their financial situation. These statements are part of what the <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/financial-well-being-scale/">U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau</a> uses to measure financial well-being. Lower financial well-being <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx109">decreases overall well-being</a>.</p>
<p>Our findings remained consistent even after we took into account several other factors, such as the education levels of the parents, whether or not they work, how much they earn per year and how they spend their money. We also considered their financial literacy and their current financial strain.</p>
<p><iframe id="2HMJF" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2HMJF/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/financial-well-being/">offers people a financial well-being score</a> on a <a href="https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201512_cfpb_financial-well-being-user-guide-scale.pdf">scale of 0 to 100</a>. Taking out a student loan is associated with a lower financial well-being score for everyone, but our research found that it is associated with an even lower score when the loan is for the borrower’s child. For instance, taking out a loan for oneself is likely to lower the score by 1.44 points, and taking out a student loan for one’s spouse likely lowers the score by 1.37 points. However, taking out a student loan for one’s child was likely to lower financial well-being scores by 1.88 points. </p>
<h2>Most students rely on loans</h2>
<p>In public policy discussions about people who take out student loans, it’s not always clear whether the loan is for themselves or someone else, such as the borrower’s spouse or child. Knowing this information provides insight into how student loan debt relates to the borrower’s well-being if the loan is for their children.</p>
<p>In 2020, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/see-how-student-loan-borrowing-has-risen-in-10-years">64% of of college graduates</a> financed their education via student loans – accumulating an average debt of US$29,927.</p>
<p>The combined amount of federal and private student loans – as well as the number of borrowers – continues to increase. The total amount of student loan debt reached <a href="https://educationdata.org/total-student-loan-debt">$1.75 trillion</a> as of Nov. 30, 2021, and the total number of borrowers stood at 47.9 million.</p>
<h2>Negative effects on households</h2>
<p>These student loan debts have adverse effects on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.26.1.165">individuals, households and the U.S. economy</a>. Consequently, the federal government is considering <a href="https://www.savingforcollege.com/article/whats-the-current-state-of-student-loan-forgiveness">federal student loan forgiveness</a>. In a December 2021 letter, several Democratic lawmakers <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.08.21.Letter%20to%20Biden%20re%20payment%20pause%20final%20signed%20(1)1.pdf">urged President Biden to extend the pause on student loan payments – which ends in January – and to act to cancel student debt</a>.</p>
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<p>The lawmakers call attention to “significant disparities” that contribute to the racial wealth gap. “Twenty years after starting college, the median Black borrower still owes 95% of their loans, compared to only 6% for the median white borrower,” the lawmakers note, citing a <a href="https://heller.brandeis.edu/iere/pdfs/racial-wealth-equity/racial-wealth-gap/stallingdreams-how-student-debt-is-disrupting-lifechances.pdf">2019 Brandeis University study</a>.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that student loan debt influences household decisions and outcomes. This includes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/fcsr.12374">delayed homeownership</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2020.1757026">lower likelihood of stock ownership</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-021-09753-9">lower probability of life satisfaction</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/fcsr.12263">lower financial wellness</a> compared with those without student loan debt. </p>
<p>Our study used a dataset for 2017. The long-term effects on parents’ financial well-being after taking out loans for their children’s college education are not known. Having datasets for longer periods of time would enable us to examine whether the loans cause lower financial well-being at different stages in parents’ lives, such as when their children finally move out or when the parents retire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Korankye does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Student loan debt can hurt borrowers, but the pain is even greater when the borrower is taking out a student loan for their child, new research shows.
Thomas Korankye, Assistant Professor, Personal and Family Financial Planning, University of Arizona
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/166877
2021-10-07T12:23:09Z
2021-10-07T12:23:09Z
Teachers say working with students kept them motivated at the start of the pandemic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421888/original/file-20210917-47336-o14fe6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5100%2C3802&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teachers experienced more positive emotions interacting with their students when schools closed during the pandemic. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/teacher-using-zoom-on-laptop-computer-to-teach-at-home-news-photo/1310937454?adppopup=true">Barrie Fanton/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Of all the things teachers do on the job, we found that teachers enjoy interacting with students the most – and that the positive feelings when working with students intensified once schools shifted to remote learning during the pandemic.</p>
<p>This finding is <a href="https://wheelockpolicycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/COVID_TeacherTime_WP-1.pdf">based on a study</a> that enabled us to examine how teachers felt about various aspects of their job before the COVID-19 school closures in the spring of 2020 and during the period immediately afterward.</p>
<p>Since our study began before the pandemic struck, we had no way of knowing our findings would ultimately provide a before-and-after snapshot of how teachers feel about their various job duties.</p>
<p>We’re a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6b-SlVgAAAAJ&hl=en">team</a> of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KlDQ2_0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">researchers</a> with <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=H2Cm-PEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">expertise</a> in the measurement of teachers’ work. In the fall of 2019, we set out to conduct a long-term study of teachers’ daily work experiences. We used a time sampling approach that enabled us to see how teachers felt emotionally about specific things they do throughout the day. </p>
<p>Partway through our data collection window, schools closed due to COVID-19. Unsurprisingly, we found that teachers’ overall emotional experiences were less positive in the period after the the pandemic hit than before. </p>
<p>But then we took a closer look and began to examine teachers’ emotions during specific types of professional activities, such as direct interactions with students, attending professional development, completing paperwork, planning and preparation and supervising students. That’s when we discovered that teachers actually experienced more positive emotions while working with students after schools closed than before. </p>
<p>Specifically, we found that teachers felt they were more attentive to their students – and more determined to meet their students’ needs – in the weeks following COVID-19-related nationwide school shutdowns.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Our results show how teachers – at least in the early stages of the pandemic – stuck with their students despite sudden changes to their work, such as having to swiftly switch to remote instruction.</p>
<p>Our results are a reminder of how teachers are often driven by what are referred to as the <a href="https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-4-legendary-approaches-to-teaching-that-impact-all-of-us-a-tribute-to-dan-lortie/2020/05">“psychic rewards”</a> of teaching – the psychological benefits of making a difference in the lives of kids through direct interactions. </p>
<p>As schools reopen, our research suggests that one way to keep teachers motivated and engaged is to ensure that they have time to build and maintain relationships with students. This is something we fear could become lost as school leaders are forced to focus on the health and safety aspects of operating schools as the pandemic continues.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>While our study shows that teachers initially prioritized and invested in their students during the pandemic, we don’t know how long they were able to sustain this response. Other <a href="https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA1108-1">studies</a> have documented that, as the pandemic wore on, teachers across the country reported feeling demoralized and emotionally depleted. And we don’t know if other things made a difference in teachers being able to maintain higher levels of positive emotions while teaching. For instance, what kind of difference did it make if school principals or district superintendents prioritized building relationship with students?</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>For our team, a critical next step is uncovering how teachers have fared as the pandemic has persisted. In those initial months of the pandemic, teachers and leaders alike thought the conditions would be temporary – just a few weeks or months. But educators are now entering their third school year of teaching in a pandemic, and we still have much to learn about the daily effects on teachers of such a profound shift in their work, and more generally, their profession.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 110,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was supported in part by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (#R305A160293).
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristabel Stark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Teachers’ fondness for working with students grew in the early stages of the pandemic, according to a new study that provides a unique before-and-after glimpse at what duties teachers enjoyed most.
Nathan D. Jones, Associate Professor of Special Education, Boston University
Kristabel Stark, Postdoctoral Associate, University of Maryland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164264
2021-09-03T12:35:46Z
2021-09-03T12:35:46Z
5 reasons video games should be more widely used in school
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419144/original/file-20210902-17-5oc89a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6000%2C4009&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Studies show video games help students learn math and science. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/girls-looking-at-tablet-together-in-classroom-royalty-free-image/1049270552?adppopup=true">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In an effort to curtail how much time young people spend playing video games, China has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/08/30/china-video-games-kids-ban-weekday/">banned students from playing them during the school week</a> and limits them to just one hour per day on Fridays, weekends and holidays.</p>
<p>The new rule took effect Sept. 1, 2021.</p>
<p>From my standpoint as a video game designer and scholar who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1l4HrFcAAAAJ&hl=en">specializes in game-based learning</a>, I don’t see a need to limit video game play among students during the school week. Instead, I see a need to expand it – and to do so during the regular school day.</p>
<p>Video games are one of the most popular mediums of our times. One estimate shows that by 2025, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/292056/video-game-market-value-worldwide/">the global gaming market will amount to US$268.8 billion annually</a> – significantly higher than the $178 billion it is in 2021.</p>
<p>The money spent on gaming does not just facilitate a virtual escape from the real world. Scholars such as James Paul Gee, a longtime literacy professor, have repeatedly shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/950566.950595">video games can be used to facilitate learning</a> in the K-12 classroom. Education writer <a href="https://www.ewa.org/profile/greg-toppo">Greg Toppo</a> reached the same conclusion in his <a href="https://www.gettingsmart.com/2015/07/smart-review-the-game-believes-in-you-how-digital-play-can-make-our-kids-smarter/">critically acclaimed</a> book, “<a href="http://www.gamebelieves.com/">The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter</a>.”</p>
<h2>A long history</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Oregon Trail computer game is displayed on a white background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419148/original/file-20210902-17-1600par.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Oregon Trail, a famous 1970s computer game, taught children about life for Americans traveling to the West during the early 1800s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-oregon-trail-computer-game-one-of-many-iconic-toys-thru-news-photo/840756172?adppopup=true">Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The use of video games in the classroom is nothing new. Many people who went to school in the 1970s through the 1990s may recall the iconic video game <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-you-wound-playing-em-oregon-trailem-computer-class-180959851/">The Oregon Trail</a>, which made its debut in a classroom in 1971.</p>
<p>In the game, players lead a group of settlers across the Midwest following in the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lewis-clark">footsteps of Lewis and Clark</a>. The game came just before the video game industry <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/history-of-video-games">was established</a> with the 1972 release of the video game <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2012/04/pong-atari-and-the-origins-of-the-home-video-game.html">Pong</a>, an electronic version of table tennis.</p>
<p>Even though educational video games have been used in classrooms for 50 years – and despite the fact that research shows <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781403984531">educational games can be effective</a> – they are <a href="https://joanganzcooneycenter.org/2014/10/21/busting-barriers-or-just-dabbling-how-teachers-are-using-digital-games-in-k-8-classrooms/">not that common</a> in classrooms today.</p>
<p>Many educational games have been released since the days of The Oregon Trail. Some of the most popular are: <a href="https://www.carmensandiego.com/game/">Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?,</a><a href="http://www.mathblaster.com/">Math Blaster!</a>, <a href="https://www.terc.edu/zoombinis/">Zoombinis</a>, <a href="https://www.icivics.org/">iCivics</a>, <a href="https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-12">DragonBox Algebra</a> and <a href="https://www.schellgames.com/games/history-maker-vr">History Maker VR</a>. Most games are for pre-K to elementary school students. </p>
<p>Here are five reasons why I think video games should be used in every classroom.</p>
<h2>1. Video games can help students stay in STEM</h2>
<p>In 2020, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology found that the nation needs to <a href="https://science.osti.gov/-/media/_/pdf/about/pcast/202006/PCAST_June_2020_Report.pdf?la=en&hash=019A4F17C79FDEE5005C51D3D6CAC81FB31E3ABC">create the STEM workforce of the future</a>. One of the reasons students drop or switch out of science, technology, engineering and math programs is because of the difficulty of introductory courses such as <a href="https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/insights-and-recommendations-from-the-maa-national-study-of-college-calculus#:%7E:text=of%20College%20Calculus-,Insights%20and%20Recommendations%20from%20the%20MAA%20National%20Study%20of%20College%20Calculus,-David%20Bressoud%2C%20Vilma">calculus</a>.</p>
<p>The University of Oklahoma has developed a <a href="https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/game/1039">calculus game</a> that can help students succeed in calculus. Research has shown student mastery of calculus <a href="https://today.tamu.edu/2019/02/13/university-students-who-play-calculus-video-game-score-higher-on-exams/">increases when using a purposeful designed learning game</a>, such as <a href="https://triseum.com/variant-limits/">Variant: Limits</a> – another calculus game that was developed at Texas A&M University.</p>
<h2>2. They provide experiential learning</h2>
<p>Teaching students 21st-century skills, such as creative problem solving, is <a href="https://www.oecd.org/els/emp/wcms_556984.pdf">important for the future workforce</a>, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Games such as <a href="https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-12">DragonBox Algebra</a>, where students solve math problems in a fantasy environment, can help students master skills such as <a href="https://www.commonsense.org/education/app/dragonbox-algebra-12">critical thinking</a>.</p>
<p>In games such as <a href="https://civilization.com/">Civilization</a>, players can be a civic leader and direct the prosperity of nations. In <a href="https://triseum.com/arte-mecenas/">ARTé: Mecenas</a>, learners can become members of the <a href="http://galileo.rice.edu/gal/medici.html">Medici family</a> and become patrons of the arts and successful bankers. Students learn through doing and can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2015.996098">gain skills and knowledge</a> through experiential learning that might not be gained in traditional classrooms.</p>
<h2>3. Players learn from failure</h2>
<p>Games are a natural way to allow students to fail in a safe way, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1725-y">learn from failures</a> and try again until they succeed.</p>
<p>Some games, like <a href="https://www.ea.com/games/burnout/burnout-paradise">Burnout Paradise</a> make failure fun. In the game, players can crash their cars – and the more spectacular the crash, the higher the points. This allows players to essentially learn from their mistakes, correct them and try again.</p>
<p>The video game theorist and author <a href="https://www.jesperjuul.net/">Jesper Juul</a> wrote in his book, “<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-failure">The Art of Failure</a>,” that losing in video games is part of what makes games so engaging. Failing in a game makes the player feel inadequate, yet the player can immediately redeem themselves and improve their skills. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of young girls wear VR headsets in class." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419149/original/file-20210902-13-1ewzc3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Video games can engage students in educational material in a fun way.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/schoolgirl-uses-virtual-reality-goggles-during-royalty-free-image/666835520?adppopup=true">SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Students stay engaged in content</h2>
<p>The average time a student spends learning in a classroom is only <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.74.6.844">60% of the allocated class time</a>. Extending the school day to give students more time for learning has been shown to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.06.003">only marginally effective</a>. A more effective way to <a href="https://www.ascd.org/books/classroom-instruction-that-works">maximize time for learning</a> is through engaged time on task. When students are interested and care about a topic and it is relevant, they are curious and engaged. This provides a much better learning experience.</p>
<p>In the classroom, teachers can engage students. But when it comes to homework, educators have to rely on other ways to motivate students. One way is through games. Educational games <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2020.3018503">can be designed to improve motivation and engagement</a>, providing students with more engaged time on task. </p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>5. Games make complex knowledge fun</h2>
<p>Educational theories state that students cannot be given knowledge; they construct knowledge in their own minds. Learners build on previously learned concepts to construct higher-level and more complex knowledge to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjf9vz4">make it their own</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/periodic-table/">periodic table of elements</a> is challenging to learn and remember for many students. However, learning a complex <a href="https://pokemondb.net/type/dual">three-dimensional matrix</a> with 27,624 values is easily accomplished by middle school students playing the popular video game <a href="https://www.pokemon.com/us/">Pokémon</a>. The essence of the game is figuring out how to combine the 17 different types of attack when battling other Pokémon. Each Pokémon has one or two types of attacks they can use. Players do not learn the different possible combinations by studying a large table with 27,624 entries, but by playing the game. Through playing the game, students gradually construct deeper knowledge of the game and <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2031858.2031859#:%7E:text=FREE%20ACCESS-,The%20deeper%20game%20of%20Pok%C3%A9mon%2C%20or%2C%20how%20the%20world%27s%20biggest%20RPG%20inadvertently%20teaches%2021st%20century%20kids%20everything%20they%20need%20to%20know,-Share%20on">develop core skills</a>, such as literacy, how to compete with grace and sportsmanship, and abstract thinking.</p>
<p>Pokémon was not developed as an educational game, but its design principles – and those of other popular video games – could easily be used to design video games for classrooms that enhance their educational experience.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct an error regarding Jesper Juul, whom the article referred to as “late.” Jesper Juul is still alive. A Danish author of the same name is deceased.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andre Thomas works for Texas A&M University and also for Triseum, a spin-off from the university that publishes the games developed at Texas A&M. </span></em></p>
While China has taken steps to rein in the playing of video games among students during the school week, a U.S. scholar makes the case for why the games should be featured more prominently in school.
André Thomas, Director - LIVE lab and Associate Professor of the Practice, Texas A&M University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/162915
2021-07-27T12:00:47Z
2021-07-27T12:00:47Z
New school planned by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine seeks to teach blend of skills to prepare students for real-world jobs
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412294/original/file-20210720-19-jfyzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2991%2C2425&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's new school will focus on teaching students about science and the music industry.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/record-producers-dr-dre-and-jimmy-iovine-attend-the-news-photo/700080180?adppopup=true">David Livingston/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Music producers Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine have announced <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/dr-dre-and-jimmy-iovine-are-opening-a-new-high-school-in-la-2970784">plans to open a Los Angeles high school</a> that will focus on, among other things, inspiring students to become entrepreneurs. The public school, which will be part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is set to open in fall of 2022 with 124 students and eventually grow to serve 250. Here, two hip-hop scholars – and one career and technical education scholar – weigh in on what the proposed school could mean for the American high school experience.</em></p>
<h2>Edmund Adjapong, assistant professor of STEM education, Seton Hall University</h2>
<p>When I look at the academy proposed by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, two things stand out – the location and the approach.</p>
<p>They plan to open the school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the nation. The <a href="https://laraec.net/los-angeles-unified-school-district/#:%7E:text=The%20ethnic%20composition%20of%20the,04%25">district serves</a> a population that is 74% Latino and 10% Black.</p>
<p>More specifically in terms of location, Dre and Iovine plan to launch the academy in Leimert Park, the <a href="https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/things-to-do/discover-leimert-park-in-los-angeles">Black cultural hub in Los Angeles</a>. Leimert Park is a predominately Black community with 72% of the population identifying as African American and about 16% identifying as Latino.</p>
<p>The decision to open the school in Leimert Park demonstrates a need to provide innovative educational opportunities and experiences for all students, but specifically Black and Latino youth. Further, the academy, which will be a part of Los Angeles Unified School District, demonstrates a commitment to supporting <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/">groups that have been marginalized in education</a>. Statistics show that <a href="http://laschoolreport.com/sullivan-unless-we-act-now-the-students-most-disadvantaged-by-school-closures-will-be-even-more-so-when-schools-reopen/">80% of students currently live at or below the poverty line</a>. The academy will be positioned to enroll students who may have limited access to quality school experiences as a result of their social status. </p>
<p>Most schools tend to <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-teachers-shouldnt-work-in-isolation-kids-need-a-team/2017/07">teach subjects in isolation</a>. This approach doesn’t encourage students to see connections between various content areas. The proposed school in Los Angeles will be interdisciplinary, much like hip-hop itself. </p>
<p>Hip-hop has five creative elements (MC, break dancing, graffiti art, DJ and knowledge of self) that capture various disciplines and create a culture that has real-life applications that young people participate in, interrogate and experience.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young girl uses a soundboard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412207/original/file-20210720-27-kdw2jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Incorporating music into science can help students understand science’s real-life applications.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/side-view-of-young-woman-sitting-at-mixing-desk-in-royalty-free-image/578458229?adppopup=true">Peter Muller/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>For instance, students can engage in science and mathematics applications of music production. They <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-14/dr-dre-jimmy-iovine-hated-school-now-seeking-change-they-are-launching-one-in-south-l-a">might study certain principles behind recording music</a>, such as amplitude and frequency, and how altering those two things can change the entire sound of the song. Adding entrepreneurship provides a way for students to make a living based on their understanding and experiences with music.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=v4O8idE9UAUC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Repko+(2009)+interdisciplinary&ots=xTXLVbIfaT&sig=I1P1jO5a66FCMyMUx4lFDuBaaf0#v=onepage&q=Repko%20(2009)%20interdisciplinary&f=false">Educational benefits</a> to interdisciplinary teaching include gains in the ability to recognize bias, think critically and tolerate ambiguity, as well as acknowledge and appreciate ethical concerns.</p>
<p>I envision the school providing opportunities for students to imagine themselves as entrepreneurs who have the skills and knowledge to innovate and create solutions to advance their local and global communities. In a <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/innovation-key-to-competing-the-global-economy">global economy</a> where innovation and critical thinking are essential, I think Dre and Iovine’s proposed school could potentially become an exemplary school for other high schools throughout the U.S.</p>
<h2>Shaun Dougherty, associate professor of public policy & education, Vanderbilt University</h2>
<p>When students learn and do things in high school that they can apply in real life, it keeps them more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2008.06.007">interested in school</a> and makes them <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w28790">more likely to graduate</a>. It also helps students develop job skills that can improve their chances of finding rewarding employment and earning a good salary. </p>
<p>One of the best things about the proposed school is that it has a focus on a few areas of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-15/dr-dre-jimmy-iovine-vow-to-create-a-new-l-a-high-school">applied learning, such as business and design, with direct connections to industries</a> that have a strong presence in Los Angeles, such as entertainment-related mutimedia design and business.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Four people stand before a school building while confetti is blasted around them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412005/original/file-20210719-27-58k4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5725%2C3837&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412005/original/file-20210719-27-58k4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412005/original/file-20210719-27-58k4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412005/original/file-20210719-27-58k4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412005/original/file-20210719-27-58k4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412005/original/file-20210719-27-58k4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412005/original/file-20210719-27-58k4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy will be a model for the high school the two artists plan to build.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/erica-muhl-andre-young-aka-dr-dre-jimmy-iovine-and-carol-l-news-photo/1178653721?adppopup=true">Robin L Marshall/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>This is not Dre and Iovine’s first foray into education. Back in 2013, they donated US$70 million to establish the <a href="https://iovine-young.usc.edu/">Iovine & Young Academy</a> at the University of Southern California. The academy takes its name from Iovine and Dre, whose legal name is Andre Young. Current plans indicate that the new high school will have a focus <a href="https://achieve.lausd.net/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=4&ModuleInstanceID=4466&ViewID=6446EE88-D30C-497E-9316-3F8874B3E108&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=107397&PageID=1&Comments=true">similar</a> to the USC Academy – <a href="https://iovine-young.usc.edu/">which focuses on arts and design, engineering and computer science, business and venture management, and communication</a>.</p>
<p>By focusing on information technology, or IT, as well as coding and communication, this school could provide access to things that students might not otherwise get.</p>
<p>Ideally, local industry leaders will <a href="https://www.acteonline.org/professional-development/high-quality-cte-tools/business-and-community-partnerships/">partner</a> with the school to provide rich work-based learning experiences, such as job shadowing or even paid for-credit internships. Such partnerships not only can help students build skills that will help get them jobs and <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED533873">college credit</a>, but also help broaden awareness of <a href="https://www.jff.org/what-we-do/impact-stories/center-for-apprenticeship-and-work-based-learning/benefits-work-based-learning/">college options and the kinds of jobs they can get</a>.</p>
<h2>Nolan Jones, associate adjunct professor, Mills College</h2>
<p>Iovine and Dre’s proposed high school appears to embody <a href="https://www.thebreakreate.com/knowledge-hip-hop-cultures-fifth-element/">knowledge</a> and <a href="https://thetempleofhiphop.wordpress.com/the-9-elements/streett-entrepreneurialism/">entrepreneurialism</a>, which are <a href="https://www.hiphopisgreen.com/10th-element/10th-element-of-hip-hop">considered two elements</a> of hip-hop culture.</p>
<p>The school is set to provide multidisciplinary education. If this is successful, it is a great way to help students uncover their potential and hidden talents through experience and formal education. It is also a possible way to provide education that can be applied in the real world. </p>
<p>With one of the founders being a hip-hop icon, and since hip-hop continues to be a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ogdenpayne/2018/05/24/3-areas-of-society-hip-hop-culture-will-dominate-by-2020/?sh=3633f6c1a149">dominant force in popular entertainment and youth culture</a>, I also see the school as an avenue to foster <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40429877/hip-hop-is-a-huge-equalizer-young-entrepreneurs-get-business-inspiration-from-the-music-industry">entrepreneurialism</a>.</p>
<p>Entrepreneurialism taps into the creative and inventive parts of hip-hop. It encourages self-employment, self-education, business management and practices of fair trade, such as receiving fair payment for work produced.</p>
<p>Given the nature of Iovine and Dre’s proposed school, it will likely speak to the <a href="https://share.america.gov/hip-hop-reshaping-youth-culture-worldwide/">interests of potential hip-hop creatives</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun M. Dougherty receives funding from the Institute of Education Sciences in the US Department of Education . </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edmund Adjapong and Nolan Jones do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new school proposed by music moguls Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine seeks to provide students with practical skills they can apply in entertainment and other fields. Is this a new model for education?
Edmund Adjapong, Assistant Professor of STEM Education, Seton Hall University
Nolan Jones, Associate Adjunct Professor, Mills College
Shaun M. Dougherty, Associate Professor of Public Policy & Education, Vanderbilt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160248
2021-07-16T12:27:47Z
2021-07-16T12:27:47Z
School posts on Facebook could threaten student privacy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411310/original/file-20210714-19-dej2pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3780%2C2467&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Images of students on school Facebook pages could fall into the wrong hands. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/girls-using-portable-computers-royalty-free-image/907538626?adppopup=true">Sol de Zuasnabar Brebbia/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Like many of us, schools in the United States are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1504791">active on social media</a>. They use their accounts to <a href="http://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/qpu8v">share timely information, build community and highlight staff and students</a>. However, <a href="https://educationaldatamining.org/EDM2021/virtual/static/pdf/EDM21_paper_276.pdf">our research</a> has shown that schools’ social media activity may harm students’ privacy.</p>
<p>As a researcher who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nxVowRQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">specializes in data science in education</a>, I and my colleagues came to the topic of student privacy unintentionally. We were exploring <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00589-6">how schools used social media during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic</a>, specifically March and April of 2020. In the course of this research, we noticed something surprising about how Facebook worked: We could view the posts of schools – including images of teachers and students – even when not logged in to our personal Facebook accounts.</p>
<p>The ability to access pages and pictures even when we were not logged in revealed that not only could schools’ posts be accessed by anyone, but they could also be systematically accessed using <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0307-4">data mining methods</a>, or new research methods that involve using computers and statistical techniques to discover patterns in large – often publicly accessible – datasets. </p>
<p>Since practically all U.S. schools report their websites to the <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/">National Center for Education Statistics</a>, and many schools link to their Facebook pages from their websites, these posts could be accessed in a comprehensive manner. In other words, not only researchers but also advertisers and hackers could use data mining methods to access all of the posts by any school with a Facebook account. This comprehensive access allowed us to study phenomena like violations of students’ privacy at a massive scale. </p>
<h2>Risks are present</h2>
<p>The easy access to student photos that we encountered comes despite <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/opinion/zuckerberg-privacy-facebook.html">broader concerns</a> about individuals’ privacy on social media. Parents, for instance, have <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/12493">expressed concerns</a> about teachers posting about their children on social media. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man looks at a computer screen filled with dozens of faces." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411298/original/file-20210714-27-gifc5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411298/original/file-20210714-27-gifc5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411298/original/file-20210714-27-gifc5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411298/original/file-20210714-27-gifc5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411298/original/file-20210714-27-gifc5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411298/original/file-20210714-27-gifc5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411298/original/file-20210714-27-gifc5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photos of students that schools post on Facebook can be easily accessed by corporations or law enforcement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teens-using-social-media-royalty-free-image/873335348?adppopup=true">ljubaphoto via iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span>
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<p>Fortunately, our search of news coverage and academic publications did not reveal any harms that have come to students because their schools posted about them. However, there are a number of possible risks that identifiable posts of students could pose. For instance, would-be stalkers and bullies could use the postings to identify individual students. </p>
<p>Also, there are newer threats that students may face. For instance, the facial recognition company <a href="https://clearview.ai/">Clearview</a> collects internet data – and social media data – from across the World Wide Web. Clearview then <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/05/27/clearview-ai---the-facial-recognition-company-embraced-by-us-law-enforcement---just-got-hit-with-a-barrage-of-privacy-complaints-in-europe/?sh=1d4b202917f5">sells access to this data to law enforcement agencies</a>, who can upload photos of a potential suspect or person of interest to view a list of potential names of the individual depicted in the uploaded photo. Clearview already <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/clearview-facial-recognition-child-sexual-abuse.html">accesses identifiable photos</a> of minors in the U.S. from public posts on Facebook. It is possible that photos of students from schools’ Facebook pages could be accessed and used by companies such as Clearview.</p>
<p>Even though we are not aware of these things actually happening, that is not reason to not be concerned about it. At a time when our privacy is often threatened in surprising ways, as technology journalist Kara Swisher writes, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/opinion/location-privacy.html">only the paranoid survive</a>.” My fellow researchers and I think this cautious view – even a paranoid view – is particularly justified when it comes to students as minors who may not provide their explicit permission to be included within posts.</p>
<h2>Millions of student photos available</h2>
<p>In our study, we used <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/">federal data</a> and an <a href="https://www.crowdtangle.com/">analytical tool provided by Facebook</a> to access posts from schools and school districts. We use the term “schools” to refer to both schools and school districts in our study. From this collection of 17.9 million posts by around 16,000 schools from 2005 to 2020, we randomly selected – sampled – 100 and then coded these publicly accessible posts. We determined whether students were named in the post with their first and last name and whether their faces were clearly depicted in a photo. If both of these elements were present, we considered a student to be identified by name and school.</p>
<p>For example, a student in a Facebook post whose photo includes a name in the caption, such as Jane Doe, would be deemed identified.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="example-fb-img" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411567/original/file-20210715-27-zkvivf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students’ identities can be easily obtained online via school postings on Facebook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>We determined that 9.3 million of the 17.9 million posts we analyzed contained images. Within those 9.3 million posts, we estimated that around 467,000 students were identified. In other words, we found nearly half a million students on schools’ publicly accessible Facebook pages who are pictured and identified by first and last name and the location of their school.</p>
<h2>Assessing the risks</h2>
<p>While many of us already post photos of ourselves, friends and family – and sometimes our children – on social media, the posts of schools are different in one important sense. As individuals, we can control who can see our posts. If we want to limit it to just friends and family, we can change our own privacy settings. But people do not necessarily control how schools share their posts and images, and all of the posts we analyzed were strictly publicly accessible. Anyone in the world can access them.</p>
<p>Even if one considers the potential harm of this situation to be minimal, there are small steps that schools can take that could make a notable difference in whether that potential is present at all:</p>
<h3>1. Refrain from posting students’ full names</h3>
<p>Not posting students’ full names would make it much more difficult for individual students to be targeted and for students’ data to be sold and linked with other data sources by companies.</p>
<h3>2. Make school pages private</h3>
<p>Making school pages private means that data mining approaches similar to our own would be much more difficult – if not impossible – to carry out. This single step would drastically minimize risks to students’ privacy.</p>
<h3>3. Use opt-in media release policies</h3>
<p>Opt-in media release policies require parents to explicitly agree to have photos of their child shared via communications and media platforms. These may be more informative to parents – especially if they mention that the communications and media platforms include social media – and more protective of students’ privacy than opt-out policies, which require parents to contact their child’s school if they do not want their child’s photo or information to be shared. </p>
<p>In sum, schools’ Facebook pages are different from our personal social media accounts, and posts on these pages may threaten the privacy of students. But using social media doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition for schools. That is to say, it doesn’t necessarily come down to a choice between using social media without considering privacy threats or not using social media at all. Rather, our research suggests that educators can and should take small steps to protect students’ privacy when posting from school accounts.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Rosenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When school officials post photos about students on Facebook, they may be inadvertently enabling data mining firms and others to use the information for other purposes, new research has found.
Joshua Rosenberg, Assistant Professor of STEM Education, University of Tennessee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161322
2021-06-24T12:09:44Z
2021-06-24T12:09:44Z
Gifted education programs don’t benefit Black students like they do white students
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404543/original/file-20210604-25-5u2ea8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C10%2C6669%2C4456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Affluent students also benefited more from gifted programs compared to students from low-income backgrounds.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/math-teacher-helps-elementary-schoolgirl-with-math-royalty-free-image/642372236?adppopup=true">SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Participating in a gifted and talented program improved high-ability students’ reading and math achievement, on average, nationwide, I found in a new study. However, in reading, these achievement gains were not universal. Black students benefited less from participating in gifted education programs than white students, my research found. And affluent students gained more from gifted education programs than did students from families with lower incomes.</p>
<p>These findings emerged from an <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737211008919">April 2021 peer-reviewed study</a> that I conducted with education professor <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u1p01p0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Jason Grissom</a>. We analyzed data for 1,340 students who participated in gifted education programs in elementary school. Specifically, we examined how much gifted education programs improved achievement and other outcomes for elementary school students, such as attendance and engagement with school, as measured by student reports of working hard, participating and paying attention in class.</p>
<p>On average, students receiving gifted services saw slight improvements in test scores. The average student who had ever received gifted services saw reading achievement scores increase from the 78th to 80th percentile, irrespective of race or income. The increase was about one-third as large in math as it was in reading. </p>
<p>Low-income students participating in gifted programs did not have net achievement gains in reading, nor did Black students. No evidence was found of a relationship between gifted education program participation with student absences or student engagement.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Some scholars of gifted education have criticized gifted programs as being <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0270-4013_2014_0000026005/full/html">elitist</a>. These criticisms are based on the fact that students from lower-income families are not admitted to gifted programs at the same rate as their peers from <a href="https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-89.3.337">higher-income families</a>.</p>
<p>Advocates for gifted education programs have worked to improve access to the programs in recent years. The National Association for Gifted Children, for instance, has pushed for schools to look at students in a more <a href="https://www.nagc.org/sites/default/files/Position%20Statement/Identifying%20and%20Serving%20Culturally%20and%20Linguistically.pdf">holistic way</a> by gathering information from students, teachers and students when screening for giftedness.</p>
<p>Our findings suggest that access to gifted education programs is not the only issue. For Black and low-income students who aren’t experiencing the same gains as other students, it may not just be about getting into gifted programs, but how well the programs serve those students once they are admitted. These findings should not be taken to suggest that gifted programs are not capable of supporting high-ability students from historically marginalized student populations. Case studies from school districts show that there are <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/an-illinois-district-proved-gifted-programs-can-be-racially-diverse/">programs</a> with <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20150484">evidence of success</a>.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Our study was unable to identify whether particular approaches to gifted education were more beneficial than others. Gifted education might include enrichment provided within the general education setting, moving to a gifted education teacher’s classroom for specialized instruction, after-school programs or even gifted education academies. It may be that the small relationships observed in this paper are due to the fact that the gifted services provided in many elementary schools <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353216686215">may not be very intensive</a>. Research that links gifted education programs with student outcomes will help educators understand how best to design gifted educational services.</p>
<p>An important topic for future research is better understanding why Black and low-income students do not appear to realize the same achievement benefits as their white peers. It could be that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/001440290807400302">gifted education curriculum is not inclusive</a> of the experiences and backgrounds of these students. Or it may be that resource constraints in the schools Black and low-income students attend result in limited intensity of gifted services.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>The differences in achievement among students in gifted education suggest that educators should examine their programming to assess whether they are adequate for serving the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Complicating such efforts, however, is the lack of comprehensive evidence on how to support high-ability, low-income students and students of color.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 106,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161322/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Redding does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Gifted programs may have to revamp the way they operate in order to benefit all students, new research suggests.
Christopher Redding, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, University of Florida
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161079
2021-06-22T18:59:27Z
2021-06-22T18:59:27Z
What is the religious exemption to Title IX and what’s at stake in LGBTQ students’ legal challenge
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407511/original/file-20210621-35174-4mwkie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C7337%2C4902&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Around 100,000 LGBTQ students study at religious institutions in the US.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/woman-wears-graduation-cap-and-gown-showing-gay-royalty-free-image/1158696624?adppopup=true">iStock/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While federal law <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/tix_dis.html#:%7E:text=Title%20IX%20states%3A,activity%20receiving%20Federal%20financial%20assistance.">shields most U.S. students</a> from gender and sexual orientation discrimination, an <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/05/14/christian-colleges-seek-defend-title-ix-religious-exemption">estimated 100,000 LGBTQ students</a> at religious institutions do not have the same protections. </p>
<p>Under a religious exemption provision, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/12/18/religious-colleges-get-exemptions-to-anti-bias-law-allowing-hidden-discrimination-against-lgbt-students/">scores of colleges and universities</a> can – and do – discriminate on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://593f573b-1436-46c6-85bf-bd1475656bfe.filesusr.com/ugd/b017d0_acbf337205884ac0b271a899cbeaf896.pdf">class action lawsuit</a> now challenges that discrimination. It alleges that the Department of Education’s acquiescence in Title IX’s religious exemption violates the students’ constitutional rights and causes them harm. </p>
<p>I am <a href="https://law.byu.edu/faculty/kif-augustine-adams/">a professor of law</a> at an institution that has claimed religious exemption to Title IX. I speak only for myself here, not for my institution. </p>
<p>As part of my <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=QyP5Z44AAAAJ">academic research</a>, I have reviewed every Title IX religious exemption claim schools across the United States have made to the Department of Education. This review and other research suggests that the lawsuit’s chances of success are slim at best. Still, the suit will bring fresh attention to tensions between LGBTQ rights and religious exemption in education. </p>
<p>Here is an explanation of what is at stake.</p>
<h2>What is Title IX?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1681">Title IX</a> is a federal statute that prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. It formed part of a wave of federal civil rights legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. </p>
<p><a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/t9-rel-exempt/index.html">With limited exceptions</a>, Title IX applies to all educational institutions that receive federal funding, even indirectly through financial support to students. The Department of Education’s <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/aboutocr.html">Office for Civil Rights</a> enforces Title IX.</p>
<p>Since 1972, Title IX has <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/TitleIX/part1.html">significantly expanded educational opportunities</a> for girls and women. For example, Title IX boosted their access to <a href="https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/education/title-ix-and-the-rise-of-female-athletes-in-america/">athletics</a>. Title IX also helped more women and girls to study in <a href="https://www.airweb.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/rimscholarlypaper.pdf?sfvrsn=a9ddb69_0">science</a> and obtain <a href="https://www.airweb.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/rimscholarlypaper.pdf?sfvrsn=a9ddb69_0">graduate degrees</a>, areas traditionally dominated by men. </p>
<p>In 2010, the Obama administration issued <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201010.pdf">guidance</a> to schools to include LGBTQ people under Title IX’s protections. </p>
<p>The Trump administration <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/23/trump-administration-reverses-title-ix-guidance-transgender-protections">rescinded</a> that guidance. But on June 16, 2021, the Biden administration <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/lgbt.html">restored</a> the inclusive interpretation. </p>
<p>The inclusive interpretation remains guidance only. It is not law that schools must follow. </p>
<h2>Why are religious institutions exempt?</h2>
<p>From the very beginning, Title IX allowed religious schools an exemption to its anti-discrimination provisions. The religious exemption in the statute formed part of a political compromise to pass the legislation. </p>
<p>The exemption has two parts. First, Title IX “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1681">does not apply to an educational institution which is controlled by a religious organization</a>.” <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=e6bb424fe8ff20872e50ba6cdc7535a3&mc=true&node=pt34.1.106&rgn=div5#se34.1.106_112">Title IX regulations</a> define “control” very broadly. Potentially, the exemption could encompass the close to <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_303.90.asp">1,000 colleges</a> and universities in the U.S. that affiliate with a religion. </p>
<p>Second, the religious educational institution is exempt only to the degree its “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1681">religious tenets</a>” conflict with Title IX. A religious educational institution has to state that its discrimination relates to religious principles. </p>
<h2>How has this exemption played out in practice?</h2>
<p>From the late 1980s through 2013, only a <a href="https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/25554/Augustine-Adams_Final%20to%20Sheridan.pdf?sequence=1">very small number</a> of religious educational institutions claimed exemption to Title IX. </p>
<p>But, with the Obama administration’s guidance regarding LGBTQ students, religious <a href="https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/25554/Augustine-Adams_Final%20to%20Sheridan.pdf?sequence=1">exemption claims burgeoned</a>. Between 2013 and May 2021, more than <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/correspondence/other.html">120 religious schools</a> claimed exemption from Title IX. The schools sought to discriminate in areas such as admissions, housing, access to classes, financial aid, counseling, athletics and hiring. </p>
<p>In 2014, the Office for Civil Rights garnered <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/us/transgender-student-fights-for-housing-rights-at-george-fox-university.html">national media attention</a> when it recognized religious exemption claims by three universities to discriminate against transgender students. </p>
<p>Included was the right for George Fox University to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/us/transgender-student-fights-for-housing-rights-at-george-fox-university.html">discriminate against a transgender man</a>. The university <a href="https://www.kgw.com/article/news/transgender-george-fox-student-denied-housing-request/283-71408483">refused to allow him</a> to live in single-sex male housing. The Office for Civil Rights also <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/07/25/2-christian-colleges-win-title-ix-exemptions-give-them-right-expel-transgender">recognized</a> exemption claims for Spring Arbor University in Michigan and California’s Simpson University to discipline and expel transgender students.</p>
<p>In the nearly 50 years since enactment of Title IX, the Office for Civil Rights <a href="https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/25554/Augustine-Adams_Final%20to%20Sheridan.pdf?sequence=1">has never denied</a> a claim to religious exemption. </p>
<p>As a result, religious educational institutions decide for themselves whether and to what degree they are exempt from Title IX.</p>
<h2>How have LGBTQ students reacted to use of the religious exemption?</h2>
<p>With no remedy through the Office for Civil Rights, LGBTQ students have turned to federal court.</p>
<p>In November 2019, two students married to same-sex partners <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yhREbm3ozLc-IH0c9idUG1RA79l_ShiM/view?usp=sharing">sued</a> Fuller Theological Seminary. The seminary had expelled them for violating its <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yhREbm3ozLc-IH0c9idUG1RA79l_ShiM/view?usp=sharing">sexual standards policy</a>, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. The policy also prohibits “<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yhREbm3ozLc-IH0c9idUG1RA79l_ShiM/view?usp=sharing">homosexual forms of explicit sexual conduct</a>.” </p>
<p>The federal court in California agreed with the plaintiffs that Title IX included LGBTQ people. It nonetheless sustained the religious exemption claim and dismissed the complaint. The court ruled that Fuller satisfied both the requirements for religious exemption. It was “<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yhREbm3ozLc-IH0c9idUG1RA79l_ShiM/view?usp=sharing">controlled by a religious organization</a>” and it based its discrimination on religious principles.</p>
<p>For the first time, a federal court adjudicated the scope of the religious exemption to Title IX. LGBTQ students lost.</p>
<h2>What is different about the latest court challenge?</h2>
<p>In March 2021, 33 LGBTQ plaintiffs brought a <a href="https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/920c04c1-03a4-48f5-9a0c-74e2e4316e55/note/ff5608bc-cac5-4aeb-9fad-bf42e8b36319.#page=1">class action lawsuit</a> against the Department of Education in federal court in Oregon. </p>
<p>A class action allows a group of people alleging similar harm to come together in one lawsuit. The 33 plaintiffs come from nearly 30 different religious colleges and universities across the U.S. </p>
<p>In the complaint, each plaintiff describes discrimination they faced in their education. For example, one student claims that her school disciplined her for “<a href="https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/920c04c1-03a4-48f5-9a0c-74e2e4316e55/note/ff5608bc-cac5-4aeb-9fad-bf42e8b36319.#page=1">refusing to disavow support for LGBTQ rights and relationships</a>.” She says the university <a href="https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/920c04c1-03a4-48f5-9a0c-74e2e4316e55/note/ff5608bc-cac5-4aeb-9fad-bf42e8b36319.#page=1">forced her into counseling and fined her</a>. </p>
<p>By suing the Department of Education, the class action lawsuit directly challenges the constitutionality of the religious exemption to Title IX.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs <a href="https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/920c04c1-03a4-48f5-9a0c-74e2e4316e55/note/ff5608bc-cac5-4aeb-9fad-bf42e8b36319.#page=1">allege</a> that Title IX’s religious exemption violates the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/christian-colleges-lawsuit-lgbtq-equality-act/2021/03/29/39343620-90af-11eb-9668-89be11273c09_story.html">Fifth</a> and <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">14th</a> Amendments to the Constitution. Specifically, they claim that the exemption deprives them of rights to due process and equal protection. </p>
<p>The complaint <a href="https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/920c04c1-03a4-48f5-9a0c-74e2e4316e55/note/ff5608bc-cac5-4aeb-9fad-bf42e8b36319.#page=1">also argues</a> that the exemption violates the Establishment Clause of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">First</a> Amendment. It alleges the exemption gives preferential treatment to religious institutions over secular ones. </p>
<p>If the Oregon court agrees with the plaintiffs, it could declare the religious exemption to Title IX unconstitutional – an outcome that would have broad ramifications.</p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<h2>What chance of success does the lawsuit have?</h2>
<p>The Oregon complaint presents 33 moving stories of personal suffering. Some plaintiffs describe suicidal thoughts because of their schools’ rejection. Others recount fear, shame and depression.</p>
<p>But the persuasive sway of the complaint’s legal arguments is less clear. </p>
<p>Lower federal courts must follow Supreme Court rulings in deciding cases. Recent decisions in the Supreme Court have significantly <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-supreme-court-found-its-faith-and-put-religious-liberty-on-a-winning-streak-158509">favored religious exemptions over other rights</a>. The Supreme Court also has not ruled how fully due process and equal protection rights protect LGBTQ people. </p>
<p>The plaintiffs face an uphill battle in federal court. Nonetheless, the lawsuit brings public attention to the discrimination that Title IX’s religious exemption allows. The plaintiffs may find more success there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161079/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kif Augustine-Adams is affiliated with Brigham Young University which has claimed religious exemptions to Title IX. The views expressed in this article are hers alone. She is also an occasional volunteer with the non-profit organization Encircle: An LGBTQ+ Youth & Family Resource. </span></em></p>
Around 100,000 LGBTQ US students study at religious institutions that can legally discriminate against them. A lawsuit seeks to end that religious exemption but faces an uphill struggle.
Kif Augustine-Adams, Professor of Law, Brigham Young University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/158605
2021-05-14T12:46:32Z
2021-05-14T12:46:32Z
New teachers face complex cultural challenges – the stories of 3 Latina teachers in their toughest moments
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396125/original/file-20210420-23-1ghs1gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C0%2C8115%2C6123&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Identity and race play significant factors in the first-year experiences of Latina teachers in the U.S.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/high-school-teacher-and-students-in-classroom-royalty-free-image/1264702811?adppopup=true">RichLegg/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gun control. Hallway decorations. Hairstyles.</p>
<p>Those aren’t the things I expected to be stumbling blocks for three Latina educators that I helped prepare to become schoolteachers in recent years. But each situation came up in their classroom or in the course of their jobs at various elementary and middle schools in the state of Indiana, where I teach. Their situations are indicative of a time in our society when we are called to more closely pay attention to issues of racism and social justice.</p>
<p>I’m tracking these former students – along with three others – as part of a study I am doing on the first-year experiences of Latina teachers. As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=d7Q3n0UAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">educator who helps prepare future school teachers</a>, I believe these experiences help shine light on some of the expectations that students, parents and school administrators might sometimes have of classroom teachers. Conversely, my research also shows some of the culturally dicey situations that schoolteachers may have to navigate once they get a classroom of their own.</p>
<p>On a broader level, my research shows the complex interactions that can take place within schools with student bodies that are becoming <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/local/education/teacher-diversity/">increasingly diverse</a>.</p>
<p>With that in mind, here are three examples based on the experiences of three former students of mine in their first year of teaching. All names in the following examples are pseudonyms.</p>
<h2>Gun control</h2>
<p>When Ms. Raymond, a sixth grade social studies teacher, discussed the Second Amendment, Mary, a white female student, expressed her view that Democrats wanted to take everyone’s guns away and that people needed guns in their home for protection.</p>
<p>Ms. Raymond clarified that some people want to see laws passed that make guns less accessible. That same day, Mary’s parents reached out to Ms. Raymond and insisted she meet with them in person. After Ms. Raymond refused to meet in person due to COVID-19 restrictions and her own sense of safety, the parents refused to meet via Zoom or discuss it over the telephone and instead explained their concerns via a messaging app the school uses for teachers and parents to communicate.</p>
<p>Mary’s parents claimed in their messages to Ms. Raymond that Mary felt Ms. Raymond is biased against her opinions and prevents her from stating them by not calling on her. They said Ms. Raymond should allow all students to speak their opinions, even if she doesn’t agree with them, which Ms. Raymond believes she does. They also insisted Ms. Raymond not speak to their child individually because she feels “threatened” by Ms. Raymond. They asked that the homeroom teacher, a white male teacher, be present during any further one-on-one interactions with Mary. The principal agreed that the student should be accommodated in order to make her feel more comfortable.</p>
<p>Ms. Raymond believes this is a move to undermine her position as a teacher. It also serves to uphold the stereotype of Latinas as being loud, hot-tempered and volatile, as indicated in the suggestion that she made the student feel “threatened.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A female teacher wearing a mask conducts her zoom class." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399068/original/file-20210505-17-1vshczw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Classroom discussions around race can be difficult to navigate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gladys-alvarez-a-5th-grade-teacher-at-manchester-ave-news-photo/1228141222?adppopup=true">Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>Hallway decorations</h2>
<p>Ms. Sanchez teaches in a school district where the dual language program is prominently featured on the district’s website. And with good reason. The teachers in this program have gone above and beyond to make the students feel welcomed and part of the school community.</p>
<p>Behind the scenes, however, the principal told the teachers in the program – including Ms. Sanchez – that they couldn’t do certain activities, such as decorating the school hallways with student work, unless they involved the other teachers in the same grade level but who are not part of the program. This happened after those teachers – veteran white teachers – complained that they weren’t being invited to participate in dual language program activities. As a practical matter, Ms. Sanchez says this means the dual language program has to involve white teachers who know neither the students nor the program.</p>
<p>The irony of the situation, according to Ms. Sanchez, is that the non-Spanish-speaking teachers were always welcome to participate in the dual language program activities – they just didn’t want to stay after school to do it.</p>
<p>In effect, while the district promotes the dual language program on its website to create an image of diversity and inclusion, the dual language program in Ms. Sanchez’s school has little autonomy, and she feels it is subjected to white surveillance and control.</p>
<h2>Hairstyles</h2>
<p>During a sixth grade science lesson that was fully online due to the pandemic, several Black girls began to comment on the hair of a white student, Amy, because her hair was braided in small cornrows with beads, seemingly in emulation of a hairstyle typically worn by Black girls.</p>
<p>“Ms. Gonzales, do you think Amy is culturally appropriating right now?” one Black female student asked.</p>
<p>Rather than address the matter on the spot, Ms. Gonzales told her students that these types of conversations are important and that they would address it two days later.</p>
<p>That day, Ms. Gonzales spoke with her team and the principal. Her team concluded that this is a conversation that obviously matters to their Black female students and that waiting two days to talk to them was too long. The principal agreed, adding that racial equality is a key part of their school and the only way to show students this is by hearing their voices. </p>
<p>She also spoke with Amy, the white student who explained that she just loved her friend’s braids and wanted to style her hair the same way, so she had her aunt do her hair. After watching a couple of videos and reading a book with Ms. Gonzales about Black hair, Amy came to realize how it could offend some of her Black peers. Ms. Gonzales also spoke with Amy’s mother, who was supportive and understood why Black students were offended.</p>
<p>Before getting into the full conversation of cultural appropriation, the class discussed what it meant to “pull people in” kindly to these kinds of conversations and not singling people out. Ms. Gonzales also discussed a bit of how Black women’s hair has been discriminated against, <a href="https://www.essence.com/hair/tignon-laws-cultural-appropriation-black-natural-hair/">historically</a> as well as in <a href="https://www.fisherphillips.com/news-insights/the-roots-of-the-crown-act-what-employers-need-to-know-about-hairstyle-discrimination-laws.html">contemporary times</a>. </p>
<p>She also brought in opinions from Black friends and colleagues on how they feel about white people wearing Black hairstyles, as well as Tik Tok videos of persons of color explaining why it’s cultural appropriation or not.</p>
<p>At the end of the meeting, which her mother also attended, Amy decided to make a statement which in part said, “I understand that I had my hair done and it offended some of my peers of color. I love the Black culture and I wanted to respect it. I didn’t know I would be offending the Black culture, and I thought I would be called out in a positive way and not a negative way.”</p>
<p>Ms. Gonzales said she received a lot of backlash from co-workers outside of her team who told her that having such conversations is wrong. Ms. Gonzales defends her actions, saying she sees it as important to provide a space where all students can voice their feelings and learn about issues such as cultural appropriation.</p>
<p>As these three accounts indicate, teachers in their first year of teaching must navigate various concerns – and sometimes concerns that conflict – among parents, students and administrators. Knowing this in advance can help teachers better prepare for the various cultural dilemmas they are likely to face in today’s classroom and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Teresa Sosa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Dicey cultural situations and power struggles await Latina teachers in America’s schools.
Teresa Sosa, Associate Professor of Education, IUPUI
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/158916
2021-04-14T12:36:08Z
2021-04-14T12:36:08Z
Knoxville school shooting serves as stark reminder of a familiar – but preventable – threat
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394890/original/file-20210413-15-whzt1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C0%2C4872%2C3209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People hold a vigil for the victims of the Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita, California, in 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-effected-by-the-saugus-high-school-shoot-hold-a-news-photo/1187735941?adppopup=true"> Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/2020/10/8/21508138/parents-schools-covid-online-poll">most U.S. students having learned virtually in 2020</a> because of the pandemic, the nation logged a record low for school shootings. There were just <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2020/01">three deaths</a> in a total of 10 school shootings in all of 2020.</p>
<p>This compares with <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-in-2019-how-many-and-where/2019/02">eight deaths</a> in 25 school shootings in 2019.</p>
<p>Now, as students return to schools for in-person instruction, the specter of school shootings is back. This was evidenced in the <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2021/04/12/police-respond-reports-shooting-near-austin-east-high-school/7194244002/">April 12 school shooting at the Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville, Tennessee</a>. The shooting left one student dead and a school resource officer injured. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lH0L_03Mtqo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A school shooting in Knoxville, Tennessee, has left one person dead.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iS4HAEMAAAAJ">criminologists</a> and authors of a new book, “<a href="https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/violence-project_9781419752957/">The Violence Project: How to Stop A Mass Shooting Epidemic</a>,” we worry that gun violence at America’s schools may be even more likely in 2021 than before the pandemic because of a number of exacerbated risk factors for violence.</p>
<p>Young people’s <a href="https://namica.org/blog/impact-on-the-mental-health-of-students-during-covid-19/">mental health suffered</a> during the pandemic. And some youths were trapped in <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104709">homes where they endured abuse</a>. As we point out in “Trauma,” a chapter in our book, children who experience abuse in childhood are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.1996.02170290056009">more likely to commit violence</a> later in life.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, there was a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/02/10/this-is-how-many-guns-were-sold-in-all-50-states/43371461/">record number of gun sales in 2020</a>, driven in part by the pandemic and civil unrest after the killing of George Floyd last summer. As a result, students may now have more access than ever to firearms.</p>
<h2>Ominous statistics</h2>
<p>The Knoxville school shooting on April 12 was the 37th school shooting of 2021, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s <a href="https://www.chds.us/ssdb/">K-12 School Shooting Database</a>. The database includes information on “each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week.” Year-to-date comparisons are complicated, because not all school districts went to remote or hybrid learning at the same time or to the same degree.</p>
<p>Taking a narrower view of shootings with injuries or deaths that occurred while school was in session, it was the fourth school shooting of 2021 and second <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2021/03">fatal shooting</a> of the year.</p>
<p>The phrase “school shooting” typically is reserved for mass casualty events like the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Columbine-High-School-shootings">1999 Columbine High School shooting</a>, the 2012 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Newtown-shootings-of-2012">Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting</a> and the 2018 <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/years-parkland-school-shooting-trial-limbo-75827501">Parkland high school shooting</a>. But talking about school shootings only when multiple people die in them minimizes <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/children-under-fire-john-woodrow-cox?variant=32126593138722">the great harm</a> guns cause in schools and to children all the time.</p>
<h2>Response in the UK</h2>
<p>Twenty-five years ago, in March 1996, a gunman walked into Scotland’s Dunblane Primary School and opened fire, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Dunblane-school-massacre">killing 16 children and a teacher</a>. A successful campaign for gun regulation followed, laws were changed, <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/100333/uk-gun-laws-who-can-own-a-firearm">handguns were banned</a> and the United Kingdom <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-1996-dunblane-massacre-pushed-uk-enact-stricter-gun-laws-180977221/">hasn’t had a school shooting since</a>. </p>
<p>Yet in America, a gun is brandished on one K-12 school campus or another every two to three days. From <a href="https://www.chds.us/ssdb/are-school-shootings-becoming-more-frequent-we-ran-the-numbers/">2015 to 2018</a>, there was an “<a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about/partnerships/office-of-partner-engagement/active-shooter-resources">active shooter</a>” – someone actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area – on U.S. school property <a href="https://www.chds.us/ssdb/are-school-shootings-becoming-more-frequent-we-ran-the-numbers/">every 77 days</a>. Since 1970, over <a href="https://www.chds.us/ssdb/data-map/">1,600 school shootings have claimed the lives of 599 people</a> as of April 13, 2021.</p>
<p>Before the pandemic, many parents had become resigned to sending their children to schools that have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/03/us/school-shooting-lockdown-drills/">active shooter drills</a> to rehearse for a real shooting incident. Some even bought <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/bulletproof-backpacks-wouldn-t-have-saved-anyone-recent-shootings-n1042801">bulletproof backpacks</a> for their children.</p>
<h2>Searching for solutions</h2>
<p>Our research on <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-shooters-usually-show-these-signs-of-distress-long-before-they-open-fire-our-database-shows-111242">school shootings</a>, consistent with <a href="https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2021-03/USSS%20Averting%20Targeted%20School%20Violence.2021.03.pdf">research from the U.S. Secret Service</a>, shows that schools can do more than just accept an America where “back to school” means back to school shootings, even without an act of Congress to potentially stop gun violence. We’ve spent the last four years examining the lives of school shooters, searching for solutions. Our findings are freely available in a <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database/">database we created</a> with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.</p>
<p>The data shows, importantly, that school shooters tend to be current or former students of the school. They are almost always in crisis of some sort before their attack, indicated by a noticeable change in behavior from usual. Often this manifests in suicidal thoughts. School shooters also tend to leak their plans for violence in advance, mostly to their peers, often via social media.</p>
<p>And school shooters usually get their guns from family and friends who failed to store them safely and securely. It’s unclear at this point how well the Knoxville shooter fits this profile, but these findings point to important avenues for school shooting prevention.</p>
<h2>Beyond school police</h2>
<p>First, if school shooters are nearly always students of the school, then educators and others who work with them may need to work harder to find ways to identify and counsel them long before they ever pick up a gun. The existing US$3 billion “<a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814748206/homeroom-security/">homeroom security</a>” industry is predicated on <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2019/09/06/fruitport-high-school-michigan-active-shooters/2213687001/">putting up walls</a> to keep active shooters out, rather than building bridges to keep actual students connected. Some school districts rely on school resource officers, or SROs, to police student problems to such an extent that the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/cops-and-no-counselors">ACLU</a> estimates that millions of students are in schools with police but no counselors, school psychologists or social workers.</p>
<p>SROs have intervened in school shootings in the past, including the one in Knoxville on April 12, but we believe they are yet another example of society’s <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing">overreliance</a> on police to solve systemic social problems, from mental illness to homelessness to drug abuse. Research shows the presence of police officers in schools <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-017-9412-8">feeds a larger social problem</a> known as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which even minor infractions at school are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12512">handled by the criminal justice system</a>.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.37394">February 2021 study</a>,
we examined 133 attempted and completed mass school shootings from 1980 to 2019 and, controlling for other factors like the school size, the number of shooters, and the number and type of firearms, we found that the death rate for victims – that is, the perpetrator being excluded – was three times greater in school shootings with armed guards on the scene.</p>
<p>Research has shown that the presence of officers’ weapons increases aggression – it is known as the “<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-psyched/201301/the-weapons-effect">weapons effect</a>.” This effect may be further exacerbated by the fact that many <a href="http://jaapl.org/content/jaapl/36/4/544.full.pdf">school shooters are suicidal</a> and may intend to provoke law enforcement into shooting them. This occurrence is known as “suicide by cop.”</p>
<h2>Toward a future without school shootings</h2>
<p>Even if many lawmakers would like to see more guns in schools <a href="https://apnews.com/article/2cfba6696074f0913e09e2ed5adcc593">through the arming of teachers</a>, we feel it is not a solution. This logic runs counter to our research, which shows that warm and welcoming <a href="https://www.naesp.org/sites/default/files/Framework%20for%20Safe%20and%20Successful%20School%20Environments_FINAL_0.pdf">school environments</a> where all students feel safe and supported are the foundation upon which good school security is built. </p>
<p>In our view, counselors, social workers, peer support networks and small class sizes are what schools need most right now to <a href="https://www.nasponline.org/about-school-psychology/media-room/press-releases/preventing-mass-violence-requires-access-to-mental-health-services-and-reduced-inappropriate-access-to-firearms">prevent violence after a pandemic</a>. They can emphasize strong and trusting <a href="https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/topic-research/engagement/relationships">relationships</a> between students and adults and teach students empathy and alternatives to violence as a means of dispute resolution.</p>
<p>School personnel and students need training to identify a student in crisis and describe how <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/more-schools-are-using-anonymous-tip-lines-to-thwart-violence-do-they-work/2018/08">to report</a> something they see or hear indicative of violent intent. Educators need new tools to help identify students before they become a threat. This means not unduly punishing students in crisis with expulsion or <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article217015060.html">criminal charges</a> – things that could escalate the crisis or any grievance with the institution.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>And as students go back to school, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-moms-are-quietly-passing-gun-safety-policy-through-school-n1132891">safe gun storage at home</a> is a paramount.</p>
<p>School shootings are not inevitable. They’re preventable. We believe the steps outlined above help promote school security while safeguarding student well-being.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Densley has received funding from the National Institute of Justice. He is affiliated with The Violence Project.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jillian Peterson receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. She is affiliated with The Violence Project. </span></em></p>
The pandemic largely gave America a reprieve from school shootings. Two criminologists say gun violence could return to America’s schools worse than before as in-person classes resume.
James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University
Jillian Peterson, Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156360
2021-04-05T12:35:48Z
2021-04-05T12:35:48Z
1 in 3 college students face food insecurity – expanding SNAP benefits on campus will help stave off hunger
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393251/original/file-20210402-15-1m504xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4163%2C2781&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stigma and lack of awareness prevent students from getting food assistance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/student-eats-lunch-at-brooks-dining-hall-on-the-university-news-photo/1231259787?adppopup=true">Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-blog/help-kids-facing-hunger-this">harder to learn</a> when you are suffering from hunger or searching for your next meal.</p>
<p>But while around <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/child-nutrition-programs/national-school-lunch-program">30 million K-12 students</a> in public schools are eligible for free or reduced lunch, it is a different matter when they leave. Many of those who graduate from high school and enroll in higher education institutions find they <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/12/21/789295697/new-snap-rule-impacts-college-students-by-limiting-benefits-and-adding-confusion">no longer have access to federal food programs</a>. </p>
<p>The nation’s leading anti-hunger program for adults, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides food assistance to almost <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-steps-the-governments-taking-toward-covid-19-relief-could-help-fight-hunger-152520">44 million Americans</a>. Only an estimated 18% of college students have been eligible for the program in recent years, with a low <a href="https://younginvincibles.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Rethinking_SNAP_benefits.pdf">3% actually receiving food assistance</a>. </p>
<p>This may be changing. Congress recently passed legislation that included relief for the estimated <a href="https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Wisconsin-HOPE-Lab-Still-Hungry-and-Homeless.pdf">one in three students</a> who struggle with food insecurity. Under the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hr133/BILLS-116hr133enr.pdf">Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021</a>, college students who are enrolled at least half-time, many of whom were previously ineligible due to historical guidelines, may now be able to access SNAP. </p>
<p>To us as scholars who study <a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/stacey.cfm">food insecurity</a> <a href="https://www.meredith.edu/directory/rebecca-hagedorn">on campus</a>, this is welcome news – our research suggests opening up SNAP would help students. But there are concerns that the current expansion may last only a few months and that any lasting change may suffer from a lack of awareness among students over their eligibility.</p>
<h2>Temporary relief</h2>
<p>One look at the Food and Nutrition Service web page on <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/students">student SNAP enrollment</a> suggests the change to allow students to receive benefits may be short-lived. The word “temporary” is printed in bold over the updated guidelines for student eligibility. It is also noted that student exemptions may be in effect only until 30 days after the COVID-19 public health emergency has ended. </p>
<p>So while the measure will give immediate relief to an estimated <a href="https://tcf.org/content/commentary/congress-made-3-million-college-students-newly-eligible-snap-food-aid-heres-must-come-next/?session=1">3 million college students newly eligible</a> for SNAP benefits, there is no guarantee that this will be permanent. Other proposed legislation to address college food insecurity on a more lasting basis, including <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2020.07.001">12 bills</a> introduced in the last legislative session alone, include a more permanent expansion of SNAP eligibility. But to date, none has been enacted. </p>
<p>If the temporary expansion of SNAP is allowed to drop with no legislation in place to replace it, then the more than <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hunger-campus-fight-against-student-food-insecurity-n1063291#:%7E:text=According%20to%20data%20from%20the,college%20students%20are%20food%20insecure.&text=College%20meal%20plans%20for%20students,expensive%20for%20low%2Dincome%20students.">30% of college students who struggle with food insecurity</a> will continue to face the challenge of balancing academic life with providing basic needs. Research shows food-insecure students struggle to maintain their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980021001191">mental and physical well-being</a> and ultimately pay the price with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzz058">lower academic success</a>.</p>
<p>While progress has been slow on a federal level, individual states have had more success. To date, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1499404620307211">13 states</a> have introduced college food insecurity-related bills, with seven of those states enacting policies.</p>
<p>California’s <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB453">hunger-free campuses bill</a>, enacted in 2017, awards funding to campuses that meet the “hunger-free” <a href="https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/legreports/18-19/hunger-free_campus_legrpt-2-13-19.pdf">designation</a>, which requires colleges to employ an individual to help students apply for SNAP and other food resources; have a food pantry or food distribution on campus; and implement a meal-share program that allows students to donate unused meal plan swipes to other students in need. </p>
<p>Both <a href="https://trackbill.com/bill/minnesota-house-file-2366-hunger-free-campus-act-established-and-designation-requirements-established-campus-food-shelves-at-minnesota-state-community-and-technical-colleges-required-grant-funding-provided-and-money-appropriated/1722762/">Minnesota</a> and <a href="https://www.billtrack50.com/BillDetail/993284">New Jersey</a> have passed similar legislation. </p>
<p>And in 2019, both Hawaii and Illinois amended SNAP eligibility to include students in career and technical programs.</p>
<p>These programs could, we believe, serve as models for states that have yet to move forward with college food insecurity policies.</p>
<h2>Raising awareness</h2>
<p>But even with the – at least temporary – federal expansion of the SNAP program to campuses, there is a second problem: Among students, there appears to be low awareness of the program. </p>
<p>A 2018 <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/696254.pdf">report by the Government Accountability Office</a> estimated that of the 3 million college students who were eligible for SNAP benefits under the old rules, only 43% were enrolled in the program.</p>
<p>As such, any permanent expansion of SNAP benefits to students would benefit from a campus outreach program to better inform students of what they are entitled to.</p>
<p>Interviews we conducted with 23 college students in North Carolina and West Virginia for a yet to be published paper indicate that understanding of federal nutrition assistance programs may be limited. Most students interviewed said they “don’t know much” about SNAP, while others stated they haven’t heard of it at all.</p>
<p>For students who were familiar with SNAP, responses on the benefits of the program and eligibility for the program varied widely, indicating a need for campus-based education.</p>
<p>Some campuses have sought to hold <a href="https://calendar.utk.edu/event/snap_awareness_day#.YEeoE5NKiuU">SNAP awareness</a> events to engage the campus community in understanding SNAP and help eligible students enroll for benefits. Events like these may prove increasingly vital during this period of expanded eligibility to ensure students in need of food assistance can navigate the often complicated enrollment process.</p>
<h2>Overcoming stigma</h2>
<p>Even when support is available, there is a stigma around receiving benefits. There is a perception held by some that those who enroll in federally assisted programs are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lkx002">lazy</a>. </p>
<p>Some of the college students we spoke to were conscious of the prejudices against people on federal assistance programs. “TV shows make these [federal] programs seem like a bad thing,” one student told us. Another spoke of “feeling self-conscious if I had to use [SNAP benefits] because of what other people’s reactions would be.”</p>
<p>It has led to hesitancy among some to come forward for federal benefits. As one student shared, “I would rather use community-based resources [such as food pantries, soup kitchens] because there is a more positive connotation.” </p>
<p>Institutions of higher education have an important role to play in addressing food insecurity for students. And nonprofits have partnered with institutions to tackle the problem. The <a href="https://cufba.org/">College and University Food Bank Alliance</a>, for example, has a network of over 700 campus food pantries.</p>
<p>But permanently expanding a federal SNAP program to students and making them aware of their eligibility has the potential to be transformative for those struggling to learn while not knowing where their next meal is coming from.</p>
<p>In 1946, the National School Lunch Program was launched recognizing that children must be nourished to learn. Seventy-five years later, we believe the U.S. must address food insecurity among college students to ensure educational achievement for all.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The federal government has temporarily widened eligibility for food assistance to more students. Two scholars argue this needs to be made permanent and be accompanied with an awareness campaign.
Anastasia Snelling, Department Chair, Health Studies, American University
Rebecca Hagedorn, Assistant Professor of Food and Nutrition, Meredith College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/143793
2020-08-20T12:16:40Z
2020-08-20T12:16:40Z
Schools looking for space could turn to churches to host classes – doing so has a rich history
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353266/original/file-20200817-14-1dvsm9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=160%2C335%2C4352%2C2808&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children evacuated from U.K. cities in WWII were taught in churches.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/school-in-a-church-children-evacuated-from-west-ham-and-news-photo/1053630860?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Could places of worship ease the burden of schools looking to reopen while giving students space to social distance? It might not be such an outlandish suggestion.</p>
<p>With space at a premium and places of worship still empty amid concerns of coronavirus spread, some education experts are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/07/17/school-coffee-shop-different-approach-teaching-learning-during-pandemic/">actively promoting the idea</a>. In New Haven, Connecticut, church leaders have already offered to <a href="https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/pastors_pitch_church_/">give up their space to students looking for a place to take online classes</a>.</p>
<p>Concern by those determined to keep church and state separate has meant that the use of “religious spaces” for education has shrunk <a href="https://www.academia.edu/2844095/Historical_background_to_conflicts_over_religion_in_public_schools">over the last couple of centuries</a>, resulting in secular school systems becoming the standard for most countries.</p>
<p>But having spent 40 years <a href="https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/1591">studying the history of Christian churches and their social outreach</a>, I know there has never been a time in the history of Christianity – indeed the history of all major religions – when religious space was not used for educational purposes. </p>
<h2>Cathedral schools</h2>
<p>In the Europe that emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, most formal education took place inside religious spaces. Training of boys to read scriptures was a task typically performed in churches by bishops and their assistants. </p>
<p>The first institutions of learning in the Western Christian tradition were <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-10841-8_2">cathedral schools</a>. During the day, the back pews <a href="http://www.humanstudy.org/history/2012-03-hudson-e.html">were filled with the best and brightest schoolboys</a> being taught the intellectual skills needed by priests.</p>
<p>Later, during the 10th century, <a href="https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/louis-pious-0011094">Louis the Pious</a>, son of Charlemagne, gave structure to the classes by mandating that a “scholasticus” – or master teacher – be appointed at cathedral schools. By the 12th century, the practice began of establishing corps of priests who lived at the cathedral and spent their days teaching.</p>
<p>These priests – called chapters of canons – established endowed chairs for teachers of different types of specialized knowledge. Chairs were filled by the most famous teachers or professors of the day, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abelard/">including the eminent philosophers Abelard</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/albert-great/">Albertus Magnus</a> as well as Albertus’ even more famous student <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/">Thomas Aquinas</a>, the highly influential 13th-century theologian. Chapters of canons also appointed one of their members as a “dean” to supervise all the different courses of study – a term still employed by universities. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353491/original/file-20200818-25043-a2v7e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353491/original/file-20200818-25043-a2v7e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353491/original/file-20200818-25043-a2v7e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353491/original/file-20200818-25043-a2v7e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353491/original/file-20200818-25043-a2v7e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353491/original/file-20200818-25043-a2v7e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353491/original/file-20200818-25043-a2v7e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christ Church College, Oxford, serves as a cathedral and a seat of learning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/christchurch-from-merton-fields-oxford-by-richard-bankes-news-photo/589150126?adppopup=true">Photo by © Fine Art Photographic Library/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The birth of universities</h2>
<p>Eventually the most successful cathedral schools drew too many students to be taught inside the churches themselves. By the 13th century, cathedral schools <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300216776/medieval-christianity">gave way on one side to grammar schools, which taught Latin, and on the other to universities</a> – where students paid money to listen to the lectures of professors and received degrees based upon their displayed knowledge. The lecture halls in which these university students were taught became the forerunners of modern classroom buildings.</p>
<p>Education in early modern Europe increasingly left the pews behind as the focus expanded beyond teaching future clergy. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-reformations-500th-anniversary-remembering-martin-luthers-contribution-to-literacy-77540">Protestant Reformation</a> in the 16th century <a href="https://tifwe.org/resource/the-priesthood-of-all-believers/">rejected the notion of a priesthood</a> and demanded that everyone learn to read the Bible, preferably while they were young. </p>
<p>To enable this, schools dedicated to teaching boys and girls who would not enter the clergy were established, increasingly in buildings distinct from places of worship.</p>
<p>Because Protestants made the <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/religions/christianity/protestant-movement">church a department of the state</a>, such schools were maintained by the country’s ruler but staffed by the church. Soon Catholics followed a similar practice of building church schools for teaching boys and girls not destined for a religious vocation. The Jesuit religious order, <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jesuit-order-established">founded in the 16th century</a>, dedicated itself to education and pioneered the building of residential campuses for their schools that were distinct and autonomous from local churches. </p>
<h2>Toward public schools</h2>
<p>During the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/">Enlightenment era</a> of the 18th century, governments went further and established new kinds of secular or nonreligious schools. These taught <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-new-scientism-and-rationalism">technical and scientific subjects</a>, such as engineering and navigation or trained military officers in the technologies of war.</p>
<p>But it was the French Revolution that sped up the movement toward secular schooling as the cultural norm. Revolutionaries in France and other European states argued that the nation deserved the loyalties previously claimed by the churches. As such, <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/french-revolution-and-catholic-church">churches should be shut down</a> to stop patriots from being distracted from a greater loyalty to the nation.</p>
<p>Revolutionaries failed in their efforts to deprive church schools of their status, however. Later nationalists, in reflecting upon why revolutionaries had failed, concluded that the education offered in church schools, rich in centuries of practice, was <a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/hedu_0221-6280_1986_num_29_1_1381">simply too strong for secular schooling to challenge</a>.</p>
<p>So they pushed for redirection of state subsidies away from church schools to secular education. By the end of the 19th century, such initiatives had resulted in the secular public school systems in operation today.</p>
<h2>Church and state</h2>
<p>Church schools did not disappear, however. In Western societies, some parochial schools and private faith-based schools continued to flourish. And there is even precedent for schools using churches in times of crisis, such as to <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/2WWeducationC.htm">accommodate children evacuated from major cities</a> in the U.K. during World War II.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, outside of Western societies, church schools became a major tool that Christian missionaries used to evangelize indigenous peoples. European colonial governments came to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/us/mission-schools-ambiguous-legacy-in-south-africa.html">subsidize mission schools</a> as cheap alternatives to building state school systems. In many African and Asian states today, church schools subsidized by foreign missions still educate <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/02/21/the-geography-of-education-in-africa">significant numbers of students</a>.</p>
<p>The constitutions of most modern states maintain a <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/885/establishment-clause-separation-of-church-and-state">strict separation between church and state</a>. And there are rules in place in countries with secular school systems that <a href="http://1.droppdf.com/files/pdATq/encyclopedia-of-american-constitution.pdf">protect the primacy of secular schooling</a> over all other types of schooling.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Courts have also moved to <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-takes-actions-address-religious-discrimination">protect the rights of students with minority religious backgrounds</a> from persecution no matter what schools they attend.</p>
<p>Education in the West has been progressively outgrowing the church environment for centuries, yet education in religious settings continues to <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-religion/oclc/56057973">lead students back toward faith</a>.</p>
<p>Whatever the impetus for using religious space for secular education, awareness of this capacity of religious space will likely remain a concern for promoters of the separation of church and state – even in these unprecedented times of pandemic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Barnes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The history of education in the West is closely associated with Christian religious spaces – from the first cathedral schools to the use of churches to teach children in WWII.
Andrew Barnes, Professor of History and Religious Studies, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118446
2019-06-14T12:44:11Z
2019-06-14T12:44:11Z
Divorced dads often dissed by schools
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279402/original/file-20190613-32335-uumi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Educators often fail to recognize fathers, a researcher contends. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Primrose-School-of-Midland-at-Westridge/8a69152ac91f48a68f5e5400cee93337/10/0">Brad Tollefson/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>By the time <a href="https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/the-social-history-of-the-american-family/n224.xml">Father’s Day</a> takes place, the school year is usually over.</p>
<p>In many ways, that’s an apt metaphor for how divorced fathers – or fathers who don’t live with their children – get treated by their children’s schools. That is, they’re often simply not seen as part of what takes place at school. These fathers are often viewed as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2007.00473.x">irresponsible and uninvolved</a>.</p>
<p>I learned this by talking to 20 fathers as part of my <a href="https://web.b.ebscohost.com/abstract?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&jrnl=15376680&asa=Y&AN=89631191&h=XNqGzELEI5In4k9VNhpzA6qIfNgkxTat%2fdZSDHxXyA8Hgjk0pUtm9eVZF6suKsQ%2bCTomSG1DPeOJNQ0M0YgtdQ%3d%3d&crl=c&resultNs=AdminWebAuth&resultLocal=ErrCrlNotAuth&crlhashurl=login.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26profile%3dehost%26scope%3dsite%26authtype%3dcrawler%26jrnl%3d15376680%26asa%3dY%26AN%3d89631191">research</a>. I found that divorced fathers, especially those who don’t share a residence with their children over 50% of the time, can find it challenging to remain involved in their children’s academic development. Several fathers told me about how often teachers and administrators at their children’s schools fail to recognize them.</p>
<p>“My son’s school never calls me,” one father told me in a statement that could be emblematic of the plight of noncustodial fathers.</p>
<h2>Messages home</h2>
<p>Many schools simply assume mothers are the primary parent to contact regarding schooling. Consequently, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00722.x">I found</a> schools tend not to send information to both parental households or inform nonresidential fathers about how their children are doing in school.</p>
<p>Divorced dads also told me that they often found out about school events at the last minute – if at all.</p>
<p>When schools treat fathers like they don’t exist, it’s not serving students well.</p>
<h2>Academic and social benefits</h2>
<p>When fathers who don’t live with their children are involved with their kids’ school, the kids are <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED452982.pdf">less likely to repeat a grade or be suspended</a>. They are also more likely to <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-23320-001">have higher grades</a>.</p>
<p>Children who have <a href="http://thripp.com/files/ucf/edp6213/class-10-20151102-ONLINE/castro-et-al-2015.pdf">more involved</a> fathers also tend to be psychologically, cognitively and physically healthier. When fathers take active roles in reading with and to their children, support their academic outcomes and are involved with their schools, children tend to graduate high school and have financial stability as adults.</p>
<p>The difference that involved fathers make begins early. For instance, children with fathers who <a href="https://flp.fpg.unc.edu/about-flp">spoke more words</a> while reading to them as children grew up to have stronger vocabulary and math skills compared to peers whose fathers spoke less.</p>
<p>Fathers can also <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781410603500/chapters/10.4324/9781410603500-14">disrupt</a> some of the negative influences in the community – such as crime, dropping out of school and earning less money – when they are more involved in their children’s education.</p>
<p>Being involved in children’s education is even more <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0042085914525789">critical</a> for children of color as compared to white children because of systematic racism some parents of color experience.</p>
<p>Father involvement may be especially <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2006.00402.x">important</a> for Latino boys’ academic motivation. Similarly, children of African American fathers who have high academic expectations are often more academically successful as a result. </p>
<p>This benefit can exist whether they share the same residences with their children or not.</p>
<p>Divorced mothers face challenges, too. When couples divorce, <a href="https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/lec321/Sirin_Articles/Sirin_2005.pdf">mothers</a> become less involved in their children’s schooling, usually because of having to work longer hours outside the home. </p>
<h2>Using tech to bypass drama</h2>
<p>Of course, when divorced dads have conflicts with their children’s mothers, it can make it more challenging to stay involved in their children’s education. The fathers I spoke with said conflicts with their former spouses often led them to find out about parent-teacher meetings, school activities or extracurricular performances after the fact. </p>
<p>Some fathers sought to work around the conflict by using email or text messages. One father texted his daughter every day because “it’s just like you’re there.” This way, he said, he learned the dates of important tests and how she did on them. He also learned about her swim meets. Another father with younger children said his former spouse let him know about a play his son was in “only 30 minutes before it started.”</p>
<p>“Thankfully I have a flexible job and could make it,” the father said.</p>
<p>Research shows the benefits of father involvement transcend academics.
Some research <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192513X17741921">suggests</a> that these benefits extend to other areas of their children’s lives because kids feel good when dads are invested.</p>
<p>Persistence and consistence can be a challenge. One study <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-01356-004">found</a> that two or three years after a divorce, 22% of fathers no longer had contact with their children and only 31% saw their children each week.</p>
<p>For all these reasons, I see an urgent need for schools to make sure that fathers are given an opportunity to play a meaningful part of their children’s education. Father’s Day may come at the end of the school year or when school is out. But that doesn’t mean they should be ignored throughout the rest of the school year.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=thanksforreading">Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversation’s stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118446/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Troilo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When children don’t live with their fathers, educators often act as if the men don’t exist, an expert on child development laments in an essay about why schools must do more to recognize dads.
Jessica Troilo, Associate Professor of Child Development and Family Studies, West Virginia University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111490
2019-02-21T13:41:18Z
2019-02-21T13:41:18Z
What’s behind the teacher strikes: Unions focus on social justice, not just salaries
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260082/original/file-20190221-148513-1hkf0yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Striking teachers are increasingly casting their struggle as being part of a broader struggle for social justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Oakland-Teachers-Strike/de2ede2732fb4a89860cf7a138c2fec3/43/0">David Zalubowski/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the past few years I’ve been studying teacher unions and teachers strikes throughout the Americas. My research has taken me from the Mexican state of Oaxaca – where <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/americas/29mexico.html">teacher protests in 2006</a> led to both <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/06/mexico-teachers-union-cnte-snte-oaxaca-nieto-zapatistas-strike/">violent repression</a> and a <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/manuel-garza-zepeda/popular-movement-of-oaxaca-ten-years-later">broad-based social movement</a> for direct democracy – to the streets of São Paulo, Brazil, to coal-mining towns in West Virginia.</p>
<p>I’ve learned that certain conditions prompt teacher unions to adopt new forms of activism and take up broader issues of social justice that go beyond how much teachers are paid.</p>
<p>Now is such a time in the United States. </p>
<h2>Factors driving the strikes</h2>
<p>The teacher strike that began Feb. 21 in Oakland, California, is just the latest example in a wave of teacher strikes that have swept the country over the past year.</p>
<p>In my view as a researcher who deals with <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=list_works&gmla=AJsN-F7kI--BtwRyFXzgHZAWXqIhkAiLEWabUoHfBuAQfS2oiGtdTz1KLKb8hn47N7CQGnT3G6arl6r0p2QzGdk_vL9a5VIhIg&user=UIbU8eEAAAAJ">issues of education and labor</a>, the current teacher strike wave in the United States is the result of three factors.</p>
<p>First is the acceleration of market-based education reforms, including the expansion of charter schools. </p>
<p>Second is networks of teacher activists organizing and transforming their unions to focus on broader social issues. </p>
<p>Third is the framing of teacher union action as part of the struggle for racial justice.</p>
<p>These factors have led teacher unions to <a href="http://www.reclaimourschools.org/">form alliances with community organizations</a>, <a href="https://www.schoolslastudentsdeserve.com/">enlist students</a> and <a href="https://www.utla.net/parents-community">parents</a> to join the activism, and <a href="http://time.com/5499164/la-teacher-strike-charter-schools/">speak out against</a> efforts to expand charter schools and privatization.</p>
<h2>Inspired by Occupy</h2>
<p>Let’s look at how these three factors played out in Oakland, starting several years ago.</p>
<p>As I learned through interviews, teacher activists in Oakland drew inspiration from the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/what-is-occupy-wall-street-the-history-of-leaderless-movements/2011/10/10/gIQAwkFjaL_story.html?utm_term=.4d0c5bf6322c">Occupy movement</a> in 2011. They helped occupy a local elementary school to <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2012/07/03/oakland-school-sit-in-raided-after-nearly-three-weeks/">protest its closing</a>, and eventually created a union caucus called Classroom Struggle with a couple dozen teachers to promote more social justice issues. Then, last spring, <a href="https://classroomstruggle.org/oea-elections/candidates/">these teacher activists</a> created a slate, in alliance with African-American teacher and organizer <a href="https://oaklandea.org/board/keith-brown/">Keith Brown</a>, and won the leadership of the Oakland Education Association. Since taking office on July 1, 2018, this new union leadership – inspired by the successful strikes in West Virgina, Arizona and Los Angeles – have been preparing for a strike.</p>
<p>The conditions that led to the Oakland strike are similar to those that led to strikes in other cities earlier this year, such as Los Angeles.</p>
<p>For instance, public education in Oakland has been <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-schools-face-harsh-cuts-as-another-budget-12346142.php">defunded</a> and the city, much like Los Angeles, is experiencing <a href="https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/report-the-cost-of-charter-schools-for-public-school-districts/">charter school expansion</a> that teachers say is taking money away from public schools. One recent report found that charter schools take <a href="https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/report-the-cost-of-charter-schools-for-public-school-districts/">US$57.3 million</a> a year from public schools in Oakland.</p>
<p>Teacher union actions in Oakland also mirror tactics and strategies that unions have used in other cities. For instance, Oakland teacher union leaders have enlisted the help of <a href="https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oakland-Unified-School-District-Officials-Advise-Educators-to-Not-Participate-in-Sickout-502299022.html">student</a> and <a href="https://californiaeducator.org/redforedoakland/">community groups</a> and focused on <a href="http://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-teachers-announce-strike-over-pay-class-sizes-1">racial justice</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260084/original/file-20190221-148513-3tylo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Teacher unions are enlisting students to help support their strikes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Denver-Teachers-Strike/d56fe2de08e64993935a25d325c0b05f/1/0">David Zalubowski/AP</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>All these actions have transformed the Oakland Education Association – and many other teachers’ unions across the country – into leaders of a social movement that has the potential of redefining public education, the labor movement and American politics. </p>
<p>Much of the media attention on teacher strikes has focused on the economic reasons for the strikes, such as <a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/08/22/teachers-are-winning-public-support-for-pay.html">low teacher salaries</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/west-virginia-teachers-strike.html">rising health care costs</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/03/us/oklahoma-teachers-textbooks-trnd/index.html">aging textbooks</a>. But there are important historical factors at play.</p>
<p>Historically, teachers’ unions have not led social, racial and economic justice movements. But there are some exceptions. Those exceptions include <a href="http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01560-8.html">teacher unionists’ critique of authoritarianism</a> in Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s; teachers’ participation in the movement for a return to democracy in Brazil in the late 1970s; and, in the United States, the participation of many <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/reds-at-the-blackboard/9780231152693">teacher union leaders in the civil rights activism</a> of the 1950s and 1960s.</p>
<p>However, it is also important to note that during the 1960s, many teachers in the United States also found themselves at odds with communities of color. Perhaps this is best exemplified by the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300109405/strike-changed-new-york">1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Strike</a>, when the United Federation of Teachers rallied against black community control of schools.</p>
<h2>New alliances</h2>
<p>Today’s teacher activists have bridged the divide between teacher unions and communities of color. For instance, between 2010 and 2012, teacher activists from Chicago’s Caucus of Rank and File Educators, or CORE, aligned with other community groups to organize against school closings in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. CORE also supported parents and students <a href="https://www.labornotes.org/2012/02/chicago-occupation-challenges-corporate-school-agenda">occupying an elementary school</a> to prevent its closure. Their rallying call – “<a href="https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/Chicago%20Teachers%20Union%20report_0.pdf">Schools that Chicago Students Deserve</a>” – included demands for reduced class size and other things related to classroom conditions.</p>
<p>In Los Angeles, activists embraced this social movement approach to union activism, fighting for the “<a href="https://www.utla.net/sites/default/files/UTLA_SLASDFINAL.pdf">Schools that LA Students Deserve</a>.” In 2014, the Los Angeles activists created a new caucus, <a href="https://www.labornotes.org/2014/01/la-teachers-run-bigger-vision">Union Power</a>, winning the elections and immediately hiring dozens of new organizers to help build towards a strike. They worked in alliance with <a href="http://reclaimourschoolsla.org/">dozens of community organizations</a>. </p>
<p>The Black Lives Matter movement fueled energy into a new student movement, called <a href="https://www.schoolslastudentsdeserve.com/">Students Deserve</a>, directly supported by the union leadership. The six-day LA strike in early 2019 represented, more than anything else, an explicit <a href="https://www.utla.net/campaigns-issues/issues/racial-justice">racial justice struggle</a>. The LA strike also called into question <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/los-angeles-teachers-strike-antiracism-unions">claims</a> by the charter and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Market-Movements-African-American-Involvement-in-School-Voucher-Reform/Pedroni/p/book/9780203941355">voucher</a> movements that school choice policies represent the best path to social mobility for children from poor communities of color.</p>
<p>Teacher unions are not always – and not often – the leaders of broader social justice movements. Now that’s changing due to a new generation of union activists who see their struggle as part of the fight for equitable resources for the communities in which they teach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Tarlau receives funding from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship program.</span></em></p>
The teacher strikes that have swept the US represent a new shift in teacher activism that has led teacher unions to align with broader social and racial justice movements, an education scholar says.
Rebecca Tarlau, Assistant Professor of Education and of Labor and Employment Relations, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.