solutions to social problems in education

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How to Empower Students to Take Action for Social Change

Young people are increasingly aware and concerned about the problems our world is confronting, from climate change to racial disparities in society. When facing social problems, how can educators transform a child’s sense of helplessness toward hope and action?

Educators must not allow our adolescents to languish in the face of social problems and injustice. In James Baldwin’s 1963 Talk to Teachers , he reminds us of this charge: “Our obligation as educators is to entrust in our students the abilities to create conscious citizens who are vocal about reexamining their society.” It is the moral imperative of public education to foster student agency to nurture an engaged citizenry.

At the Rutgers University Social-Emotional Character Development Laboratory’s Students Taking Action Together project , we have developed a social problem-solving and action strategy, PLAN, that makes it possible for teachers to transform students’ sense of hopelessness into empowerment. It allows students to investigate a particular social problem to get to the root cause, then design an action plan to challenge the dominant power structure to make change. It emphasizes considering the issue from multiple viewpoints to develop a solution that is inclusive and viable. 

Below, we’ll describe the four components of PLAN and demonstrate how to use PLAN to empower students in grades 5-12 to take action. We hope these strategies can help you encourage your students to be more deeply engaged with today’s problems and inspired to take social action. 

P: Create a Problem description

Problems are an inherent part of our daily lives, and one of the key problem-solving skills is the ability to define a problem.

To define a problem, students working collaboratively in groups of four or five start by reviewing background sources, such as articles, speeches, and podcast episodes, and then draft a problem description . They can discuss the following questions to frame their thinking. Not all questions will be answered, yet the discussion will guide and stretch their thinking to begin defining the problem:     

• Is there a problem? How do you know?
• What is the problem?
• Who is impacted by the problem?
• What are the issues from each perspective/party involved? What is the impact on the different individuals/groups involved?
• Who is responsible for the problem? What internal and external factors might have influenced this issue?
• What is causing those responsible to use these practices?
• Who were the key people involved in making important decisions?

To illustrate this process, let’s use the example of a recent issue: Texas’s refusal of federal funding to expand health care under the Affordable Care Act for all citizens of the state. For this issue, students might write the following problem description:

Along with Texas, 13 other states have refused to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid for citizens under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). State refusals can be attributed to a variety of factors. State lawmakers fear the loss of support from voters and their political party if they accept the federal funding to expand access to health care for lower-income communities and communities of color. Public perceptions of expanding social programs and the political costs of supporting bi-partisan reform also play a role. Political obstructionism harms all citizens, causing people to go without needed medical care and perpetuating inequalities in public health.  

L: Generate a List of options to solve the problem and consider the pros and cons


Organizing for change is a skill that can be taught, even though problem solving in the political arena may feel novel and uncertain for students. Stress that while there is no guarantee of a positive outcome as they tackle a problem, brainstorming effective and inclusive solutions can help stimulate deeper awareness and discussion on the need for change. According to Irving Tallman and his colleagues , this process teaches students to apply reasoning to anticipate how solutions may play out and, ultimately, arrive at an estimate of the probability of a specific result. 

That’s where the second step of PLAN comes into play: listing the possible solutions and considering the optimal plan of action to pursue. Students will revisit the background sources that they consulted during step one to consider how the actual current-event problem has been addressed over time and reflect on their own solutions. We encourage you to facilitate a whole-class discussion, guided by the following questions:

• What options did the group consider to be acceptable ways to resolve the problem?
• What do you think about their solution? 
• What would your solution be?
• What solution did they ultimately decide to pursue?

For example, here are some solutions that students may generate as they brainstorm around health care funding in Texas: 

• Launch a letter writing campaign to Senators and Congressional representatives communicating that obstructionism of federal funding to expand health care hurts all citizens and public health.
• Develop a social media-based public service announcement about the costs of refusing federal funding to expand health care, tagging state Senators and local Congressional representatives. 
• Team up with a public health advocacy organization and learn about how to support their work in key states.

Students would then weigh the pros and cons of each solution, as well as apply perspective-taking skills to consider the needs and interests of all relevant stakeholders (e.g., government officials, insurance companies, and patients) to select what they deem to be the most effective and inclusive option. In evaluating the pros and cons of all of the solutions presented above, they may determine:

• Solutions have direct routes to communicating to politicians and have a wide audience reach.
• Solutions build student’s advocacy skills and can send a clear message to lawmakers. 
• Solutions enable students to rehearse the skills of correspondence, networking, and communicating their ideas and plans with outside agencies.
• Solutions require substantial time for additional research.
• In some solutions, students may not be addressing issues in the state they live.
• In the letter-writing solution, letters lack a broad reach and the identified state(s) may already be developing reasonable alternatives to accepting federal funds to expand health care access. 
• The solutions will require efforts to be sustained over time and will demand additional time in or beyond the classroom to orchestrate.

This essential problem-solving skill will support students in making objective, thoughtful decisions. 

A: Create an Action plan to solve the problem

After students select what they assess to be the most effective solution, they collaborate with one another to develop a specific, measurable, attainable goal and a step-by-step action plan to implement the solution. Together, researchers refer to this as the solution plan. 

For example, the goal might be to develop a one-minute public service announcement about the costs of a state’s refusal to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid under the ACA.  

The step-by-step solution plan should align with the goal to resolve the problem and increase positive consequences, while minimizing potential negative effects. Your students should keep the following in mind when developing their plans:

• Make steps as specific as possible.
• Consider who is responsible for implementing each step.
• Determine how long each action step will take to execute.
• Anticipate any challenges that you may face and how you will address them.
• Identify the data that you can collect to determine whether or not your action plan was successful.

Below is a sample action plan that students may develop to meet their public service announcement goal:


• Convene a group of students to conduct research on the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid and the states that have accepted federal aid and those that refused federal aid.
• Conduct research by interviewing school nurses, county health commissioners, and the state’s Department of Health for additional content.
• Collaborate with visual arts teachers and students to design and develop the video, and course-level teacher to review the video. 
• Post the social media public service announcement on YouTube and share on social media, tagging the appropriate audiences. 

N: Evaluate the action plan by Noticing successes

The final step of PLAN involves evaluating the success of the action plan, using the evidence collected throughout in order to notice successes. As a whole class, students consider how similar problems were solved historically, as compared to the success of their plan. They also consider aspects of the plan that went well and those that could be improved upon moving forward. Connecting to past examples of social action affirms the understanding that you don’t always get it right in the initial push for change, and that the legacy and knowledge of incomplete change is passed from one generation to the next. 

A Sample Lesson

To check out how to infuse PLAN using a historic event, check out our ready-made lesson on Fredrick Douglass’s 1852 Speech: "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" .

Noticing successes is essential to instilling confidence in students to exercise their voice and choice by organizing for and taking social action. Research suggests that problem-solving skills help buffer against distress when people are experiencing stressful events in life. With PLAN, we have discovered that equipping our students with problem-solving skills is a strong predictor of student agency and social action . By teaching a deliberate social problem-solving strategy, we nurture hope that change can be made. 

In her 2003 Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope , bell hooks reminds us of the transformative power to upend the dominant power structure by bridging the gap between complaining and hope and action: “When we only name the problem, when we state a complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take away hope. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.”

It is not enough to witness and criticize injustice. Students need to learn how to overcome injustice by developing solutions and gaining a sense of empowerment and agency. 

About the Authors

Lauren Fullmer

Lauren Fullmer, Ed.D. , is the math curriculum chair and middle school math teacher at the Willow School in Gladstone, NJ; instructor for The Academy for Social-Emotional Learning in Schools—a partnership between Rutgers University and St. Elizabeth University—adjunct professor at the University of Dayton’s doctoral program, and a consulting field expert for the Rutgers Social-Emotional Character Development (SECD) Lab.

Laura Bond, M.A. , has served as a K–8 curriculum supervisor in central New Jersey. She has taught 6–12 Social Studies and worked as an assistant principal at both the elementary and secondary level. Currently, she is a field consultant for Rutgers Social Emotional Character Development Lab and serves on her local board of education.

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The Seekers

• Posted November 7, 2022
• By Lory Hough
• Entrepreneurship

In the education world, it’s easy to identify problems, less easy to find solutions. Everyone has a different idea of what could or should happen, and change is never simple — or fast. But solutions are out there, especially if you look close to the source: people who have been impacted in some way by the problem. Meet eight current students and recent graduates who experienced something — sometimes pain, sometimes frustration, sometimes hope — and are now working on ways to help others.

SEEKER: Elijah Armstrong, Ed.M.'20

“This motivated me to become an activist in the space of disability and education,” he says. “Education is supposed to act as a gateway for students, but far too often, for people with disabilities, it acts as a barrier.”

His experience led him to start a nonprofit while he was in college at Penn State called Equal Opportunities for Students “as a way to help tell the stories of marginalized students in education.” Then last year, he won the 2021 Paul G. Hearne Emerging Leader Award, an award given by the American Association of People with Disabilities that recognizes up and coming leaders with disabilities. With his prize money, Armstrong started his own award program: the Heumann-Armstrong Educational Awards, named partly for disability rights activist Judy Heumann. The award is given annually to students (sixth grade and up) who have experienced ableism — the social prejudice against people with disabilities — and have fought against it.

“Students with disabilities face barriers in education that aren’t faced by their non-disabled peers,” he says. “At all levels of education, students are forced to do intense emotional and logistical labor to fight for accommodations or go without accommodations at all. This is on top of the day-to-day challenges of having a disability or chronic illness, and the challenges that go along with that. Students with disabilities should have ways of being compensated for that labor and denoting that labor on resumes.”

One of the unique aspects of the award program, he says, is that winners aren’t restricted on how they can use their award money, although several from the inaugural round have used it to fund their own activism. For example, Otto Lana, a high school student, started a company called Otto’s Mottos that sells T-shirts and letterboards to help purchase communication devices for non-speaking students who can’t afford them. Himani Hitendra, a middle schooler, has been producing videos to educate her teachers and classmates about her disability, as well as ways they can be more inclusive. Jennifer Lee, a Princeton student, founded the Asian Americans with Disabilities Initiative.

Armstrong, who is also currently living and working in Washington, D.C. as a fellow with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, says beyond awarding money to other young activists, one of the biggest and most impactful ways he thinks he’s helping to challenge the education system is through the videos his nonprofit produces for each of the winners.

“We highlight the award winners and give them a platform to tell their stories in a way that gives them agency,” he says. “Education doesn’t often take the voices or experiences of disabled students into account when discussing accessibility in education. We want to make sure we develop a platform that gives voice to the narratives of these students, so that everyone can listen to and learn from them.”

Learn about his nonprofit: equalopportunitiesforstudents.org

SEEKER: Elisa Guerra, Ed.M.’21

In the early 2000s, Guerra wasn’t finding the kind of educational experience for her young children near her home in Aguascalientes, México, that she was looking for — one that was warm, but also ambitious and fun and stimulating.

“I saw a gap between what schools offered at that time and what parents like me were dreaming of for their young,” she says. “After my son went through three different schools and none was a true fit, I decided that I needed to imagine and create the school I wanted for my children.”

So Guerra, without any formal teaching experience, started Colegio Valle de Filadelfia, a small preschool with 17 kids that was based on what she was doing informally at home with her ownchildren. Those first few years, she says she pretty much did every job the school had, learning along the way.

“I taught. I answered the phone. I designed our programs. I managed promotion and enrollment,” she says. “I also changed diapers, cleaned noses, and mopped puke.” For many years, she served as the principal.

She also fine-tuned their learning model, what they started calling Método Filadelfia , or the Philadelphia Method. Based on the work of Glenn Doman and The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, their model isn’t your typical approach for helping young children learn.

“We teach — playfully and respectfully — tiny children, starting at age three, to read, and [we also teach] art, physical excellence, and world cultures as the first steps of global citizenship,” she says. Music lessons, including violin, are started at the preschool level, and classes are taught in two foreign languages in addition to a student’s first language. When Guerra first started the school, there were no commercial textbooks that fit what she was trying to do, so she wrote her own.

Since then, schools across Mexico, as well as Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador now use her textbooks. Al Jazeera made a documentary about her as part of their Rebel Educator series. Twice she was a finalist for Global Teacher of the Year. Just before the pandemic hit, she was appointed to unesco’s International Commission on the Futures of Education, a small group that includes writers, activists, professors (including Professor Fernando Reimers, Ed.M.’84, Ed.D.’88), anthropologists, entrepreneurs, and country presidents. (When UNESCO first reached out to her, she thought it was a scam and almost didn’t respond back to them.)

And it all started 23 years ago with an idea and, as she says, some naivete.

“In retrospect, it was crazy. Most people I know who have opened schools have done it ‘the right way,’ if such a thing exists,” Guerra says. “They were experienced teachers, or they even ran schools as principals, before jumping out to create a new one. They could do better because they knew better. I did not have that advantage. I had so much to learn myself. But in a way, that was also a blessing because I also had much less to ‘unlearn.’ …I said before that I became a teacher accidentally, but that is only partly accurate. Indeed, I was not expecting my life to take the path of education. But once I found myself there, it was my decision to stay. The discovery of a passion for teaching was the accident. To embrace the teaching profession was a choice.”

Read more about her work: elisaguerra.net/english/

SEEKER: Cynthia Hagan, Ed.M.’22

“I’ve lived here for 35 years and have witnessed the impact of poverty and the opioid crisis on our communities,” she says, “both on current realities and hopes for the future.”

Initially, when she first applied to Harvard, she thought she’d create a children’s program using puppets, inspired, in part, by Sesame Street , but after taking a few classes, Hagan’s ideas on how to help children in her state evolved.

“I became fascinated with the concept of designing for joy as introduced to us in the course What Learning Designers Do,” taught by Senior Lecturer Joe Blatt, she says. “Joy is an often-overlooked ingredient for learning.” The power of story also began to stick.

After creating a class project called Adventure Box, focused on increasing third-grade reading levels for children experiencing homelessness, Hagan’s idea for Book Joy emerged.

Research shows that children who are not proficient in reading by the third grade, when they transition from learning to read to reading to learn, are four times more likely to drop out of high school, and six times as likely to be incarcerated as an adult.

“I knew that the overall thirdgrade reading levels of children experiencing poverty in rural Appalachia were significantly lagging,” she says. “It just seemed like a logical move to modify Adventure Box to meet the needs of this population.”

She decided to focus first on McDowell County, West Virginia, once one of the largest coal producing areas in the world, where the child poverty rate in 2019 was a staggering 48.6%.

Hagan’s idea with Book Joy is simple but potentially life altering for the young children they began targeting starting this past September: give each incoming kindergarten student a curated box filled with high-quality books (printed and audio) based on interest and reading level, plus fun related activities to conceptualize the reading experience, and then follow up with new boxes quarterly (December, March, June) until third grade. The goal is to significantly increase third-grade reading proficiency.

For the launch this fall, Book Joy partnered with Scholastic to get discounted books and with Random House for free books. McDowell’s assistant superintendent/federal programs manager has been actively involved. Twice a year, Book Joy will conduct assessments with the students, their parents, and their teachers, to see how each box is working, and then tweak the content. They’ll also use feedback to improve on future boxes and teachers can use assessments to provide individualized intervention, as needed.

“When their interests, reading levels, or personal circumstances change,” says Hagan, “so does the contents of their box.”

Another goal for Book Joy, beyond improving third-grade reading proficiency for children in one of the poorest districts in Hagan’s state, is something fundamental to this former librarian: to bring joy to reading and learning, hence the name, Book Joy.

“Each box is truly a gift created just for them. No two boxes will be alike because no two children are alike,” she says. “And we are designing these boxes from an edutainment perspective, putting as much focus on eliciting joy as we do in choosing the best aligned reading material. We want every design element of the box, from the moment the children lay eyes on it to the emptying of every item, to elicit joy.”

Discover how you can help: givebookjoy.org

SEEKER: Ben Mackey, Ed.M.’13

In 2020, the district unanimously passed the Environmental & Climate Resolution, a massive overhaul of how schools in the Dallas Independent School District approach climate change. It includes reviewing and revising current policies across all schools and setting goals for reducing the district’s environmental footprint, while also keeping an eye on spending.

Mackey, a former math teacher and principal, says that it was young people in the district who really got the ball rolling when it came to making sure the district was thinking about its impact on the environment and then making a plan for change — something few districts are doing.

“The genesis of this resolution and the work really started with students,” he says. “When I took office in 2019, there was a small but mighty group of students who had been coming and attending every board meeting and sharing their perspectives and imploring the school board to make strides in its sustainability work. I was able to work with these students to get this resolution drafted and passed by the school board.”

What passed is a 10-year plan to drastically improve the district’s sustainability practices, including some steps that have already been taken, including switching energy plans and contracting for 100% renewable energy, which is expected to save the district $1 million a year on top of the energy benefits. By 2027, all plates, utensils, and trash bags will be 100% compostable.

Longer term, the district has applied for a federal grant to pilot 25 electric busses and will begin moving away from gas-powered maintenance equipment. It will limit synthetic fertilizer. The district also created a set of policies that say any new school built or existing school remodeled must include LEED silver certified standards. Another goal is to plant more trees to combat the “heat island” effect that schools that are primarily blacktop experience.

“One area that stuck out to our community group and administration as they were formulating the recommendation is how the increase in tree canopy cover can combat carbon emissions, improve learning environments, and serve to decrease energy usage,” he says. “We’re aiming to increase canopy cover at all campuses to at least 30% and we’re working with a number of phenomenal partner organizations to get this started, including the Texas Trees Foundation and the Cool Schools Parks initiatives.”

Mackey, who is the executive director of a statewide education nonprofit called Texas Impact Network(in addition to being on the school board), says his advice to other districts that want to reduce their school’s climate footprint is to get buy-in across the district — and just get started.

“Dallas ISD’s process started with students at our board meetings, speaking every single month, about the need and importance for this to happen. These students reached out to trustees and school staff and continued to come forward with both a charge and ideas for what success looks like,” he says. “The hardest part is often to get it off the ground and I’d encourage all who care about this to call your school board trustees and be a consistent and sensible voice who will share their mind and provide concrete solutions to make this work happen.”

Sign up for his monthly newsletters: benfordisd.com

SEEKER: Michael Ángel Vázquez, Ed.M.’19, current Ph.D. student

That’s why he’s trying to make the graduate years, at least for Ed School students, less stressful.

“I just went through this huge burst of depression my first year, my master’s year,” he says, “and I realized that I wasn’t the only one that was going through that.”

Part of the problem, says Vázquez, a former teacher in the Navajo Nation, is that while universities often offer great resources, many students don’t know where to turn for help or don’t even think they should ask for help.

“There’s so much pressure to feel like you know everything and not admit when you don’t,” he says.

Vázquez decided to create a comprehensive student-to-student guidebook, based on resources he knew about and those shared by other students. This “labor of love,” as he calls it, includes everything from where to find books and readings to how to save money, including where to grocery shop, how to sign up for MassHealth, how to apply for snap benefits, and how to sell items to other students through the Harvard Grad Market. He has a section on job hunting. The mental health section offers tips for finding therapists, wellness options at Harvard, ways to combat vitamin D deficiencies, and advice for advocating for yourself. Other documents include ways to prep for graduation, must-have lists for living in a colder climate, and a link to local tenants’ rights.

“I just felt like it was important to do whatever was possible for the next group of students to have a safe, happy experience, because, ultimately, learning should be fun, should be exciting,” he says. Endemic to being back in school, with all of the pressure, “it’s very common for that fun and excitement of learning” to take a back seat. “I don’t want that be the case. This guidebook is just one way to mitigate that a little bit and make it more fun and exciting for people.”

None of this support and concern for the well-being of other students surprises Vázquez’s professors, who point out that he has been one of the most active students since he got to Harvard. He’s been especially in-tune with first-gen students (he’s first gen, starting with attending the University of Southern California) and for students of color, both at the Ed School and at the college, where he’s a tutor at Adams House. He’s also been a teaching fellow for ethnic studies classes at the Ed School since 2019 and will now help teach ethnic studies to undergraduates at Harvard starting this fall. He hopes creating and sharing his guide helps all of the students he’s around.

“As a student and as somebody who is a teaching fellow and who has worked in different organizing groups on campus and off campus, I see that grad school and organizing are often very stressful,” he says. “I really want to drill that it’s OK to not know something and that learning is shared, which is why I did this. There were things I didn’t know at first. I want to share that knowledge with others, and I want it to be community-built. When you admit you don’t know something, that’s when you truly learn something.”

SEEKER: Grace Kossia, Ed.M.’17

“Anytime one of my friends unconsciously has a math moment, I always yell out, ‘You’re a mathematician!’” she says. “Too many people are walking through this life convinced that they could never be good at math. Math isn’t meant to be something we’re good at — it’s simply something we do, and when mistakes happen, we learn.”

It’s this philosophy that she and her coworkers bring to their edtech nonprofit based in Brooklyn, New York, playfully called Almost Fun, which last year helped 1.5 million middle and high school students with free online math lessons.

“The title ‘Almost Fun’ winks at the way students perk up when they engage with our resources and find unexpected joy while learning math,” she says. “We value being real with our students, and part of that is understanding that math can be a hard pill to swallow and that schoolwork may not be the number one thing students are going to want to do. However, with the right approach, we can curate experiences that make math learning ‘almost fun’ and something to look forward to for even the least confident learners.”

The backbone of their approach includes explaining concepts using easy-to-understand examples, rather than through clinical, mathematical definitions. Their distributive property lesson, for example, relates expanding and factoring an expression to opening and closing an umbrella. Their functions lesson uses a vending machine to explain how functions represent the relationship between inputs and outputs. Another lesson compares absolute value to the overall power of a superhero or villain.

Kossia says their site is meant to complement existing online sites like Khan Academy, which she says has been a trailblazer in edtech that serves many students. But as helpful as Khan is, some students still need more help — or just a different approach.

“There is still a critical number of students who struggle with high levels of math anxiety and low math confidence, which limits their ability to take full advantage of the support online resources like Khan offer,” she says. “At Almost Fun, we want to position ourselves as a complement to these existing resources by using creative math analogies to explain foundational math concepts and bridge the gaps in students’ math confidence and motivation, so that they can better benefit from the support other resources offer.”

Kossia remembers the gaps she struggled to fill after she immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the time, she was good at math, and decided to major in mechanical engineering in college. She had a hard time.

“I quickly realized that I had many gaps in my understanding of math and physics, which were essential skills I needed in this journey,” she says. “This chipped away at my confidence, but I was determined not to give up. I wanted to prove to myself and other people like me, especially Black women, that it could be done.” Later, when she worked as a physics teacher, her struggles helped her relate to students who were anxious about physics and pushed her to design creative lessons that focused on learning by doing, as opposed to learning by memorizing.

“At Almost Fun, I do the same thing but with math as the primary focus,” she says. “We believe math is more than just sets of memorized steps; it’s a way of describing relationships between things in our world.”

Access resources and lesson plans: almostfun.org

SEEKER: Shaina Lu, Ed.M.’17

“Learning about gentrification is unavoidable in placebased learning in a place like Chinatown,” Lu says. “However, it could be kind of a drag to spend your fourth-grade summer learning about gentrification.”

So Lu, an artist and former media arts teacher in Boston Public Schools, decided to make learning about this heavy topic more interesting: she created a graphic novel.

“ Noodle and Bao was my response to that feeling. I wanted to write and draw a story that elementary kids would devour and love — There’s a cat selling food in a cart! Neighborhood kids dress up and infiltrate a snobby restaurant! — but would also pay homage to some of these inspirational histories and present-day struggles they were learning about,” she says. While the novel isn’t specifically set in Boston’s Chinatown — it’s set in a fictional Town — Lu says it’s inspired by the many residents, activists, and community members of Boston’s Chinatown that she has met and worked with over the years — people who “have done so much exciting work that is more than comic book-worthy.”

Set to publish in the fall of 2024 by HarperCollins, Noodle and Bao also explores historical events from Boston’s Chinatown, most notably a fight for the land that now houses the community center where Lu worked and where elderly residents passionately voiced their displeasure to hotel developers at a meeting.

Lu says the graphic novel is just one example of something that has been important to her for many years: the intersection of art, education, and activism. Another example is a creative placemaking project she recently worked on in Chinatown with a local student in partnership with a local resident.

“The resident, youth, and I painted a community mural that featured [the resident’s] personal lens on the history of Chinatown,” she says. “The mural was painted on a condemned building on a border of Chinatown that is elslowly being eroded away by the neighboring district. It’s hard to parse out which separate part was ‘art’ or ‘activism,’ or ‘education,’ so I feel like they’re interwoven.”

Although she’s interested in teaching, Lu says classrooms are tricky places. “There’s an inherent power structure with the teacher as the fountain of knowledge and students as recipients of that.” Instead, “I’m interested in disrupting the capitalist status quo of education with ‘winners and losers’ as described by activist- philosopher Grace Lee Boggs in her 1970 essay, Education: The Great Obsession .”

She’s not interested, though, in disrupting the system on her own. “I hope to be, alongside others, building a new system, where people’s needs and interests and social responsibility define their learning, rather than their ability to produce,” she says. “There’s actually so much incredible person- centered education out there, both in and out of schools. I’ve worked with teachers who engaged students with civics project-based learning about gentrification, youth workers who have helped young people organize community gardens for their neighborhoods, and more.”

Learn about her art: shainadoesart.com

SEEKER: Justis Lopez, Current Ed.L.D. student

“I hold near to me that there are ancestors that wanted to study, but didn’t get the chance to,” he says. “There are relatives that wanted to pursue their dreams, but they put food on the table instead so that I could pursue mine, and for that I am eternally grateful and full of joy.”

It’s this gratitude and happiness for life that Lopez, a DJ known as DJ Faro (for the Spanish word, lightkeeper), is bringing to his time at the Ed School and to Project Happyvism, the culturally responsive nonprofit he started with his friend, Ryan Parker, a youth empowerment teacher and activist, that is rooted in hip hop and is a combination of happiness + activism.

“Project Happyvism is a feeling, a philosophy, and a movement that centers joy and love as a radical form of activism,” he says, meaning the commitment to loving yourself and those around you unconditionally.

“The organization embraces the beauty and need for joy,” he says, “and emphasizes the fact that maintaining happiness about who you are and what you think, say, and do in a world that consistently goes against the grain of your identity is a form of activism in itself, hence: happyvism.”

The project started from a song and video that Lopez and Parker wrote and produced and has since expanded to include helping others write songs (what they call “joy anthems”) in their recording studio, publishing a children’s book, Happyvism: A Story About Choosing Joy , and working with K–12 districts on related curriculum. They also started Joy Lab, a community gathering space in Manchester, Connecticut, where Lopez grew up, that offers yoga, wellness and equity workshops, and book readings. He plans on starting a Joy Lab at the Ed School during his time here.

“I’m just trying to create the spaces I wish I had for myself growing up,” Lopez says. “Spaces that center healing, hope, and hip hop.”

Although this is his first year as a student at the Ed School, Lopez has been involved with the school in the past, including as an organizer, MC, and DJ at the Alumni of Color Conference, thanks to Lecturer Christina Villarreal, Ed.M.’05, who later convinced him that getting into Harvard was a possibility. He also attended the Hip Hop Experience Lab conference run by Lecturer Aysha Upchurch, Ed.M.’15.

Previously, Lopez was a high school social studies teacher in Connecticut and created a hip hop class and afterschool program in the Bronx. He worked in the Hartford public schools as a climate, culture, and equity strategist, and was an adjunct professor at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. One day, he’d like to reach even higher and become the secretary of education for the United States.

“Policy is created by people and it’s important to have people in positions of leadership that understand the experiences of the students and educators they serve,” he says. “An important factor of that being a classroom teacher. When you have taught in the classroom you understand the human-centered perspective that is needed in education that goes beyond any policy. Of the last 11 U.S. secretaries of education, only three have been classroom teachers. Secretary Cardona makes the fourth. I want to build upon the human-centered approach he has brought to the role.”

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Recognizing and Overcoming Inequity in Education

About the author, sylvia schmelkes.

Sylvia Schmelkes is Provost of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

22 January 2020 Introduction

I nequity is perhaps the most serious problem in education worldwide. It has multiple causes, and its consequences include differences in access to schooling, retention and, more importantly, learning. Globally, these differences correlate with the level of development of various countries and regions. In individual States, access to school is tied to, among other things, students' overall well-being, their social origins and cultural backgrounds, the language their families speak, whether or not they work outside of the home and, in some countries, their sex. Although the world has made progress in both absolute and relative numbers of enrolled students, the differences between the richest and the poorest, as well as those living in rural and urban areas, have not diminished. 1

These correlations do not occur naturally. They are the result of the lack of policies that consider equity in education as a principal vehicle for achieving more just societies. The pandemic has exacerbated these differences mainly due to the fact that technology, which is the means of access to distance schooling, presents one more layer of inequality, among many others.

The dimension of educational inequity

Around the world, 258 million, or 17 per cent of the world’s children, adolescents and youth, are out of school. The proportion is much larger in developing countries: 31 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and 21 per cent in Central Asia, vs. 3 per cent in Europe and North America. 2  Learning, which is the purpose of schooling, fares even worse. For example, it would take 15-year-old Brazilian students 75 years, at their current rate of improvement, to reach wealthier countries’ average scores in math, and more than 260 years in reading. 3 Within countries, learning results, as measured through standardized tests, are almost always much lower for those living in poverty. In Mexico, for example, 80 per cent of indigenous children at the end of primary school don’t achieve basic levels in reading and math, scoring far below the average for primary school students. 4

The causes of educational inequity

There are many explanations for educational inequity. In my view, the most important ones are the following:

• Equity and equality are not the same thing. Equality means providing the same resources to everyone. Equity signifies giving more to those most in need. Countries with greater inequity in education results are also those in which governments distribute resources according to the political pressure they experience in providing education. Such pressures come from families in which the parents attended school, that reside in urban areas, belong to cultural majorities and who have a clear appreciation of the benefits of education. Much less pressure comes from rural areas and indigenous populations, or from impoverished urban areas. In these countries, fewer resources, including infrastructure, equipment, teachers, supervision and funding, are allocated to the disadvantaged, the poor and cultural minorities.
• Teachers are key agents for learning. Their training is crucial.  When insufficient priority is given to either initial or in-service teacher training, or to both, one can expect learning deficits. Teachers in poorer areas tend to have less training and to receive less in-service support.
• Most countries are very diverse. When a curriculum is overloaded and is the same for everyone, some students, generally those from rural areas, cultural minorities or living in poverty find little meaning in what is taught. When the language of instruction is different from their native tongue, students learn much less and drop out of school earlier.
• Disadvantaged students frequently encounter unfriendly or overtly offensive attitudes from both teachers and classmates. Such attitudes are derived from prejudices, stereotypes, outright racism and sexism. Students in hostile environments are affected in their disposition to learn, and many drop out early.

It doesn’t have to be like this

When left to inertial decision-making, education systems seem to be doomed to reproduce social and economic inequity. The commitment of both governments and societies to equity in education is both necessary and possible. There are several examples of more equitable educational systems in the world, and there are many subnational examples of successful policies fostering equity in education.

Why is equity in education important?

Education is a basic human right. More than that, it is an enabling right in the sense that, when respected, allows for the fulfillment of other human rights. Education has proven to affect general well-being, productivity, social capital, responsible citizenship and sustainable behaviour. Its equitable distribution allows for the creation of permeable societies and equity. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. One hundred eighty-four countries are committed to achieving this goal over the next decade. 5  The process of walking this road together has begun and requires impetus to continue, especially now that we must face the devastating consequences of a long-lasting pandemic. Further progress is crucial for humanity.

Notes  1 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization , Inclusive Education. All Means All , Global Education Monitoring Report 2020 (Paris, 2020), p.8. Available at https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2020/inclusion . 2 Ibid., p. 4, 7. 3 World Bank Group, World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education's Promise (Washington, DC, 2018), p. 3. Available at https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018 .  4 Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación, "La educación obligatoria en México", Informe 2018 (Ciudad de México, 2018), p. 72. Available online at https://www.inee.edu.mx/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/P1I243.pdf . 5 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization , “Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4” (2015), p. 23. Available at  https://iite.unesco.org/publications/education-2030-incheon-declaration-framework-action-towards-inclusive-equitable-quality-education-lifelong-learning/   The UN Chronicle  is not an official record. It is privileged to host senior United Nations officials as well as distinguished contributors from outside the United Nations system whose views are not necessarily those of the United Nations. Similarly, the boundaries and names shown, and the designations used, in maps or articles do not necessarily imply endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.   

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What Students Are Saying About How to Improve American Education

An international exam shows that American 15-year-olds are stagnant in reading and math. Teenagers told us what’s working and what’s not in the American education system.

By The Learning Network

Earlier this month, the Program for International Student Assessment announced that the performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000 . Other recent studies revealed that two-thirds of American children were not proficient readers , and that the achievement gap in reading between high and low performers is widening.

We asked students to weigh in on these findings and to tell us their suggestions for how they would improve the American education system.

Our prompt received nearly 300 comments. This was clearly a subject that many teenagers were passionate about. They offered a variety of suggestions on how they felt schools could be improved to better teach and prepare students for life after graduation.

While we usually highlight three of our most popular writing prompts in our Current Events Conversation , this week we are only rounding up comments for this one prompt so we can honor the many students who wrote in.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

Put less pressure on students.

One of the biggest flaws in the American education system is the amount of pressure that students have on them to do well in school, so they can get into a good college. Because students have this kind of pressure on them they purely focus on doing well rather than actually learning and taking something valuable away from what they are being taught.

— Jordan Brodsky, Danvers, MA

As a Freshman and someone who has a tough home life, I can agree that this is one of the main causes as to why I do poorly on some things in school. I have been frustrated about a lot that I am expected to learn in school because they expect us to learn so much information in such little time that we end up forgetting about half of it anyway. The expectations that I wish that my teachers and school have of me is that I am only human and that I make mistakes. Don’t make me feel even worse than I already am with telling me my low test scores and how poorly I’m doing in classes.

— Stephanie Cueva, King Of Prussia, PA

I stay up well after midnight every night working on homework because it is insanely difficult to balance school life, social life, and extracurriculars while making time for family traditions. While I don’t feel like making school easier is the one true solution to the stress students are placed under, I do feel like a transition to a year-round schedule would be a step in the right direction. That way, teachers won’t be pressured into stuffing a large amount of content into a small amount of time, and students won’t feel pressured to keep up with ungodly pacing.

— Jacob Jarrett, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

In my school, we don’t have the best things, there are holes in the walls, mice, and cockroaches everywhere. We also have a lot of stress so there is rarely time for us to study and prepare for our tests because we constantly have work to do and there isn’t time for us to relax and do the things that we enjoy. We sleep late and can’t ever focus, but yet that’s our fault and that we are doing something wrong. School has become a place where we just do work, stress, and repeat but there has been nothing changed. We can’t learn what we need to learn because we are constantly occupied with unnecessary work that just pulls us back.

— Theodore Loshi, Masterman School

As a student of an American educational center let me tell you, it is horrible. The books are out dated, the bathrooms are hideous, stress is ever prevalent, homework seems never ending, and worst of all, the seemingly impossible feat of balancing school life, social life, and family life is abominable. The only way you could fix it would be to lessen the load dumped on students and give us a break.

— Henry Alley, Hoggard High School, Wilmington NC

Use less technology in the classroom (…or more).

People my age have smaller vocabularies, and if they don’t know a word, they just quickly look it up online instead of learning and internalizing it. The same goes for facts and figures in other subjects; don’t know who someone was in history class? Just look ‘em up and read their bio. Don’t know how to balance a chemical equation? The internet knows. Can’t solve a math problem by hand? Just sneak out the phone calculator.

My largest grievance with technology and learning has more to do with the social and psychological aspects, though. We’ve decreased ability to meaningfully communicate, and we want everything — things, experiences, gratification — delivered to us at Amazon Prime speed. Interactions and experiences have become cheap and 2D because we see life through a screen.

— Grace Robertson, Hoggard High School Wilmington, NC

Kids now a days are always on technology because they are heavily dependent on it- for the purpose of entertainment and education. Instead of pondering or thinking for ourselves, our first instinct is to google and search for the answers without giving it any thought. This is a major factor in why I think American students tests scores haven’t been improving because no one wants to take time and think about questions, instead they want to find answers as fast as they can just so they can get the assignment/ project over with.

— Ema Thorakkal, Glenbard West HS IL

There needs to be a healthier balance between pen and paper work and internet work and that balance may not even be 50:50. I personally find myself growing as a student more when I am writing down my assignments and planning out my day on paper instead of relying on my phone for it. Students now are being taught from preschool about technology and that is damaging their growth and reading ability. In my opinion as well as many of my peers, a computer can never beat a book in terms of comprehension.

— Ethan, Pinkey, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Learning needs to be more interesting. Not many people like to study from their textbooks because there’s not much to interact with. I think that instead of studying from textbooks, more interactive activities should be used instead. Videos, websites, games, whatever might interest students more. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use textbooks, I’m just saying that we should have a combination of both textbooks and technology to make learning more interesting in order for students to learn more.

— Vivina Dong, J. R. Masterman

Prepare students for real life.

At this point, it’s not even the grades I’m worried about. It feels like once we’ve graduated high school, we’ll be sent out into the world clueless and unprepared. I know many college students who have no idea what they’re doing, as though they left home to become an adult but don’t actually know how to be one.

The most I’ve gotten out of school so far was my Civics & Economics class, which hardly even touched what I’d actually need to know for the real world. I barely understand credit and they expect me to be perfectly fine living alone a year from now. We need to learn about real life, things that can actually benefit us. An art student isn’t going to use Biology and Trigonometry in life. Exams just seem so pointless in the long run. Why do we have to dedicate our high school lives studying equations we’ll never use? Why do exams focusing on pointless topics end up determining our entire future?

— Eliana D, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

I think that the American education system can be improved my allowing students to choose the classes that they wish to take or classes that are beneficial for their future. Students aren’t really learning things that can help them in the future such as basic reading and math.

— Skye Williams, Sarasota, Florida

I am frustrated about what I’m supposed to learn in school. Most of the time, I feel like what I’m learning will not help me in life. I am also frustrated about how my teachers teach me and what they expect from me. Often, teachers will give me information and expect me to memorize it for a test without teaching me any real application.

— Bella Perrotta, Kent Roosevelt High School

We divide school time as though the class itself is the appetizer and the homework is the main course. Students get into the habit of preparing exclusively for the homework, further separating the main ideas of school from the real world. At this point, homework is given out to prepare the students for … more homework, rather than helping students apply their knowledge to the real world.

— Daniel Capobianco, Danvers High School

Eliminate standardized tests.

Standardized testing should honestly be another word for stress. I know that I stress over every standardized test I have taken and so have most of my peers. I mean they are scary, it’s like when you take these tests you bring your No. 2 pencil and an impending fail.

— Brennan Stabler, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Personally, for me I think standardized tests have a negative impact on my education, taking test does not actually test my knowledge — instead it forces me to memorize facts that I will soon forget.

— Aleena Khan, Glenbard West HS Glen Ellyn, IL

Teachers will revolve their whole days on teaching a student how to do well on a standardized test, one that could potentially impact the final score a student receives. That is not learning. That is learning how to memorize and become a robot that regurgitates answers instead of explaining “Why?” or “How?” that answer was found. If we spent more time in school learning the answers to those types of questions, we would become a nation where students are humans instead of a number.

— Carter Osborn, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

In private school, students have smaller class sizes and more resources for field trips, computers, books, and lab equipment. They also get more “hand holding” to guarantee success, because parents who pay tuition expect results. In public school, the learning is up to you. You have to figure stuff out yourself, solve problems, and advocate for yourself. If you fail, nobody cares. It takes grit to do well. None of this is reflected in a standardized test score.

— William Hudson, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Give teachers more money and support.

I have always been told “Don’t be a teacher, they don’t get paid hardly anything.” or “How do you expect to live off of a teachers salary, don’t go into that profession.” As a young teen I am being told these things, the future generation of potential teachers are being constantly discouraged because of the money they would be getting paid. Education in Americans problems are very complicated, and there is not one big solution that can fix all of them at once, but little by little we can create a change.

— Lilly Smiley, Hoggard High School

We cannot expect our grades to improve when we give teachers a handicap with poor wages and low supplies. It doesn’t allow teachers to unleash their full potential for educating students. Alas, our government makes teachers work with their hands tied. No wonder so many teachers are quitting their jobs for better careers. Teachers will shape the rest of their students’ lives. But as of now, they can only do the bare minimum.

— Jeffery Austin, Hoggard High School

The answer to solving the American education crisis is simple. We need to put education back in the hands of the teachers. The politicians and the government needs to step back and let the people who actually know what they are doing and have spent a lifetime doing it decide how to teach. We wouldn’t let a lawyer perform heart surgery or construction workers do our taxes, so why let the people who win popularity contests run our education systems?

— Anders Olsen, Hoggard High School, Wilmington NC

Make lessons more engaging.

I’m someone who struggles when all the teacher does is say, “Go to page X” and asks you to read it. Simply reading something isn’t as effective for me as a teacher making it interactive, maybe giving a project out or something similar. A textbook doesn’t answer all my questions, but a qualified teacher that takes their time does. When I’m challenged by something, I can always ask a good teacher and I can expect an answer that makes sense to me. But having a teacher that just brushes off questions doesn’t help me. I’ve heard of teachers where all they do is show the class movies. At first, that sounds amazing, but you don’t learn anything that can benefit you on a test.

— Michael Huang, JR Masterman

I’ve struggled in many classes, as of right now it’s government. What is making this class difficult is that my teacher doesn’t really teach us anything, all he does is shows us videos and give us papers that we have to look through a textbook to find. The problem with this is that not everyone has this sort of learning style. Then it doesn’t help that the papers we do, we never go over so we don’t even know if the answers are right.

— S Weatherford, Kent Roosevelt, OH

The classes in which I succeed in most are the ones where the teachers are very funny. I find that I struggle more in classes where the teachers are very strict. I think this is because I love laughing. Two of my favorite teachers are very lenient and willing to follow the classes train of thought.

— Jonah Smith Posner, J.R. Masterman

Create better learning environments.

Whenever they are introduced to school at a young age, they are convinced by others that school is the last place they should want to be. Making school a more welcoming place for students could better help them be attentive and also be more open minded when walking down the halls of their own school, and eventually improve their test scores as well as their attitude while at school.

— Hart P., Bryant High School

Students today feel voiceless because they are punished when they criticize the school system and this is a problem because this allows the school to block out criticism that can be positive leaving it no room to grow. I hope that in the near future students can voice their opinion and one day change the school system for the better.

— Nico Spadavecchia, Glenbard West Highschool Glen Ellyn IL

The big thing that I have struggled with is the class sizes due to overcrowding. It has made it harder to be able to get individual help and be taught so I completely understand what was going on. Especially in math it builds on itself so if you don’t understand the first thing you learn your going to be very lost down the road. I would go to my math teacher in the morning and there would be 12 other kids there.

— Skyla Madison, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

The biggest issue facing our education system is our children’s lack of motivation. People don’t want to learn. Children hate school. We despise homework. We dislike studying. One of the largest indicators of a child’s success academically is whether or not they meet a third grade reading level by the third grade, but children are never encouraged to want to learn. There are a lot of potential remedies for the education system. Paying teachers more, giving schools more funding, removing distractions from the classroom. All of those things are good, but, at the end of the day, the solution is to fundamentally change the way in which we operate.

Support students’ families.

I say one of the biggest problems is the support of families and teachers. I have heard many success stories, and a common element of this story is the unwavering support from their family, teachers, supervisors, etc. Many people need support to be pushed to their full potential, because some people do not have the will power to do it on their own. So, if students lived in an environment where education was supported and encouraged; than their children would be more interested in improving and gaining more success in school, than enacting in other time wasting hobbies that will not help their future education.

— Melanie, Danvers

De-emphasize grades.

I wish that tests were graded based on how much effort you put it and not the grade itself. This would help students with stress and anxiety about tests and it would cause students to put more effort into their work. Anxiety around school has become such a dilemma that students are taking their own life from the stress around schoolwork. You are told that if you don’t make straight A’s your life is over and you won’t have a successful future.

— Lilah Pate, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

I personally think that there are many things wrong with the American education system. Everyone is so worried about grades and test scores. People believe that those are the only thing that represents a student. If you get a bad grade on something you start believing that you’re a bad student. GPA doesn’t measure a students’ intelligence or ability to learn. At young ages students stop wanting to come to school and learn. Standardized testing starts and students start to lose their creativity.

— Andrew Gonthier, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Praise for great teachers

Currently, I’m in a math class that changed my opinion of math. Math class just used to be a “meh” for me. But now, my teacher teachers in a way that is so educational and at the same time very amusing and phenomenal. I am proud to be in such a class and with such a teacher. She has changed the way I think about math it has definitely improve my math skills. Now, whenever I have math, I am so excited to learn new things!

— Paulie Sobol, J.R Masterman

At the moment, the one class that I really feel supported in is math. My math teachers Mrs. Siu and Ms. Kamiya are very encouraging of mistakes and always are willing to help me when I am struggling. We do lots of classwork and discussions and we have access to amazing online programs and technology. My teacher uses Software called OneNote and she does all the class notes on OneNote so that we can review the class material at home. Ms. Kamiya is very patient and is great at explaining things. Because they are so accepting of mistakes and confusion it makes me feel very comfortable and I am doing very well in math.

— Jayden Vance, J.R. Masterman

One of the classes that made learning easier for me was sixth-grade math. My teacher allowed us to talk to each other while we worked on math problems. Talking to the other students in my class helped me learn a lot quicker. We also didn’t work out of a textbook. I feel like it is harder for me to understand something if I just read it out of a textbook. Seventh-grade math also makes learning a lot easier for me. Just like in sixth-grade math, we get to talk to others while solving a problem. I like that when we don’t understand a question, our teacher walks us through it and helps us solve it.

— Grace Moan, J R Masterman

My 2nd grade class made learning easy because of the way my teacher would teach us. My teacher would give us a song we had to remember to learn nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. which helped me remember their definitions until I could remember it without the song. She had little key things that helped us learn math because we all wanted to be on a harder key than each other. She also sang us our spelling words, and then the selling of that word from the song would help me remember it.

— Brycinea Stratton, J.R. Masterman

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The costs of inequality: education’s the one key that rules them all.

When there’s inequity in learning, it’s usually baked into life, Harvard analysts say

Corydon Ireland

Harvard Correspondent

Third in a series on what Harvard scholars are doing to identify and understand inequality, in seeking solutions to one of America’s most vexing problems.

Before Deval Patrick ’78, J.D. ’82, was the popular and successful two-term governor of Massachusetts, before he was managing director of high-flying Bain Capital, and long before he was Harvard’s most recent Commencement speaker , he was a poor black schoolchild in the battered housing projects of Chicago’s South Side.

The odds of his escaping a poverty-ridden lifestyle, despite innate intelligence and drive, were long. So how did he help mold his own narrative and triumph over baked-in societal inequality ? Through education.

“Education has been the path to better opportunity for generations of American strivers, no less for me,” Patrick said in an email when asked how getting a solid education, in his case at Milton Academy and at Harvard, changed his life.

“What great teachers gave me was not just the skills to take advantage of new opportunities, but the ability to imagine what those opportunities could be. For a kid from the South Side of Chicago, that’s huge.”

If inequality starts anywhere, many scholars agree, it’s with faulty education. Conversely, a strong education can act as the bejeweled key that opens gates through every other aspect of inequality , whether political, economic , racial, judicial, gender- or health-based.

Simply put, a top-flight education usually changes lives for the better. And yet, in the world’s most prosperous major nation, it remains an elusive goal for millions of children and teenagers.

Plateau on educational gains

The revolutionary concept of free, nonsectarian public schools spread across America in the 19th century. By 1970, America had the world’s leading educational system, and until 1990 the gap between minority and white students, while clear, was narrowing.

But educational gains in this country have plateaued since then, and the gap between white and minority students has proven stubbornly difficult to close, says Ronald Ferguson, adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and faculty director of Harvard’s Achievement Gap Initiative. That gap extends along class lines as well.

“What great teachers gave me was not just the skills to take advantage of new opportunities, but the ability to imagine what those opportunities could be. For a kid from the South Side of Chicago, that’s huge.” — Deval Patrick

In recent years, scholars such as Ferguson, who is an economist, have puzzled over the ongoing achievement gap and what to do about it, even as other nations’ school systems at first matched and then surpassed their U.S. peers. Among the 34 market-based, democracy-leaning countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States ranks around 20th annually, earning average or below-average grades in reading, science, and mathematics.

By eighth grade, Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. noted last year, only 44 percent of American students are proficient in reading and math. The proficiency of African-American students, many of them in underperforming schools, is even lower.

“The position of U.S. black students is truly alarming,” wrote Fryer, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics, who used the OECD rankings as a metaphor for minority standing educationally. “If they were to be considered a country, they would rank just below Mexico in last place.”

Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Dean James E. Ryan, a former public interest lawyer, says geography has immense power in determining educational opportunity in America. As a scholar, he has studied how policies and the law affect learning, and how conditions are often vastly unequal.

His book “Five Miles Away, A World Apart” (2010) is a case study of the disparity of opportunity in two Richmond, Va., schools, one grimly urban and the other richly suburban. Geography, he says, mirrors achievement levels.

A ZIP code as predictor of success

“Right now, there exists an almost ironclad link between a child’s ZIP code and her chances of success,” said Ryan. “Our education system, traditionally thought of as the chief mechanism to address the opportunity gap, instead too often reflects and entrenches existing societal inequities.”

Urban schools demonstrate the problem. In New York City, for example, only 8 percent of black males graduating from high school in 2014 were prepared for college-level work, according to the CUNY Institute for Education Policy, with Latinos close behind at 11 percent. The preparedness rates for Asians and whites — 48 and 40 percent, respectively — were unimpressive too, but nonetheless were firmly on the other side of the achievement gap.

In some impoverished urban pockets, the racial gap is even larger. In Washington, D.C., 8 percent of black eighth-graders are proficient in math, while 80 percent of their white counterparts are.

Fryer said that in kindergarten black children are already 8 months behind their white peers in learning. By third grade, the gap is bigger, and by eighth grade is larger still.

According to a recent report by the Education Commission of the States, black and Hispanic students in kindergarten through 12th grade perform on a par with the white students who languish in the lowest quartile of achievement.

There was once great faith and hope in America’s school systems. The rise of quality public education a century ago “was probably the best public policy decision Americans have ever made because it simultaneously raised the whole growth rate of the country for most of the 20th century, and it leveled the playing field,” said Robert Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at HKS, who has written several best-selling books touching on inequality, including “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of the American Community” and “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.”

Historically, upward mobility in America was characterized by each generation becoming better educated than the previous one, said Harvard economist Lawrence Katz. But that trend, a central tenet of the nation’s success mythology, has slackened, particularly for minorities.

“Thirty years ago, the typical American had two more years of schooling than their parents. Today, we have the most educated group of Americans, but they only have about .4 more years of schooling, so that’s one part of mobility not keeping up in the way we’ve invested in education in the past,” Katz said.

As globalization has transformed and sometimes undercut the American economy, “education is not keeping up,” he said. “There’s continuing growth of demand for more abstract, higher-end skills” that schools aren’t delivering, “and then that feeds into a weakening of institutions like unions and minimum-wage protections.”

“The position of U.S. black students is truly alarming.” — Roland G. Fryer Jr.

Fryer is among a diffuse cohort of Harvard faculty and researchers using academic tools to understand the achievement gap and the many reasons behind problematic schools. His venue is the Education Innovation Laboratory , where he is faculty director.

“We use big data and causal methods,” he said of his approach to the issue.

Fryer, who is African-American, grew up poor in a segregated Florida neighborhood. He argues that outright discrimination has lost its power as a primary driver behind inequality, and uses economics as “a rational forum” for discussing social issues.

Better schools to close the gap

Fryer set out in 2004 to use an economist’s data and statistical tools to answer why black students often do poorly in school compared with whites. His years of research have convinced him that good schools would close the education gap faster and better than addressing any other social factor, including curtailing poverty and violence, and he believes that the quality of kindergarten through grade 12 matters above all.

Supporting his belief is research that says the number of schools achieving excellent student outcomes is a large enough sample to prove that much better performance is possible. Despite the poor performance by many U.S. states, some have shown that strong results are possible on a broad scale. For instance, if Massachusetts were a nation, it would rate among the best-performing countries.

At HGSE, where Ferguson is faculty co-chair as well as director of the Achievement Gap Initiative, many factors are probed. In the past 10 years, Ferguson, who is African-American, has studied every identifiable element contributing to unequal educational outcomes. But lately he is looking hardest at improving children’s earliest years, from infancy to age 3.

In addition to an organization he founded called the Tripod Project , which measures student feedback on learning, he launched the Boston Basics project in August, with support from the Black Philanthropy Fund, Boston’s mayor, and others. The first phase of the outreach campaign, a booklet, videos, and spot ads, starts with advice to parents of children age 3 or younger.

“Maximize love, manage stress” is its mantra and its foundational imperative, followed by concepts such as “talk, sing, and point.” (“Talking,” said Ferguson, “is teaching.”) In early childhood, “The difference in life experiences begins at home.”

At age 1, children score similarly

Fryer and Ferguson agree that the achievement gap starts early. At age 1, white, Asian, black, and Hispanic children score virtually the same in what Ferguson called “skill patterns” that measure cognitive ability among toddlers, including examining objects, exploring purposefully, and “expressive jabbering.” But by age 2, gaps are apparent, with black and Hispanic children scoring lower in expressive vocabulary, listening comprehension, and other indicators of acuity. That suggests educational achievement involves more than just schooling, which typically starts at age 5.

Key factors in the gap, researchers say, include poverty rates (which are three times higher for blacks than for whites), diminished teacher and school quality, unsettled neighborhoods, ineffective parenting, personal trauma, and peer group influence, which only strengthens as children grow older.

“Peer beliefs and values,” said Ferguson, get “trapped in culture” and are compounded by the outsized influence of peers and the “pluralistic ignorance” they spawn. Fryer’s research, for instance, says that the reported stigma of “acting white” among many black students is true. The better they do in school, the fewer friends they have — while for whites who are perceived as smarter, there’s an opposite social effect.

The researchers say that family upbringing matters, in all its crisscrossing influences and complexities, and that often undercuts minority children, who can come from poor or troubled homes. “Unequal outcomes,” he said, “are from, to a large degree, inequality in life experiences.”

Trauma also subverts achievement, whether through family turbulence, street violence, bullying, sexual abuse, or intermittent homelessness. Such factors can lead to behaviors in school that reflect a pervasive form of childhood post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Possible solutions to educational inequality:

• Access to early learning
• Improved K-12 schools
• More family mealtimes
• Reinforced learning at home
• Data-driven instruction
• Longer school days, years
• Respect for school rules
• Small-group tutoring
• High expectations of students
• Safer neighborhoods

[/gz_sidebar]

At Harvard Law School, both the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative and the Education Law Clinic marshal legal aid resources for parents and children struggling with trauma-induced school expulsions and discipline issues.

At Harvard Business School, Karim R. Lakhani, an associate professor who is a crowdfunding expert and a champion of open-source software, has studied how unequal racial and economic access to technology has worked to widen the achievement gap.

At Harvard’s Project Zero, a nonprofit called the Family Dinner Project is scraping away at the achievement gap from the ground level by pushing for families to gather around the meal table, which traditionally was a lively and comforting artifact of nuclear families, stable wages, close-knit extended families, and culturally shared values.

Lynn Barendsen, the project’s executive director, believes that shared mealtimes improve reading skills, spur better grades and larger vocabularies, and fuel complex conversations. Interactive mealtimes provide a learning experience of their own, she said, along with structure, emotional support, a sense of safety, and family bonding. Even a modest jump in shared mealtimes could boost a child’s academic performance, she said.

“We’re not saying families have to be perfect,” she said, acknowledging dinnertime impediments like full schedules, rudimentary cooking skills, the lure of technology, and the demands of single parenting. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Whether poring over Fryer’s big data or Barendsen’s family dinner project, there is one commonality for Harvard researchers dealing with inequality in education: the issue’s vast complexity. The achievement gap is a creature of interlocking factors that are hard to unpack constructively.

Going wide, starting early

With help from faculty co-chair and Jesse Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree, the Achievement Gap Initiative is analyzing the factors that make educational inequality such a complex puzzle: home and family life, school environments, teacher quality, neighborhood conditions, peer interaction, and the fate of “all those wholesome things,” said Ferguson. The latter include working hard in school, showing respect, having nice friends, and following the rules, traits that can be “elements of a 21st-century movement for equality.”

In the end, best practices to create strong schools will matter most, said Fryer.

He called high-quality education “the new civil rights battleground” in a landmark 2010 working paper for the Handbook of Labor Economics called “Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance of Discrimination.”

Fryer tapped 10 large data sets on children 8 months to 17 years old. He studied charter schools, scouring for standards that worked. He champions longer school days and school years, data-driven instruction, small-group tutoring, high expectations, and a school culture that prizes human capital — all just “a few simple investments,” he wrote in the working paper. “The challenge for the future is to take these examples to scale” across the country.

How long would closing the gap take with a national commitment to do so? A best-practices experiment that Fryer conducted at low-achieving high schools in Houston closed the gap in math skills within three years, and narrowed the reading achievement gap by a third.

“You don’t need Superman for this,” he said, referring to a film about Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Children’s Zone, just high-quality schools for everyone, to restore 19th-century educator Horace Mann’s vision of public education as society’s “balance-wheel.”

Last spring, Fryer, still only 38, won the John Bates Clark medal, the most prestigious award in economics after the Nobel Prize. He was a MacArthur Fellow in 2011, became a tenured Harvard professor in 2007, was named to the prestigious Society of Fellows at age 25. He had a classically haphazard childhood, but used school to learn, grow, and prosper. Gradually, he developed a passion for social science that could help him answer what was going wrong in black lives because of educational inequality.

With his background and talent, Fryer has a dramatically unique perspective on inequality and achievement, and he has something else: a seemingly counterintuitive sense that these conditions will improve, once bad schools learn to get better. Discussing the likelihood of closing the achievement gap if Americans have the political and organizational will to do so, Fryer said, “I see nothing but optimism.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately portrayed details of Dr. Fryer’s background.

Illustration by Kathleen M.G. Howlett. Harvard staff writer Christina Pazzanese contributed to this report.

Next Tuesday: Inequality in health care

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Socioeconomic inequalities and learning

Social and economic inequalities have important and long-lasting effects on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development as well as on educational outcomes (Grantham-McGregor et al., 2007; Shonkoff and Garner, 2012). Multiple inequities combine, producing a negative impact on the ability of marginalized children to learn (Suárez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, and Tseng, 2015). Thus the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children widens over time (Shonkoff and Garner, 2012; Suárez-Orozc, Yoshikawa, and Tseng, 2015).

In contexts of high inequality, good quality and equitable education is key to the inclusive, peaceful, and sustained development of a society and a country. Ensuring the participation of marginalized groups and individuals in broader development processes helps reduce social inequalities. Inversely, unless attention is paid to equitable access, learning opportunities, and quality learning outcomes, education can entrench existing inequalities or create new ones.

Socioeconomic inequalities and education in the 2030 Agenda

• Leaving no one behind. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development regards equity as central to achieving sustainable development and calls for leaving no one behind. This means including all vulnerable countries and ensuring all people, regardless of their background, have the right to fulfill their potential and to lead decent, dignified, and rewarding lives in a healthy environment. Sustainable development goal (SDG) 10 is specifically dedicated to reducing inequality, with a focus that goes far beyond economic inequality: ‘By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status’ (SDG10.2) (United Nations, 2015).
• Addressing inequalities in education at the core of SDG 4. SDG 4 stresses the need to combat all forms of exclusion and inequalities relating to access to education and learning processes. This requires refocused efforts to improve learning outcomes for the full life cycle, especially for women, girls, and marginalized people in vulnerable settings. Equity is all-inclusive within SDG 4 (‘all girls and boys’, with all indicators disaggregated by sex) but is also the focus of a specific target (SDG 4.5): ‘By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations’ (United Nations, 2015).

How socioeconomic inequalities affect learning

Whereas wide disparities exist across countries, this brief focuses on socioeconomic inequalities between groups or individuals within countries. It is important to understand who is vulnerable to marginalization and exclusion and how different types of exclusion affect learning.

Exclusion is contextual and influenced by supply- and demand-side barriers that prevent children and young people from enrolling and/or succeeding at school. Exclusion can occur:

• at the individual level , based on socioeconomic status (poverty or low levels of parental education), location of residence (rural vs. urban, regional disparities), or other vulnerabilities;
• at the group level (marginalized ethnic or linguistic groups, nomadic or indigenous peoples, gender or socio-cultural and religious factors, or migration status); or
• as the result of environmental and contextual factors, such as state fragility, conflict, or natural disaster that often lead to displacement.

Factors of exclusion

• Poverty. Children from poor families are less likely to meet the basic pre-requisites for learning and are often ill-prepared to attend school. Children who live in low-resourced communities are more likely to be malnourished, to have absent parents, and to be exposed to violence and stress. Their schools may receive less funding. These factors often lead to poor outcomes (Grantham-McGregor et al., 2007; Shonkoff and Garner, 2012). School attendance may be affected by the need to work to contribute to family finances and by difficulties with paying school fees and other costs.
• Parental education and literacy. The home environment plays a critical role in children’s development and early learning (Save the Children, 2018). Results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that children of parents with high socioeconomic status demonstrated higher reading literacy than children of parents with low socioeconomic status (Xin Ma, 2008). Findings from the Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (TERCE) show that students achieve higher when their parents believe they will reach higher education (UNESCO Santiago, 2015). Inequities in parents’ level of education can significantly affect children’s ability to benefit from formal schooling. Parents who have not attended school, or who are illiterate, may avoid engaging in homework activities with their children or interacting with teachers and other service providers (Eccles, 2005; Tusiime et al., 2014). They may be unable to provide access to books and other literacy materials.
• Location of residence. Most countries have regionally unequal conditions of economic development, funding, and social services, as well as significant rural-urban divides. Schools in low-resourced areas – including rural areas and informal urban settlements – often receive less funding than schools in high-resourced areas. This results in reduced access to early childhood centres, high-quality schools, and well-trained teachers. This, in turn, results in lower literacy rates, poor academic performance, and higher drop-out rates, ultimately contributing to the cycle of poverty (Hindle, 2007). According to a 2018 UNICEF report, the poorest urban children in 1 in 6 countries are less likely to complete primary school than their counterparts in rural areas (UNICEF, 2018).
• Gender. In many countries, girls have less access to schools than boys and are more likely to drop out early. Factors may include practical matters, such as distance, safety, adequate facilities, etc. as well as expectations regarding participation in household chores, child marriage practices, etc., and limited opportunities for girls’ employment after school (GEM Report, 2016; Rihani, 2006; UNESCO, 2012). In some countries boys may drop out of school or underperform because of pressures to earn money or because school is deemed irrelevant (GEM Report, 2016). In school, teaching practices or instructional materials may contain gender stereotyping (Rihani, 2006), and students may face school-related gender-based violence that severely impedes their learning.
• Sexual orientation and gender identity. Bullying, violence, and other mistreatment is often compounded for LGBTI or gender non-conforming children and young people (UNESCO Bangkok, 2015), and has a significant educational impact. They may miss classes, avoid school activities, or drop out of school altogether. International learning assessments show that bullying reduces students’ achievements in key subjects such as mathematics (UNESCO, 2017b).
• Ethnicity, religion, and culture. Children who face direct and indirect discrimination based on their ethnicity, religion, or culture may suffer from negative psychological and physical effects from an early age (Shonkoff and Garner, 2012. This may cause them to underperform or struggle to learn.
• Language. International surveys regularly show that speaking a language in the home other than the language of instruction at school amounts to a handicap (Duru-Bellat, 2004), which leads to a greater risk of grade repetition and drop out (Pinnock, 2009).
• Conflicts, crises, disasters, and displacement. The experience of conflicts, crises, and disasters can leave children physically and emotionally traumatized. Migrant and refugee or displaced children may not have the formal residence papers allowing them to attend school or may face hostility and prejudice in school. Due to damage and/or insecurity, children may not have access to school buildings, learning materials, or qualified teachers (GEM Report, 2018b; IIEP-UNESCO, 2011).

Policy and planning responses

Education policies are among the most powerful levers to reduce income disparities. ‘In countries with currently low levels of education attainment, policies that promote equal access to basic education could help reduce inequality by facilitating the accumulation of human capital, and making educational opportunities less dependent on socio-economic circumstances’ (Brueckner, Dabla-Norris and Gradstein, 2014: 19). Education policies need to be inclusive, with the principle of equity being fundamental to all education sector plans and policies (UNESCO, 2017a). In addition, targeted policies to address specific instances of exclusion should be introduced.

Pro-poor education policies

Inequities can be addressed, and learning outcomes improved, when governments ensure that the most disadvantaged children and their families have access to quality education services in the formative years (Grantham-McGregor et al., 2007; Shonkoff and Garner, 2012).

Policy-makers should provide fair funding and special assistance to the lowest-performing schools and students, and implement school-community partnerships. They should identify priority education zones to compensate for regional funding disparities, and allocate resources based on specific criteria (e.g. percentage of children of foreign origin or whose mother tongue is not the language of instruction). (Duru-Bellat, 2004).

Pro-poor education policies that promote equal access to basic education, such as cash transfers to encourage attendance or spending on public education that benefits the poor, can reduce inequality by helping build human capital and making educational opportunities less dependent on socioeconomic circumstances (WEF, 2014).

Extending access to private schools through vouchers to reduce segregation has been implemented in some countries, with mixed results.

Targeted policies to address specific dimensions of exclusion

Education planners may also ensure targeted support for population groups faced with specific types of discrimination.

• Early childhood education policies should target the most disadvantaged children before they enter school.
• Language/bilingual education policies may help improve the educational outcomes of children whose mother tongue is not the language of instruction.
• Inclusive school curricula and teaching and learning materials can help reduce discrimination (e.g. providing age-appropriate information on sexual health, including information on sexual and gender diversity, can help address bullying).
• ICT policies can provide the tools to help close the educational divide and make classrooms an inclusive place for all (UNESCO, 2011).
• Policies to combat bullying based on gender and sexual identity can help schools establish relevant mechanisms and reporting requirements, and outline sanctions for non-compliance. For example, the Philippines 2013 Anti-Bullying Act provides the framework for national awareness-raising initiatives and school policies (UNESCO Bangkok, 2018).
• Moving to later tracking can ensure that all students get a broad education. Later tracking is associated with better outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children, who are more likely to otherwise be directed into vocational education (Blanden and McNally, 2014).
• Affirmative action policies encourage and train people from under-represented groups to help them overcome disadvantages in competing with others, particularly in higher education. The benefits are widely recognized, but each country takes a different approach (e.g. Sweden pays special attention to gender, India to caste, and Sri Lanka to the district of origin) (GEM Report, 2018a).
• Crisis-sensitive education sector plans and policies can build resilient systems, help prepare for potential disasters or conflict, and provide equitable access to schooling in crisis- and conflict-affected areas.
• Non-formal or alternative education policies may target children and young people who are outside the formal school system. Adapted curricula and methods can reconnect young people to education or provide them with the skills needed to enter the world of work: ‘Non-formal education … can play a crucial role in providing second-chance education for out-of-school children … [as long as] such educational opportunities provide a recognized pathway into the formal system’ (UIS and UNICEF, 2015: 41).

The need for holistic and cross-sectoral policies

Policy-makers and planners need to investigate other ways to mitigate the impact of inequities on learning outcomes, including health interventions, parenting and community support, and employment policies. Targeting families and communities is particularly important as educational outcomes are shaped much more by the family than by the school. Families are responsible for the initial socialization of their children and for nurturing their educational aspirations (Duru-Bellat, 2004).

Social inequities may also be addressed through wider policies to fight racism and discrimination, strategies for welcoming refugees and migrants into communities, and child-friendly spaces for children who have experienced trauma. Due to the interconnected and cumulative nature of most social inequities, working both outside and inside schools is the best way to ensure that all children meet their learning potential (Suárez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, and Tseng, 2015).

Plans and policies

• El Salvador: Política de equidad e igualdad de género  (2019)
• Malta: Trans, gender variant and intersex students in schools: policy  (2015)
• South Africa: Rural education draft policy  (2017)
• Chronic Poverty Advisory Network, 2012. ‘ Chronic Poverty and Education: A guide to what works in policy and practice’ . Education Policy Guide.
• Education for All Fast Track Initiative Secretariat, EFA-FTI; United Nations. 2010. Equity and inclusion in education: A guide to support education sector plan preparation, revision, and appraisal. Washington, D.C.: EFA-FTI Secretariat.
• UIS; FHI360; Oxford Policy Management; University of Cambridge, Research for Equitable Access and Learning Centre. 2018. Handbook on measuring equity in education . Montreal: UIS.
• UNESCO. 2017. A guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education . Paris: UNESCO. 
• UNESCO-IBE. 2016. Training tools for curriculum development: Reaching out to all learners: A resource pack for supporting inclusive education. Paris: UNESCO.

Blanden, J.; McNally, S. 2014. Reducing inequality in education and skills: implications for economic growth . EENEE Analytical Report No. 21. European Expert Network on Economics of Education.

Brueckner, M.; Dabla-Norris, E.; Gradstein, M. 2014.  ‘ National income and its distribution ’ , IMF Working Paper WP/14/101.

Duru-Bellat, M. 2004. Social inequality at school and educational policies . Paris: UNESCO-IIEP.

Eccles, J.S. 2005. ‘Influences of parents' education on their children's educational attainments: The role of parent and child perceptions’. In: London Review of Education, 3(3) , 191-204.

GEM (Global Education Monitoring) Report. 2016. Gender review: Creating sustainable futures for all . Paris: UNESCO.

––––.  2018a. ‘Everyone benefits from diversity on campus – why the problem with affirmative action?’

––––. 2018b. Global education monitoring report, 2019: Migration, displacement, and education: building bridges, not walls . Paris: UNESCO.

Grantham-McGregor, S.; Cheung, Y.B.; Cueto, S.; Glewwe, P.; Richter, L.; Strupp, B. 2007. ‘Developmental potential in the first 5 years for children in developing countries’. In: The Lancet , 369(9555), 60–70.

Hindle, D. 2006. ‘The funding and financing of schools in South Africa’. In: Commonwealth Secretariat, Commonwealth Education Partnerships 2006/2007 (pp. 148-150). Cambridge: Nexus Strategic Partnerships.

IIEP-UNESCO. 2011. Integrating conflict and disaster risk reduction into education sector planning: guidance notes for educational planners . Paris: IIEP.

Pinnock, H. 2009. Steps towards learning: a guide to overcoming language barriers in children's education. London: Save the Children UK.

Rihani, M. 2006. Keeping the promise: five benefits of girls’ secondary education. Washington DC: Academy for Educational Development.

Save the Children. 2018. ‘ Beyond access: Exploring equity in early childhood learning and development’ .

Shonkoff, J.P.; Garner, A.S. 2012. ‘ The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress ’. In: Pediatrics , 129 (1).

Suárez-Orozco, C.; Yoshikawa, H.; Tseng, V. 2015. ‘Intersecting inequalities: Research to reduce inequality for immigrant-origin children and youth’ . William T. Grant Foundation Paper.

Tusiime, M.; Friedlander, E.; Malik, S. 2014. ‘Literacy Boost Rwanda. Literacy ethnography baseline report ’.

UIS (UNESCO Institute for Statistics); UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). 2015. Fixing the broken promise of education for all: Findings from the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children. Montreal: UIS.

UNESCO. 2011. Transforming education: The power of ICT policies. Paris: UNESCO.

––––. 2012. From access to equality: Empowering girls and women through literacy and secondary education . Paris: UNESCO.

––––. 2017a. A guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education. Paris: UNESCO.

––––. 2017b. School violence and bullying: Global status report. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO Bangkok. 2015. From insult to inclusion: Asia-Pacific report on school bullying, violence, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Paris: UNESCO.

––––. 2018. School-related violence and bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression (SOGIE): Synthesis report on China, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam. Bangkok: UNESCO Bangkok.

UNESCO Santiago. 2015. TERCE: associated factors, executive summary. Santiago de Chile: OREALC

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). 2018. Advantage or Paradox: The challenge for children and young people growing up urban . New York: UNICEF. Retrieved from:

United Nations. 2015. Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

WEF (World Economic Forum) 2014. ‘Why education policies matter for equality ’ .

Xin Ma. 2008. ‘ A global perspective on socioeconomic differences in learning outcomes’ . Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2009 .

Related information

• Education Equity Research Initiative
• Spatial Education Inequalities website
• Inter-Agency Group on Education Inequality Indicators (IAG-EII)
• World Inequality Database on Education

Chapter 11: Schools and Education

11.5 improving schools and education, learning objectives.

• Understand how helpful good schooling can be to improve the lives of low-income children.
• Discuss the importance of good teachers.
• List any three strategies that will improve the education of low-income students.

This concluding section focuses mostly on elementary and secondary education, given its critical importance for young people’s development. As we consider how to improve the nation’s schools, and especially how to improve outcomes for low-income students and students of color, we need to keep in mind an important consideration: Good schooling can make an important difference for these students, and good teachers can greatly help low-income students (Chetty et al., 2011). However, a large body of research demonstrates that students’ family and neighborhood backgrounds actually matter much more than the quality of schooling for their school performance (Downey & Gibbs, 2012; Ladd & Fiske, 2011). Good schooling, then, can only go so far in overcoming the many strikes that low-income students and those of color have against them even before they enter kindergarten and the problems they continue to experience thereafter. As one education writer observes,

Let’s be realistic: Teachers aren’t miracle workers. There’s only so much they can do to address problems that troubled students bring to class every day, including neglect, abuse, and unaddressed medical and mental health issues. The obvious and subtle ways that poverty inhibits a child’s ability to learn—from hearing, visual and dental problems to higher asthma rates to diminished verbal interaction in the home—have been well-documented. So let’s seek to improve the state of families. Attacking schools and teachers makes everyone feel like a reformer, but the problems begin long before a child steps through the schoolhouse door. (Farhi, 2011)

Teachers and School Reform

This understanding of low-income students’ school performance has important implications for school-reform efforts. For example, if good schooling cannot ordinarily be expected to have a large impact on poor students’ lives, this fact calls into question certain aspects of the “No Child Left Behind” movement of the last decade. This movement, begun by the federal government, uses students’ scores on standardized tests to assess the quality of their schools. Perhaps inevitably, the subsequent growth in standardized testing has meant that teachers’ performance ratings have become increasingly tied to their students’ standardized test scores. However, because students’ test scores reflect their socioeconomic backgrounds and other nonschool factors much more than the quality of their schooling, these scores are not a good measure of teachers’ performance. As one education specialist summarizes this situation, “Of all the goals of the education reform movement, none is more elusive than developing an objective model to assess teachers. Studies have shown that over time, test scores do not provide a consistent means of separating good from bad instructors. Test scores are an inadequate proxy for quality because too many factors outside the teachers’ control can influence student performance from year to year—or even from classroom to classroom during the same year” (Russell, 2011, p. WK12).

The Need for More General Social Reform

The importance of students’ family and neighborhood backgrounds has a significant implication beyond the issue of teacher assessment: To improve low-income students’ school performance, our society must address the problems of poverty and racial/ethnic inequality. As two sociologists argue this point, “If we are serious about improving American children’s school performance, we will need to take a broader view of education policy. In addition to school reform, we must also aim to improve children’s lives where they spend the vast majority of their time—with their families and in their neighborhoods” (Downey and Gibbs, 2012, p. 85). Chapter 2 “Poverty” and Chapter 3 “Racial and Ethnic Inequality” discussed strategies to reduce poverty and racial/ethnic inequality; these strategies would also help improve the school performance of low-income students and those of color.

A School Reform Agenda

Despite the need to address poverty and racial inequality, it remains true that schools with decaying buildings, uncommitted teachers, and other problems cannot be expected to produce students with even adequate levels of academic achievement. It is thus critical, says poverty expert Mark Robert Rank (2004, p. 208), to do everything possible to provide a quality education to the nation’s poor children: “To deny children the fundamental right to a decent education is both morally wrong and bad social policy. It flies in the face of the American concept of equality of opportunity…Countless studies have documented the immediate and lingering effects of disparate educational outcomes on later life. Improving public education for low-income children is absolutely essential.”

In short, good schools and good teachers do matter. In particular, good elementary- and middle-school teachers have been shown to have a lifelong impact on their students: students with good teachers are more likely years later to have lower teenage pregnancy rates and higher college attendance rates, and they are also more likely to have higher salaries in adulthood (Lowrey, 2012).

Education experts urge several measures to improve the nation’s schools and the education of American children (Madland & Bunker, 2011; Rokosa, 2011; Rothstein, 2010; Smerdon & Borman, 2009). These measures include the following:

• Have smaller schools and smaller classrooms.
• Provide more funding for schools, especially those in low-income neighborhoods.
• Repair decaying school buildings.
• Increase teachers’ pay to attract more highly qualified applicants.
• Hold teachers more accountable for their students’ learning, while recognizing the obstacles that teachers of low-income students must overcome.
• Expand early childhood (preschool) education.

On the national level, these steps will cost billions of dollars, but this expenditure promises to have a significant payoff by saving money in the long run and reducing crime, health problems, and other social ills.

As the United States tries to improve its schools, it is also important to attend to the emotional and physical health needs of low-income children (Lowe, 2011). Because of the many problems these children experience in their families and neighborhoods, including alcohol and drug abuse, hunger, illness, marital conflict, and violence, their emotional and physical health may often suffer. They cannot be expected to do well in school unless they are in good health in both respects. For this reason, many schools are now partnering with community health organizations and other agencies to address the emotional and physical health needs of schoolchildren, often by establishing well-staffed and well-equipped health centers inside the schools. Another effort involves recess (yes, recess!), as evidence indicates that children are healthier and better behaved if they go out for recess for a sufficient amount of time.

In a related issue, it is also important for the nation to try to improve parenting skills if it hopes to improve the educational performance and attainment of low-income students (Roksa & Potter, 2011). As Chapter 10 “The Changing Family” discussed, low-income parents are less likely to read and talk with their young children, and this problem impairs their children’s cognitive and neurological development. Home visits and other efforts by professionals to encourage parents of infants and toddlers to engage in these activities regularly hold potential for improving their children’s ability to learn and do well in school.

School violence and bullying are two other problems that must also be addressed. Several of the steps just outlined should reduce school violence, but other measures should also help. One example involves antibullying programs, which include regular parent meetings, strengthened playground supervision, and appropriate discipline when warranted. Research indicates that these programs reduce bullying by 20–23 percent on the average (Farrington & Ttofi, 2009). Any reduction in bullying should in turn help reduce the likelihood of school massacres like Columbine, because, as noted earlier, many of the students committing these massacres had been humiliated and bullied by other students. More generally, because the roots of school violence are also similar to the roots of youth violence outside the schools, measures that reduce youth violence should also reduce school violence. As discussed in previous chapters, such measures include early childhood prevention programs for youths at risk for developmental and behavioral problems, parenting training programs, and policies that provide income and jobs for families living in poverty.

At the level of higher education, our discussion highlighted the fact that social inequality in the larger society also plays out in colleges and universities. The higher dropout rates for low-income students and for students of color in turn contribute to more social inequality. Colleges and universities need to do everything possible to admit these students and then to help them once they are admitted, as they face many obstacles and difficulties that white students from more advantaged backgrounds are much less likely to encounter.

Key Takeaways

• Good schooling can be very helpful for low-income students, but these students’ socioeconomic backgrounds have more impact than schooling on their futures.
• For this reason, more general social reform must accompany effective school reform.
• Several strategies, including smaller classes and better-paid teachers, will help improve the learning of low-income students.

For Your Review

• Write a short essay in which you outline what a school’s superintendent might do to improve the learning of the school district’s elementary school students.
• Why do you think the United States has not more vigorously pursued the school reform agenda outlined in this section?

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hilger, N., Saez, E., Schanzenbach, D. W., & Yagan, D. (2011). How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project STAR. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126 , 1593–1660.

Downey, D. B., & Gibbs, B. G. (2012). How schools really matter. In D. Hartmann & C. Uggen (Eds.), The Contexts Reader (2nd ed., pp. 80–86). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Farhi, P. (2011, May 20). Five myths about America’s schools. The Washington Post . Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ .

Farrington, D. P., & Ttofi, M. M. (2009). Reducing school bullying: Evidence-based implications for policy. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 39 , 281–345.

Ladd, H. F., & Fiske, E. B. (2011, December 12). Class matters. Why won’t we admit it? New York Times , p. A23.

Lowe, J. I. (2011, January 13). To boost learning, start with emotional health. Education Week . Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/12/07/13lowe_ep.h31.html .

Lowrey, A. (2012, January 6). Big study links good teachers to lasting gain. New York Times , p. A1.

Madland, D., & Bunker, N. (2011). Middle-class societies invest more in public education: A stronger middle class is associated with higher levels of spending on education . Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.

Rank, M. R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: Why American poverty affects us all . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Rokosa, J. (2011). Fighting the war on poverty with early childhood education. Retrieved January 7, 2012, from http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/poverty_early_childhood_education.html .

Roksa, J., & Potter, D. (2011). Parenting and academic achievement: Intergenerational transmission of educational advantage. Sociology of Education, 84 , 299–321.

Rothstein, R. (2010). How to fix our schools. Retrieved January 11, 2012, from http://www.epi.org/publication/ib286/ .

Russell, H. B. (2011, May 1). A new measure for classroom quality. New York Times , p. WK12.

Smerdon, B. A., & Borman, K. M. (Eds.). (2009). Saving America’s high schools . Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

• Social Problems: Continuity and Change. Provided by : Social Problems: Continuity and Change is adapted from a work produced and distributed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) in 2010 by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. This adapted edition is produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing through the eLearning Support Initiative.. Located at : http://open.lib.umn.edu/socialproblems/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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5 Big Challenges Facing K-12 Education Today—And Ideas for Tackling Them

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Big Ideas is Education Week’s annual special report that brings the expertise of our newsroom to bear on the challenges educators are facing in classrooms, schools, and districts.

In the report , EdWeek reporters ask hard questions about K-12 education’s biggest issues and offer insights based on their extensive coverage and expertise.

The goal is to question the status quo and explore opportunities to help build a better, more just learning environment for all students.

In the 2023 edition , our newsroom sought to dig deeper into new and persistent challenges. Our reporters consider some of the big questions facing the field: Why is teacher pay so stubbornly stalled? What should reading instruction look like? How do we integrate—or even think about—AI? What does it mean for parents to be involved in the decisionmaking around classroom curriculum? And, perhaps the most existential, what does it mean for schools to be “public”?

The reported essays below tackle these vexing and pressing questions. We hope they offer fodder for robust discussions.

To see how your fellow educator peers are feeling about a number of these issues, we invite you to explore the EdWeek Research Center’s survey of more than 1,000 teachers and school and district leaders .

Please connect with us on social media by using #K12BigIdeas or by emailing [email protected].

1. What Does It Actually Mean for Schools to Be Public?

Over years of covering school finance, Mark Lieberman keep running up against one nagging question: Does the way we pay for public schools inherently contradict what we understand the goal of public education to be? Read more →

2. Public Schools Rely on Underpaid Female Labor. It’s Not Sustainable

School districts are still operating largely as if the labor market for women hasn’t changed in the last half century, writes Alyson Klein. Read more →

3. Parents’ Rights Groups Have Mobilized. What Does It Mean for Students?

Libby Stanford has been covering the parents’ rights groups that have led the charge to limit teaching about race, sexuality, and gender. In her essay, she explores what happens to students who miss out on that instruction. Read more→

4. To Move Past the Reading Wars, We Must Understand Where They Started

When it comes to reading instruction, we keep having the same fights over and over again, writes Sarah Schwartz. That’s because, she says, we have a fundamental divide about what reading is and how to study it. Read more→

5. No, AI Won’t Destroy Education. But We Should Be Skeptical

Lauraine Langreo makes the case for using AI to benefit teaching and learning while being aware of its potential downsides. Read more→

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3. problems students are facing at public k-12 schools, table of contents.

• Problems students are facing
• A look inside the classroom
• How teachers are experiencing their jobs
• How teachers view the education system
• Satisfaction with specific aspects of the job
• Do teachers feel trusted to do their job well?
• Likelihood that teachers will change jobs
• Would teachers recommend teaching as a profession?
• Reasons it’s so hard to get everything done during the workday
• Staffing issues
• Balancing work and personal life
• How teachers experience their jobs
• Lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Major problems at school
• Discipline practices
• Policies around cellphone use
• Verbal abuse and physical violence from students
• Addressing behavioral and mental health challenges
• Teachers’ interactions with parents
• K-12 education and political parties
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

We asked teachers about how students are doing at their school. Overall, many teachers hold negative views about students’ academic performance and behavior.

• 48% say the academic performance of most students at their school is fair or poor; a third say it’s good and only 17% say it’s excellent or very good.
• 49% say students’ behavior at their school is fair or poor; 35% say it’s good and 13% rate it as excellent or very good.

Teachers in elementary, middle and high schools give similar answers when asked about students’ academic performance. But when it comes to students’ behavior, elementary and middle school teachers are more likely than high school teachers to say it’s fair or poor (51% and 54%, respectively, vs. 43%).

Teachers from high-poverty schools are more likely than those in medium- and low-poverty schools to say the academic performance and behavior of most students at their school are fair or poor.

The differences between high- and low-poverty schools are particularly striking. Most teachers from high-poverty schools say the academic performance (73%) and behavior (64%) of most students at their school are fair or poor. Much smaller shares of teachers from low-poverty schools say the same (27% for academic performance and 37% for behavior).

In turn, teachers from low-poverty schools are far more likely than those from high-poverty schools to say the academic performance and behavior of most students at their school are excellent or very good.

Among those who have been teaching for at least a year, about eight-in-ten teachers say the lasting impact of the pandemic on students’ behavior, academic performance and emotional well-being has been very or somewhat negative. This includes about a third or more saying that the lasting impact has been very negative in each area.

Shares ranging from 11% to 15% of teachers say the pandemic has had no lasting impact on these aspects of students’ lives, or that the impact has been neither positive nor negative. Only about 5% say that the pandemic has had a positive lasting impact on these things.

A smaller majority of teachers (55%) say the pandemic has had a negative impact on the way parents interact with teachers, with 18% saying its lasting impact has been very negative.

These results are mostly consistent across teachers of different grade levels and school poverty levels.

When we asked teachers about a range of problems that may affect students who attend their school, the following issues top the list:

• Poverty (53% say this is a major problem at their school)
• Chronic absenteeism – that is, students missing a substantial number of school days (49%)
• Anxiety and depression (48%)

One-in-five say bullying is a major problem among students at their school. Smaller shares of teachers point to drug use (14%), school fights (12%), alcohol use (4%) and gangs (3%).

Differences by school level

Similar shares of teachers across grade levels say poverty is a major problem at their school, but other problems are more common in middle or high schools:

• 61% of high school teachers say chronic absenteeism is a major problem at their school, compared with 43% of elementary school teachers and 46% of middle school teachers.
• 69% of high school teachers and 57% of middle school teachers say anxiety and depression are a major problem, compared with 29% of elementary school teachers.
• 34% of middle school teachers say bullying is a major problem, compared with 13% of elementary school teachers and 21% of high school teachers.

Not surprisingly, drug use, school fights, alcohol use and gangs are more likely to be viewed as major problems by secondary school teachers than by those teaching in elementary schools.

Differences by poverty level

Teachers’ views on problems students face at their school also vary by school poverty level.

Majorities of teachers in high- and medium-poverty schools say chronic absenteeism is a major problem where they teach (66% and 58%, respectively). A much smaller share of teachers in low-poverty schools say this (34%).

Bullying, school fights and gangs are viewed as major problems by larger shares of teachers in high-poverty schools than in medium- and low-poverty schools.

When it comes to anxiety and depression, a slightly larger share of teachers in low-poverty schools (51%) than in high-poverty schools (44%) say these are a major problem among students where they teach.  

About two-thirds of teachers (66%) say that the current discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat mild – including 27% who say they’re very mild. Only 2% say the discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat harsh, while 31% say they are neither harsh nor mild.

We also asked teachers about the amount of influence different groups have when it comes to determining discipline practices at their school.

• 67% say teachers themselves don’t have enough influence. Very few (2%) say teachers have too much influence, and 29% say their influence is about right.

• 31% of teachers say school administrators don’t have enough influence, 22% say they have too much, and 45% say their influence is about right.
• On balance, teachers are more likely to say parents, their state government and the local school board have too much influence rather than not enough influence in determining discipline practices at their school. Still, substantial shares say these groups have about the right amount of influence.

Teachers from low- and medium-poverty schools (46% each) are more likely than those in high-poverty schools (36%) to say parents have too much influence over discipline practices.

In turn, teachers from high-poverty schools (34%) are more likely than those from low- and medium-poverty schools (17% and 18%, respectively) to say that parents don’t have enough influence.

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Four of the biggest problems facing education—and four trends that could make a difference

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic , which was a follow up to,  Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About , which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of the private sector, education technology, inequality, and pedagogy.

Unfortunately, we think the four biggest problems facing education today in developing countries are the same ones we have identified in the last decades .

1. The learning crisis was made worse by COVID-19 school closures

Low quality instruction is a major constraint and prior to COVID-19, the learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was 57% (6 out of 10 children could not read and understand basic texts by age 10). More dramatic is the case of Sub-Saharan Africa with a rate even higher at 86%. Several analyses show that the impact of the pandemic on student learning was significant, leaving students in low- and middle-income countries way behind in mathematics, reading and other subjects.  Some argue that learning poverty may be close to 70% after the pandemic , with a substantial long-term negative effect in future earnings. This generation could lose around $21 trillion in future salaries, with the vulnerable students affected the most.

2. Countries are not paying enough attention to early childhood care and education (ECCE)

At the pre-school level about two-thirds of countries do not have a proper legal framework to provide free and compulsory pre-primary education. According to UNESCO, only a minority of countries, mostly high-income, were making timely progress towards SDG4 benchmarks on early childhood indicators prior to the onset of COVID-19. And remember that ECCE is not only preparation for primary school. It can be the foundation for emotional wellbeing and learning throughout life; one of the best investments a country can make.

3. There is an inadequate supply of high-quality teachers

Low quality teaching is a huge problem and getting worse in many low- and middle-income countries.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 . In addition, in many countries teachers are formally trained and as such qualified, but do not have the minimum pedagogical training. Globally, teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects are the biggest shortfalls.

4. Decision-makers are not implementing evidence-based or pro-equity policies that guarantee solid foundations

It is difficult to understand the continued focus on non-evidence-based policies when there is so much that we know now about what works. Two factors contribute to this problem. One is the short tenure that top officials have when leading education systems. Examples of countries where ministers last less than one year on average are plentiful. The second and more worrisome deals with the fact that there is little attention given to empirical evidence when designing education policies.

To help improve on these four fronts, we see four supporting trends:

1. Neuroscience should be integrated into education policies

Policies considering neuroscience can help ensure that students get proper attention early to support brain development in the first 2-3 years of life. It can also help ensure that children learn to read at the proper age so that they will be able to acquire foundational skills to learn during the primary education cycle and from there on. Inputs like micronutrients, early child stimulation for gross and fine motor skills, speech and language and playing with other children before the age of three are cost-effective ways to get proper development. Early grade reading, using the pedagogical suggestion by the Early Grade Reading Assessment model, has improved learning outcomes in many low- and middle-income countries. We now have the tools to incorporate these advances into the teaching and learning system with AI , ChatGPT , MOOCs and online tutoring.

2. Reversing learning losses at home and at school

There is a real need to address the remaining and lingering losses due to school closures because of COVID-19.  Most students living in households with incomes under the poverty line in the developing world, roughly the bottom 80% in low-income countries and the bottom 50% in middle-income countries, do not have the minimum conditions to learn at home . These students do not have access to the internet, and, often, their parents or guardians do not have the necessary schooling level or the time to help them in their learning process. Connectivity for poor households is a priority. But learning continuity also requires the presence of an adult as a facilitator—a parent, guardian, instructor, or community worker assisting the student during the learning process while schools are closed or e-learning is used.

To recover from the negative impact of the pandemic, the school system will need to develop at the student level: (i) active and reflective learning; (ii) analytical and applied skills; (iii) strong self-esteem; (iv) attitudes supportive of cooperation and solidarity; and (v) a good knowledge of the curriculum areas. At the teacher (instructor, facilitator, parent) level, the system should aim to develop a new disposition toward the role of teacher as a guide and facilitator. And finally, the system also needs to increase parental involvement in the education of their children and be active part in the solution of the children’s problems. The Escuela Nueva Learning Circles or the Pratham Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) are models that can be used.

3. Use of evidence to improve teaching and learning

We now know more about what works at scale to address the learning crisis. To help countries improve teaching and learning and make teaching an attractive profession, based on available empirical world-wide evidence , we need to improve its status, compensation policies and career progression structures; ensure pre-service education includes a strong practicum component so teachers are well equipped to transition and perform effectively in the classroom; and provide high-quality in-service professional development to ensure they keep teaching in an effective way. We also have the tools to address learning issues cost-effectively. The returns to schooling are high and increasing post-pandemic. But we also have the cost-benefit tools to make good decisions, and these suggest that structured pedagogy, teaching according to learning levels (with and without technology use) are proven effective and cost-effective .

4. The role of the private sector

When properly regulated the private sector can be an effective education provider, and it can help address the specific needs of countries. Most of the pedagogical models that have received international recognition come from the private sector. For example, the recipients of the Yidan Prize on education development are from the non-state sector experiences (Escuela Nueva, BRAC, edX, Pratham, CAMFED and New Education Initiative). In the context of the Artificial Intelligence movement, most of the tools that will revolutionize teaching and learning come from the private sector (i.e., big data, machine learning, electronic pedagogies like OER-Open Educational Resources, MOOCs, etc.). Around the world education technology start-ups are developing AI tools that may have a good potential to help improve quality of education .

After decades asking the same questions on how to improve the education systems of countries, we, finally, are finding answers that are very promising.  Governments need to be aware of this fact.

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Consultant, Education Sector, World Bank

Senior Adviser, Education

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11.5 Improving Schools and Education

Learning objectives.

• Understand how helpful good schooling can be to improve the lives of low-income children.
• Discuss the importance of good teachers.
• List any three strategies that will improve the education of low-income students.

This concluding section focuses mostly on elementary and secondary education, given its critical importance for young people’s development. As we consider how to improve the nation’s schools, and especially how to improve outcomes for low-income students and students of color, we need to keep in mind an important consideration: Good schooling can make an important difference for these students, and good teachers can greatly help low-income students (Chetty et al., 2011). However, a large body of research demonstrates that students’ family and neighborhood backgrounds actually matter much more than the quality of schooling for their school performance (Downey & Gibbs, 2012; Ladd & Fiske, 2011). Good schooling, then, can only go so far in overcoming the many strikes that low-income students and those of color have against them even before they enter kindergarten and the problems they continue to experience thereafter. As one education writer observes,

Let’s be realistic: Teachers aren’t miracle workers. There’s only so much they can do to address problems that troubled students bring to class every day, including neglect, abuse, and unaddressed medical and mental health issues. The obvious and subtle ways that poverty inhibits a child’s ability to learn—from hearing, visual and dental problems to higher asthma rates to diminished verbal interaction in the home—have been well-documented. So let’s seek to improve the state of families. Attacking schools and teachers makes everyone feel like a reformer, but the problems begin long before a child steps through the schoolhouse door. (Farhi, 2011)

Teachers and School Reform

This understanding of low-income students’ school performance has important implications for school-reform efforts. For example, if good schooling cannot ordinarily be expected to have a large impact on poor students’ lives, this fact calls into question certain aspects of the “No Child Left Behind” movement of the last decade. This movement, begun by the federal government, uses students’ scores on standardized tests to assess the quality of their schools. Perhaps inevitably, the subsequent growth in standardized testing has meant that teachers’ performance ratings have become increasingly tied to their students’ standardized test scores. However, because students’ test scores reflect their socioeconomic backgrounds and other nonschool factors much more than the quality of their schooling, these scores are not a good measure of teachers’ performance. As one education specialist summarizes this situation, “Of all the goals of the education reform movement, none is more elusive than developing an objective model to assess teachers. Studies have shown that over time, test scores do not provide a consistent means of separating good from bad instructors. Test scores are an inadequate proxy for quality because too many factors outside the teachers’ control can influence student performance from year to year—or even from classroom to classroom during the same year” (Russell, 2011, p. WK12).

The Need for More General Social Reform

The importance of students’ family and neighborhood backgrounds has a significant implication beyond the issue of teacher assessment: To improve low-income students’ school performance, our society must address the problems of poverty and racial/ethnic inequality. As two sociologists argue this point, “If we are serious about improving American children’s school performance, we will need to take a broader view of education policy. In addition to school reform, we must also aim to improve children’s lives where they spend the vast majority of their time—with their families and in their neighborhoods” (Downey and Gibbs, 2012, p. 85). Chapter 2 “Poverty” and Chapter 3 “Racial and Ethnic Inequality” discussed strategies to reduce poverty and racial/ethnic inequality; these strategies would also help improve the school performance of low-income students and those of color.

A School Reform Agenda

Despite the need to address poverty and racial inequality, it remains true that schools with decaying buildings, uncommitted teachers, and other problems cannot be expected to produce students with even adequate levels of academic achievement. It is thus critical, says poverty expert Mark Robert Rank (2004, p. 208), to do everything possible to provide a quality education to the nation’s poor children: “To deny children the fundamental right to a decent education is both morally wrong and bad social policy. It flies in the face of the American concept of equality of opportunity…Countless studies have documented the immediate and lingering effects of disparate educational outcomes on later life. Improving public education for low-income children is absolutely essential.”

In short, good schools and good teachers do matter. In particular, good elementary- and middle-school teachers have been shown to have a lifelong impact on their students: students with good teachers are more likely years later to have lower teenage pregnancy rates and higher college attendance rates, and they are also more likely to have higher salaries in adulthood (Lowrey, 2012).

Education experts urge several measures to improve the nation’s schools and the education of American children (Madland & Bunker, 2011; Rokosa, 2011; Rothstein, 2010; Smerdon & Borman, 2009). These measures include the following:

• Have smaller schools and smaller classrooms.
• Provide more funding for schools, especially those in low-income neighborhoods.
• Repair decaying school buildings.
• Increase teachers’ pay to attract more highly qualified applicants.
• Hold teachers more accountable for their students’ learning, while recognizing the obstacles that teachers of low-income students must overcome.
• Expand early childhood (preschool) education.

On the national level, these steps will cost billions of dollars, but this expenditure promises to have a significant payoff by saving money in the long run and reducing crime, health problems, and other social ills.

As the United States tries to improve its schools, it is also important to attend to the emotional and physical health needs of low-income children (Lowe, 2011). Because of the many problems these children experience in their families and neighborhoods, including alcohol and drug abuse, hunger, illness, marital conflict, and violence, their emotional and physical health may often suffer. They cannot be expected to do well in school unless they are in good health in both respects. For this reason, many schools are now partnering with community health organizations and other agencies to address the emotional and physical health needs of schoolchildren, often by establishing well-staffed and well-equipped health centers inside the schools. Another effort involves recess (yes, recess!), as evidence indicates that children are healthier and better behaved if they go out for recess for a sufficient amount of time.

In a related issue, it is also important for the nation to try to improve parenting skills if it hopes to improve the educational performance and attainment of low-income students (Roksa & Potter, 2011). As Chapter 10 “The Changing Family” discussed, low-income parents are less likely to read and talk with their young children, and this problem impairs their children’s cognitive and neurological development. Home visits and other efforts by professionals to encourage parents of infants and toddlers to engage in these activities regularly hold potential for improving their children’s ability to learn and do well in school.

School violence and bullying are two other problems that must also be addressed. Several of the steps just outlined should reduce school violence, but other measures should also help. One example involves antibullying programs, which include regular parent meetings, strengthened playground supervision, and appropriate discipline when warranted. Research indicates that these programs reduce bullying by 20–23 percent on the average (Farrington & Ttofi, 2009). Any reduction in bullying should in turn help reduce the likelihood of school massacres like Columbine, because, as noted earlier, many of the students committing these massacres had been humiliated and bullied by other students. More generally, because the roots of school violence are also similar to the roots of youth violence outside the schools, measures that reduce youth violence should also reduce school violence. As discussed in previous chapters, such measures include early childhood prevention programs for youths at risk for developmental and behavioral problems, parenting training programs, and policies that provide income and jobs for families living in poverty.

At the level of higher education, our discussion highlighted the fact that social inequality in the larger society also plays out in colleges and universities. The higher dropout rates for low-income students and for students of color in turn contribute to more social inequality. Colleges and universities need to do everything possible to admit these students and then to help them once they are admitted, as they face many obstacles and difficulties that white students from more advantaged backgrounds are much less likely to encounter.

Key Takeaways

• Good schooling can be very helpful for low-income students, but these students’ socioeconomic backgrounds have more impact than schooling on their futures.
• For this reason, more general social reform must accompany effective school reform.
• Several strategies, including smaller classes and better-paid teachers, will help improve the learning of low-income students.

For Your Review

• Write a short essay in which you outline what a school’s superintendent might do to improve the learning of the school district’s elementary school students.
• Why do you think the United States has not more vigorously pursued the school reform agenda outlined in this section?

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hilger, N., Saez, E., Schanzenbach, D. W., & Yagan, D. (2011). How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project STAR. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126 , 1593–1660.

Downey, D. B., & Gibbs, B. G. (2012). How schools really matter. In D. Hartmann & C. Uggen (Eds.), The Contexts Reader (2nd ed., pp. 80–86). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Farhi, P. (2011, May 20). Five myths about America’s schools. The Washington Post . Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ .

Farrington, D. P., & Ttofi, M. M. (2009). Reducing school bullying: Evidence-based implications for policy. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 39 , 281–345.

Ladd, H. F., & Fiske, E. B. (2011, December 12). Class matters. Why won’t we admit it? New York Times , p. A23.

Lowe, J. I. (2011, January 13). To boost learning, start with emotional health. Education Week . Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/12/07/13lowe_ep.h31.html .

Lowrey, A. (2012, January 6). Big study links good teachers to lasting gain. New York Times , p. A1.

Madland, D., & Bunker, N. (2011). Middle-class societies invest more in public education: A stronger middle class is associated with higher levels of spending on education . Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.

Rank, M. R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: Why American poverty affects us all . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Rokosa, J. (2011). Fighting the war on poverty with early childhood education. Retrieved January 7, 2012, from http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/poverty_early_childhood_education.html .

Roksa, J., & Potter, D. (2011). Parenting and academic achievement: Intergenerational transmission of educational advantage. Sociology of Education, 84 , 299–321.

Rothstein, R. (2010). How to fix our schools. Retrieved January 11, 2012, from http://www.epi.org/publication/ib286/ .

Russell, H. B. (2011, May 1). A new measure for classroom quality. New York Times , p. WK12.

Smerdon, B. A., & Borman, K. M. (Eds.). (2009). Saving America’s high schools . Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Aspen Challenge: San Diego Unified students celebrate their solutions to community problems

Three high school teams from the San Diego Unified School District will advance to this year’s national Aspen Challenge finals in Colorado, next month.

The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization that provides education and resources to students so they can research solutions to some of their community’s most critical problems. The institute holds competitions around the world, challenging teams to develop their strategies for issues ranging from immigration to homelessness and the mental health of children. The challenge came to San Diego for the first time this year.

Back in February, 150 students from 19 campuses across the county chose their topics and began the 10-week challenge, delivering their final presentations before a panel of expert judges earlier this month. They are supported by coaches and community mentors during the process.

The winning teams were from Madison and Mira Mesa high schools and the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts.

• Madison High School’s  project “SPORK” created multiple pathways for reducing the consumption of single-use plastics in their community by improving the recycling habits of their peers through a public awareness campaign.
• Mira Mesa High School , team “SGWB (Student Guide to Well-Being)” established inclusive spaces for their peers to have honest conversations about mental health by designing a student-driven web platform filled with resources and community support.
• San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts  identified the major causes of absenteeism among their peers, including a lack of transportation access and unaddressed mental health concerns. Their solution, “LEO (Learning Excellence Outreach),” aimed to target both by adding buses to their school’s fleet and forging partnerships to bring psychology and social work graduate students to their schools to begin working with their student body.

The Voices United team from Crawford High School presented their own solution to chronic absenteeism, with a long list of data showing that the average chronically absent student has missed 28.5 days of school.

The Crawford team determined many students miss school simply because they can’t speak English.

Their strategy included the use of a pocket translator that works in 150 languages for immigrant students and their families.

“Because they don’t feel connected in school, like they can’t communicate, that could be a big problem. Imagine they give you homework (and) you don’t speak English. How are you going to figure that out when you can’t even communicate with your teacher?" said Jhoanna Duarte, 16, a sophomore with the Crawford team.

Dominic Medlin, 19, a Crawford senior added, “Parents and students need to communicate more so they can talk to each other in school and then at home.” 

Voices United did not advance to next month's Aspen Ideas Festival . They were given an award for the best collaboration by a team.

‘Hear Their Voices’ forum will offer solutions to racial issues hurting Black and Brown students | Social Views

• Updated: May. 13, 2024, 9:35 p.m. |
• Published: May. 13, 2024, 4:50 p.m.

PennLive's Editorial Board and DE & I Committee is hosting the "Hear Their Voices" forum, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg. The forum will be held 6 p.m. Sunday, May 19 at Linglestown Life United Methodist Church. Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission

• Joyce M. Davis | [email protected]

Many people in our region have been shocked at the stories of racial harassment and bullying Central Dauphin students shared with school directors at their meeting last week in the wake of the death of 16-year-old Justin Johnson.

Police say Johnson died on April 26 of complications from Sickle Cell Anemia after playing a game of tag with friends, but some parents and students say they are skeptical of police accounts. And they want to make sure officials do not brush aside their complaints about bullying and racism inside schools.

We are live outside Central Dauphin School District where students are protesting after the death of student Justin Johnson. Posted by PennLive.com on Friday, May 3, 2024

Posting some videos from the meeting of the Board of Directors of Central Dauphin School District in which students and parents offer heartbreaking details of their experiences with racism in our schools. Posted by Joyce M. Davis on Wednesday, May 8, 2024

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How renewable energy serves as a catalyst to broader social change

Renewable energy boosts livelihoods worldwide Image:  Unsplash/VD Photography

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• From fostering innovation to job creation, renewable energy solutions drive progress towards a more equitable and sustainable world.
• Many renewable energy solutions create opportunities for economic development while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Here are some examples of how renewable energy solutions are changing lives all over the world.

Renewable energy solutions mitigate climate change and promote a healthier environment and they often serve as catalysts for broader social change. From fostering innovation and job creation to promoting gender equality or making civic participation more accessible, renewable energy solutions drive progress towards a more equitable and sustainable world.

With support from the Skoll Foundation, the Solutions Insights Lab (SIL), a new initiative of the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), created What’s Working . This is a searchable portal that combines published solutions journalism and interviews with a wide array of leaders whose work has been supported by the Skoll Foundation over the past 20 years to uncover insights that can help address social problems worldwide.

Have you read?

A new study reveals how renewables could power africa by 2040.

The SIL is a targeted research and analysis service focused on identifying and interrogating what’s working and what’s not in a particular sector or field. It employs interviewing techniques drawn from the solutions journalism approach but is not a work of journalism and is appropriately separated with a firewall from SJN’s core journalism work.

The interviews are not works of journalism themselves. The interviewing approach was standardized and the over 200 individuals interviewed were specifically selected as part of a project supported by the Skoll Foundation. They do not represent any form of endorsement by SJN, which is an independent, non-partisan organization that does not advocate for any particular approach to social change.

The interviews follow a solutions framework to explore how successful approaches work. They look at evidence of impact and replicable insights and their limitations. We analyzed these interviews, in combination with relevant stories within SJN’s Solutions Story Tracker , to distil the lessons learned by those doing this work on the ground and surface insights related to the role renewable energy solutions play in mitigating climate change and making progress on several other Sustainable Development Goals, from eradicating poverty to achieving gender equality.

Solutions for multiple problems

We’ve consistently seen that changemakers can and do successfully design solutions to address more than one issue. This is perhaps most evident among renewable energy solutions that seek to create opportunities for economic development while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Bringing affordable and clean renewable energy to rural and underdeveloped communities benefits the health of their environment and their economy, creating jobs and providing resources that foster innovation and entrepreneurship.

Lifeline Energy , for example, designs, manufactures and distributes solar-powered and wind-up media players across sub-Saharan Africa to connect communities to important information. Classrooms can listen to school lessons, farmers can listen to agricultural radio broadcasts about pesticides, frontline health workers can listen to pre-recorded health content and villagers can access information that allows them to participate in their communities in more informed ways.

Moving to clean energy is key to combating climate change, yet in the past five years, the energy transition has stagnated.

Energy consumption and production contribute to two-thirds of global emissions, and 81% of the global energy system is still based on fossil fuels, the same percentage as 30 years ago. Plus, improvements in the energy intensity of the global economy (the amount of energy used per unit of economic activity) are slowing. In 2018 energy intensity improved by 1.2%, the slowest rate since 2010.

Effective policies, private-sector action and public-private cooperation are needed to create a more inclusive, sustainable, affordable and secure global energy system.

Benchmarking progress is essential to a successful transition. The World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index , which ranks 115 economies on how well they balance energy security and access with environmental sustainability and affordability, shows that the biggest challenge facing energy transition is the lack of readiness among the world’s largest emitters, including US, China, India and Russia. The 10 countries that score the highest in terms of readiness account for only 2.6% of global annual emissions.

To future-proof the global energy system, the Forum’s Centre for Energy & Materials is working on initiatives including Clean Power and Electrification , Energy and Industry Transition Intelligence, Industrial Ecosystems Transformation , and Transition Enablers to encourage and enable innovative energy investments, technologies and solutions.

Additionally, the Mission Possible Partnership (MPP) is working to assemble public and private partners to further the industry transition to set heavy industry and mobility sectors on the pathway towards net-zero emissions. MPP is an initiative created by the World Economic Forum and the Energy Transitions Commission.

Is your organisation interested in working with the World Economic Forum? Find out more here .

The more of these solutions I looked at, the more I saw that their benefits often have third and fourth layers. They are improving women’s lives and reducing gender inequalities, for example, or making it easier for communities to access information and services, like healthcare. Solutions that address multiple needs are the most powerful and cost-effective. They also bridge the silos that so many solutions exist in.

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Barefoot College International , for example, uses clean energy to promote socio-economic development, protect the environment and improve women’s lives. Its theory of change places women at the centre as key changemakers. CEO Rodrigo París told us that putting resources towards women is key because “Women have roots in the communities, they have the knowledge... They have a good understanding about the past, about family and the roots, but they have a clear vision on how to solve problems.”

The organization trains mostly older women with little to no formal education in over 90 countries to install, repair and maintain solar lighting units in their villages. Women like Jullietta, a 69-year-old mother of seven and grandmother of 30 in Guatemala, receive the skills and resources they need to electrify homes and schools with solar energy. In doing so, they earn an income for themselves, better the environment and expand economic development opportunities for their entire village.

As one of the 20 trained 'solar mamas' in Guatemala (there are over 3,500 across the world), Jullietta brought power to 35 families in her village and is helping increase the status of women more broadly. The women’s new skills and financial independence puts them at the centre of important community-wide changes too and give them more agency to impact decision-making.

Global Gender Gap Report 2023

Transforming agriculture.

Almost 10,000 miles away, a group of women farmers in Harpur, India purchased and installed solar pumps that use affordable and clean energy to irrigate their crops. The pumps have increased their yields and enabled more diverse crops, which has led to greater profits. They also make a profit by selling irrigation services to others.

Despite facing discrimination, their increased financial independence and greater self-reliance has challenged gender norms in the traditionally male-dominated village. The women report deciding how to use the money they’ve earned and having more control over their economic well-being. The state government in Bihar has also used solar-operated pump projects as a means to improve livelihoods among rural women and is looking to replicate the model in other districts.

Solar lights, in particular, have expanded opportunities for women to improve their livelihoods. From women in Kenya leaving the sex trade once they had lights to fish at night to women in a rural Pakistani village being able to earn money making pottery after the sun goes down and women in Mali creating cooking solutions that don’t produce harmful indoor pollutants , renewable energy solutions have expanded choices and resources for women across the world.

Improving access to healthcare

Other renewable energy solutions seek to alleviate poverty by increasing access to information and services, like healthcare, which also impact women. To reduce high maternal mortality rates among women in rural Zimbabwe, Mobility for Africa uses Hambas , electric three-wheel tricycles that run on rechargeable batteries. Hambas transport pregnant women and new mothers to health facilities for pre- and post-natal care. The clean and renewable energy source mitigates harm to the environment.

Many solutions use renewable energy to expand health services, which is a foundational step in reducing poverty. From the Selco Foundation using solar panels to increase treatment capacities of rural health facilities to using mini solar grids for lighting homes to avoid venomous snake bites , these creative solutions address multiple issues in a single package.

An important aspect of the solutions framework is acknowledging the limitations of a solution. While renewable energy solutions have the potential to provide benefits across three or more areas of people’s lives, they are not without challenges. The biggest hurdle is the upfront costs of purchasing and installing the infrastructure, as well as ensuring there is a system in place to maintain it.

Renewable energy sources, such as solar, can also be less reliable than traditional energy sources, so the power may be more intermittent. But solutions that combine renewable energy with other important issues clearly play important roles in achieving several Sustainable Development Goals, from climate action to eradicating poverty to achieving gender equality. Clean, affordable and renewable energy stands as a pivotal solution with the potential to create a more equitable and healthy future for all.

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Director of People, Finance, and Administration

🔍 school of humanities and sciences, stanford, california, united states.

The world’s biggest social problems are complex, multi-faceted, and pervasive. No academic center, company, or organization can solve systemic issues – such as economic inequality, inequitable access to health care and education, and racial discrimination – alone. We need leaders with different skills and experiences to come together to generate fresh insights, evidence, and action to make progress.

  Stanford Impact Labs – a major initiative at Stanford University – invests in mission-driven teams of researchers and practitioners from government, business, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropy. These teams (we call them impact labs) work together on social problems of their choice, where practical progress is possible. With our support, these impact labs rapidly develop, test, and scale new solutions to social problems that affect millions of people worldwide. Learn more about our work at https://impact.stanford.edu/ .

  Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) is an equal opportunity organization strongly committed to racial and social justice. To that end, we particularly encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply for open positions. Please submit your resume and a cover letter through the Stanford Career Portal .

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) is hiring a Director of People, Finance, and Administration. In this role, you will design, deliver, and improve strong systems, processes, and practices for finance and administrative operations. The Director of People, Finance, and Administration will work closely with the Executive Director at a unique time of dramatic growth in the organization, with a team and operating budget that has doubled over the past 12 months. Your work will establish best practices, support continued growth and compliance, and inform decision-making about SIL’s future, in ways that allow our startup team and culture to thrive within the demands of a longstanding institution. Specifically, the Director of People, Finance, and Administration will lead the following areas of work:

Leadership and Management

●      Serve as a key member of the leadership team shaping growth and impact of SIL, providing evidence-based recommendations about spending, procurement, hiring, recruitment, retention, facilities, and continued oversight of impact labs’ financials.

●      Directly oversee the strategy, management and continuous improvement of all SIL people, financial and administrative operations to ensure compliance and enable impact.

  Finance

●      Develop, improve, and maintain financial models to manage the $15+ million annual operating budget, and to inform SIL’s programmatic expansion

●      Lead annual budgeting process. This involves coordinating across six functional teams, identifying areas of concern, and building processes for timely completion and oversight

●      Responsibly steward and optimize the use of funds, and monitor financial health to accomplish the SIL mission of social impact.

●      Build internal systems for contracting and procurement that allow SIL to make decisions quickly and pay vendors on time, and support SIL staff in working with vendors and contractors.

People Operations

●      Lead the implementation of SIL’s talent strategy to inclusively and equitably attract, hire, retain, and grow a diverse team

●      Improve SIL recruiting, outreach, hiring, retention, and performance management processes by identifying and solving inefficiencies, reducing bureaucracy, and applying a human-centered approach based in evidence and best practice

●      Refine onboarding and offboarding processes, and serve as key liaison between SIL and Stanford Humanities & Sciences HR.

●      Identify and implement ways to build and maintain a healthy and positive team culture

●      Build and implement professional development strategies for SIL Staff

●      Support SIL Directors and Managers as they seek to recruit, hire, and support staff, by providing guidance, administrative support, and problem-solving

●      Lead postdoc appointment process for SIL postdoctoral fellowship program, in coordination with host labs

●      Lead Stanford and USCIS visa applications process for SIL staff, in coordination with the Bechtel Center, Humanities and Sciences HR, and other Stanford units, to ensure timely completion and submission of necessary documents

General Administrative Operations

●      Serve as point of contact with key partners in finance, HR, facilities, and other administrative offices at Stanford Humanities and Sciences, as well as Stanford’s Office of Development liaisons.

●      Develop and administer training for SIL staff for finance, budgeting, CRM maintenance, hiring, submitting transactions and reimbursements, and other administrative processes.

●      Supervise, coach, and develop the Operations & Finance Administrator  

●      Develop and implement best possible practices in software licenses, and the use of office space and facilities, that are right-sized for Stanford Impact Labs and fall within the boundaries of University policy.

●      Collaborate with SIL and Humanities and Sciences staff to ensure accuracy and timeliness of SIL’s Salesforce CRM database, create annual reports, and develop donor-facing materials.

Investment Operations

●      Maintain prudent and fit-for-purpose financial management policies for a diverse portfolio of partners and awardees.

●      Advise Investments & Accountability team in their selection process, overseeing the honoraria process for reviewers and investment committee members, and reviewing proposal budgets to identify questions and discrepancies

●      Support Stanford Impact Labs’ grantees by providing ad hoc financial management support when appropriate or referring them to the correct contact, and developing proactive guidance to our impact labs to anticipate common financial management roadblocks

●      Support the review of Stanford Impact Labs’ portfolio of investments by analyzing labs’ financials if needed and generating insights into use of funding

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

●      Education & Experience:

●      Bachelor’s degree and five years of relevant experience, or combination of education and relevant experience.

WHO YOU ARE

●         You are excited to build and optimize organizations. You have demonstrated experience developing and improving the processes and systems required to grow organizations. You have a meticulous eye for improving outcomes of your work, and for the organization. You are excited to innovate, and are open to testing and learning what works (where, when, for who, and why). You are at home in a lean start-up environment, with the ability to stay focused and nimble in the face of rapid change.

●         You are a skilled finance and administrative professional with 5+ years of experience and a track record of success . You have experience both creating and tracking financial models, and doing the day-to-day work of ensuring timely, accurate, and compliant financial systems.

●         You are committed to expanding into people operations . While you may have little experience of people operations, you are willing to learn and grow in this new and exciting field to shape/curate/maximize the employee experience of 15 (and growing) dynamic team members.

●         You are a collaborative team member and leader. You have experience advising leadership and providing evidence-driven recommendations. You are comfortable building trust-based relationships and partnerships to deliver shared goals. You have a track record of teamwork and leadership, especially across different ways of working. You have experience reconciling multiple, diverse viewpoints to negotiate across internal and external stakeholders.

●         You are an effective communicator. You are capable of communicating effectively and compassionately both verbally and in writing to understand and advocate for competing needs, inquire about workarounds, and influence and persuade people. You have experience documenting complicated processes in ways non-experts can understand. You have demonstrated experience explaining complex financial concepts to different audiences, and have trained team members in financial and administrative best practices.

●         You are a flexible, resourceful, and well-organized leader of complex projects . You have a proven track record of coordinating multi-faceted and complex projects, including the ability to anticipate issues, develop proactive solutions, and engage the right people to support and champion success.

●         You are a leader, invested in team members’ and other stakeholders’ growth and development. You have the ability to provide training, coaching, and mentoring for staff on new policies and processes. You are eager to build approaches to professional development outside your immediate team, for a larger organization.

●      You are committed to centering equity and inclusion in programs and practices. In particular , you have a demonstrated track record of working effectively across lines of difference.

WE WOULD ALSO LOVE

●         Familiarity with Stanford’s financial and administrative systems , including Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI), PeopleSoft, Stanford’s gift processing transmittal process, labor schedules, labor distribution adjustments, SeRA and sponsored research policies, Taleo and other hiring and appointment processes and webforms, space oversight databases, and more.

●      Familiarity with Stanford’s accelerator models and the financial administration and grant-making practices associated with cross-university initiatives.

Research shows that many applicants who would be successful in a position are reluctant to apply unless they meet every listed requirement. No candidate will meet every requirement. If you may be a good fit, we encourage you to apply.

HOW TO APPLY

Deadline for applications is May 24th, 2024 by 5:00 PM Pacific Time . Please submit the following through Stanford’s online jobs portal.  

●      A 1-2 page resume highlighting examples of relevant skills and experiences

●      Upload a cover letter and make sure to respond to these 2 questions in it:

1.     Tell us what energizes and excites you most about the Director of People, Finance, and Administration role, why you think you are particularly well-suited for the role and how it ties into your longer-term goals. [300 words max]

2.     What will be your biggest challenge in this role and why? [250 words max]

TERMS AND FUNDING

This is a 100% FTE, 1 year fixed term exempt position with the possibility of renewal. This position will be based on the Stanford campus and is a hybrid position, with 2-3 days of in- person work and 2-3 days of remote work per week.

The expected pay for this position is $95,000 to $134,000 per annum. Stanford University provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the university reasonably expects to pay for a position. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographic location, and external market pay for comparable jobs.

  There is no visa sponsorship available for this position.

  Stanford Impact Labs is an equal opportunity organization working to address some of the world’s most challenging social problems. To that end, we particularly encourage people with lived experience of those social problems to apply for open positions.

  This position is classified by Stanford University as an Academic Services Administrator 2, Job Code 4122, Grade J.

  Why Stanford Impact Labs is for You

We’re a small and growing team working towards a game-changing mission, we bring thoughtful excellence to our work and to how we work together, seeing and valuing each other as more than just “people we work with”. Our team loves working here because of the meaning they derive from the work, the people they get to do the work with (colleagues, partners, stakeholders), the culture of collaboration and atmosphere of trust, openness and care, as well as the hybrid work environment.

  Why Stanford is for You

Imagine a world without search engines or social platforms. Consider lives saved through first-ever organ transplants and research to cure illnesses. Stanford University has revolutionized the way we live and enrich the world. Supporting this mission is our diverse and dedicated 17,000 staff. We seek talent driven to impact the future of our legacy. Our culture and  unique benefits  empower you with:

●         Freedom to grow. We offer career development programs, tuition reimbursement, or audit a course. Join a TedTalk, film screening, or listen to a renowned author or global leader speak.

●         A caring culture. We provide superb retirement plans, generous time-off, and family care resources.

●         A healthier you. Climb our rock wall, or choose from hundreds of health or fitness classes at our world-class exercise facilities. We also provide excellent health care benefits.

●         Discovery and fun. Stroll through historic sculptures, trails, and museums.

●         Enviable resources. Enjoy free commuter programs, ridesharing incentives, discounts and more

The job duties listed are typical examples of work performed by positions in this job classifications and are not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, tasks and responsibilities. Specific duties and responsibilities may vary depending on department or program needs without changing the general nature and scope of the job or level of responsibility. Employees may also perform other duties as assigned.

  Consistent with its obligations under the law, the University will provide reasonable accommodation to any employee with a disability who requires accommodation to perform the essential functions of their job.

  Stanford is an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

• Schedule: Full-time
• Job Code: 4122
• Employee Status: Fixed-Term
• Requisition ID: 103240
• Work Arrangement : Hybrid Eligible

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Billboards promising speedy weed delivery are everywhere. So too is a distinct skunky smell that lingers on streets, alleyways, and in apartment buildings.

The increased access to weed is contributing to a growing public health problem: More children are unintentionally ingesting marijuana edibles, getting sick, and going to the hospital.

From 2020 to 2022, the Michigan Poison and Drug Information Center, which takes calls from across the state, recorded 801 incidents of cannabis toxicity among children ages 5 and younger. That represents a nearly 75% increase of unintentional youth cannabis ingestion, a “worrisome and concerning” spike, said Varun Vohra, the center’s academic and managing director. Meanwhile, cases of unintentional cannabis use by children ages 4 to 13 grew by 60% from 2020 to 2023.

These trends have led public health professionals, local leaders, and school officials to search for solutions. In Detroit, school leaders are highlighting the urgency of what is likely a statewide problem. Detroit Public Schools Community District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti and school board members recently issued a plea for help to lawmakers and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer . Vitti said cannabis use — intentional or not — is widespread in Detroit schools, disrupting classes and sending students to the hospital nearly every week.

This school year alone, the district has counted roughly 750 incidents involving marijuana as well as vape pens that students use for tobacco. The latter make up a huge chunk of those incidents.

The public climate for cannabis is such that a 9-year-old, Kaydn Mahouli, complained about the billboards for weed to Detroit City Council members .

All of this speaks to a new frontier for child health and safety that has officials in schools and beyond scrambling to address an unintended outcome of cannabis legalization.

Child cannabis poisoning on the rise nationwide

Michigan voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2018, and recreational dispensaries opened their doors in December 2019. In Detroit, the first dispensary to sell recreational weed began operation in January 2023 , a delay stemming from legal battles over the city’s marijuana ordinance .

Dr. Kelly Levasseur, chief of pediatric emergency medicine at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, said the number of young patients entering the emergency department after the legalization of recreational marijuana rose dramatically.

“In 2020, during COVID … I’d have maybe one patient come in every few months, and now it’s probably every other week,” she said. “It is so common.”

Levasseur said toddlers and children, from roughly 16 months to 6 years old, comprise the majority of patients suffering from cannabis intoxication. They arrive with telltale symptoms of central nervous system depression: They are disorientated, sleepy, and confused as parents carry them into the waiting room. In severe cases, a child’s respiratory function becomes compromised.

“We can almost recognize these kids when they’re walking down the hallway,” Levasseur said.

Meanwhile, she is also treating teenagers for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, an illness caused by daily cannabis use that results in severe cyclical nausea and vomiting. Levasseur said it typically resolves when the patient completely stops using marijuana.

Dr. Jason Vieder, vice chair of the emergency department at Henry Ford Health, said the issue is especially acute among young children who get their hands on temptingly sweet cannabis gummies, cookies and brownies.

Part of the problem, not only for children but also young people and adults, is that the dosage in these products is an “inexact science,” Vieder said. He said that while prescription pills might have lines scored down the middle to accurately separate half doses, eating half an edible does not necessarily mean people are getting half the supposed marijuana dose.

The issue is certainly not unique to Michigan.

Bart Hammig, a scholar of public health at University of Arkansas, has published research on the rise of pediatric cannabis poisoning nationwide. Although the research is challenging given federal laws about cannabis, Hammig told Chalkbeat that “the rate of [emergency department] visits associated with cannabis use has increased about four to five times in the past decade.”

Even states that pioneered the template for legal cannabis struggle to address this issue.

Colorado became the first state, along with Washington state, to legalize recreational pot in 2013. But doctors like Sam Wang of Children’s Hospital Colorado still see a high volume of children with cannabis poisoning.

“So our state has kind of led the way … with things that include child resistant packaging, marketing and advertising regulations, dose limitations … public education, etc. And we’d like to think that this has helped,” Wang said. “But unfortunately, the rates have continued to increase.”

Wang and other physicians and researchers stressed the need for more public awareness campaigns, especially when it comes to adults leaving cannabis edibles around the house where little hands can grab them.

Searching for ways to reduce kids’ cannabis use

Vitti and school board members have outlined several ways to curb cannabis use among kids, including stricter regulations on packaging and labeling of marijuana products.

They are also calling for detection systems in schools for marijuana and vape pens, and public awareness campaigns funded through cannabis revenues and taxes.

Vitti said the need to address these issues is deepening. In an interview with Chalkbeat, he cited two recent drug-related incidents that involved a second and third grader. “When we have young children involved, there is definitely a greater sense of urgency,” he said.

When asked for a response to Vitti’s letter, a spokesperson for Whitmer referred Chalkbeat to Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency.

That office has rules aimed at keeping pot edibles and products away from kids. The rules prohibit products that could appeal to children and minors based on shape, label, and overall packaging. For example, cartoons or caricatures are not allowed, nor the word “candy,” and products must be sold in opaque, child-resistant packages.

“Enforcement of these rules has been — and continues to be — a high priority for the CRA for years,” David Harns, a spokesperson for the agency, said in an email to Chalkbeat.

Harns wrote that the image Vitti included in his letter of marijuana edibles masquerading in packages that resemble Sour Patch Kids, Jolly Ranchers, and Skittles does not represent “regulated Michigan products.”

DPSCD Police did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment about how often school police are encountering these products in Detroit schools.

Detroit City Council Member Angela Whitfield Calloway, a former Detroit public schools educator, said she is “beyond alarmed” about the situation.

She said more cannabis revenue should go toward funding robust education and awareness campaigns in traditional public, charter, and private schools.

“We have to have outreach, and we can’t depend on the schools because the schools are reaching out to us. They’re saying, ‘City of Detroit, we need your help,’’ Calloway said.

The proliferation of billboards advertising recreational cannabis across the city is also on her radar after comments to the City Council from Mahouli, the 9-year-old who expressed his concerns about children seeing the same billboards he sees “everywhere” that advertise marijuana.

Mahouli’s grandmother, Jacqueline Miller, explained to council members that Mahouli helps his mother at her substance abuse clinic in Pontiac and wants to become a doctor so he can take over the clinic one day.

Calloway has directed Detroit’s Legislative Policy Division to explore how the city could potentially restrict such advertisements.

Meanwhile, Council Member Scott Benson has proposed earmarking 10% of gross receipts from cannabis sales for youth substance abuse programs . Detroit currently uses 2% of its cannabis tax revenues for substance abuse outreach, and that includes a $40,000 youth program launching this summer through the Detroit Health Department. Benson says that’s not enough.

Roughly $101 million in state cannabis taxes from last year went to the K-12 School Aid Fund.

Although often less novel than marijuana, tobacco is also attracting similar concerns.

State Sen. Stephanie Chang, a Democrat from Detroit, said she is generally open to allocating more cannabis revenue for prevention. But she wants to drill down on more details and talk to stakeholders. And she pointed to her bill to address vaping , which includes banning flavored vapes, earmarking taxes for tobacco prevention and K-12 education, and enacting more regulations on businesses selling tobacco products.

Chang was recently at a student roundtable at Davis Aerospace Technical High School where students were asked if they know someone who has been harmed by vaping. “I think almost every student raised their hand,” she said.

Vitti has similar concerns. “The vape pens are even more dangerous [than cannabis] as far as usage and it’s a major problem,” he told Chalkbeat. “And that’s where we are seeing gas stations, close to school, selling vape pens, to underage children. That needs to be cracked down.”

Karmen Hanson, senior fellow with the National Conference of State Legislatures, has researched how states that were first to enter the so-called green rush, like Colorado and Washington, have incorporated public health into cannabis policy .

“Legislators and other policymakers will come back year after year, and regulators for that matter, too, to try to correct things that they believe need repairing or tweaking,” she said.

Hanson said local leaders now have the opportunity to learn from those examples.

Robyn Vincent is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit, covering Detroit schools and Michigan education policy. You can reach her at [email protected] .

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Watch CBS News

Social Security projected to cut benefits in 2035 barring a fix

By Aimee Picchi

Edited By Alain Sherter

Updated on: May 7, 2024 / 11:28 AM EDT / CBS News

The timeline to replenish Social Security is being extended. The federal retirement program said Monday it may not need to cut benefits until 2035, one year later than previously forecast, because of stronger performance by the U.S. 

The new projection, from the Social Security Board of Trustees' annual report,  amounts to "good news" for the program's 70 million beneficiaries, said Martin O'Malley, Commissioner of Social Security, in a statement. Even so, he urged Congress to take steps to shore up the program to ensure it can pay full benefits "into the foreseeable future."

Social Security relies on its trust funds to provide monthly checks to beneficiaries, with the funds primarily financed through the payroll taxes that workers and businesses provide with each paycheck. But the funds' reserves are drawing down because spending is outpacing income, partly due to the wave of baby boomer retirements and an aging U.S. population. 

Experts underscore that if the trust funds are depleted, benefits won't suddenly disappear. Instead, Social Security beneficiaries will face a cut to their monthly checks, with the agency on Monday projecting that recipients would lose 17% of their current benefits.

That would be painful for millions of retired and disabled Americans, but it represents a modest improvement from last year, when the Social Security Administration projected that benefits could be slashed by 23% if the trust funds reached the point of depletion.

Advocates for older Americans praised the improved outlook, while pressing Congress to take action on shoring up the program. 

"Congress owes it to the American people to reach a bipartisan solution, ensuring people's hard-earned Social Security benefits will be there in full for the decades ahead," AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said in a statement. "The stakes are simply too high to do nothing."

Lawmakers have yet to take action despite being aware of the looming funding crisis, noted Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on the federal fiscal policies, in a statement.

"Every year we get closer to the deadline, we seem to get further away from the solutions," she said. Without a fix, "Social Security's retirement trust fund will be insolvent when today's 58-year-olds reach the normal retirement age and today's youngest retirees turn 71."

Economic boost

O'Malley attributed the improved Social Security forecast to the stronger economy, pointing to what he called "impressive wage growth, historic job creation, and a steady, low unemployment rate." In other words, a healthy job market is resulting in more Social Security taxes going into the funds' coffers.

The report comes as Social Security's financial outlook has become a political lightning rod, with Republicans proposing that the retirement age be raised — effectively cutting benefits for millions of current workers — and former President Donald Trump indicating he would be open to cuts to Social Security and Medicare. 

Democrats argue that there are other ways to fix the program without cutting benefits, such as raising the cap on payroll taxes. Currently, individual income over $168,600 is exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. 

Medicare's "go broke" date

Meanwhile, Medicare's go-broke date for its hospital insurance trust fund was pushed back five years to 2036 in the latest report, thanks in part to higher payroll tax income and lower-than-projected expenses. Medicare is the federal government's health insurance program that covers people age 65 and older and those with severe disabilities or illnesses. It covered more than 66 million people last year, with most being 65 and older.

Once the fund's reserves become depleted, Medicare would be able to cover only 89% of costs for patients' hospital visits, hospice care and nursing home stays or home health care that follow hospital visits.

In a statement on Monday, President Joe Biden credited his administration's economic policies for Social Security and Medicare's stronger outlook. 

"Since I took office, my economic plan and strong recovery from the pandemic have helped extend Medicare solvency by a decade, with today's report showing a full five years of additional solvency," he said. "I am committed to extending Social Security solvency by asking the highest-income Americans to pay their fair share without cutting benefits or privatizing Social Security."

—With reporting by the Associated Press.

• Social Security

Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

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News & Insights

The 2024 Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) Is Already Falling Short of Retirees' Needs. Will 2025 Be Better?

May 12, 2024 — 02:10 pm EDT

Written by Adam Levy for The Motley Fool  ->

The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) is designed to help retirees keep up with rising costs due to inflation. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work out, and 2024 is shaping up to be another disappointing year for seniors.

Retirees have seen their Social Security benefits lose 36% of their buying power from 2000 to 2023, according to research from The Senior Citizens League. That's actually an improvement from 2022, as a result of 2023's 8.7% COLA. But it looks like 2024's 3.2% COLA is failing to keep up with rising expenses yet again.

High inflation is particularly challenging for seniors, and some may be wondering if they'll get some reprieve in 2025. There's some good news and some bad news on that front.

Image source: Getty Images.

How Social Security determines the cost-of-living adjustment

Before we can dive into why the 2024 COLA is falling short of retirees' needs, it's important to understand how the government calculates the annual cost-of-living adjustment.

The COLA is determined based on a measure of inflation called the CPI-W. Most people are familiar with the CPI, or Consumer Price Index. It measures the cost of a specific basket of goods in any given month. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will also publish variations on the basket tailored toward specific groups. The CPI-W measures a basket of goods commonly purchased by urban wage earners and clerical workers.

The Social Security Administration takes the average CPI-W reading during the third quarter -- July through September -- and compares it to the average CPI-W reading during the prior-year quarter. The COLA is equal to the change. If the CPI-W declines, the COLA is 0%.

Two big problems with the COLA

There are two problems that arise for seniors when it comes to their annual cost-of-living adjustment.

First of all, the COLA is backward-looking. The Social Security Administration looks at what inflation was, and it makes the annual adjustment based on the inflation you've already experienced. That's a fine solution to the rising living expenses in most economic environments. It becomes much more of a burden in volatile high-inflation environments like the U.S. has experienced over the past three years. The current system requires seniors to wait until the next year to make up for the rising cost of goods they're experiencing presently. Granted, a system reliant on predicting future inflation rates is fraught with potential pitfalls due to inflation's inherent unpredictability.

The second problem with the COLA has to do with how it's calculated. As mentioned, it uses a short snapshot of inflation for a very specific group of people, urban wage earners. It shouldn't be a surprise that urban wage earners spend their money differently than retired senior citizens. So, the average senior experiences much different changes in their cost of living from year to year. Often the COLA falls short of the actual change in seniors' living expenses.

What's interesting is the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a specific CPI for the elderly, the CPI-E. The reading measures price changes based on the spending patterns of Americans age 62 and older -- the exact group eligible for Social Security retirement benefits. If the Social Security Administration used CPI-E to calculate the COLA, retirees would've received a 4% increase to their monthly benefits checks in 2024 instead of just 3.2%.

On top of that, the CPI-E has increased faster than the 2024 COLA in each of the first three months of the year. Seniors experienced year-over-year cost-of-living increases of 3.5%, 3.4%, and 3.7% in January, February, and March, respectively. In other words, retirees are once again experiencing a reduction in their spending power.

Will 2025 be any different?

There's a chance seniors will get some reprieve in 2025. As inflation remains elevated, it's likely the COLA for next year will be higher than expected . The Senior Citizens League currently forecasts a cost-of-living adjustment of 2.6%, up from its original forecast of 1.75%.

Meanwhile, it's reasonable to expect inflation to decrease from its current level by next year. While many expected inflation to come down this year, that has yet to materialize, and economists have become less optimistic it will move significantly lower by the third quarter. But many believe the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates by the end of the year as its fight against high inflation eases, indicating strong expectations that inflation will move lower.

Of course, that only provides a momentary bit of relief for retirees. The bigger problem is the disconnect between the CPI-W and the true cost-of-living changes for seniors. While several members of Congress have proposed a switch to using the CPI-E to calculate the annual COLA, the law as it stands today still leaves the door open for seniors to lose purchasing power.

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