This is an edition of our Future of Learning newsletter. Sign up today to get it delivered straight to your inbox.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on the Future of Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post What teachers want from AI appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Heather Martin was a 17-year-old senior at Columbine High School when a school shooting took the lives of 12 classmates and one teacher. 

More than two decades later, in 2021, she was an English teacher at Aurora Central High School in Colorado when six of the school’s students were shot at a park across the street from the campus. 

Martin was one of several experts and survivors of school shootings who spoke about recovering from gun violence during a recent webinar hosted by the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Supportive Schools. 

Martin and a group of Columbine survivors founded The Rebels Project in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting, this time at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012. The organization serves as a network of survivors helping other survivors recover after an incident of mass trauma. 

“We wanted to provide what we did not have access to in 1999, which was people who ‘got it,’ people who understood, people who wouldn’t judge what we were feeling and would know why we were angry,” said Martin, who initially dropped out of college because of the trauma she experienced but re-enrolled a decade later.

Over the past 30 years, school shootings have “changed the culture of education,” Marleen Wong, CEO of the Center for Safe and Resilient Schools and Workplaces, said at the recent event. “It is possible to recover but it’s a very difficult journey.” 

Wong said that after many school shooting there have been “deaths of despair,” or students or staff dying by suicide. To help prevent this, schools need to deploy mental health professionals immediately after violence, she said. 

Jennifer Freeman, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut and crisis coordinator at the National Center on Positive Behavior Interventions and Support, said recovery happens in phases. In the week following an incident, the focus is on understanding what happened and dealing with the immediate psychological issues students and staff may be experiencing. 

In the next, roughly month-long period, communities often unite around their schools. But as months go by, external support often goes away and people begin to struggle with the reality of just how long recovery can take. That’s also the time when school officials start to consider systems for rebuilding.

But recovery isn’t linear; timelines differ and recovery efforts won’t look exactly the same in every school, Freeman said. 

She and other speakers, including representatives from the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District in Texas, the Maine School Safety Center and the Delaware nonprofit Children & Families First, provided recommendations for recovery. Here are a few of those suggestions: 

• Don’t attempt new projects or shifts in school district strategy in the days and months after a crisis. “Your district’s typical capacity to adjust and change is going to be really limited,” Freeman said. 
• Consider increasing staffing and resources, at least temporarily, to meet the therapeutic and educational needs of students and staff. Many districts have found it helpful to appoint a recovery coordinator to help manage the recovery process and create a written recovery plan. 
• Select external help carefully. In the aftermath of an incident, schools are often approached by vendors and other outside groups pitching programs related to safety, trauma recovery and mental health. “[M]ake sure that any new practice that you consider adopting is evidence-based and is truly aligned,” said Freeman. 
• Collect several sources of data, including school climate surveys, that can help districts find patterns in how the recovery is going – for example, by identifying which students and faculty are most vulnerable.
• Focus on building and maintaining strong relationships between staff and students. “It becomes really important as a school community to focus on reestablishing those connections to make sure that all students and staff are welcomed and feel connected,” Freeman said.
• Build a relationship of trust with local law enforcement teams before an incident occurs, so those teams are familiar with the particular sensitivities of responding to crises in schools and don’t re-traumatize students.
• Model and practice with students emotional regulation skills such as deep breathing and techniques to calm anxiety and stress.
• Turn to resources like the guide created by the Principal Recovery Network, a group of principals who have experienced school shootings on or near their campuses.

Martin said that what helped her was eventually seeking out professional trauma therapy. “As a teacher, you’re really just going to be like ‘No, I’m fine. I can do this. I gotta push through for the kids,’” Martin said. 

But, she added, “You can’t help other people, unless you help yourself.”

This story about the aftermath of school shootings was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. 

The post A checklist no one wants: 8 steps to take after a school shooting appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Among the superintendents of 78 of the nation’s urban school districts, just 11 have been in their jobs since 2020.

That statistic startled Michael Hinojosa, a former leader of the Dallas Independent School District who is now superintendent-in-residence at the Council for the Great City Schools, a coalition representing those 78 districts.

The pandemic made superintendents’ jobs even harder. On top of their other duties, they had to make decisions about masking and vaccines and address such issues as  community food needs. The flare-up of the education culture wars in 2021 also added to the pressures on districts’ top administrators. Some superintendents transitioned to other roles in their communities or districts, while others chose to retire, according to Ray Hart, the council’s executive director. 

Two years ago, the council asked Hinojosa to create an initiative to develop people for district leadership positions. Known as the Michael Casserly Urban Executive Leadership Institute, the year-long program prepares urban school district leaders to take on the superintendent role by providing training on the biggest challenges and responsibilities of the job post-pandemic, including politics and student behavioral and mental health challenges. The institute accepts 10 candidates a year who attend seven in-person, weekend-long sessions in addition to virtual meetings. 

“It’s a very complex job,” said Hinojosa, “and we want to make sure you have a fighting chance for success.”

To design the curriculum, Hinojosa and his colleagues studied the qualities of successful superintendents. Those who could create connections with board, staff and community members had a much better chance of thriving in their jobs, he said. Based on that research, the sessions focus on topics such as school board relationships, finance and budgets, and media and politics. Instructors walk candidates through real case studies of school districts, diagnosing problems and coming up with potential solutions. 

Matias Segura was appointed interim superintendent of the Austin Independent School District in December 2022, after five years as the district’s chief of operations. Around the same time, he got a call from Hinojosa encouraging him to apply for the program.

Segura said the program has given him practical training, as well as access to a network of other leaders who are facing similar challenges.

“What really, really helped,” he said, “was how to be more effective once you’re in the seat.” In January, Segura was selected to remain as Austin’s permanent superintendent.

Hinojosa said the program is trying to select candidates from underrepresented demographic groups. Nationwide, only 4.4 percent of superintendents are Black and 3.1 percent are Hispanic, according to a 2023 survey by the School Superintendents Association. During the 2022-23 school year, women made up 28 percent of superintendents.

In addition to Segura, the first cohort included Ebony Johnson, who has since become Tulsa Public Schools superintendent, and Brenda Larsen-Mitchell, now interim superintendent for Clark County School District, in Nevada. 

Both have taken over districts whose challenges reflect the times: Johnson, the Tulsa district’s former chief academic officer, became superintendent after former Superintendent Deborah Gist resigned in order to avoid a state takeover of the school system. Larsen-Mitchell, former deputy superintendent, was promoted after her predecessor took a buyout, following years of a tense relationship between the school board and educators. 

Segura said a school leader preparation program is particularly vital for urban districts, many of which serve Black, Hispanic and emergent bilingual students. 

“If you have individuals who aren’t ready to take the role, then our students are going to be impacted, which is why this type of cohort is so critically important,” Segura said. “A disruption can be catastrophic.”

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

The post New superintendents need ‘a fighting chance for success’ appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

PITTSBURGH — Maria Hubal sent one student back to class just as another walked in. The sixth grader, slouched over with his hood pulled low, made a beeline to a hammock chair and curled up.

Hubal, Bellevue Elementary’s behavioral health school educator, gently asked if everything was OK and what she could do to help. He said he was at a “red” — based on a color thermometer posted by the door that students can use to describe their stress level.

“OK. Give me something so I know what’s going on,” Hubal responded.

The student finally mumbled, “I’m very, very stressed.” He sighed, continuing, “There’s a lot of stuff going on at my home, and also here at school.”

Conversations like this are common in Hubal’s class, the school’s appointed “Chill Room,” where students know her as the chill therapist. The room has an open-door policy — students who are feeling anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, or just need to reset can ask for a room pass at any time during the school day. They have 10 minutes in the room before they have to head back to class, unless Hubal decides they need more.

Bellevue Elementary is one of three school buildings in the Northgate School District, a district of 1,100 students two miles from downtown Pittsburgh. As Northgate returned fully to in-person learning in 2021, educators here noticed that student mental health had worsened, and decided to dedicate nearly a fifth of the district’s federal Covid-relief funds — about $800,000 — to building out its mental health programs.

It contracted with the Allegheny Health Network’s Chill Project, a school-based mindfulness and behavioral health initiative, enabling the district to add six full-time therapists to its staff. The district also partnered with a nearby farm specializing in equine-assisted therapy, and in February, hired a full-time horticulture therapist to expand a horticulture therapy initiative launched last year.

Three years in, educators and district leaders say they’ve seen a noticeable change in their students — both in their academics and their behavior and mental well-being. Behavioral incidents, particularly physical confrontations between students, have dropped in the past three years, according to Caroline Johns, the district’s superintendent. The district’s graduation rate has increased by nearly 11 percent in that time, to 94 percent.

That said, the effort has come with challenges: Northgate spent many months getting buy-in from school staff and families at a time when school-based mental health had become a target of the culture wars elsewhere. The federal funding that propelled these programs is set to expire this year, so the district will need to find other ways of sustaining the work.

“Covid lit the house on fire,” said Jeff Evancho, Northgate’s director of partnerships and equity. “In a lot of ways, this became a method to tackle that problem.”

Related: The school psychologist pipeline is broken. Can new federal money fix it?

The Northgate school district serves students from two small boroughs nestled along the Ohio River, about 90 percent of whom are eligible for the free and reduced-price meal program. Even before the pandemic, the district was dealing with poor academic performance, low attendance, disengaged family members, and student mental and behavioral health challenges.

When students returned to school after months of social isolation, many were grieving family members lost to Covid or coping with parents who had lost their jobs or homes, according to district officials. The district’s guidance counselors had to shift from academic to mental health counseling.

“The needs we saw when the kids came back were more significant than anything we’d ever seen,” said Johns, the superintendent.

A few months before the pandemic, Johns had seen a presentation about AHN’s Chill Project, launched in 2019, and longed to bring it to her district. Its founder and director, William Davies, had worked in urban and suburban schools and seen firsthand the lack of mental health supports. In the 2022-23 academic year, counselors nationwide served an average of 385 students; the numbers were even more stark for school psychologists — 1 to 1,119 students.

“There’s this perfect recipe and perfect storm for an absolute disaster scenario where kids are falling through the cracks, and they’re suffering greatly,” Davies said.

Davies sought to help schools create a culture that prioritized student and teacher mental health in several ways: by establishing universal interventions such as monthly lessons on coping with peer conflict, self harm and other issues; by providing a dedicated space that allows students and teachers to decompress or get immediate help from a therapist; and providing in-school therapy or crisis therapeutic sessions of the sort that are typically offered by a hospital or clinic.

When federal Covid relief funds became available, Johns was able to plow some of the money into bringing the AHN model to her district. Nationwide, other districts made similar calculations: More than a third of 5,000 school districts surveyed by the group FutureEd in 2022 said they planned to use at least some of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds on mental health programs or staff. That said, the overall share of spending on those programs appears to be low, according to the group.

Today, Northgate’s three school buildings each have two full-time therapists who, like Hubal in Bellevue, are AHN Chill Program employees, in addition to three school counselors. One therapist at each school provides traditional talk therapy, while the other manages the Chill room and teaches monthly Chill lessons to help students develop strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety.

Sydney Jackson, a senior who has been a regular in the middle/high school’s Chill room since it opened, comes in every day to water the plants that line the window sills. There’s also a “nest” filled with bean bags, and comfy couches and chairs framing an electric fireplace.

Before the Chill room, Sydney said she would often go into the bathroom and cry. Now she visits “Miss Krissy” — Krissy Rohr, the middle/high school’s Chill therapist and educator — who helps her manage her feelings and develop coping skills.

“I’ve gotten so much better at identifying my feelings,” she said. “The thing that I do the most is called “catastrophizing,” which is finding the worst possible outcome of any situation. Miss Krissy has taught me what it is and how to deal with it. I’ve learned how to challenge those thoughts and feelings.”

The regular chill lessons have helped too, she said. On a Tuesday morning, Sydney sat in a classroom with the nine other students in her advisory group, listening as Rohr taught a lesson on healthy relationships.

Rohr opened the discussion by asking the class what friendship meant to them, then asked them to consider what they expect from their friends and the qualities they’re drawn to.

Later, Rohr divided the students into smaller groups and asked each to come up with answers to two questions: “What do you say to a friend that’s pressuring you to do something that you aren’t comfortable with?” and “Why is it better to talk something out with a person as opposed to talking about them with other people?”

As Rohr walked around the class observing, she told one group, “No matter what you do your whole life, you’re never going to be everybody’s cup of tea, somebody is always going to take an issue with something.”

Nevaeh Bonner, a senior, responded: “I try to remind myself of that every day. Just do what you do, do what you want to do, because someone’s just gonna find a reason.”

Related: A surprising remedy for teens in mental health crises

About a 20-minute drive away, Orchardview Stables sits on an expanse of green fields home to 16 horses, two goats, chickens and a resident cat.

Each semester, the district selects eight or nine middle schoolers to care for a horse on the farm — feeding, cleaning and riding it. Mary Kay Soergel, a riding instructor and the director of Orchardview Stables, said when kids come to work with the horses, “they learn compassion” and how to be responsible for another living being.

The farm is a family business for the Soergel family, who not only work but live on the farm. Soergel’s daughter, Tessa Maxwell, is a former special education teacher who serves as the farm’s executive director and the lead certified therapeutic riding instructor. The farm also employs a clinical trauma mental health professional, who also offers expertise as an equine-assisted psychotherapist.

“Horses are pretty honest through their body language. Horses are very accepting as long as you respect them,” said Maxwell. “It’s very therapeutic because kids don’t have to pretend to be something they’re not. They don’t have to worry about the shoes they’re wearing or the clothes they have on or the grades they’re getting.”

This year, the district is trying to align the equine therapy program more closely with the Chill program by having Maxwell and other professionals at the stables work with the district’s Chill therapists. The Orchardview staff try to keep the same themes and lessons the kids might be working through in school in their conversations with kids at the farm, while the Chill therapists help students debrief lessons or emotions they experienced in their work with horses.

The district has also started to embrace horticulture therapy, thanks to a $70,000 “moonshot” grant in 2022 from the organization Remake Learning. Horticulture therapy uses plant-based and gardening activities to help individuals struggling with stress, anxiety and depression.

Through a donation from nearby Chatham University, Northgate received its first greenhouse, built next to the football field outside the middle/high school. Chill therapists have run summer camps there and a gardening club started by the high school art teacher now numbers more than 55 members.

In January, the district hired a certified horticulture therapist to lead the program, including working in the greenhouse with ninth graders who participate in a mandatory life skills class.

Aside from building out specific mental health programs, the district’s elementary schools launched a “Kindness Club” in 2022 and the high school has a “No Place for Hate” club.

Related: Mental health: Is that a job for schools?

Northgate leaders know their level of investment in mental health programs is unusual.  It has also come with risks: School districts in Pennsylvania and across the country have faced opposition from community and school board members when they’ve tried to create programs that address students’ emotional and behavioral needs. Groups such as Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education have sued districts and targeted social-emotional learning programs in Bucks County and Cumberland County.

But Northgate has avoided that so far, in part by taking a gradual approach and being transparent with parents and school board members, say administrators. The district first invested in professional development to educate teachers about, and train them on, the Chill program. The district also started holding family engagement nights to showcase the mental health services and acquaint parents with the Chill lessons.

Cheryl Patalano, who serves on the district’s board of directors, said she is glad that her middle schooler and her high schooler have a safe space in the school they can visit to decompress.

Patalano said that the Chill Room is a place where students can go during the school day when they can’t go home to “get away from things.”

“Now we have this whole room, so I think it’s great,” she said. “They are very non judgmental, and I feel like just knowing that it’s there is also a huge help.”

Evancho, the partnerships and equity director, said the programs have begun to create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable talking about mental health. “There’s no problem for a kid to leave class and say ‘I gotta go to the Chill Room.’ The kids don’t feel weird about it, it’s just built into our school culture in a pretty authentic way.”

Nearly three times as many students access therapy now than before the district partnered with the Chill Project, according to Johns, the superintendent. The district is still collecting data to determine the programs’ effectiveness, and will spend the next school year analyzing the information collected over the past two years, Johns said.

The changes the district has seen in its students are driving it to find funding to keep the programs going when ESSER money evaporates later this year. So far it has secured some additional funding through statewide grants for mental health and school safety, and it is applying for other federal and philanthropic support. Eventually, Johns said, the district will have to find ways to fund the programs directly out of its own budget, which is about $28.5 million a year. All told, Northgate has dedicated about $920,000 in private and public money to the new programs, the vast majority of it for the Chill Project.

On a Tuesday afternoon just after recess, first grader McKenna ran into Bellevue Elementary’s Chill Room for a quick chat with Hubal. She pulled a tub of Lego bricks over to the table and sat down — it’s her favorite activity when talking with Hubal. McKenna said the room is calming, especially if she hugs a Squishmello, one of the many stuffed animals in the room.

She comes into the room when she has a “really, really bad attitude or is angry with somebody,” she said. But she said going to the Chill Room — and the lessons she gets there — has helped her learn to control her emotions and better communicate with her mother and classmates even when she’s frustrated.

Just knowing the room and Hubal are near reassures her, McKenna said: “I can come in here whenever I need and she helps me.”

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

The post Horticulture, horses and ‘Chill Rooms’: One district goes all-in on mental health support appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Why do rural students have to “beat the odds” in order to get to college?

That’s the question Jim Shelton asked his fellow panelists during last week’s sixth annual Rural Summit, a gathering focused on addressing the needs of rural students.  Shelton is president of the philanthropic group Blue Meridian Partners and deputy secretary of the Department of Education during the Obama administration.

While rural students graduate from high school at higher rates than their urban and suburban peers, only about 55 percent go directly to college. Those who do drop out at high rates due to financial barriers, transportation, internet connectivity and family responsibilities, noted speakers at the summit.

While acknowledging the differences among and the diversity of rural communities in places like Oklahoma, Kentucky, Hawaii and Pennsylvania, speakers made the case that these communities all have the knowledge, talent and systems to help their students succeed academically in college and beyond — they just need the resources.

Education leaders and advocates say one answer is “place-based partnerships,” collaborations among local organizations working together to improve outcomes for students and families.

“Schools are only part of the solution,” said Russell Booker, CEO of the Spartanburg Academic Movement, a place-based partnership in the South Carolina city. He said it takes community partnerships that include the school system, housing, healthcare, the criminal justice system and local government to improve outcomes for rural students.

The summit was hosted by Appalachian Kentucky-based nonprofit Partners for Rural Impact. Dreama Gentry, the group’s president and CEO, said the goal is to bring together people working in pre-K, K-12 and higher ed to discuss the opportunities students need from “the cradle to career spectrum.”

Too often, Gentry said, educators focus on a single indicator — kindergarten readiness, for example — without considering how that relates to student preparedness and success at each stage of their education. “It’s actually taking that holistic look to make sure we’re supporting them at every step,” she said.

Here are a few of the initiatives highlighted at the three-day summit: 

• The Community Colleges of Appalachia launched a Rural Educator Academy in fall 2022 to train faculty and staff to better understand and meet the needs of students in rural Appalachia, particularly those from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds.

The six community colleges in the first cohort worked to identify and alleviate a specific issue facing students on their campuses. For example, Tri-County Technical College, in Pendleton, South Carolina, focused on educating faculty and staff about the barriers preventing students in poverty from succeeding in college, while Mountain Empire Community College, in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, developed a mentorship program to create a sense of belonging among first-generation as well as all incoming college students.

• The Hawaii-based nonprofit organization Kinai ʻEha launched in 2017 with the goal of disrupting the state’s school-to-prison pipeline, primarily for native Hawaiian and Micronesian youth. It runs a trauma-informed program, rooted in Hawaiian culture and language, that works with high schoolers who’ve dropped out of high school, as well as those who’ve experienced homelessness, poverty, incarceration or drug use. Students live and work on a farm, receive food and clothing, attend classes to complete their GED or HISET, and participate in work-based learning or vocational programs. In 2019, Kinai ʻEha helped to secure a state law requiring the creation of a task force to implement a system for evaluating and supporting kids who are struggling with trauma, behavioral or mental health problems and chronic absenteeism.

• Rural alliances in states including Indiana and Texas are providing high schoolers with career and technical education, part of an effort to expand access to post-secondary pathways in rural areas and combat rural shortages of skilled workers. For example, the nonprofit Rural Schools Innovation Zone launched in South Texas in 2019 to bring together five rural districts, five higher ed institutions and workforce groups to create more opportunities for students to access college and careers that are prevalent in their regions. The collaboration has established five career and tech academies at each high school focused on sectors like health and sciences, the military or skilled trade jobs; as of the 2022-23 school year, 54 percent of RSIZ students had received a certification in an industry of their choice. In 2023, the Texas legislature passed a bill to expand the program to other parts of Texas.

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

The post Is the secret to getting rural kids to college leveraging the entire community? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post How AI could transform the way schools test kids appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Editor’s note: This story led off this week’s Future of Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes every other Wednesday with trends and top stories about education innovation. Subscribe today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Calculating the value of data science classes appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

OXNARD, Calif. — On a Wednesday morning this December, Dale Perizzolo’s math class at Adolfo Camarillo High School is anything but quiet. Students chat about the data analysis they’ve performed on their cellphone usage over a week, while Perizzolo walks around the room fielding their questions.

The students came up with the project themselves and designed a Google form to track their phone time, including which apps they used most. They also determined the research questions they’d ask of the data — such as whether social media use during class reduces comprehension and retention.

“It’s more real-world math,” said Nicolas Garcia, a senior in Perizzolo’s class. “We have the chance and freedom to choose what we’re doing our datasets on, and he teaches us how we’re going to work and complement it [in] our daily lives.”

Across town, students in Ruben Jacquez’s class at Rio Mesa High School use coding software to compile and clean data they’ve collected on student stress levels. A few miles away at Channel Islands High School, Miguel Hernandez’s students use pie and bar charts to analyze a dataset about how social media influences people’s shopping habits.

Perizzolo, Jacquez and Hernandez are among the eight math teachers of an increasingly popular data science course offered at most schools in the Oxnard Union High School district, an economically diverse school system northwest of Los Angeles, where 80 percent of students identify as Hispanic. The district rolled out the class in fall 2020, in an attempt to offer an alternative math course to students who might struggle in traditional junior and senior math courses such as Algebra II, Pre-Calculus and Calculus.

California has been at the center of a heated debate over what math knowledge students really need to succeed in college and careers. With math scores falling nationwide, some educators have argued that the standard algebra-intensive math pathway is outdated and needs a revamp, both to engage more students and to help them develop relevant skills in a world increasingly reliant on data. At least 17 states now offer data science (an interdisciplinary field that combines computer programming, math and statistics) as a high school math option, according to the group Data Science for Everyone. Two states — Oregon and Ohio — offer it as an alternative to Algebra II.

But other math educators have decried a move away from Algebra II, which they argue remains core to math instruction and necessary for students to succeed in STEM careers and beyond. In California, that disagreement erupted in October 2020, after the group that sets admission requirements for the state’s public university system (known as A-G) announced it would allow students to substitute data science for Algebra II to help more students qualify for college. Math professors, advocates and even some high school educators argued that the state was watering down standards and setting students up for failure in college.

Then, in July last year, the group reversed its earlier decision, and in February released new recommendations reiterating that data science courses (and, to the surprise of some experts, even long-approved statistics classes) cannot be used as an alternative to Algebra II. It remains unclear how the decision will reshape college admissions; additional guidance is expected in May.

In Oxnard, educators say they have been left in the dark about how these decisions affect course offerings for their students. They argue that, more than ever, students need real-world math to help them succeed in the subject, and that the expansion of data science — some 500 Oxnard district students have taken it to date — has reoriented teachers’ and students’ approach to math. 

“Data science is changing their view of math,” said Jay Sorensen, Oxnard’s educational technology coordinator, who helped design the class. “It changed their perspective, or their view of what math is, because they maybe didn’t enjoy math or were frustrated with math or hated math before.”

Related: Inside the new middle school math crisis

Many kids in Oxnard stop taking any math after junior year of high school and the district has been trying to fix this for almost a decade. In 2015, Tom McCoy, then the assistant superintendent of education services, jokingly asked Sonny Sajor, the district’s math instructional specialist, “Can I get some math for poets?”

That started a conversation on what math classes might benefit and engage high schoolers who struggled in the subject and who didn’t plan to pursue science or math fields or attend a four-year college, said McCoy, who became Oxnard’s superintendent in 2020.

“Too many kids that dislike math would stop taking math the minute they could,” said Sajor, who co-designed the course at Oxnard. In the year before the district launched Data Science, only about 45 percent of students who took Math I in ninth grade made it to Math III by their junior year.

Inspired by a University of California, Los Angeles, seminar they attended on data science for high schoolers, Sajor and Sorensen designed the new course and partnered on it with the ed tech vendor Bootstrap.* Oxnard’s first data science classes generated enough student interest that the district expanded the course to more schools, and its popularity has continued to grow. Perizzolo’s class, for example, was meant to have 30 students but enrolls 39; he says he won’t turn away a student who signs up for a math class.

But not all educators in Oxnard were on board. Some math teachers, for example, questioned whether the Data Science course — which had been approved as an advanced statistics course equivalent to general statistics courses — was really equivalent to an advanced math course.* They noted that the statistics content in the course was at a ninth-grade level, Sajor said.

Oxnard Union’s data science teachers, though, say they’ve seen benefits.

“It’s giving kids exposure to really practical math, and it’s also creative,” said Allison Ottie Halstead, who teaches Data Science along with Honors Pre-Calculus and A.P. Statistics at Rancho Campana High School.

Alicia Bettencourt, who teaches Data Science at Hueneme High School, said the course has helped her to “incorporate more real-world problems, more authentic assessments, when I’m teaching” other math classes including Algebra II.

Most of Oxnard’s Data Science classes enroll a mix of students who are using the course to fulfill their required third year of math and those who’ve already taken Algebra II. According to district data, students who took Data Science as juniors in the 2022-2023 year were more likely to sign up for a math class their senior year. (Only about 10 percent of those students enrolled in Math III, an integrated math class that’s equivalent to Algebra II; larger shares enrolled in Statistics, Math for Finance Literacy and other classes). Meanwhile, the share of students receiving a D or F in Math III has dropped slightly since the Data Science course was introduced in 2020, the district said.

Nizcialey Dimapilis, a senior in Hernandez’s class at Channel Islands High School, said she is taking Data Science and A.P. Calculus simultaneously to prepare for computer engineering courses in college. “I thought this class would be more useful because it involves coding, which is completely kind of new to me,” Dimapilis said. The course has helped her understand graphs and create and read data in her other classes as well, she said. 

Some students said it helped them grasp math concepts they’d been introduced to in past classes and made them more interested in pursuing math in the future. Jaya Richardson, a senior taking Data Science at Oxnard High School, said she doesn’t consider herself “a math person.” As a junior, she took Math III and barely passed with a D.

Richardson considered repeating the class for a higher grade, but her counselor suggested Data Science instead. She said she’s happy with the decision, and even plans to pursue a degree in biology at a UC or CSU.

“This is way better,” she said of the Data Science course. “It’s still stressful, it’s still hard, but it’s more beneficial. We still do math in here, but it breaks it down in a way where I’m able to understand it without being overwhelmed.”

Related: Teachers conquering their math anxiety

But many STEM professors are worried about the consequences of experiments like Oxnard’s.

Jelani Nelson, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that most data science courses offered in high schools are low level and don’t comply with UC and CSU college admission criteria that alternatives to Algebra II build on students’ earlier math coursework.

Without an understanding of what he calls “foundational math” — Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II — he says students won’t succeed in college courses in computer science, math, technology and economics. Even art can draw on foundational math, he noted (perspective drawing, for example, uses geometry).* Introductory college classes in data science also build on those math concepts, he said, so students who’ve taken data science in high school but not Algebra II are unlikely to succeed in the subject.

Many four-year colleges don’t teach Algebra II, Nelson said, so there’s little opportunity to make up that work later. “If you want to get back on track,” he said, “how are you going to do it?”

Adrian Mims, founder of the Calculus Project, a nonprofit that works to increase the number of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and low-income students in advanced mathematics, said swapping out data science for Algebra II has unintended consequences.

Standardized tests including the SAT and college math placement exams cover Algebra II, he said. He said he worries that students who opt for data science instead will be stuck in remedial math courses “not because they can’t learn the math, but because they made decisions in high school that deprive them of the opportunity to learn the content for them to do well.”

Rather than replacing Algebra II, data science concepts could be infused into Algebra II courses, and data science courses that include some Algebra II and geometry could be offered as electives to students who’ve already completed Algebra II, Nelson and others argue.

Others, though, don’t share those concerns. Pamela Burdman, founder of Just Equations, a nonprofit rethinking the role of traditional math pathways in high school, points to data showing that many students who take Algebra II in high school learn little.* She said emerging research suggests that courses like data science could have “more potential for bringing students into STEM” than the traditional preparatory math courses.

Despite the recent focus on the UC admissions requirements, only about 400 applicants out of roughly 206,000 in the last admissions cycle listed that they’d taken data science or statistics in lieu of Algebra II, she noted.

“I do worry that the debate over data science versus Algebra II is sort of a distraction,” she said.

Zarek Drozda, director of Data Science for Everyone, the national initiative based at the University of Chicago, agreed. “In the 21st century, if we can’t find opportunities to teach students about data, data science and AI basics, that is a huge problem,” he said.

Related: How can schools dig out from a generation’s worth of lost math progress?

Teachers and school guidance counselors in Oxnard are wary of wading into the math debate with their higher ed peers. But they aren’t afraid to voice their discontent with what they view as a disconnect between students’ needs and higher education.

“They’ve always moved the goal posts and I don’t know if they ever think about the students,” Hugo Tapia, a guidance counselor at Adolfo Camarillo High School, said about the state’s A-G university system.

Daniel Cook, a learning, instruction and technology coach at Camarillo, said that students come into high school behind in math and that the pandemic only made the problem worse. Yet colleges still expect students to have mastered Algebra II concepts and shut the door on those who haven’t.

“If one A-G math is the only reason why a kid doesn’t get into college, we’re robbing those kids,” he said.

Cook said that at Camarillo High School, some 44 percent of sophomores are not on track to be A-G eligible because of math, so they’re getting a message early on that they’re not college material. By senior year, the figure is about 25 percent.

Traditional math curriculum “is essentially focused on preparing students for STEM pathways in college,” Cook said. The July vote and subsequent policy recommendations to nix data science as an option for college applicants, he said, are a “slap in the face to students who have interests that are not STEM related.”

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

Educators in Oxnard are trying to cope with the uncertainty created by the state’s higher education system. With data science no longer counting toward college admission, Oxnard will eventually limit the course to students who’ve already taken, or are taking, Algebra II, according to Sajor. The district is also considering a pilot course that would integrate Algebra II and Data Science.

Such a course might ultimately be better for the district, Sajor said, because it would help more students engage with Algebra II concepts while also introducing them to coding and data science. “It’s maybe a step back, but it also might be two steps forward,” he said.

Still, current data science students, like Emma-Dai Valenzuela, say the class in its current form has been invaluable. A senior in teacher Stefanie Davison’s class at Pacifica High School, Valenzuela said it has allowed her to fulfill her graduation requirements while actually succeeding in a math class.

She transferred into the class after struggling in Math III, the integrated Algebra II course, she said. Valenzuela plans to join the Navy before attending college, and said her recruiters told her this course would offer a basic understanding of coding and math she can build on later.

“This is more hands-on,” she said. “We’re constantly doing new things.”

* Corrections: This story has been updated to say that data science courses were equivalent to general statistics classes under University of California system admissions rules, and to clarify Pamela Burdman’s comment about student performance in Algebra II.

It has also been updated to clarify Jelani Nelson’s comment about the importance of foundational math for college coursework.

The name of the ed tech vendor Bootstrap has also been updated.

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

The post Data science under fire: What math do high schoolers really need? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Students at Bessemer Elementary School don’t have to go far to see a doctor. If they’re feeling sick, they can walk in to the school’s health clinic, log on to a computer, and connect with a pediatrician or a family medicine provider. After the doctor prescribes treatment, students can in many cases go straight back to class – instead of having to go home.

The telemedicine program was launched in fall 2021 by Guilford County Public Schools, North Carolina’s third largest school district, as a way to combat chronic absenteeism. The number of students missing 10 or more days of school soared in the district – and nationally – during the pandemic, and remains high in many places.

Piloted at Bessemer, the program has gradually expanded to 15 of the district’s Title I schools, high-poverty schools where families may lack access to health care. Along with other efforts aimed at stemming chronic absenteeism, the telemedicine program is helping, said Superintendent Whitney Oakley. The chronic absenteeism rate at Bessemer fell from 49 percent in 2021-2022 to 37 percent last school year, an improvement though still higher than the district would like.   

“It really doesn’t matter how great a teacher is or how strong instruction is, if kids aren’t in school, we can’t do our job,” she said.

Oakley said district administrators focused on health care access because they were seeing parents pull all their children out of school if one was sick and had to visit the doctor. Rates of chronic absenteeism were also higher in areas where families historically lacked access to routine medical care and had to turn to the emergency room for non-emergency health care needs.

The telemedicine clinic is also a way to relieve the burden on working parents, Oakley said: Many parents in the district’s Title I schools work hourly wage jobs and rely on public transportation, making it difficult to pick up a sick child at school quickly.

Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that combats chronic absenteeism, said that early research indicates that telehealth can improve attendance. According to one study of three rural districts in North Carolina that was released in January, school-based telemedicine clinics reduced the likelihood that a student was absent by 29 percent, and the number of days absent by 10 percent.

Some districts are also turning to virtual teletherapy services to fight chronic absenteeism. Stephanie Taylor, a former school psychologist who is now vice president of clinical innovation at teletherapy provider Presence, says the company’s work has expanded from 1,600 schools to more than 4,000 in recent years as the need for mental health services grows. Therapy can help kids cope with emotional issues that might keep them from attending school, she said, and virtual services give students more choice of counselors and a greater chance of finding someone with whom they mesh.  

At Guilford County Public Schools, the district plans to expand its existing mental health services to eventually include teletherapy, according to Bessemer Elementary Principal Johnathan Brooks. The district is also planning to roll out its telemedicine clinics to all of 50 of its Title I schools, said Oakley.

The clinic is staffed by a school nurse who helps the physician remotely examine the student and ensures that prescriptions are quickly filled. The program is funded through a partnership between the district, local government and healthcare providers and nonprofits, which allows for uninsured families to still access treatment and medicine, Brooks said.

The biggest challenge in launching the clinic was getting parents’ buy-in, he said. The district held meetings with parents, particularly with those who don’t speak English as a first language, to communicate how it would help their kids. To access the program, parents must opt in at the beginning of the school year.

Of the 300 students who received care at Bessemer’s clinic last year, 240 returned to class the same day, said Oakley. Without the program, she said, “all 300 would have just been sent home sick.”

She added: “School is often a trusted place within the community and so it helps to bridge some of those gaps with medical providers. It puts the resources where they already are.”

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

The post An unexpected way to fight chronic absenteeism appeared first on The Hechinger Report.