Since I first moved to Finland in 2013, I have witnessed an ever-deepening societal problem that has devastated student learning. Childhood has become dominated by digital devices. This is a global trend, but it disproportionately affects Finnish children.

Finland’s teenagers, formerly the world’s highest achievers, still perform above average on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, but they turned in their lowest-ever average scores in math, science and reading in the latest study, and those numbers have been going down for years.

In December, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture described the predicament as “extremely disconcerting.”

As a U.S. teacher and parent living in Finland, I understand the concern. American schools can learn valuable lessons from Finnish education, both positive and negative.

In 2016, despite research showing that students who used computers more often at school performed much worse on reading and math PISA tests, the Finnish government announced it would spend millions of euros on ramping up digital learning.

Finland is now one of the leaders in using digital devices at school, ranking sixth overall in the 2022 PISA study. On average, Finnish teenagers reported spending more than four hours on digital devices during the school day.

Predictably, digital distraction is high: The 2022 PISA data revealed that over 80 percent of Finland’s 15-year-olds said that digital devices distracted them, at least sometimes, while in math class.

The data also showed a strong association between digital distraction and student achievement. The teenagers who said they were distracted by their classmates’ device use performed significantly worse academically than those who rarely encountered this level of distraction.

Across wealthy countries, academic achievement has taken a nosedive as children’s smartphone ownership has surged. (Depression and anxiety have spiked, too.) And there is growing evidence that digital devices have eroded learning outcomes. Research has also indicated that excessive cellphone use is associated with adverse effects on student well-being, texting in class is linked to lower grades and just having one’s smartphone nearby decreases cognitive capacity.

Consistent with those findings, Finland’s PISA scores have declined steadily since the iPhone debuted in 2007.

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

It’s tempting to look at the country’s slumping PISA performance and blame the Finnish style of education. But this conclusion misses the forest for the trees.

I work in a hybrid role with Copper Island Academy, a Michigan charter school that uses tried-and-true practices from Finnish education, including regular brain breaks, teacher collaboration and hands-on learning.

Our K-8 school scored in the top 10 percent of the state’s public schools on a comprehensive evaluation that considers proficiency, growth and other key indicators.

Copper Island is careful about what it borrows from Finnish education, however. We embrace evidence-based practices like brain breaks but have refrained, for example, from adopting Finland’s recent emphasis on digital learning.

We subscribe to the country’s former approach of minimizing screen time during the school day. Japan, another high-achieving nation, has also done this.

Unlike their Finnish counterparts, Japanese teens improved upon their 2018 PISA scores in every subject despite the Covid-19 disruption. They also reported the least time using digital devices for leisure during the school day — about an hour less than Finland’s teenagers.

Related: There is a worldwide problem in math and it’s not just about the pandemic

U.S. psychologist Jon Haidt decries a “phone-based childhood,” which contributes to sleep loss, addiction, attention problems and social deprivation. This global phenomenon emerged about 12 years ago, but is playing out differently worldwide.

About 50 percent of American children now receive their first smartphone before they turn 11. According to a 2022 survey, most children in Finland, however, appear to get a phone (typically a smart device) at the age of 5 or 6. The study also indicated that — for the first time in its history — virtually all first-graders owned phones, including phone watches.

Finland’s plummeting PISA scores may reflect — perhaps more than anything else — a phone-based childhood that starts much too early. Experts recommend delaying smartphone ownership as long as possible to reduce distraction and addiction. Smartphone use triggers dopamine increases inside children’s brains, and those spikes make these devices hard to resist.

But there is some hope for Finland’s education system.

A couple of months ago, my 12-year-old son started venting when he came home from his Finnish school. He described classmates who gravitate to their smartphones whenever possible.

“Why doesn’t my school just get rid of phones?”he asked me.

A few weeks later, I received an unexpected email from his principal. The teachers and students had discussed the pros and cons of using phones at school and decided to ban the devices.

The decision filled my son with joy. It was a step in the right direction.

Timothy Walker is an American teacher, educational consultant, and the author of “Teach Like Finland.”

This story about smartphones and children 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 OPINION: There are lessons to be learned from Finland, but giving smartphones to young children isn’t one of them appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Before she got to the math in her lesson on linear equations last fall, Sydney Kealanahele asked her class of eighth graders on Oahu why kalo, or taro root, is so important in Hawaii.* What do you know about kalo, she asked them. Have you ever picked it?

A boy who had never spoken in class, and never seemed even slightly interested in math, raised his hand.

“He said, ‘I pick kalo with my grandma. She has a farm,’” Kealanahele recalled. “He was excited to tell us about that.”

Class discussion got animated. Everybody knew about poi, the creamy staple Hawaiian food made from mashed taro. Others had even noticed that there were fewer taro farms on Oahu.

That’s when Kealanahele guided the conversation to the whiteboard, plotting data on pounds of taro produced over time on a graph, which created a perfect descending line. The class talked about why there is less taro production, which led to a discussion about the shortage of farm labor.

Kealanahele had taught eighth-grade math for six years at a campus of the Kamehameha Schools, but this was the first time she had started a lesson with a conversation about farming. The idea came from professional development she’d just completed, in ethnomathematics, an approach that connects math to culture by embedding math in a story about something relevant to students’ lives.

Ethnomathematics isn’t new, but until recently it was limited to a niche area of educational and anthropological research on how different cultures use math. Over the past couple of decades, it has evolved into one of several efforts to create more engaging and inclusive math classrooms, particularly for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students, who tend to score lower on federal tests than their Asian and white peers. Ethnomathematics advocates say that persistent achievement gaps are in part a result of overly abstract math instruction that’s disconnected from student experience, and that there’s an urgent need for new approaches that recognize mathematical knowledge as it’s practiced outside of textbooks.

Many Black and Brown students don’t feel comfortable in math classes, said Shelly Jones, professor of math education at Central Connecticut State University. She said those classes tend to be “competitive” and that teachers “hone in on what Black and Brown students don’t know as opposed to honoring what they do know.” She added:  “We are trying to pull in students who have not traditionally felt they belonged in math spaces.”

That said, research on the impact of ethnomathematics is limited, and its practice is largely confined to individual classrooms — like Kealanehele’s — where the teacher has sought out the approach. And teachers who incorporate ethnomathematics without the right support and instructional tools risk stumbling into a cultural minefield, experts say. Most teachers in U.S. classrooms are white. If one of those white teachers decides their Hispanic students should learn base-20 Mayan numbers, and their students ask why, the teacher will have to come up with an answer, said Ron Eglash, a professor in the University of Michigan’s School of Information.

“Telling kids, ‘Because it’s your heritage,’ sounds really awkward from a white teacher,” Eglash said.

But experts say that high-quality ethnomathematics lessons boost student confidence and engagement when used by teachers (of any race) who have been trained and who allow students the time to explore the material on their own and through discussion.

Ethnomathematics falls under the same umbrella as culturally responsive math instruction. Experts say that teaching math this way requires teachers to get to know their students and create a learning environment where students can connect to math concepts. It involves developing lessons that reveal the math in everyday activities, like skateboarding, braiding and weaving. It can also include exploring the math involved in cultural practices, like beading.

“A lot of this work is about removing barriers or perceptions from a marginalized population that math is something the Greeks created and is imposed on me,” said Mark Ellis, a professor of education at California State University, Fullerton. He said that culturally responsive instruction takes other measures into account, besides academic outcomes, when determining impact. These include students’ attitude about math, sense of belonging in math classes and engagement in math discourses.

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

Traditional math instruction, Ellis said, is treated as if math were acultural, even though, as we know it in the U.S., math descended from the computational traditions of many places, including Mesopotamia (360-degree circles), ancient Greece (geometry and trigonometry), India (decimal notation, the concept of zero) and China (negative numbers). If these mathematical traditions are taught, Ellis and others ask, then why not Hawaiian calculations for slope, sub-Saharan fractal geometry and Mayan counting systems?

Eglash argues that ethnomathematics lessons aren’t just for students from the culture that the lessons draw from. It’s important that students explore math concepts from all cultures, including their own, he said.

Ethnomathematics, a term coined in the 1970s by Brazilian mathematician Ubiratan D’Ambrosio, first appeared in the U.S. about 25 years ago. That’s when Eglash and his wife, University of Michigan design professor Audrey Bennett, developed a suite of teaching modules by which students learn the history or context of a practice — braiding hair into cornrows, for example — and then use algebra, geometry and trigonometry to create their own cornrow designs with software.

Eglash and Bennett designed the teaching tools with the idea that students can use a module to create their work, which can mean mixing cultures. A Puerto Rican student used Eglash’s module about Native American beading to create a Puerto Rican flag simulation.

In 2009, Richmond City Public Schools asked Eglash and Bennett to teach a module called Cornrow Curves to a class of Black 10th graders. Eglash asked the class where cornrows came from. Their answer: “Brooklyn!” That led to discussion about the African origins of cornrows — where they indicated marriage status, religious affiliation and other social markers — and on through cornrows’ history during the Middle Passage, Civil Rights, hip-hop and Afrofuturism.

Only then did the students begin doing math, designing their own cornrows, noticing how the plaits get closer together or further apart depending on the values students enter in a simulation. One student created a design for straight-line cornrows by visually estimating how far to space them apart. In her presentation to class, Eglash recalled, she said that “there are 12 spaces between the braids on one side, which covers 90 degrees, so the braids are positioned every 7.5 degrees because 90/12 = 7.5.”

The Cornrow Curves module and other lessons like it have now been adopted by districts in 25 states. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, began offering a culturally responsive computer science curriculum in 2008 that incorporates ethnomathematics lessons that Eglash and Bennett developed. Some evidence indicates that this course helped boost student participation in computer science: An external evaluation found that enrollment in the classes rose by nearly 800 percent from 2009 to 2014.

In 2012, Chicago Public Schools adopted the same curriculum for an introduction to computer science course and invested in significant professional development for teachers. In 2016, the course became a graduation requirement for all Chicago high school students, and 250 teachers are trained each year on the curriculum.

An outside analysis of the Chicago program showed that students who took the course before taking AP computer science were 3.5 times more likely to pass the AP computer science exam than those who only took the AP course. A separate study in Chicago and Wisconsin showed that where the course was offered racial and gender achievement divides disappeared and that students were more likely to take another computer science class.

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

Keily Hernandez, 15, a first-year student at Chicago’s George Westinghouse College Prep High School, was happy to see the computer science course on her schedule this year, because she plans to major in computer science in college. At first, she found the cornrows module challenging — getting the designs to look the way she wanted them to look was difficult — but it was also fun, she said.

The class is collaborative, she said, and students often turn to each other or to the internet for ideas and help. Hernandez said that taking the class has relieved her doubts that she can be a computer scientist.

“The class made me reassured,” she said. “Math isn’t something that you just know, the same way that computer science isn’t something that you just know. You get better at it the more you do it.”

It’s students like Hernandez that Linda Furuto wanted to attract when she took the job as head of the math and science subdivision at the University of Hawaii West Oahu in 2007. At the time, student enrollment was so low that the school offered just two math courses. Furuto, who had grown up on Oahu and received her Ph.D. in math education from the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled thinking, “This isn’t working. We need to implement ethnomathematics here.”

Over the next six years, she began to integrate ethnomathematics into coursework, and student interest grew. By 2013, the university offered more than 20 math classes.

“Students would say things like, ‘I hated math. I felt no connection to it. But now I see that math is my culture and because of that I want to be a secondary math teacher,’” Furuto said. “Just knowing that the life of a student has in some way, shape or form been transformed speaks volumes.”

In 2018,  by then a professor of mathematics education at the University of Hawaii Manoa, Furuto established the world’s first ethnomathematics graduate certificate and master’s degree program.* So far, about 300 teachers have participated in the online program; about half are from Hawaii.

While teachers in Chicago get ongoing professional development in cohorts both before and while they teach the district’s ethnomathematics-based computer science course, educators who complete the University of Hawaii program are highly likely to be the only teacher at their school with this niche training.

Sydney Kealanahele, the teacher on Oahu, said that as inspired as she was by the ethnomathematics program, she doesn’t have time to teach using the method more than twice every three months.

“To create a really good lesson that feels authentic to me, and not just thrown together,” she said, “it takes time to do the research.”

For a teacher who doesn’t have colleagues in their school using the same approach, it can be hard to fit in something new like ethnomathematics, said Janel Marr, a math resource teacher in Oahu’s Windward School District. Marr was one of the first teachers to participate in the ethnomathematics graduate program, as an eighth-grade math teacher. Today she teaches in the graduate program.

“When you go back to the classroom, there are so many other things from all sides, from administration and curriculum to state tests,” she said. “It starts to get overwhelming. It’s not being implemented as much as we in the program would want it to be.”

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

Ideally, said Eglash, ethnomathematics content should be related to real-world situations, even if that involves exploring painful periods of history. Where possible, content should connect with art, history, sports and math to provide multiple ways for students to interact. This is critical, he said, to address power dynamics and “identity barriers” in the classroom, like the race of the teacher. When teachers let students explore content individually and through group discussion, students gain control over their own learning.

“The teacher finds a way to use the tool that is authentic — which is something the kids pick up on and respect, even for white folks,” he said. “It’s when you are trying to be something you are not that teaching becomes awkward.”

Doing ethnomathematics right can also engage teachers, Marr said. She had been teaching eighth-grade math at Kailua Intermediate School for 13 years when she hit a wall. Her students would ask why they had to learn math, she said, and she didn’t have an answer. She was looking for inspiration when she heard about the University of Hawaii ethnomathematics program.

“My students would learn to work with the numbers and everything, but it wasn’t like they were making a connection of why there is slope,” Marr said.

After earning her master’s, Marr had the idea to approach linear equations in a new way. She showed her students a photo of a mountain with a long, bare line down its lush, forested side and asked if anyone knew what they were looking at. Most students didn’t.

She wrote a word on the whiteboard: holua. The path, students learned from research they did in class, was made of gravel pounded into lava rocks, and it ran down the side of the Hualālai Volcano on the east side of Hawaii. Elite members of ancient Hawaiian communities sledded down mountainside paths like this one as part of the extreme sport known as holua.

“We talked about those pictures and talked about, well what would the slope be? How fast might they be going? Because slope is really related to the rate of speed,” she said. “Math isn’t just theoretical. It’s having an experience of being part of the place.”

*Correction: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Sydney Kealanahele’s name, and to clarify Linda Furuto’s role when she started the ethnomathematics program.

This story about ethnomathematics 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 To engage students in math, educators try connecting it to their culture appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

TULSA, Okla. — Amoni y Zoe esparcieron el contenido de una bolsa de sándwich llena de caramelos de frutas sobre sus escritorios como parte de una lección de matemáticas sobre proporciones.

“¿Qué significa tener el 50 por ciento?” preguntó su maestra, Kelly Woodfin, a los alumnos de sexto grado en su clase de matemáticas avanzadas. “¿Qué significa tener la mitad?”

Amoni y Zoe, ambas de 11 años, comieron solo un caramelo cada una, mientras convertían la proporción de manzanas verdes o fresas rosadas de su bolsa en fracciones, decimales y porcentajes. Cuando se quedaron perplejas con una estrategia para convertir un decimal en un porcentaje, inmediatamente levantaron las manos.

“Creo que hay que dar dos pasos hacia la izquierda”, dijo Amoni, su oración terminando en una pregunta.

“Has estado haciendo esto durante dos semanas, hermana”, la reprendió Woodfin en broma. “No sé por qué dudas de ti misma”.

Hace años, cuando Woodfin asistió de kinder hasta octavo grado en Union Public Schools, ella estudió en aulas bastante homogéneas. Woodfin recuerda que sus compañeros eran predominantemente blancos, un legado de que las familias blancas se mudaron a los suburbios cuando las escuelas de Tulsa empezaron a desegregarse durante los años cincuenta. Pero cuando ella regresó para enseñar en el distrito de Union en 2012, la población estudiantil blanca matriculado se había reducido a poco más de la mitad.

Sin embargo, hasta hace poco, los estudiantes en las clases avanzadas de matemáticas de Union seguían siendo en su mayoría blancos. Los estudiantes del itinerario acelerado en la escuela intermedia y secundaria procedían principalmente de escuelas primarias en vecindarios prósperos, donde los estudiantes tendían a sacar mejores resultados en la prueba de nivel de pre-álgebra para la cual tenían una sola oportunidad de tomarla en quinto grado. Pero en un día de invierno reciente, solo dos de los estudiantes de Woodfin se identificaban como blancos y más de un tercio todavía estaban aprendiendo el inglés.

La transformación en las clases de Woodfin representa más que un cambio general sobre quién asiste a las escuelas de Unión, donde hoy solo uno de cada cuatro estudiantes es blanco. También es el resultado de una campaña de años de duración para identificar y promover a más estudiantes de orígenes subrepresentados en los cursos de matemáticas más desafiantes del distrito.

En otros lugares, preocupaciones sobre quién puede acceder a clases de matemáticas avanzadas han llevado a los distritos a eliminar los sistemas de itinerarios (desagrupamiento) que separan a los estudiantes en diferentes clases de matemáticas según su capacidad percibida, o a eliminar las clases aceleradas por completo en nombre de la equidad.

Unión Public Schools, en cambio, ha intentado encontrar un término medio. El distrito, que se encuentra en partes de Tulsa y sus suburbios del sureste, continúa el sistema de grupos de clases de matemáticas separadas a partir del sexto grado. Pero también ha agregado nuevas formas para que los estudiantes califiquen para cursos de matemáticas de nivel superior, más allá de la prueba de nivel y ha aumentado el apoyo (incluyendo tutoría en las escuelas y períodos de clase más largos) para los estudiantes que han demostrado promesa en la materia.

Los datos de inscripción sugieren que el esfuerzo de hacer que las matemáticas de nivel superior sean accesibles para más estudiantes, habían comenzado a dar resultados antes de la pandemia. Pero han habido desafíos: en los últimos años, menos estudiantes se han matriculado en clases de matemáticas avanzadas en general, aunque el decrecimiento en número de estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos ha sido menos pronunciado que para otros grupos. Sentimientos anti-profesores, además de los bajos salarios docentes en Oklahoma, han dificultado la contratación de educadores de matemáticas, según administradores del estado. En Union High School, un puesto para enseñar Álgebra II permaneció vacante durante más de un año.

Pero el distrito sigue comprometido con sus cambios. Últimamente, directores de escuela y educadores de matemáticas veteranos han convencido a algunos exalumnos a que se unan a las filas docentes de Union. Shannan Bittle, especialista en matemáticas de secundaria en Union, dijo que los nuevos programas académicos del distrito, como aviación y construcción, podrían ofrecer a los estudiantes más formas de aplicar matemáticas avanzadas en empleos lucrativos.

“Nos esforzamos muchísimo para no dejar a la gente fuera” de las matemáticas aceleradas, dijo ella. “Pero hacemos todo lo posible para darles las herramientas para tener éxito”.

Tomar álgebra o matemáticas de un nivel superior en la escuela intermedia coloca al estudiante en el camino de tomar cálculo en la escuela secundaria, lo cual abre puertas a universidades selectivas y se considera un curso de entrada para muchas carreras STEM, las cuales son bien remuneradas. Datos federales sobre educación muestran que los estudiantes blancos en la escuela secundaria se matriculan en cálculo a una tasa casi ocho veces mayor que la de sus pares afroamericanos y aproximadamente el triple del promedio de los estudiantes latinos.

“Hay muchos estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos, y estudiantes procedentes de familias de bajos ingresos, que han demostrado aptitudes y anhelan más, pero sistemáticamente se les niega el acceso a cursos avanzados de matemáticas”, escribieron los autores “Esta práctica, y esta mentalidad, debe cambiar un informe de las organizaciones sin fines de lucro Education Trust y Just Equations”, publicado en diciembre del 2023.

Aun así, los enfoques que algunos distritos escolares han adoptado para aumentar la diversidad estudiantil en las clases de matemáticas han generado controversia.

En San Francisco, el distrito escolar eliminó clases de matemáticas aceleradas en las escuelas intermedias y secundarias en 2014 para poner fin a la segregación por capacidad, lo cual provocó protestas de padres. Tres años después, Cambridge Public Schools en Massachusetts comenzó a desmantelar su política de itinerarios de matemáticas aceleradas o de nivel de curso. Cerca de Detroit, el consejo escolar de Troy eligió eliminar las clases de matemáticas avanzadas para las escuelas intermedias empezando más tarde este año.

Asimismo, el año pasado la junta de educación del estado de California adoptó nuevas pautas curriculares que, entre otras ideas, alientan a las escuelas a posponer álgebra hasta el noveno grado. La junta insistió que el esquema “afirma el compromiso de California de garantizar la equidad y la excelencia en el aprendizaje de matemáticas para todos los estudiantes”. Pero los críticos, entre ellos profesores de matemáticas y ciencias, han opinado que hace lo contrario, al negar a los estudiantes la preparación académica que les hace falta para tener éxito.

“Veo el valor, en teoría”, dijo Rebecka Peterson, profesora de matemáticas de Union High y la Maestra Nacional del Año 2023, acerca de esfuerzos como el de California. Pero añadió: “Cada niño es distintivo, y como madre, una talla única no es lo que quiero para mi hijo”.

Peterson comenzó a trabajar en las escuelas de Union hace unos 12 años, impartiendo clases de matemáticas desde álgebra de nivel intermedio hasta cálculo de Advanced Placement. Desde el principio, Peterson notó la división demográfica en sus clases: “Somos un distrito con una riqueza cultural, y, sin embargo, mis clases de cálculo eran en su mayoría blancas”, dijo.

Decidió hablar con su directora de escuela en ese entonces, Lisa Witcher. Las dos descubrieron que, aunque Union High recibía a estudiantes de todos los 13 campus de primaria del distrito, los estudiantes de cálculo de Peterson venían principalmente de solo tres: los más blancos y ricos de las escuelas primarias de Union.

Poco después, oficiales administrativos del distrito recurrieron a Witcher para encabezar un nuevo programa de universidad temprana. Ella comenzó a reclutar estudiantes que habían tomado geometría en su primer año, pero descubrió que solo un décimo de los estudiantes afroamericanos de primer año en Union eran elegibles para inscribirse en esa clase. No habían tomado la clase requerida para entrar, Álgebra I, en octavo grado.

“Eso provocó algunas conversaciones incómodas”, dijo Witcher, quien se jubiló del distrito en 2021.

Al final, los administradores encontraron que la causa de la falta de diversidad estudiantil en las clases de matemáticas avanzadas de la escuela intermedia y secundaria se encontraba en el quinto grado. Ese era el año en el cual las escuelas administraban un examen mayormente basado en palabras, en el que los estudiantes tenían una sola oportunidad de aprobar. Los funcionarios del distrito dijeron que ese examen de gran peso perjudicaba a dos poblaciones en aumento en las escuelas de Union: los niños que todavía estaban aprendiendo el inglés y los niños de familias de bajos ingresos, cuyos padres no podían pagar tutores privados.

Este descubrimiento provocó una serie de cambios que comenzaron hace aproximadamente una década. El distrito escolar no eliminó el examen de quinto grado que servía como entrada a las matemáticas avanzadas, pero hoy los estudiantes pueden tomar el examen múltiples veces. Las escuelas primarias ofrecen tutores de matemáticas a partir del tercer grado, con programas extraescolares para estudiantes rezagados en la materia. Los maestros pueden recomendar a estudiantes prometedores a tomar matemáticas avanzadas de sexto grado, independientemente de su desempeño en el examen de nivel. Un administrador central también revisa las calificaciones de los estudiantes y el progreso en los exámenes de competencia para automáticamente inscribir estudiantes en clases aceleradas. (Se les envía una carta a los padres notificándoles sobre la inscripción automática y en ese momento pueden optar por que sus hijos no participen).

“Los perseguimos a todos los rincones del distrito escolar”, dijo Todd Nelson, ex profesor de matemáticas que ahora supervisa datos, investigaciones y pruebas del distrito.

Desde 2016, ha aumentado la diversidad de los estudiantes matriculados en los cursos avanzados de matemáticas del distrito. Ahora los estudiantes latinos representan el 29 por ciento de la matrícula total, antes representaban el 18 por ciento. Los estudiantes afroamericanos y multirraciales representan cada uno el 10 por ciento de la matrícula, en el 2016 representaban cerca del 8%.

Sin embargo, más recientemente la participación en matemáticas de nivel superior ha disminuido en todos los subgrupos de estudiantes en las escuelas de Unión. Las cifras del distrito muestran que esta tendencia comenzó antes de la pandemia, especialmente en las escuelas secundarias. Pero los administradores dicen que la interrupción debido a los cierres de las escuelas contribuyó a una persistente aversión a inscribirse en cursos desafiantes. Aun así, las proporciones de estudiantes afroamericanos, latinos y multirraciales que se matriculan en las clases avanzadas de matemáticas de Union han caído en tasas mucho más bajas que las de los estudiantes asiáticos y blancos.

“Consideramos que el trabajo que estamos haciendo es un proceso a largo plazo, a diferencia de solucionar el problema en un año”, añadió Nelson.

En la clase de sexto grado de Woodfin, Vianca, de 11 años, no estaba segura de cómo había terminado en la clase de matemáticas avanzadas. Recordó haber tomado un examen “súper difícil” cuando estaba en quinto grado y se registró para matemáticas estándar en la escuela intermedia.

“Parece que me colocaron aquí”, dijo.

Vianca dijo que la materia le ha sido un desafío este año. Pero un cambio reciente en los horarios de sexto grado que agrega más tiempo para las matemáticas significa que tiene 90 minutos con Woodfin cada día, en lugar de solo 45.

“Ella siempre va más despacio” cuando le parece demasiado, dijo Vianca sobre su maestra. “Puedo pedir ayuda”.

Duplicar la cantidad de tiempo para las matemáticas para los estudiantes de sexto grado en Union ha tenido un costo. Algunos padres se enojaron ante la reducción de actividades extracurriculares, como arte o música. El cambio requirió duplicar el número de profesores de matemáticas de secundaria, y los directores de escuela ya habían tenido dificultades para reclutar profesores para esas materias. (El año pasado, la tasa de rotación de docentes de Oklahoma alcanzó el 24 por ciento, la tasa más alta en una década, según datos estatales.)

La falta de diversidad docente también complica la misión general del distrito de incrementar la diversidad estudiantil en las matemáticas avanzadas, reconoció Bittle. Solo dos de aproximadamente 90 profesores de matemáticas de escuelas intermedias y secundarias se identifican como afroamericanos; y los esfuerzos para reclutar en Langston University, la única universidad históricamente afroamericana del estado, aún no han sido exitosos. Bittle añadió que los bajos salarios docentes en Oklahoma no ayudan. Las escuelas de los estados vecinos tienden a ofrecer mucho más que el salario inicial para profesores en Oklahoma de aproximadamente $40,000 anuales.

Las investigaciones acerca del debate sobre la eliminación de los sistemas de seguimientos demográficos presentan un panorama complicado. Casi al mismo tiempo que el distrito hizo sus cambios, un estudio internacional encontró que separar a los estudiantes dotados en clases aceleradas podría exacerbar la división entre ricos y pobres en las escuelas. Otro artículo, publicado por la Brookings Institution en 2016, encontró que los estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos en estados que utilizaron más sistemas de itinerarios para separar a estudiantes de octavo grado en diferentes niveles de habilidad en matemáticas obtuvieron mejores calificaciones en los exámenes de Advanced Placement.

“Esto seguirá siendo turbio”, dijo Kristen Hengtgen, analista senior de Education Trust. “El proceso de eliminar los sistemas de itinerarios parece tener buenas intenciones, pero todavía no hemos visto de manera concluyente que funcione”.

Sin embargo, Unión sigue comprometido con sus esfuerzos. Y en una clase de cálculo totalmente silenciosa, donde sólo el zumbido del sistema de climatización interrumpía el frotar de los lápices, los estudiantes permanecían comprometidos con sus propios trabajos.

Lizeth Rosas estaba sentada en la última fila. Vestida con bata azul brillante del programa de enfermería que tendría más tarde ese día, la joven de 18 años garabateó notas sobre cómo encontrar el valor promedio de fricción en un intervalo determinado.

“¿Alguna pregunta?”, dijo su maestra. “Hablen ahora o callen para siempre.”

Sólo ocho de los 22 estudiantes de la clase se identificaban como blancos. Rosas comenzó a estudiar matemáticas avanzadas cuando estaba en séptimo grado, dijo. El año pasado, para su sorpresa, un maestro le recomendó tomar el curso de Advanced Placement.

“Al principio me cuestioné, y, mucho”, dijo. “No sabía si estaba lista. Es mucho que procesar y nos movemos muy rápido”.

Rosas planea trabajar como enfermera práctica con licencia después de graduarse y supone que las conversiones de medicamentos y líquidos intravenosos requerirán matemáticas. Su padre, quien dirige su propia empresa de remodelación, no puede ayudarla con sus tareas de cálculo, dijo ella. Pero su programa de enfermería, parte de un programa de extensión de la escuela secundaria en el cercano Tulsa Technology Center, ofrece tutoría académica.

“No me hace tanta falta”, dijo Rosas. “Los profesores aquí son realmente atentos. Simplemente me ayudan. Me recuerdan que puedo hacerlo”.

Este artículo sobre equidad en las matemáticas fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro centrada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Regístrese para el Hechinger newsletter.

The post Cómo un distrito ha diversificado sus clases de matemáticas avanzadas — sin controversia 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.

Even before her son started kindergarten, Ashley Meier Barlow realized that she might have to fight for his education. Her son has Down Syndrome; when he was in prekindergarten, school officials in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, told Barlow that he wouldn’t be going to the neighborhood school, with some special education accommodations, as she had assumed.

Instead, the educators told Barlow that they wanted her son to attend a classroom across town meant for children who are profoundly impacted by their disabilities. Barlow immediately resisted, because she knew the curriculum would likely focus on life skills, and her son might never be taught much reading beyond learning the shape of common, functional words like stop and exit. “I think about it 10 years later and it still makes me want to cry,” said Barlow. “They had no confidence that they would be able to teach him.”

Driving the recommendation, Barlow knew, was her son’s low cognitive scores. “If [schools] have an IQ that suggests a child’s cognitive ability is significantly less than average, they will rely on it every time,” said Barlow, who now handles special education cases in her work as an attorney. To get her son even modified access to the regular kindergarten curriculum, Barlow would need to show that his potential to learn exceeded his test scores.

For generations, intelligence tests have played an outsize role in America, helping at times to control who can join the military and at what rank; who can enroll in the nation’s most elite private schools, and even who can be executed under federal law. They have also played a large role in America’s public schools, helping to determine from the earliest grades who can access extra help and accelerated learning and who can reap the benefits of high expectations.

After the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, schools suddenly found themselves required to label and serve children with a variety of special needs — including learning disabilities and what was then called mental retardation — without enough tools beyond testing to guide them. 

IQ tests’ centrality in many schools is now slowly starting to ebb after decades of research showing their potential for racial and class bias, among other issues. IQ scores can also change significantly over time and have proven particularly unreliable for young children. As a result, more states and school districts have adopted policies and practices that downplay the role of intelligence testing in special education evaluations.

Yet the change isn’t happening fast enough for many parents and researchers who say the tests remain deeply ingrained in the work of school psychologists, in particular, and that they are still regularly misused to gauge young children’s potential and assess whether they are “worthy” of extra help or investment.

“Cognitive testing is kind of the bread and butter of [school] psychologists,” says Tiffany Hogan, a professor and director of the Speech & Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston. “Casting doubts on the use of it is casting doubts on the entire field.”

Related: How a disgraced method of diagnosing learning disabilities persists in our nation’s schools

About a year ago, my daughter, then 5, took an intelligence test as part of a standard education evaluation process. When I looked at the subtest results, a lot of it seemed predictable. My daughter performed especially well in the parts of the verbal section that measure general knowledge (a 5-year-old might be asked the opposite direction from north, for instance). That made sense because we talk constantly about the world around us. Her scores were lower in the portions of the test focused on visual and spatial patterning. That, too, tracked in a family that hates puzzles. 

My (fortunately) low-stakes experience speaks to the long-standing criticism that intelligence tests measure a child’s exposure and early education opportunities, especially for white, middle- and upper-class language and experiences, rather than “innate” intelligence. When the tests became common in public schools in the 1970s and 80s, the goal was they would assess children’s potential, while achievement tests would show how much progress they had made learning grade-level skills. This distinction was codified through a method of evaluating for learning disabilities called the “discrepancy model,” included in 1977 federal guidelines. This model, which I reported on in an article last year for The Hechinger Report and Scientific American, requires a significant “discrepancy” between a child’s IQ and achievement to establish a learning disability, making it hard for children with lower IQs to qualify.

“(School psychologists) had very few tools in the beginning,” said Mary Zortman Cohen, who retired last June after working 34 years as a school psychologist in Boston, “so cognitive testing took on an outsize role in special education.”

At the same time, intelligence tests faced some legal challenges. In the late 1960s, San Francisco school educators labeled a young African American boy named Darryl Lester mentally retarded (what we now call intellectually disabled) after an IQ test. Without fully informing his mother, the school district pulled him out of the regular education program and assigned him to classes focused on life skills. Years later, he recounted in a story published by KQED, San Francisco’s public radio station, that his school days were dominated by recess and field trips.

In the early 1970s, Lester, known in court documents as Larry P., became the lead plaintiff in a California lawsuit alleging that IQ tests discriminated against Black students and were too often used to label them “educable mentally retarded” and remove them from traditional classes. In Lester’s case, he struggled to learn to read but never got appropriate help. 

Lester and the other plaintiffs won their case. In the late 1970s, a judge ruled that IQ tests could not be used to determine special education eligibility for Black students. Despite the victory, Lester was never taught to read, according to the KQED update.

The California case had a big impact on the state with the largest public school enrollment but was an anomaly nationally. Even as California enacted the ban, IQ tests became central across the country to the relatively young and rapidly expanding field of school psychology. To this day, some schools, like Lester’s, withhold access to sufficient academic instruction for many children with low IQs, said Kentucky parent and lawyer Barlow. “It even happens in preschool, this withholding of academic supports.”

In many places, IQ scores have historically been embedded into the definitions of two disability types: intellectual disability (where an IQ score below the low 70s often plays a large role in qualifying a child for the designation) and specific learning disability, such as dyslexia or dyscalculia (where until the early aughts the federal government told states to use the IQ discrepancy model for diagnosis).

Yet cognitive testing is not limited to learning and intellectual disabilities, it is often part of the process for determining a wide range of disabilities, sometimes needlessly so. Children suspected of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and emotional and behavioral issues frequently get these tests, and the tests are a standard part of the protocol in many districts whenever a family or school outsider requests a special education evaluation for any reason. “I think what it boils down to is needing something to disqualify kids from services, and this pervasive view that it represents a child’s potential,” said Hogan, the Boston speech and literacy professor. She believes that cognitive testing can provide useful context on a child’s strengths and weaknesses but should never be relied on too heavily to diagnose, or fail to diagnose, a student.

Related: Almost all students with disabilities are capable of graduating on time. Here’s why they’re not

In his 1981 book, “The Mismeasure of Man,” biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously assailed the validity and influence of IQ testing, bringing news of this developing critique to a broader audience. Contrary to the beliefs of some of the original creators and backers of IQ tests, Gould disagreed with the idea that the tests could be used to rank or assign value to people. And he pointed out the structural racism and subjectivity embedded in both the tests and how they were being used to perpetuate societal power structures. His book coincided with other research showing that IQ tests can be biased against Black or low-income students, as well as many others, because they contain language and content that is more familiar to white middle- and upper-income students. 

In the years after “The Mismeasure of Man,” a growing number of education researchers and scientists also began to question the validity and importance of IQ tests in diagnosing learning disabilities. The critiques prompted the federal government to change course in 2004, as part of reauthorizing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, strongly recommending that states consider alternatives to looking at the gap between intelligence and achievement scores when determining if a child has a learning disability.

So why does intelligence testing remain so pervasive?

“There’s a science-to-practice lag that can take many years,” said Zortman Cohen, the retired school psychologist. “It takes a long time to infiltrate large, bureaucratic school systems.”

School psychologists say procedures are changing, albeit slowly and inconsistently. Change has been possible in part because of the spread of an evaluation method, known as “response to intervention,” that looks at how children respond to different teaching strategies before making a call as to whether they have a disability.

School psychologist Regina Boland said that in her first job in Nebraska she was forced to rely on the IQ discrepancy model to determine if a child had a learning disability (that district now uses a different approach). “There’s general agreement that it is the least valid method,” she said. “There are some kids who don’t get services under that model who definitely deserve and need support.”

Since moving to Illinois, a state that uses response to intervention as its main method, Boland has a lot more latitude in when to use cognitive tests in the process of determining whether a child has a disability and what help they need.

Under response to intervention, “a lot more is in the control of the school psychologist,” she said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than what we’ve done in the past.”

While Boland believes that “the usefulness of IQ tests is overrated by some teachers,” she wouldn’t want to see them disappear entirely; she uses some form of cognitive testing in about 60 to 70 percent of her initial evaluations.

“I find it useful when kids who are lower functioning and may have intellectual disabilities come across as defiant and disrespectful, when really it’s a matter of them not understanding the information,” she said. “An IQ test can look beyond assumptions and capture abilities that are not assessed in the classroom.”

Related: What research tells us about gifted education

Not every intelligence test is created equal. Recent decades have seen a growth in cognitive tests with the goal of minimizing some of the race and class bias that plagued their predecessors.

Boland said she’s selective about which cognitive tests she uses. She avoids the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), a commonly used test. She finds it loaded with language that’s more familiar to middle-class white children and an overall bias “against cultural and linguistic minorities.” Research studies have critiqued the test in the past for including questions such as: “Who was Charles Darwin?” and “What is the capital of Greece?”

“I might use the Weschler if it’s a middle-class white kid,” she said. Fortunately, Boland added, there are more options than ever for cognitive tests that are “less language loaded.”

Jack Naglieri, an emeritus professor at George Mason University and a creator of some of those alternative tests, including the Cognitive Assessment System, said he noticed decades ago how blurry the distinction was between achievement tests and intelligence tests. Both, he said, test a child’s accrued knowledge, not innate capacity.

His tests try to measure “thinking rather than knowledge,” as he puts it.

As an example, his tests would attempt to assess a child’s ability to see patterns in a series of visual shapes (see diagram) while a traditional IQ test might require a child to show vocabulary and numeracy knowledge to answer a comparable question. “The field is mired in the past in 100-year-old technology that people think is good because it’s been used for so long,” he said, “not because it really works.”

Educators and school psychologists need to rely less on intelligence tests, use them more wisely in some instances, and ensure that they are choosing the least biased tests. But they cannot bear this responsibility alone. States and school districts play an enormous role in setting the parameters under which school psychologists must operate. Some district and state officials have denied children access to special education services by setting limits on how many children qualify — with cognitive testing at times playing a problematic role as gatekeeper. Boland, the school psychologist, for example, had more freedom to exercise her professional judgment when she moved to a state that didn’t mandate a heavy reliance on intelligence testing in diagnosing certain disabilities.

Training programs for school psychologists also must change, at least those that still include outdated materials or simplistic guidance on cognitive testing. “Strict cognitive testing is a poor way of addressing the pieces of the puzzle for any one kid,” said Zortman Cohen. “It takes a lot of good training to understand how to do this well.”

In addition to systemic and policy changes, we also need a shift in mindset. Embedded in too many schools’ practice and policy, to this day, is the idea that an intelligence test score can somehow measure human potential. It does not. At their best, these tests provide a snapshot in time of a child’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses. But it is fundamentally unjust to deploy them in ways that conflate a score with a capacity for learning, and exclude children from full participation in that learning process by denying them access to an academic curriculum, or extra help learning to read. To continue to do so implicitly upholds the wild, ill-informed dreams of IQ exams’ 19th and early 20th century creators, many of them eugenicists who believed civilization would advance only upon social and educational exclusion and segregation determined by untested tests.

For nine months, Kentucky parent Barlow despaired that her son might fall victim to this kind of exclusion. She considered filing a legal complaint against the district, attended meeting after meeting, and reached out to national and local parent advocates alike — all to no avail. Then, a friend of hers was appointed principal of the neighborhood school — shortly before her son was scheduled to start kindergarten. The district relented, agreeing to let him attend the school.

Today he’s in seventh grade and receives regular instruction with his peers in math, English, science and social studies, with modifications. Barlow said he has made tremendous gains in areas including health, math, and reading. His learning enriches his life on a daily basis. It would not have been possible without exposure to a mainstream curriculum and peers, Barlow said.

“To see the bright lights go off when he is able to read the title of a TV show or the name of a song or the food he wants to eat on a menu — it’s like the angels are singing,” she said. “He can access the world because he can read.”

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

The post How flawed IQ tests prevent kids from getting help in school appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For a few weeks in the spring of 2016, nearly all the eighth graders at a small public school affiliated with Columbia University agreed to stay late after school to study math. They were preparing for a critical test, the New York State’s Regents examination in algebra. Half of the kids came from families that lived below the poverty line in Harlem and upper Manhattan. They attended a selective middle school, and were advanced enough to be taking algebra in eighth instead of ninth grade. Many others were the children of Columbia professors, and none of them – rich or poor – really needed help passing the test.

But researchers set up a review class to test a theory about the best way to study for a test. For the first eight sessions, half the students had a traditional review class. They were given a Barron’s Regents review study guide with lots of practice problems. Their teachers worked through the first half of the problems, explaining how to solve them step by step. 

The other half of their classmates studied the same algebra topics in a different way. They spent the first 45-minute session taking a mini practice test. They received no instruction and worked independently. The following day, their teachers went over the students’ errors. The students had four test-and-review cycles like this, for a total of four mini tests and four sessions of error review. 

Then, the two groups swapped. The kids who had been taught via traditional, explicit instruction switched to reviewing the remaining algebra topics through their errors. And the kids who had been correcting their errors received eight sessions of traditional test prep. Their teachers taught both ways too, so that differences between the two modes couldn’t be attributed to a particular teacher. The following year, the same four teachers repeated the entire experiment with a fresh group of eighth graders. All told, 175 kids participated in the experiment. 

Which method worked best? 

On the surface, it was a tie. Students improved by about the same amount – 12 percent – whether they learned through explicit instruction or error review. Students had taken tests before and after the test prep course. Noting how much they improved on various algebra topics, researchers were able to trace those gains back to whether students learned that topic through explicit instruction or through their errors.

There was one big difference, however. Learning through errors was twice as powerful based on instructional time. Teachers had to teach all eight sessions in the traditional instruction condition, totaling 360 minutes of instructional time. But teachers only had to teach every other session when students learned through errors, adding up to only 180 minutes.

“You get more bang from your teacher buck, if you will, from the learning from errors condition,” said Janet Metcalfe, a psychologist at Columbia University who led the study, which was published online in the British Journal of Educational Psychology in January 2024. (The Hechinger Report is an independent news organization based at Teachers College, Columbia University, but has no relationship with the middle school or the researchers involved in the study.)

Of course, students might not see it that way. They still had to be in class for the full 360 minutes after school, with half the time spent taking practice tests in order to generate the errors.

The study is not a repudiation of explicit instruction. The students were also taking an algebra class during the school day where they had likely had a lot of explicit instruction and were already familiar with the concepts. Metcalfe said that having this background knowledge is critical for learning by errors to work. The students aren’t just guessing, but they’re making common mistakes. 

“They’re just doing one little thing wrong,” said Metcalfe. “And once they understand what that one little thing is, and remember not to fall into a habit where they’ll make the same mistake, they can overcome it.”

Metcalfe offered the example of fractions. A student might mistakenly think that a large denominator means it’s a large number, but then remembers discussing the error in a review session and knows that a fraction with a large denominator might actually be a tiny number. The memory of discussing the error stops the student from making it again, she explained.

Learning from errors, however, was inconsistent. One of the four teachers produced more than twice the test score gains for students than a colleague. It’s not that this teacher was much better than the others. All four teachers produced almost identical test score gains when they taught explicitly how to solve problems. They were all good explainers. 

But being a good explainer is not always the same thing as being a good teacher. Metcalfe and her team analyzed videos and transcripts of the review sessions to understand what the teachers were doing differently. And it turns out there are multiple ways to teach through errors. 

The teacher who got the best results employed a sort of Socratic method. “Okay, you guys got this wrong? Why would somebody get this wrong?” recalled Metcalfe. “And he did very little lecturing, almost none.” 

This teacher asked his students to talk about how they had solved the problem and why they did it that way.  He asked them to talk about what they found difficult. Students would often explain their thinking to each other. Finally, the teacher would ask his students to come up with ideas on how to recognize and avoid such mistakes in the future. This teacher had a knack for maintaining a fast pace and getting through a lot of problems from the previous day’s mini test. His students’ test scores jumped by far more than 12 percent when he taught this way.

By contrast, the teacher who produced the lowest test score gains tended to lecture students on the correct way to solve the problems that they had gotten wrong. The focus was on the corrections, not the errors. His classes weren’t very interactive.  His students’ test scores improved by only 6 percent instead of 12 percent. Still, on a per minute basis, he was as effective teaching through errors as he had been teaching traditionally. 

Another teacher was extremely slow paced. “I was convinced when I was watching the teachers that the second teacher would have no success at all,” recalled Metcalfe. “He would take five minutes on one problem, and just let them mull over it.”

Her prediction was wrong. “His students did really well,”  Metcalfe said, laughing. Perhaps this is an error that Metcalfe won’t make again. Like the star teacher, he didn’t lecture.

It’s worth emphasizing again that these were highly motivated, high-achieving students who cared about their Regents exam scores. This method might not work with less motivated students who are struggling in school.  

Even with ideal students, it also seems like it takes a special teacher to pull off this kind of teaching. It reminds me of other progressive teaching approaches, from inquiry learning to project-based learning, for which researchers have documented remarkable results with masterful teachers. But maybe it’s asking too much of the average teacher to teach this way, thinking of questions on the fly that will magically steer students to the right answers. Should we be promoting ways of teaching that only a small minority of teachers can realistically do well? 

My big takeaway from this study is for students. When preparing for a math exam, they should take a practice test, go over mistakes and make sure they understand why they made them. 

This story about test prep was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Proof Points newsletter.

The post PROOF POINTS: The surprising effectiveness of having kids study why they failed appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

At the beginning of the school year, each of my 11th grade teachers stated that they would not tolerate students using AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, to complete assignments. They explained that any use of AI would be considered plagiarism and could result in a failing grade.

Despite these warnings, I regularly hear my classmates laugh about how they used ChatGPT for the prior night’s homework. Their gloats are often accompanied by comments along the lines of “Work smarter, not harder” and “Teachers literally make it so easy to use AI.”

My classmates at the public high school I attend in New York City are not unusual: In a recent survey, 89 percent of students who responded said they had used ChatGPT for homework.

It’s easy for teachers to admonish students not to use ChatGPT and then blame them when they do. But educators must realize that the work they are assigning, which largely relies on rote memorization, is a perfect fit for artificial intelligence.

Rather than browbeat students for using AI, maybe educators should outsmart AI by reimagining education so that it requires more creativity and critical thought, the aspects that separate people from robots.

Related: ‘We’re going to have to be a little more nimble’: How school districts are responding to AI

Since third grade, I have been taking standardized tests. Now that I’m older, these include Regents exams, New York State tests and Advanced Placement assessments. My teachers say that our scores on these tests are a reflection of our academic proficiency, as well as a predictor of our future academic and professional success.

Yet, in my experience, all standardized tests do is reduce nearly every class, even the most interesting, to regurgitation.

Take AP Psychology. I signed up for this class because I am fascinated by the subject, especially the philosophical and open-ended aspects that require thoughtful discussion and analysis. But rather than encouraging us to engage with psychology’s intellectual premises, the class requires us to memorize roughly 400 terms.

If I can remember each term and its definition, I will have set myself up for success in the class and on the final AP exam.

Sounds fascinating and enlightening, right? Not to me. Unfortunately, this is the current state of education. Exams and teaching to the test have become so ingrained in education that little to no room is left for creative learning, rich discussion, critical thought or the development of emotional intelligence.

These are the very skills and activities that separate people from robots, yet instead of developing them, students are told to act like robots and simply spit back information on exams.

Ironically, AI is, of course, much better at being a robot than a typical student is; systems like ChatGPT can access and spit back large swaths of information better than any person.

Thus, it is no surprise that GPT-4 clocks high scores on the bar exam, SAT and multiple AP exams, including a 5 (the highest possible score) on AP Psychology.

These results show that the modern student is susceptible to AI takeover. If educators wish to effectively prevent AI from entering classrooms, they must reimagine the way students are taught.

Rethinking education in America should include a move away from teaching to the test and a push toward project-based learning, which encourages students to collaborate, examine and analyze real-world issues and apply scientific research to solve problems.

Related: OPINION: Banning tech that will become a critical part of life is the wrong answer for education

This approach might even drive test scores higher. A 2021 study estimated that students whose curricula included KIA, a project-based learning approach, would be 8 percent more likely to earn a passing score on AP exams.

While project-based learning may help lift standardized test scores, its real power lies in improving problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. These skills are vital for current students who are preparing for a world with AI.

According to one report, AI could eventually replace 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. The jobs that AI is currently unlikely to be able to replace are the ones that require problem-solving and critical thinking, as well as those that require complex communication, decision-making, creativity and emotional intelligence.

Education is a means to getting a job and being successful. Simply put, for my generation and future generations to succeed, we are going to need much more than rote memorization skills. The good news is that the skills we need are the ones that make learning fun, challenging and exciting.

We are at a crossroads. Educators, policymakers and everyone with an interest in the future of work has a decision to make: They can either continue supporting an education system that teaches students to think in ways that AI can clearly do better, or they can decide to reform education to prepare students for the not-to-distant world of the future.

Benjamin Weiss is a junior at Midwood High School in Brooklyn, N.Y.

This story about ChatGPT and high school 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 STUDENT VOICE: Teachers assign us work that relies on rote memorization, then tell us not to use artificial intelligence appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

There are few topics in college access and higher education that inspire as much conviction from opposing sides as standardized tests.

Over the last few years, many people have come to believe that such tests are at the root of education inequity.

Opponents of tests have argued that removing tests from college admissions is the primary way to expand access.

Those beliefs, combined with the banal reality that few people like the tests — whether it’s the students studying for them, the parents paying for test prep or institutions being called out for using them in admissions — have made tests a perfect target.

But tests are not the single source of inequity, their elimination is not the cure and likability is not the criterion upon which the future of American education should rest. While I did not like taking a Covid test or the unmistakably pink line it summoned right before my planned vacation, the test was a meaningful predictor of what was to come, as well as where I had been.

Related: PROOF POINTS: Test-optional policies didn’t do much to diversify college student populations

Today, because many colleges and universities across the country no longer require students to include SAT or ACT scores in their applications, there’s a perception among some students that including test scores adds no additional value.

And yet, in the class of 2023, 1.9 million students took the SAT at least once, while 1.4 million took the ACT. Millions of students still take the SAT and ACT and choose to include their scores as one more way to stand out in admissions.

However, fewer students from lower-income backgrounds are taking these tests than in years past. The College Board reported that in 2022 only 27 percent of test-takers who reported their family income were from families earning less than $67,084 annually — a steep decline from the 43 percent of test-takers from families earning less than $60,001 six years earlier. In contrast, from 2016 to 2022, the percentage of test-takers from wealthy households grew slightly or stayed about the same.

A clear pattern has emerged in which two groups — one wealthy and one not — have responded to test-optional policies in disparate ways. The middle and upper class opt in, and the others opt out. Publicly available information from various colleges compiled by Compass Education Group shows that students who submit scores have a higher rate of acceptance than those who don’t.

If these tests supposedly no longer matter, why are privileged students using them as a competitive advantage — while underrepresented students opt out?

We now have evidence that standardized tests in fact may help — not hurt — students from low-income families and underrepresented minority groups get into and persist in college. The latest research shows that not only are test scores as predictive or even more predictive than high school grades of college performance, they are also strong predictors of post-college outcomes.

Therefore, earning and reporting high test scores should boost acceptance odds for students from under-resourced high schools and communities, since admissions officers seek data that indicates a student can keep up with the academic rigor at their institutions. Reporting higher scores can be the difference between attending a two- or a four-year college, where chances of persistence and graduation are exponentially higher.

Furthermore, for thousands of high-schoolers, these tests are not optional — and this has nothing to do with the admission policies of colleges and universities.

Many states and school districts in the U.S. use the SAT and ACT tests as part of their high school graduation requirements, accountability and evaluation systems.

These states and systems rely on the tests because they are a standardized way to tell whether students across a variety of districts — rich, poor; big, small; urban, rural — are ready for postsecondary success.

Many educators believe that standardized tests flatten such variables by placing everyone on the same scale — that they are, in fact, more equitable than the alternatives.

Yes, there are score gaps by race and class. However, standardized tests did not cause these realities — the unfairness associated with them is symptomatic of the broader inequalities that permeate education and all aspects of our society.

Related: OPINION: The charade of ‘test-optional’ admissions

The SAT and ACT measure a student’s mastery of fundamentals, including the English and math skills they should be learning in K-12. The unfairness lies in the fact that wealthier students often attend better schools and can afford to pay for extracurricular test preparation, which reinforces their schoolwork and often comes with valuable counseling. In doing so, they increase their confidence as well their motivation. All these things also help prepare students for life, not simply a test.

Rather than target our rage at tests that consistently deliver bad news, let’s focus our energies on preparing all students to do well on these tests so that they know that college is within their reach, and they are prepared to succeed when they get there.

We must embed test preparation in the school day for all students, not just a select few, all across America. We should work with teachers to ensure they are prepared to deliver high-quality instruction that reinforces what students learn in class and enables them to achieve scores that will unlock a myriad of opportunities.

There are models for this. Advanced Placement classes, for example, prepare students for tests that specifically help them become more competitive in admissions and earn college credit, allowing them to save time and money in college. (Unsurprisingly and unfortunately, this advantage, too, is often unavailable in many under-resourced schools and districts.) We can and should create a similar but more equitable model for college entrance exams.

As we begin 2024, let’s adopt a fresh and nuanced perspective on standardized tests so that all students can use them to their advantage — to be prepared for and succeed on the tests and, ultimately, in college and beyond.

Yoon S. Choi is CEO of CollegeSpring, a national nonprofit that provides in-school test preparation to districts in high-poverty neighborhoods, working with and through teachers to ensure they can deliver high-quality instruction that prepares students for standardized tests.

Correction: An earlier version of this story did not include the qualifier that the percentage of test-takers from lower-income families was a percentage of those who reported their family income, not of all test-takers. It also misstated the 2022 figure. 

This story about standardized tests 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 OPINION: Standardized tests can be great predictors of college success and should not be seen as a cause of inequity appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Nearly one year ago, Tennessee school districts warned thousands of parents that because of a new state law, third grade students could be held back a year if they are not reading on grade level by spring.

The law — which created “a little bit of a firestorm” according to one of its legislative co-sponsors — was seen by supporters as a necessary step to address lagging literacy rates in the state. Concerned parents and school staff flocked to community meetings and legislative sessions to speak out against it.

But of the roughly 44,000 third grade students who scored low enough to be at risk of retention, just under 900 students, or 1.2 percent of all third graders who took the test, were actually held back because of their reading scores. That’s similar to retention rates in previous years — a report from the Tennessee Education Research Alliance shows that around 1 percent of third graders were held back each school year between 2010 to 2020.

Tennessee’s law was modeled after a much-praised literacy program in neighboring Mississippi that includes tutoring, improved literacy training for teachers and a retention policy for third graders who don’t pass its state test. Mississippi held back 8 percent of third graders in 2015, the first year its retention policy was in place. That includes some students held back for other reasons.  

So, what happened in Tennessee?

By the end of spring 2023, about 40 percent of third graders achieved a “met expectations” or “exceeded expectations” score on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. That was a higher passing rate than previous years, but 60 percent of third grade students were still set to be held back because they scored in the “below expectations” or “approaching expectations” range.

However, the law was written to offer several escape hatches for students with low scores.

About 24 percent of all third graders who took the test this spring were exempt from retention because they either had a disability, were an English language learner with less than two years of English instruction, were previously retained or “met other exemptions determined locally,” according to the state’s report.

An additional 10 percent of students were granted a waiver because their parents appealed.

Related: Tennessee law could hold back thousands of third graders in bid to help kids recover from the pandemic

Just under 5 percent of students re-took the test and earned a passing grade. About 2 percent of students scored “approaching expectations” on the test, attended summer school and showed “adequate growth” by the end of the summer.

That leaves more than 12,000 students, or just under 17 percent, who were promoted to fourth grade but are required to receive high-dosage tutoring throughout the year. For these students, the threat of retention still looms.

The law says students who are promoted but required to attend tutoring could still be held back in fourth grade if they do not pass the reading portion of the test or show “adequate growth” by the end of the year.

“For those 12,000 students, the story is not over,” said Breanna Sommers, a policy analyst with The Education Trust in Tennessee.

The definition of “adequate growth” is a complicated formula that includes student’s TCAP scores and the probability that they’ll reach proficiency by 10th grade. During a recent meeting of the Tennessee Board of Education, the department said they are projecting 5,000 to 6,000 fourth grade students will be held back this year.

In Metro Nashville Public Schools, 77 third graders — or 1.4 percent — were held back last school year when the law went into effect. In the five prior years, the district only held back between one and 10 third graders a year. Nearly 1,200 fourth grade students in the district are required to get tutoring interventions this year.

To fill the demand, the district is providing teachers with a stipend to tutor students during their planning periods. Metro Nashville Public Schools has also hired full- and part-time tutors and contracted with an online tutoring service called Varsity Tutors.

Sonya Thomas, co-founder of the parent advocacy group Nashville PROPEL and a supporter of the law, said Tennessee’s renewed focus on reading was a long time coming, though her own children are now too old to benefit from it.

“It’s one of the strongest literacy packages that this state has ever put into place,” Thomas said. “I’m excited about the momentum that it’s going to create in the state.”

Related: Third graders struggling the most to recover in reading after the pandemic

But she’s still concerned that most children did not pass the reading portion of the third grade test this spring.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re going in the right direction, it’s just a matter of the quality of instruction and the quality of interventions that need to be given to children with a sense of urgency. We should not have to wait until third grade to know whether a child is going to pass or fail,” Thomas said.

Studies on the impact of retaining students are generally mixed, but the practice is more successful with younger students and when it is coupled with resources and support aimed at helping students catch up.

Education analysts are still studying the effects of Tennessee’s law — the state has not released demographic data on who makes up the 1.2 percent of third graders held back or the more than 12,000 fourth graders who could be held back this spring. Research on retention laws in other states indicates Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students are more likely to be retained.

“We all share a common goal of wanting our kids to read on grade level. We definitely want to maintain high expectations and know that our students can exceed and reach those. And we still believe that retention is a high-stakes intervention that should only be used in very limited cases in which it’s paired with extensive support,” said Sommers, the Education Trust analyst. “We’re looking forward to more long-term outcome impact data to see. We’ll be really excited if the tutoring was impactful or if summer camp was impactful.”

This story about grade-level reading 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 Parents feared Tennessee’s new reading law would hold back thousands of students. That didn’t happen appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In education circles, it’s popular to rail against testing, especially timed exams. Tests are stressful and not the best way to measure knowledge, wrote Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in a Sept. 20, 2023 New York Times essay.  “You wouldn’t want a surgeon who rushes through a craniectomy, or an accountant who dashes through your taxes.” 

It’s tempting to agree. But there’s another side to the testing story, with a lot of evidence behind it. 

Cognitive scientists argue that testing improves learning. They call it “practice retrieval” or “test-enhanced learning.” In layman’s language, that means that the brain learns new information and skills by being forced to recall them periodically. Remembering consolidates information and helps the brain form long-term memories.  Of course, testing is not the only way to accomplish this, but it’s easy and efficient in a classroom. 

Several meta-analyses, which summarize the evidence from many studies, have found higher achievement when students take quizzes instead of, say, reviewing notes or rereading a book chapter. “There’s decades and decades of research showing that taking practice tests will actually improve your learning,” said David Shanks, a professor of psychology and deputy dean of the Faculty of Brain Sciences at University College London. 

Still, many students get overwhelmed during tests. Shanks and a team of four researchers wanted to find out whether quizzes exacerbate test anxiety.  The team collected 24 studies that measured students’ test anxiety and found that, on average, practice tests and quizzes not only improved academic achievement, but also ended up reducing test anxiety. Their meta-analysis was published in Educational Psychology Review in August 2023. 

Shanks says quizzes can be a “gentle” way to help students face challenges. 

“It’s not like being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool,” said Shanks. “It’s like being put very gently into the shallow end. And then the next time a little bit deeper, and then a little bit deeper. And so the possibility of becoming properly afraid just never arises.”

Why test anxiety diminishes is unclear. It could be because students are learning to tolerate testing conditions through repeated exposure, as Shanks described. Or it could be because quizzes are helping students master the material and perform better on the final exam. We tend to be less anxious about things we’re good at. Unfortunately, the underlying studies didn’t collect the data that could resolve this academic debate.

Shanks doesn’t think competency alone reduces test anxiety. “We know that many high achieving students get very anxious,” he said. “So it can’t just be that your anxiety goes down as your performance goes up.” 

To minimize test anxiety, Shanks advises that practice tests be low stakes, either ungraded or ones that students can retake multiple times. He also suggests gamified quizzes to make tests more fun and entertaining. 

Some of this advice is controversial.  Many education experts argue against timed spelling tests or multiplication quizzes, but Shanks recommends both. “We would strongly speculate that there is both a learning benefit from those tests and a beneficial impact on anxiety,” he said. 

Shanks said a lot more research is needed. Many of the 24 existing studies were small experiments and of uneven quality, and measuring test anxiety through surveys is an inexact science. The underlying studies covered a range of school subjects, from math and science to foreign languages, and took place in both classrooms and laboratory settings, studying students as young as third grade and as old as college. Nearly half the studies took place in the United States with the remainder in the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Nigeria, Iran, Brazil, the Netherlands, China, Singapore and Pakistan. 

Shanks cautioned that this meta-analysis should not be seen as a “definitive” pronouncement that tests reduce anxiety, but rather as a summary of early research in a field that is still in its “infancy.” One big issue is that the studies measured average test anxiety for students. There may be a small minority of students who are particularly sensitive to test anxiety and who may be harmed by practice tests. These differences could be the subject of future research. 

Another issue is the tradeoff between boosting achievement and reducing anxiety. The harder the practice test, the more beneficial it is for learning. But the lower the stakes for a quiz, the better it is for reducing anxiety. 

Shanks dreams of finding a Goldilocks “sweet spot” where “the stakes are not so high that the test begins to provoke anxiety, but the stakes are just high enough to get the full benefit of the testing effect. We’re miles away from having firm answers to subtle questions like that.” 

This story about test anxiety was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

The post PROOF POINTS: Lowering test anxiety in the classroom appeared first on The Hechinger Report.