Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?” Learn more.

There is a conceptually extremely straightforward way to radically reduce chronic absenteeism and most of the other blights harming our school system: Change our schooling paradigm.

Schooling is the most important industry in the world, yet it is a failed industry. Research at Duke University, which I observed very closely, showed clearly and starkly why schools fail. Ninety-five percent of our classrooms violate what should be the first principal of schooling: Amplify, do not short-circuit, children's fundamental learning drives.

Our schooling system was created during the Industrial Age specifically to short-circuit these drives so farm kids would work pliantly in factories. Children are meaning construction organisms, and when you put them in meaning-destroying environments like our classrooms, they lose motivation. When the pandemic dissociated them from being in the classroom, they lose more motivation, so it’s no wonder they have become chronically absent.

Duke replaced the typical information transfer/testing model with a far more powerful and effective model based on gifted techniques for all children that put passion, beauty, joy, and meaning construction at the center of learning. This power-up paradigm was introduced in six K–2 classrooms in each of twenty-eight K–5 schools for a total of 5,000 students who were primarily of poverty and color. Although passion was a key goal, academic rigor was higher than in the system it replaced.

The results were extraordinary. Gifted identification rates in this population went from 0 percent to 28 percent—an astonishing increase—versus the national average of 6 percent. After the research, one school brought the methodology to all classrooms, K–5. The fifth-grade math, English language arts, and science combined proficiency in this school went from 41 percent to 86 percent in five years as the poverty rate climbed from 70 percent to 90 percent and the racial achievement gap fell from 28 to 8 points. Imagine if the current top NAEP proficiency level went from 41 percent (fourth grade math) to 86 percent; Duke showed that this is more than possible.

I observed many of these classrooms and a significant number of those using traditional means in the same schools. There was no comparison: Children in the Duke classrooms were extremely motivated, very active, learned, and used sophisticated soft skills, and most relevantly, were extremely excited about school so that many of them wanted to come in on weekends and over the summer.

This excitement is the only real solution to the problem of chronic absenteeism.

From my extensive experience in Duke classrooms plus (1) my work in Hollywood and PBS with advanced artist-based learning experience creation and (2) my work at Columbia University Teachers College on paradigm issues, I realize that there are four key principles or steps necessary to reform our schools and solve the myriad of problems, like absenteeism, hyper-disengagement of boys, rising mental health problems, poor performance, etc., that plague our ill-conceived system. These are:

1. Learning DNA. Understand children’s learning and productivity drives and the immensely powerful forces for learning and flourishing unleashed when school environments resonate with these drives.

But also be aware (1) that our schools were designed to destroy these forces and (2) that everyone is exposed to the destructive value system that does this starting at age five. This early and universal exposure makes these values second nature to virtually everybody, including teachers, administrators, politicians, parents and, especially, wonks.

2. Joyful learning. Create learning experiences that optimize these forces. This is done by striving for three goals: (1) passion (plus beauty, joy and meaning); (2) soft skills like curiosity, creativity, collaboration, etc.; and (3) hard academic skills and knowledge. Children’s interest in and capacity for acquiring academic knowledge is dramatically increased when it’s done in the context of passion and meaningful soft skills. The goal is to make learning an unforgettable experience, and Duke and IBM showed this can be done by combining advanced pedagogy, artistic experiences, and enlightened technology.

3. Power-up schooling. Entire schools and districts must be completely transformed to the new model. The new techniques will evolve rapidly, and teachers require significant scaffolding to use them and keep up with pedagogical and media format advances. This requires an external power-up services provider to partner long-term with the district. It also requires a new financial model for schooling and serious scaling techniques using technology.

4. Viral reform. Good learning and schooling models can only be turned into effective reform if the very considerable obstacles to change are understood and analyzed. The reason that American schools don’t improve (in fact, they seem to be devolving) is that there is a very specific innovation barrier that keeps new ideas out of the classroom. Every single Duke school backslid to the old model, losing all progress. I had a front-row seat to observe and analyze this barrier to innovation and now fully understand it and the three other related obstacles to reform: (1) the irrational schooling market, (2) the lack of a connection between investment inputs and improved academic outputs (the “broken pump”), and (3) the need for virality accelerants. Any plan must incorporate workable solutions to these problems.

The only change that will cure the absentee pandemic—and it will fix a large swath of other problems as well—is effective reform that transforms our schools to the power-up model. None of the hundreds of efforts tried in the past sixty-six years (since Sputnik) have had all four of the above factors, and thus all have failed as the old model comes crashing back in (if it ever went away to begin with).

Although this seems like a huge lift, like buying a new car when you have a flat tire, nothing else has ever worked and ever will. We simply cannot just fix the flat because it’s not the problem; the whole vehicle is the problem, and we need a new one. To change metaphors, chronic absenteeism is not a disease, it is a symptom, and there are many other symptoms of the disease breaking our school system and our future: dysfunctional politics, a permanent underclass costing at least $1 trillion a year, at least a 20 percent reduction in GDP, sub-optimal workplaces, teen mental illness, individual psychological problems, deaths of despair, political attacks on the public school system, (some) school shootings, and many others.

All the factors are in place to make viral reform happen except awareness. The paragraph quoted below is full of band-aids that will not work when the problem requires a far more intense intervention. Once a minimal awareness of the problem and solution spread, viral reform can happen and the American public schools will finally flourish.

From the Wonkathon writeup, some possible band-aids:

“School systems and charter networks have experimented with many different interventions to mitigate the problem. Connecticut, for example, used federal Covid-19 relief dollars to develop a home-visit program. A Detroit school paired home visits with adult mentors for students. New Mexico requires its districts to craft attendance plans with interventions tailored to the students’ situations. Santa Fe hired attendance coaches and offered students incentives to return to classrooms. Maine and New Jersey have created attendance teams tasked with analyzing data and finding solutions. There’s been much talk about making school more engaging, building relationships with parents, and clarifying guidance about when sick children should and shouldn’t stay home.”

This essay focuses on A Republic, If We Can Teach It: Fixing America’s Civic Education Crisis, a new book by Jeffrey Sikkenga and Hoover research fellow (emeritus) David Davenport.

The state of civic education in America is perilously low, but the stakes are incredibly high. If, as many say, we need to undertake strong measures to strengthen or even save American democracy, the single most important thing we could do is to require more and better teaching of civic education and American history.

One need only look at the latest “Nation’s Report Card” testing, which shows that only 23 percent of eighth-graders are proficient or better in civics and a mere 14 percent in U.S. history, to see the depth of the problem. Not all states even require civics courses anymore and many provide precious little: a single semester course in high school, which is too little, too late. Civics and history are usually taught with boring or even biased textbooks with an emphasis on memorizing dates and events rather than creating good citizens.

The touchstones: More and better

Improving civic education boils down to two basic ideas: more and better. The need for more civic education is both obvious and a goal around which people with different points of view could rally. We need more civic education at home. We need more in elementary and middle school, where history and civics have too often given way to other subjects. We need more than just a single one-semester government course in high school.

Second, we need better civic education. We understand there will be arguments about the exact content of civic education, and political agendas are likely to raise their heads. Still, it is possible to reach some agreement on what educational approaches will lead to the best possible teaching.

More: The family’s role

In his farewell speech, Ronald Reagan chose to emphasize the importance of citizenship and civics. He spoke of the need for “an informed patriotism” among America’s citizens, noting that “all great change in America begins at the dinner table.” Reagan felt it was vital for the future that parents share with their kids “what it means to be an American.”

How to do this? Let us count the ways. Simply talking about America and its stories is one important way. In most families, kids are happy when parents read to them but even happier when they tell stories. Reading stories to children about America and some of its heroes and holidays is another great way to introduce them to civic education. Even discussing current events at their level can be a valuable connection to civics and history. Taking children along on civic and political outings—whether to vote or to a rally—can help them see the importance of this in the family. Summer field trips can easily include teachable moments by visits to national parks, monuments, battlefields, and the like. Since values are better caught than taught, modeling educated citizenship for children is itself a crucial role for parents.

Elementary and middle school

As noted above, civics has been all but lost in the elementary school curriculum. As in the family and home, however, the early grades are the time to plant the roots of civic interest and importance. The right model is a layer-cake approach to the teaching of civic education: We start in kindergarten with a base layer that is age-appropriate, and we build on that in every grade as students are able to understand and handle more. Young children love stories, and this is a great way to begin their civic education with compelling stories about America and its heroes.

Since the middle school curriculum is generally less prescribed than high school, it would seem to be a good opportunity to do more with civic education. A few states have decided to add a civic education course to the middle school curriculum. Florida was an early adopter of a one-semester course, and it has seen improvement in its civics test scores. Alabama and Indiana have such courses in middle school, and New Jersey added such a requirement beginning in the fall of 2022. A new civics bee is creating excitement about the subject among middle school students.

High school

It’s difficult to believe that not every state requires at least a one-semester high school course in civic education. That would seem to be the absolute minimum a state should do, and yet, we are still several states short of 100 percent—a gap that simply must be closed.   Beyond that bare minimum, however, there are a couple of other ways to increase the emphasis on civic education in high school. One would be to require a full year of government and civics, not just a single semester. Such a course would need to include attention to the primary documents and texts of the American founding, especially since many states do not require a high school history course in the founding.

Another way to increase the emphasis on civic education in high schools is through testing. At a minimum, states should require the NAEP tests on U.S. history and government, now administered only in the eighth grade, in the twelfth grade, as well. Other tests may also prove helpful. For example, a number of states have begun requiring that students pass the civics portion of the same test that immigrants seeking citizenship must take.

Better: The curriculum

People will differ on how to improve civic education. Although the philosophical and political minefields are perilous, there are ways people can agree on that would make the teaching of civic education better. For example, civic education should be an “all hands on deck” project, not just a school curriculum. Civic education needs to be embraced and encouraged in families and civic associations and by government and other leaders in our society. It needs to be understood as a high priority for the nation, embraced and encouraged by everyone. Civic education needs to be “caught” as well as “taught.” The layer cake approach to civics curriculum is reasonable and objective.

Another path to better civic education is to pay heed to the pedagogical questions. Like most subjects, civic education is best introduced with the “what” questions that are so basic to understanding everything else. Then as students grow older and have stronger powers of reasoning, the “how” questions become more pertinent. Finally, a good civic education prompts students to ask and think about “why” our democratic republic works as it does. Reducing civic education to memorizing a bunch of dates and events shoots way too low on the educational quality target. Although addressing the deeper “why” questions requires a base of civic knowledge, those are the questions that excite and motivate students to become better citizens—which is after all, the real goal of civic education.

Using primary documents to teach civics and history leads to better civic education. Textbooks can lead to political controversy over what to include and exclude. They tend to stay with the lower-level “what” or “how” questions without really addressing the “why.” They also risk the problem of presentism: by bringing the past to us rather than making us go to the past, we continue to wear our twenty-first-century glasses to understand the people and issues of a different time. Far better is to ask students to remove those glasses and travel back in time to read important speeches, debates, laws, and documents and study events of the time. This approach to teaching history and government creates far more excitement as students learn and debate the issues of that time. And, most important, it invites students to draw their own conclusions—not those of a textbook author or teacher.

Conclusion

I close with bad news and good news about civic education in America. The bad news is that the current state of civic education is poor—in fact, alarming. With other subjects pushing civic education out of the curriculum, very little civics is taught in the elementary and middle school years, and the typical one-semester course in high school is too little, too late. The same is true of U.S. history. Test scores confirm that students are not even “proficient” in their understanding of U.S. history, government, and civics.

But here’s the good news: We do not have to sit back and wait for a miracle cure. We do not need to wait for the gridlocked federal government to impose some kind of one-size-fits-all fix. We won’t need to depend on a billionaire to rescue civic education by investing tons of money in it.

Rather, improving civic education depends on many small and medium steps by a wide variety of people, not a big fix by a few. As Ronald Reagan said, it begins with parents at home—reading great books about the American story and its characters, taking their kids to visit historic sites, and talking about national holidays and their purpose. Community civic associations of all kinds can reinforce that message.

Then in schools, beginning in kindergarten, we start to build the layer cake of civic knowledge and interest. States should develop goals and standards for introducing age-appropriate subjects and materials in elementary school right on through middle school or junior high school. In high school, every state should have a one-semester course in civic education at a bare minimum, but a full-year course in civics along with three years of U.S. history—including the American founding—should be the goal. The key questions in high school, based on the work that has already been done in earlier grades, should be the “why” questions. The use of primary documents in teaching in high school should be emphasized. Once again, the NAEP test should be required in twelfth grade; other tests, including perhaps the citizenship test, could supplement that.

If we can do those things, we will be well on our way to improved civic education and, more than that, better prepared citizens—even, as Reagan put it, informed patriots. It is worth doing for its own sake, but such a movement will also improve our republic with greater engagement, trust, and understanding for the challenges we face. As James Madison rightly said, “A people who would be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge brings.” More and better civic education will not fix all our nation’s problems, but it has the possibility to greatly improve this experiment in self-government that we love and wish to see sustained.

Editor’s note: This was first published by the Hoover Institution.

The education-policy world tends to orbit around reforming urban schools. The impulse is understandable, given the serious academic struggles of poor children growing up in American cities. The media spotlight also shines brightest in big cities, revealing urban schools’ flaws, while governments and philanthropies have plowed billions into these school systems in hopes of making them better.

The work to improve urban education must continue in earnest, but such a myopic focus risks forgetting about education in rural areas and small towns. True, the achievement gaps are not nearly as staggering, and students from these communities almost always graduate from high school. But not everything is rosy, especially when it comes to readying young people for college and career.

Consider numbers from Middletown, famous as the gritty hometown of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and now former President Trump’s running mate. Of its recent graduating classes, just 29 percent went on to college (two- or four-year) shortly after high school, and only 14 percent earned at least an associate degree by their mid-twenties. These post-secondary enrollment and completion numbers were much lower than for Ohio students as a whole (47 and 30 percent, respectively). Meanwhile, a mere 3 percent of Middletown students took an AP exam during high school, and even fewer passed one (14 percent passed an AP test statewide). Just one in ten earned industry credentials, with most of them being general certificates in things like CPR and occupational safety—not the high-powered credentials needed for skilled professions.

These disappointing outcomes aren’t limited to Middletown. We also see worrisome student readiness and post-secondary data in scores of other small town and rural districts across Ohio.

The political rise of Senator Vance could do much good for students from rural areas and small towns. Now, it is true that vice presidents don’t typically drive education policy, and many conservatives have been skeptical of a strong federal role in education. In his two years in the U.S. Senate, Vance hasn’t built a lengthy track record in K–12 education. In sum, we don’t have a clear indication of what he would do in this area—if anything—should he become VP.

That said, Vance is known for writing and speaking passionately about the challenges of growing up poor in rural America. He’s expressed concern about the lack of social and economic mobility for disadvantaged children, especially those living in blue-collar communities like Middletown. As he noted in a 2017 speech—co-sponsored by Fordham—at the Columbus Metropolitan Club, “Children who grow up on the bottom of the economic ladder very often tend to stay there…I think that should really worry us.” He also described barriers—some from his own experience—that hold back young people with less social capital. And in his GOP convention speech, Vance pledged not to forget the hardworking folks from the heartland:

And I promise you one more thing. To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.

Given all this, it’s not hard to picture Vance putting rural and small-town education more front and center. He might stick to talking about the challenges students from these communities face, and the urgency of providing opportunities for advancement. Or he might also seek concrete ways to improve rural education through policymaking at the federal level or use his platform to promote ideas that could be pursued by state leaders.

We have some general ideas that we’d encourage Vance to consider (we’re sure there are many other possibilities worth considering, too).

1. Supporting high-quality career and technical education (CTE). Providing students with rigorous CTE opportunities can open doors to good job opportunities that help students to climb the socio-economic ladder. Yet CTE in many schools is still not geared to helping students gain the technical skills needed for in-demand careers. As Oren Cass has noted, the federal government subsidizes higher education at far more generous levels than CTE and workforce programs. If elected VP, Vance might push for a more balanced approach to workforce development by ratcheting up federal investments for high-quality CTE programming in high school.


2. Providing hands-on career opportunities for rural and small-town students. One advantage of growing up in a metro area is the chance to explore various careers during high school. Students living in and around Columbus could seek job-shadowing, part-time work, or an internship with a plethora of employers, including large healthcare networks, advanced manufacturers, IT firms (including, soon, Intel), financial institutions, and more. Career opportunities are far more limited in sparsely populated areas. One potential way to address this barrier might be a scholarship that provides high school juniors or seniors from rural and small-town communities an opportunity to do summer internships with an employer located in a larger city.


3. Promoting academic rigor for high-achieving students from rural and small towns. Advanced coursework opportunities, such as AP or IB, range from limited to non-existent in rural schools. Schools may find it hard to achieve a “critical mass” of students who are interested and able to tackle courses such as AP Chemistry or AP Calculus. And there may not be a teacher with the specialized expertise to lead such a course. The lack of advanced courses puts high-achieving students a couple steps behind as they pursue college admissions and success in higher education. One way to increase advanced coursework might be to launch a cohort of trained high school instructors who teach advanced courses at multiple sites in sparsely populated areas—somewhat akin to travel nurses or itinerant physicians. Another possibility is to bolster high-quality online course choice which would also increase access to rigorous coursework.


4. Giving educational choice a boost in rural and small-town communities. Consistent with the GOP platform and his comments about parental rights, Vance is sure to support school choice. But as reporters have pointed out in pieces about the expansion of private school vouchers, less populated areas tend to have fewer schooling options, and some rural Republicans have even been cool towards choice as a result. As VP, Vance could provide leadership on this issue and perhaps warm rural and small-town communities to the concept of educational choice. He might help calm irrational fears stoked by critics about the purported impacts on districts, and he could champion parental empowerment—no matter where families live. As for concrete policy actions, he could push for additional federal aid to grow public charter schools in non-urban (and urban) communities and explore ways to provide seed-funding to launch private school options.

Every student—just as Vance has done—deserves the opportunity to pursue the American dream. Achieving this aim begins with excellent schools in all quarters of the state that focus on academic success and open doors to college and great careers. Yes, November is a long way off. But the remarkable ascent of Senator Vance into the national limelight could bode well for rural and small-town students, and we’d encourage him to increase the emphasis on their opportunities for success.

Earlier this year, the Louisiana Department of Education launched a Let Teachers Teach workgroup. More than two dozen educators were tasked with identifying “common classroom disruptions and unnecessary bureaucracies” and then brainstorming solutions. The workgroup’s efforts produced a report containing eighteen recommendations that cover a wide range of issues.

In a recent blog, Fordham Senior Visiting Fellow Robert Pondiscio argued that the report “deserves to be studied closely in every state and school district if we are serious about improving teacher job satisfaction and effectiveness and raising student achievement.” He’s spot on. Research indicates that working conditions have a strong influence over teachers’ employment decisions. Improving retention and student achievement means addressing day-to-day issues that teachers have identified as sources of frustration, burnout, and disillusionment.

That being said, it’s important to remember that Ohio is not Louisiana. There are aspects of teaching that are universal, but significant differences in state policy can mean different experiences for teachers. In fact, Ohio is already in the midst of tackling several of the problems highlighted by the workgroup.

With these caveats in mind, let’s examine how three sets of leaders—state policymakers, officials at Ohio’s Department of Education and Workforce (DEW), and district and school leaders—can or already are implementing the Louisiana workgroup’s recommendations.

State policymakers

Although state policymakers are far removed from the day-to-day work of schools, they play a crucial role in empowering teachers and ensuring a high-quality education for students. Fortunately for Ohio, several of the recommendations that fall within the purview of state policymakers are already in the works. One example is two closely related recommendations regarding student well-being. First, supporting student mental health challenges through trained professionals. And second, ceasing to “force” teachers to be mental health professionals.

During his first term, Governor DeWine established a first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at helping schools address the non-academic needs of students. Known as the student wellness and success (SWS) fund, it allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to schools to provide things like mental health services and mentorship programs. Although the current version of the fund is different from its predecessor courtesy of some legislative tinkering, public schools still receive funds intended to meet non-academic needs. They are required to spend at least 50 percent of their allotted dollars on physical- or mental-health-based services or a combination of the two. Going forward, lawmakers should ensure this funding remains available and closely monitor spending to ensure it’s being used to support students in effective ways.

The Department of Education and Workforce

As is the case with state policymakers, DEW has already made some progress. For example, the workgroup calls on state officials to “create a repository of high-quality, easy-to-access teacher resources” and “provide scheduling, pacing, and implementation guidance for core content areas.” Over the last several years, Ohio leaders have implemented several initiatives aimed at accomplishing these goals. INFOhio, for example, offers a digital and searchable library of materials that can be used for free by teachers, school staff, parents, and students. INFOhio also powers Open Space, Ohio’s digital platform for open access and open educational resources.^[1]

Unfortunately, it’s unclear how helpful teachers find these resources. And curriculum isn’t the only area where feedback from the Ohio field would go a long way. Professional learning, required training, and student behavior and discipline are all issues cited by the workgroup, and are areas where state leaders should gather Ohio-specific feedback before they make any changes. With this in mind, DEW should take a page out of Louisiana’s playbook and establish an Ohio-specific workgroup composed of teachers who represent various geographic regions and school types. Together, these teachers could offer feedback about efforts that are already underway (like the SWS fund) and pinpoint issues that leaders have yet to address.

District and school leaders

Politicians and state bureaucrats get a lot of flak for getting in the way of teachers who just want to teach. But it’s district and school leaders who are typically the ones with the most power to improve job satisfaction. In fact, many of the workgroup’s recommendations fall under the purview of local leaders, who could immediately implement these ideas if they so desired. Examples include:

• Tailor professional growth plans. This idea calls on schools to eschew “generic or irrelevant” growth plans and instead focus on tailoring them to teachers’ individual needs. Given that recently passed legislation allows Ohio school districts to develop and use their own frameworks for teacher evaluation (rather than the state framework), this is definitely something district administrators could accomplish.


• Ensure ample time for classroom preparation. This recommendation calls on schools to ensure that professional learning days at the beginning of the school year provide teachers with uninterrupted time to prepare their classrooms for the first day of school. Right now, the report notes, these days are filled with meetings that leave teachers with little time to prepare.


• Abolish antiquated lesson planning requirements. The report notes that most high-quality curricula already provide lesson plans for teachers. This eliminates the need for them to create their own and should, in turn, eliminate districts’ requirements.

***

Recruiting talented young people into the teaching profession is more important than ever. But it’s equally important to identify and address problems that could drive away the effective and experienced educators we already have. Louisiana deserves kudos for its efforts. Now it’s time for Ohio leaders—state policymakers, department officials, and district and school leaders—to step up to the plate.

Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?” Learn more.

When states and schools dramatically expand access to sports, then chronic absenteeism rates will decrease. Here’s my thinking: If kids are missing school because they are sick and bored (see page 114 of this report), then maybe policymakers and practitioners can make a difference by focusing on health and engagement. A renewed focus on sports is the most tangible and least coercive way to encourage a healthier and more engaged student body.

I will offer three observations about the current state of K–12 sports and three recommendations for practitioners. My bet is that any of these recommendations will dramatically reduce chronic absenteeism.

Bottom-line: The more kids participate in sports, the more they will come to school. It’s time for more players and fewer spectators.

First observation: Less than half of students participate in sports. According to the National Federation of High School Associations (NFHS), about 7.8 million high school students, or approximately 45 percent, participated in sports. But this also depends on which school you attend. Almost one in four high schools do not offer any interscholastic sports at all, according to a report from the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Second observation: Most high school sports are seasonal, limiting the number of competitions to just a few weeks per year. Football and cross country are in the fall, basketball and track are in the spring. If you’re lucky, there are more than ten football games in a year. That’s about 480 minutes of playing time if you play both sides of the ball for every game of the season. Basketball boasts about twice as many regular season games and maybe three tournaments per year for about the same amount of playing time but for half as many players. What happens when your sport is not in season? The fact is the large majority of students simply don’t have game weeks most of the year.

Third observation: The number and type of sports in high schools don’t match the interests of most kids these days. Schools on average offer about fifteen sports, according to a report by the Women’s Sports Foundation. That is less than half the number of sports in the 2024 Paris Olympics. And new sports are becoming popular. For example, I would bet more kids play pickleball per year than the number of kids who play football.

When a minority of students participates in a small number of sports for only a few weeks per year, you can see that there is a huge opportunity to increase the health and engagement of students simply by expanding opportunities for kids to compete. Here are three recommendations to do just that.

First recommendation: Create a year-round intramural sports program. The benefits of intramurals in college are well known, but for some reason, intramurals appear to be much less prevalent in K–12. The beauty of an intramural sports program in a high school is that a school can effectively increase the number of competitive minutes at a much lower cost and with much more local control. There is no travel, no coordination with other schools, and the school has the ability to set as many competitions or tournaments as desired. And while high school athletic associations may govern competition between schools, their jurisdiction over intramural sports is much less clear. That means the types of sports offered can expand fluidly without permission.

Second recommendation: Expand the types of sports that are offered to include high-interest, low-cost alternatives. The Aspen Institute wrote an entire playbook on how schools could expand participation in sports by expanding the number of sports offered. Did you know that skateboarding, handball, and ping pong are Olympic sports? Why can’t schools offer ultimate frisbee, netball, dodgeball, and taekwondo? The truth is that there are high-interest, low-cost sports out there. Schools just need to ask their students about their interests and adjust their priorities to invest in more sports. It will pay dividends in school culture, attendance, and probably academic achievement.

Third recommendation: Set aside funds so kids can choose a club sport. Remember in the movie Miracle on 34th Street when Kris Kringle inadvertently sets a new policy for Macy’s? If Macy’s doesn’t have it, they will show you another store that does. We need more Macy’s and fewer Gimbels when it comes to sports. If schools demonstrate that their first interest is the health and engagement of students by facilitating that health and engagement anywhere, then I would bet families would love those schools even more. Many public schools out west already do this, even in California.

The benefits of sports programs last well into adulthood. Almost twenty years ago, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published a brief on the longitudinal effects of participation in high school sports. Eight years after high school graduation, former high school athletes were (1) more likely to attend postsecondary education, (2) more likely to be employed, and (3) more likely to be physically fit than their non-athlete peers. For some reason, we’ve forgotten what we already know.

Every kid deserves the opportunity to play sports and to play all year round. I would bet more kids will get off the bench when they have a real chance to play.

Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?” Learn more.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of students in the United States were chronically absent from school (i.e., missing 10 percent or more school days). The pandemic only exacerbated the issue, and while there has been some progress over the last few years, chronic absenteeism rates remain far above pre-pandemic levels. We have been studying the causes and consequences of chronic absenteeism in Detroit—and the district and community-based efforts to reduce it—for nearly a decade.

Our research in Detroit, alongside other evidence on attendance interventions, has led us to a simple conclusion: Schools cannot radically reduce chronic absenteeism alone. Chronic absenteeism is an “ecological” issue, meaning that a complex combination of factors can lead to attendance problems. Those factors will vary between students and families and may even differ for the same students over time. But broadly speaking, the barriers to regular attendance that many students face are due to a combination of family, school, and contextual factors, often resulting from or exacerbated by social and economic inequalities. Deep social inequality creates extremely challenging conditions for student attendance in places like Detroit. Districts and schools only have certain tools and resources available to them, which are not necessarily aligned with or adequate for alleviating the barriers to attendance that many families face. This is especially the case in high-absenteeism districts, given the magnitude of chronic absenteeism; but it is also true in other school districts more broadly, where supplemental resources and services are often necessary to meet families’ needs.

There are absolutely things that schools can and should do to improve student attendance. But because high rates of chronic absenteeism are driven by social and economic inequalities that are outside the scope of schools or districts to address alone, focusing only on school-based efforts will not lead to dramatic increases in attendance. Indeed, we know from existing research that the practices most within schools’ grasp are unlikely to have a large impact:

• Effective communication has a small, positive impact at most.
• Non-lenient academic expectations may have a small a positive impact.
• Incentives have little supportive evidence and may even have negative impacts.
• Positive school climate is associated with better attendance, but the causal relationship is unclear, and positive effects are likely small.
• Court-based action (both truancy prosecution and truancy diversion) has been ineffective.
• Intensive casework and community schools can make a bigger difference, but these are personnel- and resource-intensive practices.

To solve the problem of chronic absenteeism, we need to address it as a societal problem rather than an educational one. Policymakers and community leaders must commit to improving the conditions for student attendance outside of school, just as schools are committed to improving conditions inside schools.

This means policymakers must allocate additional resources and facilitate collaboration across multiple sectors (e.g., healthcare, housing, transportation, social services) to meet student and family needs. There is no getting around the fact that deep social and economic inequalities are the fundamental cause of high chronic absenteeism rates in Detroit and similar districts. Cross-sector coordination is a necessary condition for connecting families with resources and services that can remove barriers to student attendance, but better coordination alone will be insufficient in many contexts. Thus, to truly address chronic absenteeism, policymakers must make substantial investments to reduce material inequalities—for example by increasing families’ economic security, housing affordability and stability, access to healthcare and healthy environments, and access to transportation. This can be done through a combination of new resources and services provided directly to families, investments to improve existing systems and programs, and more coordination between school systems and other policy sectors.

In the meantime, schools and districts should address factors within their locus of control. First, they should focus on improving the things that are already core to their school improvement efforts: effectively communicating with families about attendance in informative and supportive (but not punitive) ways; strengthening relationships between educators, students, and families; and creating an overall positive culture and climate. They can also work with families to better understand local barriers to attendance and either provide resources directly or connect them with available external resources and services. They should avoid counterproductive practices, such as an over-reliance on attendance incentives and punishments. In addition, to the extent that they employ any attendance-specific personnel, they should consider positioning these personnel as “navigators” who help families access resources that can help alleviate barriers, rather than generalists who focus on a variety of different school-based attendance-related tasks.

Any proposal to radically reduce chronic absenteeism that focuses solely on schools is not radical at all. For more than a century, we have known that poverty and out-of-school inequalities are the primary drivers of chronic absenteeism. Yet, for the past decade (both before the Covid-19 pandemic and after it), we have narrowed our focus to inside-of-school solutions. No matter how creative or “out of the box,” such school-based efforts will amount to tinkering on the margin, especially in the highest-absenteeism districts. Rather, we need the political will to invest in the resources, services, and institutions that can address the root causes of absenteeism directly.

Note: The authors' forthcoming book on this subject, Rethinking Chronic Absenteeism: Why Schools Can’t Solve It Alone, will be published by Harvard Education Press in 2025.

About seven in ten (72 percent) high school teachers say that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem in their classroom. Parents feel less strongly, as the majority (56 percent) say that students should sometimes be allowed to use their cellphones in school.

This difference of opinion was one reason that I recently attended a packed session at the National Charter Schools Conference in Boston. Called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Restricting Cellphone Use: Lessons from School Leaders, it gave an unvarnished account of precisely what the title promised. Presenters included the founder of a charter management organization, Dana Teasley, President of GEO Academies (Indianapolis, IN), and two principals, Dawn Cobb-Fossnes of Ocean Academy Charter School (Bridgeton, NJ) and Othiniel Mahone of GEO Academies 21st Century School (Gary, IN).

Plenty of schools say they don’t allow students to have their phones out during class. But many teachers will tell you that’s lip service. This particular panel talked about policies with teeth, meaning all phones are stored away in a separate location for the entire day, sometimes called “away for the day.”

Here are three things that I learned from this battle-tested trio about how to implement a phone ban in middle and high schools.

1. Overcommunicate before you take action.

Over and over, the trio told us that you’ve got to set the stage for the policy long before it’s implemented or “the parents will be livid!” (Recent articles echo this recommendation.)

So leaders formed voluntary committees at their schools to discuss potential cellphone policy changes, with representation from administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Every household also received multiple phone calls letting them know about this ongoing dialogue. Newsletters and social media helped to get the word out, too. In the interim, students had to conduct research about why banning cellphones in class was a good idea (no alternate thesis was allowed!). As part of that assignment, they had to interview a fellow student, a parent or guardian, and another adult about the potential drawbacks to phones in schools and how to address any concerns the interviewees had.

In addition to the committees, school leaders held multiple meetings to solicit parental input. At those meetings, they summarized the research on cellphone use and the negative repercussions for kids. They distributed handouts with the draft cellphone policy and told parents bluntly that they were part of the problem: “We’ve got to stop you from texting your kids during class!” Parents chuckled, but the message was received.

In the three weeks leading up to the policy’s implementation, administrators sent email reminders to parents every other day about the upcoming ban and how it would be carried out. Some might say that’s overkill. But the panelists were adamant that students and parents needed ample notice and time to prepare for the culture change. Students continued to push back, but given the incessant communication and multiple opportunities to weigh in, parents were fully aware of the policy (even if they weren’t 100 percent on board) and no longer squabbled with their kids about it.

Once the scheduled “banning” day actually arrived, the school was blanketed with signs at entrances, classroom doors, and hallways reminding everyone that phones were off limits.

2. Nail down the process by which phones will be collected and returned—and consequences for noncompliance.

Presenters shared how their prior efforts had failed and why. They’d tried “green and red zones” for phone use—think green for cafeteria and red for the classroom—but it was far too hard to monitor. They’d tried pricey lockable pouches that stored students’ phones for the day and could be reopened only at an “unlocking base” at the final bell. But some kids still managed to open them by damaging them. Or they brought in burner phones (no kidding) to put in the pouch while their real phone stayed with them. Or they forgot to unlock their phone at school, took the pouch home, and had their parents calling the school at 7 p.m.

The winning storage solution ending up being a wood box in each homeroom that costs about 40 bucks on Amazon (also known as a cellphone locker). No, it didn’t solve the burner phone issue, but it did address some of the other headaches. The panel’s advice: Keep it simple.

Students had to check in and turn over their phones first thing in the morning during homeroom. The homeroom teacher was responsible for collecting and locking them in the box. Devices had to be picked up at the end of the day in the same homeroom class.

Panelists told us that enforcement was key for both teachers and students. If the homeroom teacher failed to collect the phones, the principal was quick to pay her a visit. If that teacher was absent, an administrator would collect the phones instead, as opposed to asking a wavering substitute to do it. Enforcement at the kid level meant swift and clear consequences for any phone use at any time during the school day and any place in the school—and purposely included inconveniencing their parents.

To wit, the cellphone policy at GEO Academies 21st Century reads as follows:  

The school is not responsible for personal devices or cellphones, so while we do make an effort to keep them secure, it is still the responsibility of the student to follow policies responsibly. Again, we strongly recommend the device not be brought to school at all.

This policy has been developed with the input of students, teachers, and parents, and there will be NO exceptions to it:

First warning: Parent must pick up phone and Saturday school detention.

Second warning: Parent must pick up phone and an out-of-school suspension.

Third warning: Parent must pick up phone and an out-of-school suspension and possible expulsion.

Administrators already had in place Saturday school detention. Besides punishment for behavioral infractions, it was used as mandatory make-up time for those students who had missed too many days. So it made sense to use it for cellphone infractions, as well. Classroom teachers were paid extra to monitor Saturday school.

Not long after, the policy was expanded to include other outside electronic devices. Without their phones, students had started using their watches, tablets, and other personal computers for their preferred distractions. But because the schools had one-to-one computing programs (where each student was provided with a laptop to access the internet and digital course materials), there was no need for outside electronics.

3. Don’t exempt teachers’ phones.

For the ban to be successful, they told us that it had to be an adult policy, too. So teachers also locked up their phones so that everyone was in it together. It was important for them to be models for their students. And the kids rather enjoyed keeping the teachers accountable if they caught them with their phones!

Make no mistake: It was a difficult adjustment for the educators, as well. After all, we adults are no strangers to cellphone obsession. But if teachers didn’t buy into the ban and have to abide by it, they’d be accused of hypocrisy and risk losing credibility with the students.

Some will say that teachers need their phones in case of classroom emergencies. But there’s nothing stopping them from using two-way radios, landline phones in classrooms, computer-based alert systems, or old-fashioned panic buttons. Intercom systems are also a mainstay in schools, and some even have digital displays throughout the building that can be used to broadcast emergency messages.

Others might say there’s no need to treat the adults like the children. But this seems like one of those issues where it’s important to lead by example.

—

It’s been just seven months since these schools started banning cellphones. That’s not terribly long, but panelists shared that they are already seeing benefits. There’s been a decrease in fighting, bullying, and cheating. Kids are more engaged and productive in their classes, and some appear less distressed.

In the end, we can’t turn back time and put the genie back in the bottle. But we can lock her out of schools and put her in a box.

Everyone benefits from exemplars. We all need models to mimic and follow. In the policy realm that means states, legislatures and governors who pass policies and reforms that materially improve the lives of their residents.

We also need cautionary tales, clear examples of mistakes and pitfalls to avoid. On education, California has stepped into that role. Any aspiring policymaker looking for guidance on sensible education reform should take a glance at Sacramento over the past half-decade and do exactly the opposite.

Most recently, under pressure from teachers unions, the Legislature killed a bill introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio that would have mandated the teaching of phonics. The bill had the support of both the state-level parent-teacher association and the NAACP—and rightly so. A mountain of research going back to the 1950s vindicates phonics as the best way to teach young children to read.

The nation’s schools have had something of a reckoning in the past few years: Millions of children struggled to read because schools followed pseudoscientific theories about early literacy. Now at least a generation more will suffer the same fate in California.

In an open letter to Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, the California teachers union bristled at the “top down, statewide mandate” approach of this bill. But the teachers unions are happy to see California impose curricular, instructional and ideological mandates in other realms.

The state’s top-down sex education framework clocks in at 746 pages of material, curricula, assessments, grading recommendations and instructional requirements. The state compels teachers to tell kindergartners that children in “kindergarten and even younger have identified as transgender” and that biological sex is completely divorced from “gender identity.”

In 2021 the state ignited a brawl over its mandated ethnic-studies curriculum. Its content and instructional practices have roots in 1960s activism against American hegemony; the goal is to “liberate” students from the oppressive forces of capitalism, patriarchy and settler colonialism.

In 2023 California implemented a new mathematics framework, the first edition of which included “whiteness” and “social justice” as topics for instruction. The goal was to raise the “sociopolitical consciousness” of students—in math class. A revised framework was notably less political but required teachers to use a quantifiably ineffective approach to teaching called “discovery” learning, where students must be left to “discover” their way into long division or algebraic equations.

Taken together, the California Legislature is happy to impose top-down mandates about curricular content and instructional “practices” in other content areas as long as they align with progressive pieties. Lawmakers will mandate that teachers educate children about the latest obsessions of critical race theory or gender ideology, but letter sounds or math facts are a bridge too far.

Fundamentally, California demonstrates what happens when a radical theory of education is put in practice. There are a handful of competing philosophies of education, and the most popular in schools of education is “critical pedagogy.” Its fundamental principle maps the Marxist oppressor-oppressed dichotomy on to the student-teacher relationship, concluding from there that the imposition of any content, any behavioral norms, any expectations is inherently oppressive. The teacher’s only role is to develop a child’s “critical consciousness,” to foster discontent with the current power structure and spur students into left-wing activism.

In most American schools, vestiges of a liberal-arts education remain: Kids practice academic skills, learn history and might even read excerpts of Shakespeare. With its rejection of phonics, California has fully committed itself to a rejection of a liberal-arts tradition and fully embraced a radical agenda in its schools.

Editor’s note. This was first published by The Wall Street Journal.

For several years now, critics have been blaring klaxons about the questionable quality and increasing prevalence of “credit recovery” courses in America’s high schools. Credit recovery programs (or “online credit recovery”), unlike repeating a class or taking traditional “summer school,” allow students to navigate through computer modules, taking quizzes and assessments within these digital programs to earn the high school credits they initially failed to obtain. Now, a working paper by Carolyn Heinrich and colleagues shines a spotlight on the troubling realities of these programs, particularly through their analysis of an online Algebra 1 credit recovery course.

They approach credit recovery by focusing on the assessments, in particular the assessments for an Algebra I course offered by one of the nation’s largest credit recovery vendors. The team analyzed 1,408 assessment questions, classifying them by their form and also using Bloom’s taxonomy to measure their quality and rigor. Such classifications are not direct measures of question quality, which might be debated by educators and psychometricians, but certainly speak to the value of the assessments. The results are both unsurprising and disheartening: Not only were 83 percent of the questions multiple choice, but over 90 percent did not demand any higher-order thinking such as analysis or evaluation. Only a handful of word problems required students to engage in more complex cognitive tasks.

Since in-person proctoring of these exams is rare, what’s even worse is that 91 percent of the assessment questions could be easily answered with a simple Google search. Many of these questions have been floating around the internet since 2015, with answers readily available on numerous websites. The process for retaking tests previously failed is also alarmingly lenient. Students retaking unit exams, known as “post-tests,” can review all their previous answers along with the correct ones before attempting the exam again, often with the questions in the exact same order. This method maximizes the student’s likelihood of passing the exam without actually understanding the material, further diminishing the credibility of these assessments.

The study points to lax state policies on credit recovery as another area of concern. Only a few states have any form of regulation for these programs. New York stands out as the sole state with comprehensive regulations, including rules for ongoing interaction between students and teachers, ensuring that the process isn’t entirely virtual. Still, requiring significant student-teacher interaction is an exceedingly low bar for quality, especially considering the potential for misuse—and the incentives to raise graduation rates. When the American Enterprise Institute surveyed districts about credit recovery policies in 2019, they found little regulation at the district level, either.

What can be done to address these issues? Heinrich and her colleagues recommend several measures. First, they advocate for better assessments that truly measure student understanding and learning. Second, they suggest mandating in-person proctoring to curb the rampant cheating facilitated by the current online formats.

There’s also a pressing need for state-level auditing of these programs. Randomly selecting students for additional testing could provide insights into the extent of superficial learning and cheating. Since districts are what ultimately hand out the credits, districts themselves ought to implement separate, rigorous assessments that students must pass, ensuring that the credits students receive reflect genuine learning and comprehension.

The story of Jeremy Noonan, one of Heinrich’s coauthors for this study and a whistleblower in the Paulding County School District in Georgia, underscores the systemic nature of these issues. Noonan exposed how his district provided test bank questions with easily searchable answers and tried to raise awareness of the problem with authorities ranging from his own principal and other local administrators to state officials in Georgia and even his district’s accreditor, Cognia, which declined to investigate Noonan’s claims. Eventually, he resigned and went public with these problems, which extend far beyond his suburban Atlanta district.

Although credit recovery programs are sold to districts as a more effective and efficient method of catching students up than traditional course-retakes and summer school, evidence continues to accumulate that the way they are implemented in high schools is rife with misuse, prioritizing increasing graduation rates over increasing student learning. As this new study reveals, these programs need a comprehensive overhaul, with rigorous assessments, in-person proctoring, and robust state regulations to ensure they fulfill their promise of helping students succeed. Without dramatic changes, students would almost certainly be better off recovering credit the old-fashioned way, through normal course-retakes and summer school.

SOURCE: Jennifer Darling-Aduana, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Jeremy Noonan, Jialing Wu, and Kathryn Enriquez, “Failing to Learn from Failure: The Facade of Online Credit Recovery Assessments,” Working Paper (June 2024).

Teacher voice is often missing from education policy discussions, leading to what can feel like an adversarial relationship between pundits and practitioners. Educators for Excellence (E4E) strives to reframe that relationship by amplifying the interests and concerns of teachers across the land. They have recently released the results of their wide-ranging teacher survey, conducted annually since 2018, and this year’s findings are well worth the attention of education leaders.

Developed by a cadre of eighteen teachers dubbed the National Teacher Leader Council, the eighty-five-item questionnaire was administered online during the first two months of 2024. A nationally representative sample of 1,000 full-time, pre-K–12, public-school teachers working in both district and charter schools responded. Following the overall demographics of the profession, respondents were overwhelmingly female and white. Nearly 60 percent were between the ages of thirty and forty-nine, and a similar percentage reported having earned tenure in their job. Eighty-five percent taught in traditional districts. Forty-five percent of respondents worked in suburban schools, 29 percent in urban settings, and the remainder in rural locales. Approximately one-third of the sample taught in large schools (more than 1,000 students), and another third taught in small schools (less than 500 students). A plurality of respondents taught grades pre-K–5.

The topline findings are organized into seven themes, spanning topics like student outcomes, curriculum and instruction, feelings about union representation, testing, technology, etc. Here is a selection of the big picture takeaways: Teachers believe that students are still struggling in the wake of the pandemic, with 70 percent reporting that their students are behind academically and 64 percent reporting that their students’ mental well-being is worse compared to pre-pandemic. Teachers are pessimistic regarding their profession, with just 16 percent indicating they would recommend the job to others—an all-time low among E4E polling results. Interestingly, teachers of color report that their morale and outlook have significantly improved over the past few years after also hitting all-time lows.

Generally, a majority of teachers are positively disposed toward their unions’ efforts to address traditional issues, such as salaries and working conditions, but those positive numbers are down from previous years. Overall satisfaction with efforts to transform the profession from within is below 50 percent, and is even lower for certain specific union functions like improving professional development (42 percent) and expanding career ladders (38 percent). To improve working conditions, teachers are calling for more collaborative and dynamic work environments. More specifically, they expressed interest in strategic staffing approaches that would break from traditional school models and focus on team teaching and other collaborative structures.

A section of questions related to curriculum highlighted concerns over what many teachers view as a quick switch to science-of-reading-based literacy instruction. More than 60 percent of teachers say their district has implemented new curricular materials aligned to the science of reading in the last year, but only a quarter of those teachers say their instructional practices have shifted “very much” as a result of the changes. For elementary school teachers specifically, a slightly higher 31 percent say their instructional practices have shifted. A majority of respondents across the board indicate that better support and training are needed to fully implement the shift to science of reading.

There’s far more detail to be had from the raw question and response charts at the back of the report, covering issues both mundane and hot button, including standardized testing, college readiness, and some “culture war” issues. Questions and answers regarding teachers’ adoption and use of artificial intelligence are new and will be of interest to many on the policy front. There is, literally, something for everyone in this report. Here’s hoping policymakers pay close attention to the results.

SOURCE: Educators for Excellence, “Voices from the Classroom 2024: A Survey of America’s Educators” (May 2024).