PRIEST RIVER, Idaho —The moms seated at the conference table on Election Day were worried. They had good reason: Their poll watchers at voting sites — grange halls on dirt roads, community centers hardly larger than a bungalow— suggested things were not going their way.

There were no formal exit polls conducted in West Bonner County, where the school district covers 781 square miles over timbered hills and crystalline lakes in the north Idaho panhandle. But Dana Douglas, a fit and forceful blonde sipping on an Americano and a water bottle boosted with electrolytes (she was teaching spin at 6 p.m.) had been poll-watching at Edgemere Grange Hall, and she had her indicator for how voters were casting their ballots: “Anyone who said, ‘Hello, good morning’” was in their camp. “Anyone with a scowl” who would not look her in the eye was in the other. 

“It’s going to be a battle,” she said at the table. Sitting beside her, Candy Turner, a retired elementary school teacher who had brought Ziploc bags of pear slices and dried cranberries for the hours ahead, agreed. “I think we are in trouble based on what I saw.”

After Election Day, headlines in key locales all around the country spoke of moms fighting extremists in local school board races and winning. But even as some celebrated “flipping” their school boards back, far-right groups like Moms for Liberty remain. As the organization declared in an email blast in which they claimed winning 50 new school board seats: “WE ARE JUST GETTING STARTED!” 

Some people overlook school board skirmishes, seeing them as trivial. For Turner, Douglas, and many in the West Bonner County School District, they are anything but. It’s not about Democrats versus Republicans (Turner is a registered Democrat; Douglas is “a proud conservative Republican”). It’s about the viability of public education in their community. 

This is not hyperbole. The national infection facing public schooling—the tug-of-war between education professionals and extremist culture warriors—has brought chaos and damage to West Bonner County. After this past school year ended, the superintendent acknowledged that 31 percent of teachers, counselors, and education leaders left the district, and scores of parents pulled their children, opting for homeschooling, online learning, or enrolling in another district. Buildings are infrequently cleaned; an elementary school principal reported at an October school board meeting that mice were running over children’s feet and hallways smelled of urine. 

What has happened in West Bonner County offers a warning to public school supporters elsewhere. Douglas, Turner, and others are fighting to restore normalcy to an institution that should not be up for grabs — but is.

“We’ve been the canary in the coal mine,”Margaret Hall, the current school board chair who faced a far-right challenger, said on the eve of the November election. Hall, a soft-spoken but firm force, has served on the board for eight years, even through chemotherapy treatments for cancer. “What has to happen,” she said, “is people have to wake up and decide, ‘We don’t want someone to come in and tell us what we want. We want to decide ourselves.’”

Idaho is a conservative state and Bonner County is even more so, with registered Republicans outnumbering Democrats by almost seven to one (statewide it’s closer to five to one). Despite the nation’s bitter party politics, residents of this county have traditionally exercised a neighborly pragmatism in which the kids — or, as Douglas prefers, “our babies” — come first.

People filled in the gaps when it came to local needs, from sending groceries home with some children over weekends to teachers helping students brush their teeth or spending extra hours with struggling readers. But that spirit is now being tested by extremists who see a soft target in a stressed school district. Suddenly, the far-right’s anti-public-education catchphrases blared regularly on the national stage have become wedged into the local lexicon. 

For example, “transgenderism” (described by one candidate as “boys in girls bathrooms, boys in girls sports, ‘gender-affirming care,’ and related absurdities”) became a top issue in this November’s school board race. One candidate for reelection, Troy Reinbold, a nonchalant figure who has attended meetings in cutoff shorts and exited mid-agenda without explanation, touted his work on “the strongest transgender policy in Idaho schools” and opposition to “social emotional learning,” which he called “a precursor to critical race theory.”

Hall, for her part, abstained in an August vote on a school district policy that would require teachers and staff to “refer to students by their biological sex” and students to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their genders assigned at birth, along with bar transgender girls from girls’ sports teams. She said it was confusing, poorly written, and not vetted by the board’s legal counsel (instead it was reviewed by the anti-LGBTQ Christian legal advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom). Hall’s campaign signs were later tagged with rainbow stickers. The policy ended up passing 4-0.

Related: Florida just expanded school vouchers — again. What does that really mean?

How a place that had long treated differences with a live-and-let-live ethos adopted the intolerant tone of national politics is anyone’s guess. Some blame an influx of newcomers. Bonner County, like the rest of Idaho, is growing, and over the past decade, the tally of registered voters has risen almost 50 percent to nearly 32,000. 

But who they are and why some of them don’t support public education is a more complicated question. It’s possible that Idaho’s lax COVID-19 rules lured extremists, survivalists, and those lacking a communal impulse. There’s also a broader arc at play in a state economy that’s forced people to shift from work in local sawmills to commuter jobs that get them home later and leave them reliant on others to keep civic life running — a common pattern in 21st-century America. But Priest River, where the district is headquartered, is close-knit, populated by descendants of the six Naccarato brothers, who came from Italy to build the Great Northern Railroad in the late 1800s and stayed. That includes many mom organizers like Candy Naccarato Turner. 

Priest River police chief Drew McLain dates the start of recent drama to the school board vote to rescind the English Language Arts curriculum from the well-established education publisher McGraw Hill. It had been swiftly and unanimously approved in June 2022 and was delivered to replace the curriculum that was out of print. But far-right activists objected, complaining that it included aspects of social emotional learning. Such instruction — on skills like “self-confidence, problem-solving, and pro-social behavior,” as McGraw Hill described the curriculum on its website — is a bugaboo for conservative ideologues. And on August 24 of last year, with one member missing, the board voted 3-1 to return the texts to the publisher. 

The decision got the attention of moms like Douglas, Turner, and others. Whitney Hutchins, a new mother who graduated from West Bonner County schools in 2010 and whose family has operated a resort on Priest Lake for generations, started attending school board meetings. Ditto for Jessica Rogers, a mom of three daughters who had served on the curriculum committee and was upset by the reversal. Others, too, wondered what was happening.

After all, for years the meetings had been quiet affairs at the district’s storefront office on Main Street in a room with aged wood floors, folding chairs and tables, and a capacity of 34. By late 2022, such serenity was a thing of the past. People started lining up three to four hours in advance, which McLain said forced him to close Main Street for safety. Quickly, the gatherings got more and more unruly. First, McLain sent one officer, then several. At times, he called on the sheriff for backup. 

Things escalated even further when Jackie Branum, who was hired as superintendent in the summer of 2022, proposed a supplemental levy, which sets a chosen amount as property tax to support local schools’ operating costs, and a four-day school week to address financial issues — then abruptly resigned. The board approved the shorter week, angering many parents. Then it appointed Susie Luckey, a popular elementary school principal, as interim superintendent until June. By May, the board had put a levy before voters that would provide roughly one-third of the district’s budget.

Supplemental levies in Idaho, which ranks 50th nationally in public school funding, had long been used for capital projects and are now essential for operations. But residents suddenly sorted into “for” and “against” factions. Signs sprouted along rural roads; arguments raged on Facebook. The levy failed by 105 votes out of 3,295 cast. Parents expressed concern at a public meeting that the district would cut sports and extracurricular activities; some worried about teacher retention. Not to mention: The district still had no permanent superintendent.

In a swift but puzzling process, the school board eventually announced two finalists for superintendent. One was Luckey. The other was a far-right former elected politician who worked for the Idaho Freedom Foundation by the name of Branden Durst. Durst was an unusual choice given his lack of school experience and the IFF’s hostility to public education. (In 2019, the president of the IFF called public schools “the most virulent form of socialism (and indoctrination thereto) in America today,” adding, “I don’t think government should be in the education business.”) 

Then again, it wasn’t Durst’s first go-around: In 2022, the Democrat turned Republican ran for state superintendent of public instruction. He lost the GOP primary but in Bonner County beat his two challengers with 60 percent of the vote. Among the donors to his campaign were IFF leaders and a local resident who had opposed the McGraw Hill curriculum.

It is unclear how Durst, an abrasive outsider from 420 miles south in Boise, was so quickly ushered into contention. Jim Jones, former Idaho attorney general and a former justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, points to the IFF. He said the organization aims to “discredit and dismantle” public schools throughout the state, “starting with West Bonner County School District.” 

Related: Inside Florida’s ‘underground lab’ for far-right education policies

Jones also credits the IFF for helping extremists Keith Rutledge and Susan Brown get elected to the West Bonner County School Board in November 2021 in a low-turnout race. It was a pivotal election — but people didn’t realize it then. In hindsight, Douglas said residents “got lazy and complacent and we didn’t get to the polls and put people in the district that valued public education.” 

By early 2023, Rutledge and Brown — along with Reinbold, who revealed himself as a fellow extremist — had become a majority voting bloc on the five-person school board. Hall, the school board chair who works on climate change mitigation and who readily references the Idaho education code, and Carlyn Barton, a mother and teacher who describes herself as a “common sense constitutional conservative,” were at odds with the other three. 

Durst’s candidacy earlier this year turned up the heat on divisions both on the board and in the community. School board meetings were packed. Militia started showing up. And while the Second Amendment is cherished in Idaho, residents were alarmed to find men donned in khaki with walkie-talkies — and presumably guns — present for conversations on children’s education.

“The militia should not be at school board meetings,” argued McLain, the police chief who claimed that one grandfather “was so pissed at the militia” that he arrived drunk with a rifle. “It’s been frustrating,” he added. “If you told me I had the choice of a school board meeting or a bank robbery, I would be way less stressed going to the bank robbery.”

Following multiple contentious meetings with Hall and Barton, who pressed board members to reconsider Durst’s candidacy, in late June, he was selected by a 3-2 vote. After his hiring was finalized, Barton charged that “the direction of our board has turned into a fascist dictatorship with an agenda which is far from our conservative point of view.” 

From the moment he slid into the superintendent’s maroon Naugahyde-upholstered chair in the West Bonner County School District office, Durst seemed to relish his position of power. There was serious work to do — like negotiating a teacher contract — but he appeared far more interested in burnishing his reputation, describing his takeover as “a pilot” that others could learn from.

This was a chance, he told me in multiple interviews, to use the district to test his “ideas that are frankly unorthodox in education,” including some rooted in his Christian values. He wanted intelligent design taught alongside evolution in biology classes. He was working to have a Christian university offer an Old Testament course to high school students at a Baptist church near their school. He hoped the district would adopt curricula developed by the Christian conservative college Hillsdale in Michigan.

Durst also cast himself as a model for how non-educators could take charge of a school district. He boasted that national far-right figures were in touch and encouraged him not to “screw this up.” As he put it, “I broke into the club. I got a superintendency without having to go through the traditional process of doing it.” Indeed, he had not been a school principal, administrator, or classroom teacher.

Related: Teachers struggle to teach the Holocaust without running afoul of new ‘divisive concepts’ laws

That lack of process was a major problem for the state Board of Education, which in August gave the district notice it was not in compliance with Idaho law, a determination that jeopardized tax dollars critical for funding the schools. A letter sent to Rutledge, the chair at the time, cited budget irregularities, missed school bus inspections, concerns about discipline rates of special education students, and the failure to file forms to access federal funds. But the main issue, the state’s board said, was the district’s “decision to employ a non-certified individual as superintendent.” Durst had sought emergency certification but was rebuffed by the state. 

All of the uncertainty and division grew so dire that teachers found themselves struggling to carry on, leaving many no choice but to give notice. “It breaks my heart that I had to leave,” Steph Eldore, a fixture at Priest Lake Elementary School for 26 years, told me over tears in late August. With her daughter starting high school, Eldore and her husband, Ken, who had been director of facilities and capital improvements for 16 years, quit the district, finding jobs and enrolling their daughter elsewhere.

By the end of summer, 27 teachers had retired or resigned, along with 19 other staff members, including the director of special education, a school principal, and three counselors. Families followed. By fall, school district enrollment was down to 1,005 students, 100 less than projected. Even McLain, the police chief, had rented a place in Sandpoint, about half an hour from Priest River, and enrolled his two high school–aged children there. “We call ourselves the Priest River refugees,” he said. SergeantChris Davis, the district’s school resource officer, similarly said his daughter has opted to finish high school online. All in all, the Lake Pend Oreille School District in Sandpoint, whose permanent levy offers steady funding, reported 43 student transfers from West Bonner County School District.

Others, of course, remained. As the school year began, the West Bonner County School District 83 (“Strive for Greatness”) Facebook page was active with notices of cross-country races, soccer games, and picture day. But behind the sheen of normalcy were problems. A shortage of bus drivers led the district to cancel or combine routes. Many students’ commute times doubled, upsetting parents whose young children got home after dark, while other students had no bus transportation at all. There were also issues with school cleanliness. Kylie Hoepfer, a mom of a fourth grader, took on cleaning mouse turds on the bleachers at her daughter’s volleyball game. “I had heard about the mice problem but sweeping it all up was pretty gross,” she recalled.

The biggest hurt for families, however, was the loss of seasoned teachers. The district hired new ones, but a number of them soon quit. Trinity Duquette, a 1997 graduate of the high school, said her 8th-grade daughter “is on her third language arts teacher this year,” each with different styles and expectations. “They have been assigned essays and had a turnover in the midst of the assignment.” 

For Paul and Jessica Turco, who built strong bonds with their son’s special education teachers who have since left the district, the loss “was like breaking up a family.” They said it was weeks into the school year before the new teachers read their son’s Individualized Education Program, the written plan outlining his learning needs. “It was like he was starting from the very beginning rather than a stepping stone from where he left off the prior year,” said Jessica. And it’s showing. “We have been dealing with constant outbursts,” she added, and “when he comes home from school, he doesn’t want to talk about his day.”

While watching the disruption, Hutchins, the new mom whose soft features belie a fierce frankness, made a decision: She and her husband were moving to Spokane, Washington. “I’m not going to raise my daughter here,” she said, curling into a leather chair at her family’s resort. Hutchins’s brother is gay. Watching his experience in school had been painful, and the hostility toward LGBTQ+ students seemed to be growing worse. “This is horrible to say,” Hutchins said after Durst’s hiring, “but the right-wing extremists, they are taking over our community.” 

She wasn’t the only one thinking that — but not everyone was in a position to leave. Rogers, the mom of three who was on the curriculum committee, and her husband had recently built a home with sweeping views of Chase Lake. There was no moving away. So, she got involved at the school, first as a volunteer, then as a paraprofessional, and, more recently, teaching technology. Initially, she hadn’t wanted to get political, but soon, it no longer felt like a choice. 

Back in late 2022, after the school board rescinded the McGraw Hill curriculum and voted for a four-day week, parents like Paul and Jessica Turco reached out to Turner, the retired elementary school teacher, who dialed up Douglas, the Election Day poll-watcher. “I called Dana and said, ‘The kids want some help,’” Turner recalled.

Although Douglas grew up over the state line in Newport, Washington, she married her high school sweetheart from Priest River and now bled Spartan orange. They had built a thriving family business, sent two children through the local schools, and had grandchildren enrolled. She understood that what she saw happening was at odds with what she stood for.  

“I am a Republican. I am a Christian conservative,” said Douglas. “But I am 100 percent pro–public education, and I am pro–every child, and I will do anything for this community to embrace everyone and to love everyone.”

She, Turner, and others, including Hutchins, Rogers, and the Turcos, began meeting. How to take back the district? It started with the school board and, said Douglas, included a notion that should seem obvious: “getting people who value public education” to serve. 

By the summer of 2023, they had collected signatures for a recall vote of Rutledge and Brown, the board’s chair and vice chair respectively. The group’s slogan—“Recall, Replace, Rebuild” — blossomed on signs in downtown storefronts, in yards, and banners posted in fields. The group collected endorsements, video testimonials, and built a website. By the time they were days out from the August 29 vote, their numbers had swelled. Over 125 people gathered in the wood-beamed great room at the Priest Lake Event Center for what was part rally, part check-in: Who could pick up “WBCSD Strong” T-shirts? Who would hold signs at key spots ahead of the vote? 

Related: Inside the Christian legal campaign to return prayer to public schools

Recalls usually fail. But in West Bonner County, the result was resounding. With a 60.9 percent turnout, Rutledge and Brown were recalled by a wide margin. But then, after the election but before votes were officially certified, Rutledge and Brown posted notice of a board meeting for Friday, September 1, at 5 p.m., just before Labor Day weekend. The top agenda items — “Dissolve Current Board of Trustees” and “Turn Meeting Over to the Superintendent”— raised alarms. 

“I read the agenda and I was irate,” said Katie Elsaesser, a mom of two and a lawyer whose office is near the school district office. “I immediately started calling people.” She texted her husband that she would miss their son’s soccer game, then drafted a complaint, finishing at 2 a.m. In the morning, she drove to the district court in Sandpoint. One hour and fifteen minutes before the meeting was to take place, Elsaesser got a ruling to halt it. McLain delivered the news to the crowd in the high school cafeteria. “You would think I scored a touchdown,” he said.

In another strange twist after the recall, the board could not hold several meetings because Reinbold failed to show. Without a quorum, which required three present members, business halted. Finally, after a former school board chair alerted county officials, the sheriff agreed to investigate. Reinbold reappeared, and in mid-October, the board finally filled the vacant seats with two people who supported the recall. 

With his options running thin, on September 25, 2023, Durst announced plans for “an amicable and fair exit.” For the fourth time in less than two years — since a longtime superintendent retired in June 2022 — the district was again seeking a new leader. Hall reached out to Joseph Kren, a former principal at the high school who had also served as superintendent in a nearby district. Kren was enjoying retirement—he got Hall’s call at 9:30 p.m. before he was to wake at 3:30 a.m. to go elk hunting. He would agree to a 90-day contract (the four-day week means it runs through March). 

His appointment was greeted with relief. Kren, a serious-faced former wrestler, is religious but not ideological. On the sixth day of his new job, occupying the same spot Durst had just vacated, Kren showed me the silver-colored crucifix he had hung above his desk. Kren was clear that his faith “has guided [him]” but has “never gotten in the way.”

Growing up with a brother who was deaf, Kren said, has made him attuned to matters of inclusion and accommodation, which he called “a legal and moral responsibility.” His only agenda was to put things right. By Thanksgiving, he told me, the district had corrected state compliance issues, and he was working to add bus drivers. With so many turnovers, he acknowledged “disruptions can and do occur.” But his plan, he said, was steady: to “roll up [his] sleeves and work alongside” staff and to make “firm, consistent, morally sound decisions based in fact and the law.”  

The November 2023 election would be pivotal. With the two school board replacements set — picked by the recall supporters who lived in the two school zones that had been represented by Rutledge and Brown — the other three zones’ seats were on the ballot. The pro-recall crowd wanted to boot Reinbold and reelect Hall and Barton. The election, in essence, would decide which side had a majority.

But each had challengers. Hall faced Alan Galloway, a sharp-jawed army veteran and cattle rancher who opposed “transgenderism,” efforts “to impose the outlawed teaching of CRT through SEL or any other ‘trojan horse’ scheme,” and a levy. He circulated a controversial letter with inflammatory claims, including that Hall had “failed our children by delaying action related to bullying, dress codes and Pornography within our schools.” 

Barton faced Kathy Nash, who had pushed to rescind the curriculum, was treasurer of the Bonner County Republican Central Committee, and connected to far-right figures at the state level. Two of the far-right candidates shared a campaign treasurer and campaign finance reports show some of the same people donating to the three far-right candidates.

In other words, there were teams. Jim Kelly, Nash’s campaign manager, said Nash would bring scrutiny to school finances — and provide representation to those wounded by the recall. Kelly told me, “The big concern for Kathy, and for a lot of us, is that the school board is going to be 100 percent lopsided,” if the candidates he backed, whom many would consider far-right, were not elected. “People are objecting that there will not be a conservative voice.”

And yet, Nash’s opponent, Barton, was a conservative Christian. As was Reinbold’s challenger, Elizabeth Glazier, whose website described her as a “Proud Republican & Conservative Christian” who opposed the four-day week and the hiring of Durst. The race was not conservatives against liberals or Republicans against Democrats. It was, as locals told me, a referendum casting those who cared that students had books, buses, and teachers with a decent wage, against those who embraced extremist rhetoric. 

Related: Who picks school curriculum? Idaho law hands more power to parents

At various polling places on Election Day, far-right campaign volunteers were overheard promising that Nash and Reinbold would keep boys out of girls’ bathrooms. 

For parents who rely on the public schools, this kind of allegation was maddening. “It’s just paranoid bull honkey,” said Jacob Sateren, a father of eight (six in the schools). We met at a coffee shop across from the junior high on Election Day shortly after he had voted. Sateren, who’d turned a challenging childhood into a successful adulthood building pole barns, laughs when people call him “a woke liberal.” (His Facebook profile features an American flag emblazoned with the Second Amendment, he pointed out.)

He finds charges that schools are “indoctrinating” children absurd. “I haven’t had any of my kids come home and talk about any crazy weird stuff. And even if they did, if you are an involved parent, it doesn’t really matter. If teachers at the school are teaching my kids something I disagree with, it’s my job to be paying enough attention to catch it,” he said. “I don’t know why people get worked up. There is always going to be stuff you disagree with.” 

On the day before the vote, under steady rainfall, Hutchins, Rogers, and another volunteer placed signs along Route 57 across from Priest Lake Elementary School, a polling station. Rogers’s youngest daughter skipped while twirling a child-sized umbrella. “A lot of people are very confident of Margy winning — we are not,” said Rogers, referring to Hall by her nickname. 

There was good reason for concern. In the end, Hall did best Galloway by a 60-40 margin. But as Douglas and Turner had feared, Nash defeated Barton, and Reinbold won over Glazier. Retaking the district would not be quick or easy. Yet having a majority on the board offered relief. “We can rebuild,” said Douglas.

Hall, however, was concerned about the division that had eroded support for public education in the first place. The question on her mind was how to bring calm. On the eve of the election, she had made a soup with red lentils, ginger, and coconut milk, which she ladled into small ceramic bowls. As she sat at her dining table talking and eating, she rose periodically to let her dog, Cinco, outdoors, accompanying him with a flashlight. Because of a defect at birth, he now has only three legs; there were cougars and a pride of mountain lions in the dark woods. 

Between trips, she shared her idea of creating random seating assignments at the round tables in the high school cafeteria where school board meetings were now held, a strategy for encouraging residents on each side to sit together and actually converse. “How tired are people of the fighting and name-calling and bashing?” There was much work to do — a new levy needed, a curriculum people agreed on, teacher contracts, luring families back — but she told me it started with “trying to work as a team, to balance perspectives.”  

The day after the election, with the reality of the mixed board clear, Hall offered a sober assessment. “My work,” she said, “is definitely cut out for me.”

This story about West Bonner was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. Laura Pappano is the author of School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education, to be published by Beacon Press in January 2024.

The post The (mostly) Republican moms fighting to reclaim their Idaho school district from conservatives   appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In recent years, division over how social studies should be taught has plagued school districts around the country.

The irony, according to Lawrence Paska, executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies, is that in many places, the subject is “not being taught, period.”

Social studies is sometimes seen as an afterthought, left out of daily instruction, he said. But instead of strengthening social studies or helping more students engage with the subject, the focus in recent years has been on undermining or attacking it, he said.

The increasing politicization of social studies was a concern shared by many educators, education leaders, researchers and advocates at last week’s annual NCSS conference in Nashville. Sessions examined ways educators can navigate state laws that limit conversations on race and other difficult topics, as well as how they can develop the high quality materials and instruction those attending said was vital to preparing students for civic life.

About 3,500 people attended the conference, among them K-12 and higher ed educators who teach the subjects that constitute social studies — including history, civics, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, law and religious studies.

Last month, NCSS updated its definition of social studies as the “study of individuals, communities, systems, and their interactions across time and place that prepares students for local, national, and global civic life.” The revised definition is meant to emphasize an inquiry-based approach, in which students start by asking questions, then learn to analyze credible sources, said Wesley Hedgepeth, NCSS president.

The group also chose to set out guidance for elementary and secondary school social studies instruction, to emphasize that education in the topic must begin in the early grades, Hedgepeth said.

The inquiry-based approach is defined within the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards, a set of decade-old, Common Core-like guidance for social studies. The approach has received pushback from conservative politicians who want to see more “patriotic” social studies curriculums, experts at the conference said.

Critics say revisions, or attempted revisions, to social studies standards by policy makers in states such as Virginia and South Dakota remove inquiry-based learning. The new standards instead emphasize “rote memorization of facts that are deemed to help children become more patriotic,” said James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. Educators and researchers say these efforts are part of a pattern — deliberate or not — of flooding state standards and curriculums with so much content that it becomes impossible for teachers to spend the time needed to go in-depth on topics and for students to engage in critical thinking or questioning.

While it isn’t new for state legislatures and boards to step in to dictate what’s taught, what’s different now is that laws prohibit teaching certain histories rather than requiring them to be taught, according to Grossman.

While many educators at the conference seemed to want to avoid politics and focus on their instruction, they recognized that simply choosing to be a social studies teacher can be seen as taking a political side. Conservative politicians today increasingly see social studies teachers as targets, attendees said. Educators from Virginia, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky, among other states, said fights over social studies standards or anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been bruising. Some talked about receiving death threats and being doxxed, while others said they were increasingly fearful of losing their jobs.

In a workshop on how educators can get involved in advocacy efforts surrounding state revisions of history and social studies standards, Virginia teachers shared how they organized to fight a controversial social studies standards revision under the administration of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Sam Futrell, a middle school social studies teacher and president of the Virginia Council for the Social Studies, said educators organized their state professional organizations and local unions to push back against a draft revision that she said included several errors and omissions such as referring to Native Americans as “America’s first immigrants.”

Sessions at the conference also focused on how to strengthen and improve social studies materials and instruction. Educators from several states, including Maryland, Iowa and Kentucky, spoke about the need for curriculum and resources that don’t simply cater to big states like Florida, California and Texas. Social studies curriculum publishers from Imagine Learning, Core Knowledge and Pearson also talked about their efforts to update materials to make them relevant to kids from diverse backgrounds and to work more closely with educators in different states to meet their needs.

Some school leaders said they need high-quality resources that can help teachers who aren’t specialists in a particular subject or area of history to fill gaps in their knowledge. Others said the absence of a national approach to social studies instruction is an obstacle to ensuring that all students have a common framework for understanding the country and its history and participating in civic life.

Bruce Lesh, supervisor of elementary social studies for Carroll County Public schools in Maryland, said that while math, science and English have national frameworks for instruction, nothing equivalent exists in social studies. The C3 Framework discusses how to teach social studies, but it’s not like the Next-Gen science standards or Common Core English and math standards that lay the groundwork for what to teach and help all students gather a common set of knowledge and skills.

In those other disciplines, said Lesh, “There was an effort to take the inequity out of what was taught to students.”

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

The post Teaching social studies in a polarized world appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

On May 31, a school board meeting in Hernando County, Florida, made national news when more than 600 hundred people showed up and the meeting lasted until 2:30 a.m. The county had moved the meeting to the high school auditorium to accommodate a large crowd. Fearing violence, it had installed metal detectors and called in police, sheriff’s deputies and a SWAT team.

Kathleen Gates, a retired teacher who had taught for many years at Brooksville Elementary School in the Hernando County School District, described preparing for that school board meeting as if she were going into battle.

Before she left her house that evening, she printed out her will and put it on the table, along with a letter to her family. “I really did not expect to make it home,” she said during a recent conference on teaching difficult topics in the current partisan political environment, particularly in Florida.

The controversy in the rural county just north of Tampa started when a newly elected school board member, backed by the conservative Moms for Liberty group, reported a fifth-grade teacher for showing “Strange World,” a Disney movie with a gay character, in class. While the district had already closed its investigation into the teacher, the school board meeting that spring evening would decide the fate of Superintendent John Stratton, whom Moms for Liberty wanted removed.

While the meeting was heated on both sides, a majority of students, educators and parents who spoke voiced support for Stratton and the school district. Eventually, and unexpectedly, the school board voted to keep him on as superintendent.

“A rural red county in Florida stood up to Moms for Liberty and said ‘no,’” Gates recounted.

Gates was one of four Florida educators to share their recent experiences teaching in the state at the “Freedom to Teach: Confronting Complex Themes in Contested Spaces” conference, hosted by Flagler College in St. Augustine.

Originally designed as an academic conference to share research, the event brought together Florida K-12 and college teachers and students, national journalists and professionals from libraries and museums whose work focuses on history and civics. They discussed how Florida’s political climate, including recent state laws that limit school discussions of race, gender and sexuality, has affected teaching and learning on the ground.

Brandt Robinson, a history teacher from Dunedin High School in Florida, described how, during the 2021-22 school year, a student in his African-American history class dropped out three days in. Robinson later found out that the student’s mother had enrolled him in the class to get a copy of the course syllabus. She filed an appeal with the school board seeking to remove the textbooks in Robinson’s class, accusing him of teaching the concept of critical race theory and saying his course was aligned with The New York Times’ 1619 Project, both of which are now banned by the state’s board of education.

While her appeal was rejected, Robinson said, the parent filed a formal records request for all his class materials and course documents. She then went before the school board accusing Robinson of indoctrinating students with Marxist ideas, he said.

Robinson noted that these events took place even before Florida’s recent laws went into effect. He said incidents like this arose in part because of a white racial backlash in response to the mass protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Robinson, who is also the union representative for the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association, said it’s fallen to the state’s educators to be the “the kindest, most decent, but the most fierce and most credible people in the room” at school board meetings and other public events.

One of Robinson’s fellow panelists at the conference, Hayley McCulloch, a U.S. history teacher from Lee County, said many of the day-to-day obstacles teachers face in her district can be linked to what she called the conservative “assault on public education.” Among the challenges facing the district – one of the last places in the country to integrate public schools – is a shortage of nearly 200 teachers that has forced students to miss a lot of learning time.

“We’re being attacked as professionals and intellectuals,” she said, adding that changes to the state’s curriculum and standards on history and civics education have removed any freedom teachers have in the classroom to shape how and what they can teach.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has argued that the education laws are necessary to give parents more control over their children’s learning. He has said of the state law limiting discussions of gender that parents “should be protected from schools using classroom instruction to sexualize their kids as young as 5 years old.” In signing the law curbing discussions of race, DeSantis said, “There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

Sara Pierce, an assistant principal at Hollywood Hills High School in one of Florida’s more progressive counties, Broward, said that it falls on school administrators to make sure their teachers feel safe in their classrooms.

Teachers “need to have creative freedom and to able to design their curriculum and feel confident in their skill sets,” she said. Even in a blue county such as Broward, she said it has been tough to navigate the state’s new laws.

“If we take care of the teachers, then the teachers are free to then turn around and do their job, which is to take care of the children,” she said.

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Public school teaching remains a female-dominated profession. Nearly 80 percent of classroom teachers in our public schools are women. Yet when it comes to the top job — superintendent — just three in 10 are women.

Nearly half of the country’s 500 largest school districts had a change in leadership during the pandemic, but men still filled more than 70 percent of those vacancies, research by Women Leading Ed, a national network working to grow and strengthen the pipeline of women in education leadership, found. And men often replaced women in the districts where women had been leading — seven out of 10 times.

These are alarming and discouraging numbers. But they don’t have to be the end of the story.

We can strengthen gender equity in education leadership by actively supporting women who aspire to be leaders, opening professional doors for them and changing systems and policies that thwart their ascension to positions of power.

During my own leadership journey to become a superintendent, I have seen first-hand the attrition of talented women in our profession. I have also seen how sponsors, mentors and the inclusion of aspiring female leaders in key decision-making roles can be powerful tools for addressing these unacceptable imbalances, along with thoughtful approaches to gender equity in hiring and promotion.

As a teacher, I worked with about as many male principals as female — which is standard for the roughly 50/50 split nationally. However, central offices were always male dominated.

That continues to be the case in too many of our public school districts.

Related: White men have the edge in the school principal pipeline, researchers say

The lack of representation in leadership meant that when I did get a central office leadership position, I felt a constant need to prove I was worthy of being there. I believed I had to demonstrate daily that I wasn’t only just as good as but even better than my male colleagues.

Imposter syndrome, discussed across many professions, is something I felt and had to grapple with as I rose from building principal to head of curriculum, chief academic officer and beyond. I persisted thanks to sponsorships, through which my professional superiors actively opened doors for me, created trusting leadership environments and encouraged me to see myself in the female leaders who were in positions above me.

I was fortunate to have dedicated and dynamic sponsors and mentors. These leaders, women and men, not only took me under their wings, but gave me the chance to spread my own, even when my title at the time may not have matched the specific requirements of a given leadership opportunity.

Long before I became the superintendent of the school system that I attended as a child and in which I began my teaching career, I had mentors. My predecessor, Sharon Contreras, didn’t just name me her deputy, she gave me broad exposure to new challenges and management assignments.

She and other colleagues encouraged me to “just get in there and lead.” It was vital advice.

Women in leadership must often take their own seat at the table. That can mean inserting yourself into meetings and discussions even when your name isn’t on the invitation.

I believed I had to demonstrate daily that I wasn’t only just as good as but even better than my male colleagues.

It can also mean actively seeking opportunities well outside your official job description. When I served as head of academics for the district I now lead in North Carolina, I would ask another sponsor of mine if I could join meetings on facilities, operations and finance.

She always said yes and pulled me into an increasingly broader set of meetings and management decisions.

Sponsorship works, and as a woman in education leadership I am committed to paying it forward. This is a commitment I know countless of my female colleagues share.

However, there are also systemic levers that we can and must pull in order to bring about real gender equity in education leadership and in leadership as a whole.

Focusing on the composition and function of hiring teams is a good place to start — reexamining who is on hiring committees, what authority each team member holds and who determines the initial hiring pool are all opportunities for placing greater emphasis on gender equity.

Once women are on the job, ensuring that workplace policies and programs support and facilitate their growth and tenure in leadership is similarly paramount.

The reality is that women are more likely to be primary caregivers not only for children but for other family members too. As a mother of two with a job with 24/7 responsibilities, I know that so-called mom-guilt is real and corrosive if not acknowledged and addressed.

So, despite my real and important professional obligations, I make time for my family and demand that our policies encourage my colleagues in leadership and our school staff to do so as well.

Without that understanding, and without ensuring that people have space to meet the demands of their personal lives and make their loved ones the priorities they should be, we will continue to push too many talented, aspiring women leaders out before they can ascend to higher positions.

Related: COLUMN: Education needs more ambitious women

Well-administered family leave policies, flexible schedules and common decency and understanding can go a long way. The job needs to get done, but we can and must have humane workplace practices as we collectively do the work.

Paying it forward, pulling on the levers of policy change available to us and making gender equity in leadership an intentional priority all helped me and have been drivers of growth for countless women in leadership that I know.

It takes no great leap of imagination to see how powerful these changes could be for gender equity in leadership. The solutions are right there for us.

We simply need to just get in there and lead.

Whitney Oakley is superintendent of Guilford County Schools in North Carolina.

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In the last few years, the American education system has been bludgeoned by changes that have upended decades of progress toward better academic, economic and social outcomes for all.

Politicians around the country have been aiming to demolish progressive policies by targeting teaching about race and ethnicity, the LGBTQIA+ community and women’s reproductive rights. Calls for book banning and censorship have become common. These dangerous culture wars will wreak havoc on education and education policy for years to come.

As a teacher and school-based leader, I always understood the necessity of advocating for students and helping them navigate life, and I tried to help other teachers change the trajectory of many lives.

I taught my students to respect the power of civic engagement and social activism. Recent politics has made it hard to extend that work. The rollout of Florida’s House Bill 1557, popularly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, was the start of a radical transformation that threatens to undo decades of social change. Other states, including Indiana, Alabama, Ohio and Tennessee have followed Florida’s lead with legislation that is discriminatory against the LGBTQIA+ community. It must be resisted.

Teaching is inherently activist.

Politicians are also attacking the Black population. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis challenged the College Board’s AP African American Studies course, he inspired others to follow suit with flagrant concessions to institutional racism. Calls to be “anti-woke” and “anti-indoctrination” have become increasingly popular battle cries. Earlier, the complete misrepresentation and misunderstanding of critical race theory signaled a disregard for the Black community and contempt for the importance of students learning about all people and cultures. Since then, states such as Arkansas and Texas have also opposed the true teaching of the history of Black people in this country by dropping African American history courses and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The states’ actions provide a smoke screen for efforts to limit discussion of race and racism and disenfranchise the Black community.

As teachers worry about losing their jobs for violating the often-vague language of these new laws, school boards have succumbed to the demands of the few over the best interests of the majority. Who suffers the most? The students.

Related: Teachers, deputized to fight the culture wars, are often reluctant to serve

There is a critical need to prepare teachers to be intentional voices calling out the oppression that continues to plague our education system. We must do this through teaching, learning and advocacy — as well as social activism and civic engagement.

I have trained in, taught and led educator preparation programs. In past years, these programs met societal and student needs through instruction on culturally responsive teaching, trauma-informed education, conscious leadership and many other progressive approaches. Our goals were not far-fetched or new.

Teacher preparation programs have traditionally served as catalysts for shaping the future of the American education system and the ways in which we collectively work as a society to improve outcomes for all students. Teaching is inherently activist. Colleges, schools of education and alternative teacher preparation programs prepare people to engage in activism through teaching and learning. This is not what some politicians would call “indoctrination”; instead, these efforts embrace the potential for educators to be true change agents and justice warriors.

Related: OPINION: You can’t teach psychology without covering gender and sexuality, and you can’t teach history without covering racism

Today, during this 21st century version of the civil rights struggle, it is more important than ever to remember the lessons of the past and the role of educator preparation in training teachers and other education professionals to confront lies, dismantle oppressive systems and be advocates for students’ causes.

We must be deliberate in the ways in which we prepare teachers to serve the community. So many rights and freedoms are currently under attack in this country. That makes it even more important to fight for justice within the American K-12 educational system and ensure that our students learn the truth. This is dire.

Eugene Pringle Jr. is a senior professorial lecturer at the American University School of Education.

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In March, the Minneapolis Public Schools district was the target of a large ransomware attack that resulted in thousands of confidential documents — student mental health records, sexual assault incidents, suspensions and truancy reports, child abuse allegations, special education plans — dumped online.

Last year, a similar data breach of the Los Angeles school district led to thousands of students’ psychological records uploaded to the dark web. In 2020, Baltimore County Public Schools was hit with a cyberattack that disrupted the district’s remote learning programs, froze its operations and cost the school system nearly $10 million. On Sept. 1, Pennsylvania’s Chambersburg Area School District was the latest school district to be hit with a cyberattack.

Cyberattacks have become a growing threat to school districts across the country in recent years, with cybercrime gangs viewing school systems as soft targets because of their lack of cybersecurity infrastructure. While many school districts are starting to take steps to secure that infrastructure, there’s still a long way to go, according to experts.

“Students normally shouldn’t have to worry about their privacy and their safety when they’re going around the internet in a school-approved manner,” said Jake Chanenson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago and one of the authors of a study released earlier this year on the privacy and security challenges facing K-12 education. But because schools don’t have enough staff with the expertise to properly vet safety risks associated with educational technology, he said, the increased use of that tech is putting students at risk.

School districts that have been hit say they are taking new safety precautions. After a phishing attack in 2019, the Atlanta Public Schools district hired a private firm to conduct security assessments of its networks to find blind spots and weaknesses, according to Olufemi “Femi” Aina, the district’s executive director of information technology. The district has also backed up sensitive school data offsite, invested in insurance that covers cybersecurity liability and added security procedures like multi-factor authentication on school devices, he said. In addition, the district is providing cybersecurity education to employees and students. School faculty and staff participate in mock phishing drills and are sent to cybersecurity training. Students are being taught to set up multifactor authentication and choose complicated passwords.

“If you can prevent your employees or make them more aware, so that they do not click on those harmful emails, or respond to those types of messages, it can be just as effective, if not more, than a lot of different systems that we have,” Aina said.

Days or weeks of missed school and lost instructional time for students can result when sensitive student or employee information, such as social security numbers, student health records and disability diagnoses, is compromised due to a ransomware attack or data breach, he said.

Related: ‘Don’t rush to spend on edtech’

The federal government is starting to step in. During a recent Department of Education cybersecurity summit cohosted by first lady Jill Biden, Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, the agency announced several new initiatives and released guidance for school districts on how to tackle cyber threats and what to do if they are hit by an attack.

The education department plans to develop a special council made up of federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments to coordinate policy and communication between government and the education sector to strengthen school district’s cyber defenses, according to Kristina Ishmael, deputy director of the Office of Educational Technology. She called it a “first step” in the department’s strategy to protect schools and districts from cybersecurity threats and help them respond to attacks.

Meanwhile, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has proposed a pilot cybersecurity program, which would run separately, but in tandem, with the FCC’s E-Rate program, which was created in the early 1990s as a way to provide affordable internet for schools and libraries. The three-year pilot would provide $200 million to schools and libraries eligible for the E-Rate program to use toward hiring cybersecurity experts and beefing up school network security.  

Groups such as the Consortium of School Networking, or CoSN, a K-12 tech education advocacy group, have long been calling on the FCC to update the E-Rate program to include more cybersecurity protections, said CoSN’s CEO Keith Krueger. “We’ve been saying this is a five-alarm fire for the last two years,” he said.

“None of that really solves the problem that only about one in three school districts has a full-time equivalent person dedicated to cybersecurity.”

Keith Krueger, CEO, Consortium of School Networking, or CoSN

Krueger said he doesn’t believe a three-year pilot is needed to determine the demand for this funding; a coalition of education organizations that includes his group is calling for the pilot to be limited to one year and for the FCC to make cybersecurity funding permanent at the pilot’s conclusion. He added that while the federal government’s announcement of resources for school districts is helpful, much more funding to support cybersecurity infrastructure is needed.

“None of that really solves the problem that only about one in three school districts has a full-time equivalent person dedicated to cybersecurity,” he said. While they wait for additional funding, he said school districts need to get creative in their methods for attracting the cybersecurity professionals their districts need, he said. Such approaches could include partnering with local community colleges, vocational or technical schools to provide internships for students in cybersecurity programs.

Marshini Chetty, associate professor at the University of Chicago and one of the lead researchers of the study on privacy and security risks to K-12 education, recommends that school districts develop a cybersecurity plan or checklist that outlines who to call in case of an attack and how to inform students and faculty. Her co-author on the study, PhD candidate Chanenson, said districts should dedicate a professional development day to cybersecurity and best practices for staff as part of back-to-school planning.

Atlanta’s Aina said school districts aren’t usually able to pay top dollar for cybersecurity professionals. Given the growing threats to school systems, Aina said district leaders need to give school technology leaders access to more funding so they can keep protections for the sensitive data in their schools up-to-date.  

“Most people don’t remember cybersecurity until there’s an incident and then it becomes the buzzword,” he said. “But cybersecurity is all about being ready, being proactive and building those layers around your critical assets to keep you safe before the incident happens.”

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We are facing an impending crisis in the nation’s principal pipeline, and the way we license principals is making it worse. This is especially true if a would-be principal is enrolled in a distance education program offered by a college or university outside their state. It is difficult for aspiring school administrators to know in advance if their home state will accept the program they are considering or the license they have earned.

We could not be experiencing this problem at a worse time. Principals, like teachers, are struggling and accelerating their plans to leave their roles in the wake of the pandemic. This is on top of the pre-pandemic trend in which 50 percent of school leaders were leaving in their third year. Schools in communities experiencing high poverty suffer the most.

With only 40 to 50 percent of assistant principals becoming principals, the nation needs more educators willing to become administrators. To help fill these gaps, we need to streamline school principal licensure across state lines.

This issue seems to be particularly acute for Black and Hispanic educators, who are underrepresented in principalship and systemically delayed in being promoted. In a survey of Black and Hispanic teachers, 52 percent suggested allowing licensure across state lines as a key tactic to diversify the profession (there is limited data on principals’ attitudes on this issue).

Expanding the school administrator pipeline is critical. Research shows that when a school has a Black leader, students do better and more Black teachers get hired and stay on the job.

Related: OPINION: Want to improve our public schools? Create an impressive principal pipeline

As a consultant and educator licensure professional, I have seen firsthand how complicated it can be for aspiring leaders trained in one state to become licensed in another. I recall an interaction with an education student who had been offered a pathway to a school leadership position. She was excited by the offer, but wanted to ensure that she would be able to become licensed in that state before committing. Despite documenting how her program of study matched the requirements listed on the state’s website, she could not get confirmation from the state’s licensing board that her program would meet the state’s requirements. This experience left her agonizing between completing her current program or starting another program approved by the state offering the leadership pathway.

Licensure across state lines is complicated not only for principal candidates but also for licensing boards and principal preparation program providers. Boards and providers know that the requirements a candidate needs to meet to become licensed in their home state can change before the student ends the program. This makes them reluctant to confirm for candidates in advance whether an out-of-state program meets their state’s standards for licensure.

We must change our approach to credentialing school leaders trained or licensed outside of the state in which they hope to work.

I recall one year in which, over a six-month period, requirements in seven states where many of our students were located changed, requiring us to reevaluate whether a path to licensure still existed for our students in those states.

The current system does not serve aspiring principals, administrator preparation programs or state licensing boards well. We must change our approach to credentialing school leaders trained or licensed outside of the state in which they reside.

One critical step that we can take is to create a more straightforward pathway for licenses earned in one state to transfer to another. Here, we can take a cue from policies developed for teachers. The recently launched Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact creates reciprocity between participating states and reduces barriers to employment. We need a similar agreement for principals. Policymakers should act now to develop a compact for principal licensure, leveraging the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact as a guide.

Related: OPINION: How to make it easier for teachers to stay in the classroom

Additionally, licensing boards and principal preparation program providers must take action to ensure that students know when they enroll if a program meets their home state’s requirements. Minimally, providers must allocate more internal or consulting capacity to review changing licensure requirements in other states. Often, program providers only employ one staff person to oversee licensure-related work for multiple educator preparation programs. When standards change, it is incredibly difficult for staff to keep pace. States should have clear language (as in Tennessee and Rhode Island) describing the requirements that in-state and out-of-state program completers must meet to be licensed.

A small number of states, like South Carolina, go even further. They allow education students, before enrolling in an out-of-state program, to request a review of the program to clarify whether it is expected to meet South Carolina’s requirements. Initiatives like this should be expanded and, potentially, opened to preparation program providers.

This is not an argument that we should have lower standards for licensure. It is a plea that we remove barriers to candidates who have enrolled in, or received a principal license from, a quality administrator preparation program outside of the state in which they hope to work.

Having an effective school leader is one of the highest-leverage investments we can make in a K-12 school. Failure to take proactive steps to widen the principal pipeline will significantly affect the supply of school administrators in this country. Policymakers, licensing boards and principal preparation program providers must act now to ensure an ample and equitable workforce of school leaders prepared to serve this nation’s schools.

Leopold Richardson is the principal consultant at Asher Ambrose, a strategic leadership and education consultancy, and former senior regulatory affairs, accreditation and certification professional.

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Chief equity officers in public school districts across the country have one key mission: to help address the inequities in our education system. But as more equity officers are hired, their individual challenges — and how to solve them — are unique.

In practice, the work of a chief equity officer varies vastly across counties, cities, neighborhoods and the schools they serve — often even classroom to classroom.

Most equity officers are aware of the external fights and forces they face, such as the debates around critical race theory, school name changes and the reversal of equity initiatives, along with the politicization of the role itself.

And they face hurdles within the very school systems they serve.

At Chicago Beyond’s recent convening of equity officers from around the country, many shared a similar throughline: Too often, some don’t receive the support they need from their school districts and feel isolated. It’s critical to note that a goal of equity work is that it will exist in all aspects of a school district, and it should not squarely fall on one person alone.

I believe there are three mechanisms that district equity leaders and educators can reimagine to advance student equity, whether equity officers’ mission is supported or not: funding, policy design and collaboration.

Addressing the first mechanism, many districts rely on traditional, often outdated funding models, like those based on school size. Yet students at some of the smallest schools are often the most marginalized or the furthest away from opportunities.

The result is a vicious cycle — a lack of resources creates inadequate educational experiences, which creates academic emergencies that require more resources and ensure that there are no means to even begin considering equity.

An example of a reimagined funding model is the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) Opportunity Index, whose metrics include barriers to opportunity like race, socioeconomic status, health and community factors.

Equity officers should play a vital role in the funding process, providing their expertise and input to ensure that underrepresented schools receive the resources they need to succeed.

Related: How one city closed the digital divide for nearly all its students

Second, district leadership can foster equity by focusing on policies behind the scenes that lead to better outcomes for all.

Take a school with low reading scores, where an obvious solution involves creating and funding a reading program. Designing an equitable policy would involve considering broader questions: Why aren’t the children reading at grade level? What systems and programs do we need to put in place for all students to read and write at grade level? Are students’ books culturally relevant to them and can they connect with them?

Third, all reimagined polices must also be informed by the voices of students’ families and communities; those who are most impacted have the most to gain or lose.

Educators and administrators must work alongside equity officers to develop policies that are culturally responsive and inclusive. Even if everyone doesn’t agree with the final policies, all can walk away knowing that they were given a chance to provide input and that proper information was gathered beforehand.

That’s why collaboration is key. Too often, equity officers are brought in after a policy or program is enacted and getting media attention.

We can create learning environments that enable all students to thrive by focusing on and reimagining the ways we fund, design and collaborate with equity in mind.

Equity officers must collaborate to work alongside other district leaders and department heads, parents, students and community members. Otherwise, their endeavors will certainly encounter obstacles that slow or block progress toward equitable outcomes.

One positive example: Chicago Public Schools this year renamed an elementary school after American abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

In the past, a name change would have involved just two meetings with families. The equity office revamped the approach to add more involvement from staff, parents and, most importantly, students.

Each grade level researched names to nominate and presented ideas to the entire student body, who voted for their favorite. The process was long and occasionally fraught, but ultimately created meaningful partnerships.

That test case helped the school district develop a standardized, thoughtful process for name changes in the future that will include student ownership and pride.

A school name change is progress. But it’s only a start. We can also do this for decisions that include district leaders.

As chief innovation officer at Chicago Beyond, my work gives me a unique opportunity to engage with national leaders across urban, rural and suburban school districts. I understand the responsibilities facing equity officers everywhere and believe we can create learning environments that enable all students to thrive by focusing on and reimagining the ways we fund, design and collaborate with equity in mind.

We trust our teachers to shape our children’s futures. Let’s trust our chief equity officers as well.

Maurice Swinney is chief innovation officer at Chicago Beyond. He spent 21 years in public education, most recently serving as the first-ever chief equity officer at Chicago Public Schools.

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No one can deny the pandemic’s devastating impact on America’s public schools. Since March 2020, districts across the country have experienced alarming declines in student achievement in math and reading, a mental health crisis among students and widespread job dissatisfaction among educators.

The pandemic also made it impossible to ignore the inequities faced by Black and Latino students — such as limited access to digital resources, rigorous coursework and skilled educators.

And while it’s tempting to blame the pandemic for creating these challenges, the truth is that they existed long before schools transitioned to remote learning three years ago.

Federal and state policymakers have since suggested various solutions — from increasing access to tutoring to boosting teacher pay. However, one of our greatest potential solutions is often missed in the national conversation: providing professional development for principals.

The public appreciates and understands the important role that CEOs, college presidents and other leaders play in the success of their organizations. Yet, the significance of the key leadership position in our schools is largely overlooked and under-supported.

Principals often lack access to professional development opportunities. Research suggests that this is one of the top reasons why so many principals are exiting their jobs.

Consider what principals take on when they agree to lead a school. They recruit and develop teachers who are in front of our kids each day. They meet with families to discuss their children’s academic performance and social-emotional progress. They advocate for the needs of students in front of district leaders and school board members. Most of all, they set a school’s vision and culture.

Research shows that effective principals can have a dramatic impact on absenteeism, teacher satisfaction and, importantly, student achievement.

Related: OPINION: We know principals are important, so why doesn’t anyone want to be one these days?

One study found that replacing a below-average principal with an above-average principal results in gains of an additional three months of learning in math and reading for the average student.

We need to remember that a principal presides over an entire school, meaning that their impact extends far beyond students and teachers, reaching exponentially more people. Principals have the power to positively change a community.

So how can K-12 districts capitalize on this outsized potential role that principals can play in creating an atmosphere of excellence?

The answer lies in giving them authority to lead — especially those who serve in the most disadvantaged schools. It also lies in providing principals with the proper financial support and resources to develop great teachers, improve student outcomes and create learning environments that foster success.

Effective principals can have a dramatic impact on absenteeism, teacher satisfaction and, importantly, student achievement.

Take the work happening in Memphis-Shelby County Schools in Tennessee, where my colleagues at New Leaders have broadened the principal pipeline and helped develop future and sitting principals. A recent study found that schools led by principals who received New Leaders training outperformed their peers and met more standards than the district average.

In some instances, principals may benefit from development programs that put them in proximity to their peers. Some programs bring together entire leadership teams for joint summits, where they learn strategies for working collaboratively, including creating action plans, using systems to scale best practices and looking at curricula through an equity lens.

Other times, principals need expert coaching from a more experienced colleague, like a former education leader or former principal, who can provide immediate feedback about the challenges that pop up on any given day — from confronting thorny disciplinary situations, to navigating complex staffing challenges, to keeping track of students’ mental health and well-being.

Regardless of the format, professional development opportunities need to be designed specifically with principals in mind. That means that the curricula must include research-based content, provide high-quality feedback and focus on continuous opportunities for practice.

This would allow our schools’ key leaders to create learning environments in which everyone thrives.

School districts task principals with tremendous responsibilities and, rightfully, hold them accountable when their schools fall short of their goals. In return, principals deserve opportunities to develop their skills and discover new ways to drive improved outcomes for students and unite teachers and families in this shared mission. Principals can only be a solution when they’re given the professional development necessary to succeed, including opportunities to learn and grow — just like the students they serve.

Jean S. Desravines is the CEO of national nonprofit New Leaders.

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Education policy should be top of mind as state policymakers continue their legislative work this spring. After unprecedented learning loss, growing disparities in educational outcomes and overall public dissatisfaction, the time is right for an education overhaul.

Now is the time to capitalize on a growing momentum for personalized, competency-based learning, as 72 percent of Americans say K-12 education should be a top priority for state lawmakers in 2023. Almost half say that they want to see bold changes taking place.

Such change will require states to create the policy flexibility needed for local innovation to flourish. Yet inflexibility is a hallmark of our current education system, apparent in our failure to meet the diverse learning needs of all our children.

Education leaders must be brave and stand up and admit publicly and repeatedly that this system just isn’t working and discuss what is needed to improve it. Policymakers must revamp our education system’s faulty design and the failed policies that prevent us from trying new approaches.

Across all socioeconomic and racial groups, Americans want an education system that goes beyond college preparation and delivers practical skills for every learner, based on their own needs, goals and vision for the future.

We believe that this can be achieved by making the future of learning more personalized, focused on the needs of individual learners, with success measured by progress and proficiency instead of point-in-time test scores.

Change is hard, but we expect our students to take risks and fail every day. We should ask no less of ourselves.

The work has already begun. A decade ago, barely half of all states had policies in place that allowed for personalized, competency-based learning. Now, almost every state does. This approach has learners and educators working together to ensure that students master what they need to learn, with opportunities to show what they know and can do in a variety of ways.

Personalized learning helps each student receive support to reach their learning goals. It’s tailored so that they can chart their own path to getting where they need to be, using the time and space they need to get there.

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This approach to teaching and learning also fosters more equitable outcomes. In Philadelphia, personalized learning interventions helped stop the widespread practice of labeling, sorting and separating students by perceived academic ability and behavioral compliance. District leaders worked with parents, community leaders, administrators and educators to create a system that recognizes, and accounts for, how children start their learning journeys in many different ways.

For example, we introduced nonverbal cognitive assessments to measure intellectual aptitude among all second graders. This resulted in the identification of many more Black, Latino and non-English speaking learners being offered accelerated learning opportunities. Previously, most children identified as “gifted” were from affluent areas and predominately white. 

Americans want an education system that goes beyond college preparation and delivers practical skills for every learner, based on their own needs, goals and vision for the future.

Across the country, similar teaching and learning innovations are underway. The Canopy Project has documented hundreds of examples of what is possible when stakeholders work together to reimagine the future of education.

Thirteen states have outlined the knowledge, skills and dispositions that all students in the state must demonstrate by the time they graduate.

Organizations representing state boards of education, state education chiefs and state legislators are now recognizing the power of this movement, amplifying and elevating this new approach to education.

The state of North Dakota has been pushing innovation since 2013 when it introduced a structured statewide system for continuous improvement and accountability. The measurement system included a growth metric to ensure educators had an accurate view of learner progress. The work truly began to reap dividends in 2017, when the governor, state lawmakers and education stakeholders enacted legislation giving the superintendent authority to waive state assessment and graduation requirements, so-called seat time policies and other elements of state-required instruction.

This provided the flexibility districts needed to shape innovative educational approaches.The department has since established the North Dakota Personalized, Competency-Based Learning Initiative, supporting districts as they scale personalized learning models.

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KnowledgeWorks, in a partnership with the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and educators across the state, developed the North Dakota Learning Continuum, which defines a set of learning expectations for students participating in a competency-based learning model and details what they should know and be able to demonstrate, both during their K-12 career and beyond.

While state policy in North Dakota made way for system innovations, transformation gained traction when local educators, families and students came together to make fundamental changes in their vision for a common education future.

Instead of focusing on ACT scores, grading scales and report cards, the new approach gives North Dakota schools the ability to reevaluate goals and benchmarks and offers students the opportunity to pursue the outcomes they desire.

To make transformational change, the best intentions of every educator, principal and administrator are not enough. Every stakeholder, including parents, teachers, advocates and community members, must be an active part of the solution. All school systems and educators need support in the common effort to find solutions to America’s student learning deficit.

Many new school board members, state legislators and policy makers have taken office this spring. Sharing examples of success and what personalized learning could look like in their communities can be a powerful policy motivator.

Everyone has a role to play in changing the course of a century-old system, and for fulfilling the promise and potential that personalized, competency-based learning holds for our nation’s students.

Bill Hite is the former superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), the largest public school system in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He currently serves as the CEO of KnowledgeWorks.

Kirsten Baesler is the state school superintendent and administrator of the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, overseeing the education of almost 122,000 students across the state.

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

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