Growing numbers of students need special education services. Yet there are fewer qualified clinicians who are willing and able to work in school buildings full time.

There is a new solution that exists, one that many other sectors have embraced: A hybrid, more flexible workforce.

The number of students deemed to need special education services increased by nearly a million students over the last decade, and it now makes up 15 percent of all public school enrollments.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates a 19 percent growth in demand for speech language pathologists and a 12 percent growth in demand for occupational therapists over the next decade.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than two-thirds of public schools have reported increases in students seeking mental health services.

The effects of these strains on resources are far-reaching. Students and families are left waiting for critical services, while staffers are faced with ever-growing caseloads that lead to burnout and, in some cases, departure from the profession.

Students in low-income areas are already the least likely to have access to special education and early intervention services — a challenge exacerbated by staffing shortages.

Teletherapy services, provided online via live videoconferencing, were commonly used during the pandemic months when schools were shuttered and students needed connection with their therapists.

Related: Teletherapy has been powering virtual special education for years

Once clinicians learned how to work online, many embraced teletherapy, finding that it brought focus to their time with children and offered exciting new ways to engage in their sessions. A significant number of U.S. public school districts relied on it to provide critical special education services including psychological evaluations, speech therapy and occupational therapy to their students.

But when schools reopened, many prioritized a return to fully in-person services. Even though clinicians were ready to change how and where they worked, most schools were not. In discussions I’ve had with school leaders, many regarded teletherapy as an emergency stopgap, and in my view, that was a mistake.

Returning to the old ways of doing things just hasn’t worked. Many schools that dug in on resuming in-person services with no exceptions have been unable to fill vacancies across their special education teams.

And, for example, annual data from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association shows that despite growing student needs, the percentage of certified speech language pathologists working in schools has been declining steadily for over a decade.

With staff shortages in critical areas, backlogs and compensatory time (to make up for services not provided) have been building up, signaling a need for a better solution.

Some districts are now turning to teletherapy services for special education as more than a temporary pandemic-era solution.

Some districts are now turning to teletherapy services for special education as more than a temporary pandemic-era solution, and are creating true hybrid service models, in which schools strategically utilize their in-person staff for emergent issues or high-need students, while virtual therapists provide support for ongoing special education service needs.

Data from my organization, Presence, a provider of teletherapy solutions, shows that some of the nation’s largest districts, and at least 10,000 forward-thinking schools, have adopted a hybrid model to ensure support for students, clinicians and school and district leaders.

With the capability to deliver a portion of services online, districts can offer services and stability for students regardless of their zip code. The hybrid model also enables school administrators to increase capacity and balance workloads by retaining great therapists while adding more diversity and deeper specialties to the talent pool.

For example, Newberg-Dundee Public Schools in Oregon embraced teletherapy to assess and address the needs of their students faster and have since seen positive results. Teachers in the district told us that many students appear to be more eager to attend their teletherapy sessions. They said that students often seem more focused in the dedicated virtual setting and less distracted.

District officials say parents are now requesting teletherapy services for their children because they’ve seen such great progress.

Related: These parents want more virtual learning. New Jersey says they’re on their own

In addition to supporting students and school administrators, teletherapy serves the providers themselves. The model embraces working remotely from home, with flexible hours, including part-time.

Many of those drawn to teletherapy are working mothers seeking to reduce time outside the home and retirees who want to continue the work they love in a reduced capacity.

The thousands of clinicians who have embraced teletherapy find that when they remove themselves from day-to-day burdens inside the school building, they are better able to focus on their clinical work and target their students’ specific needs.

A hybrid staffing model alone isn’t a cure-all to address students’ increasing needs or to reverse widespread school staff shortages. But as schools search for solutions to address these issues, embracing a combination of in-person staff and remote specialists offers promise.

Kate Eberle Walker is CEO of Presence, the leading provider of teletherapy solutions for children with diverse needs.

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I hear frequently from those in business that younger employees, directly out of K-12 or higher education, are looking for direction.

They want step-by-step guidance on how to tackle challenges.

That’s because some of today’s learners graduate without ever being required to process information, think critically or seek paths forward that are not explicitly spelled out for them.

The rigid structure of the traditional K-12 education system leaves little room for students to engage in real-world problem-solving scenarios. In many cases it stifles creativity and curiosity, discouraging students from questioning established norms or exploring alternative perspectives.

While curriculums vary across different regions and educational systems, in most cases a heavy emphasis on grades and standardized test scores prioritizes rote memorization over developing students’ capacity to analyze, synthesize and evaluate information critically and independently.

Students are not actively involved in shaping their learning journey. They should be. Our world presents increasingly complex challenges. Education must adapt so that it nurtures problem solvers and critical thinkers.

That’s why I’m a fan of personalized and competency-based learning environments, in which young people do learn these skills.

Related: Why a high-performing district is changing everything with competency-based learning

These environments encourage students to make important decisions about what, when and where they learn. Students assess their own strengths and weaknesses and set learning goals in partnership with their teachers.

Students are not pushed ahead until they have demonstrated competence, but can advance rapidly in areas in which they excel and delve deeper into subjects that interest them.

Teachers support and provide resources, but the responsibility for learning lies with each student.

When I was a school superintendent in Maine, the five cities and towns that comprised our learning community wanted assurances that graduates of our three high schools would be adequately prepared for college or career training opportunities after high school.

We set out to meet that challenge and better understand the extent to which personalized, competency-based learning could prepare our learners for an uncertain future.

What we learned is that when high school students develop the skills required for success in college or vocational training, they are more likely to pursue postsecondary education and opportunities.

Our world presents increasingly complex challenges. Education must adapt so that it nurtures problem solvers and critical thinkers.

In one of our high schools, postsecondary enrollment had become an area of particular community concern after students started showing less interest in postgraduate opportunities. Following full-scale implementation of a proficiency-based system in 2011, postsecondary enrollment increased to 71 percent by 2018, up from an average rate of 59 percent over the 10 years prior to the district’s shift to personalized, competency-based learning.

But the true indicator of impact came directly from students and their eventual professors. One professor reached out to tell me how impressed he was by the self-advocacy that students from our district demonstrated.

Since my time in Maine, personalized, competency-based learning has gained momentum as a transformative solution for equipping students with the skills and tools needed for navigating an ever-evolving future.

More educational institutions, both at the K-12 and higher education levels, have been using competency-based learning models. Every state now has policies on the books that provide the flexibility needed for more learner-centered approaches.

The recent announcement by the U.S. Department of Education calling on more states to innovate and pilot new approaches to assessment represents a significant shift toward innovation over compliance and signals that there will be more opportunities for collaboration between federal and state entities in building a new framework for the nation’s K-12 system.

But like all organizations, education institutions can be resistant to change.

Some schools or districts may not be fully aware of the flexible policies that exist or may feel uncertain about how to translate those policies into practice. Unclear guidance, conventional parental expectations and fear of reporting requirements can limit districts’ willingness to experiment with different teaching approaches.

As I witnessed firsthand in Maine, early adopters of student-centered learning practices will inevitably face a myriad of challenges as they endeavor to reshape a system deeply rooted in well-established cultural norms.

Related: OPINION: Post pandemic, it’s time for a bold overhaul of U.S. public education, starting now

Innovation carries inherent risks and often lacks established support networks, services and reporting structures. Resistance from educators, students and parents whose learners benefit from the status quo can quickly sideline well-positioned efforts to better support all learners. 

Despite these challenges, I remain steadfast in my belief that embracing a more progressive educational approach is not merely an option; it’s a strategic imperative if we hope to nurture a generation ready to thrive in a dynamic and unpredictable world.

In a time when adaptability and mastery of diverse skills are paramount, competency-based learning transcends traditional education models.

By tailoring learning experiences to individuals’ strengths and preferred pace, personalized, competency-based learning not only fosters a deeper understanding of subjects but also cultivates independence and self-confidence.

Virgel Hammonds is chief learning officer at KnowledgeWorks, which partners with national policymakers and local learning communities to create learner-centered policies and practices. He previously served as superintendent of the RSU 2 school district in Maine.

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Last year, Brandi Pitts’ kindergarten students were struggling with a software program meant to help them with math. The tool was supposed to enable teachers to tailor their instruction to individual students’ learning needs, but even the kids who had strong math skills weren’t doing well.

At a training session this summer, Pitts, a teacher at Oakdale Elementary in Sandy, Utah, learned why: The program works best when teachers supervise kids rather than sending them off to do exercises on their own. Her school had received free software licenses through a state-funded project, but she’d initially missed the formal instruction on how to use the program because she was out sick.

“A lot of times with education, we have to figure things out on our own,” she said. “But having that training, I’m so much more encouraged that I can improve my teaching.”

School systems spend tens of billions of dollars each year on ed tech products, but much of that money is wasted. Educators, who are rarely trained on the software, often leave products unopened or unused. Meanwhile, with more than 11,000 ed tech products on the market and companies sometimes making extravagant claims about their effectiveness, it’s often impossible to determine which products work and which don’t.

But after much trial and error, Utah designed a system to ensure that the money districts spend on ed tech actually benefits students. The state’s K-12 Math Personalized Learning Software grant program, created in 2013, requires ed tech companies to train teachers like Pitts on their products and obligates the businesses to credit the state if the licenses are never used. Experts say it’s a promising model for alleviating some of the problems plaguing ed tech.

“There’s a coming reckoning as the pandemic funding comes to an end over the next year. School districts will have to make choices.”

Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking

It’s “driving more accountability,” said Tal Havivi, senior director of industry partnerships at the International Society for Technology in Education, which connects educators and ed tech providers. While he’s unaware of other states doing anything similar at this scale, he said there’s a growing movement among school districts to write contracts that require ed tech providers to show results before they are paid.

That movement can’t grow fast enough, according Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, which represents school tech leaders. During the pandemic, school systems dramatically expanded the number of software products they used as companies offered free subscriptions for a limited time and the federal government showered districts with emergency funding, he said. But many of the products weren’t high quality.

“There’s a coming reckoning as the pandemic funding comes to an end over the next year,” Krueger said. “School districts will have to make choices.”

Related: ‘Don’t rush to spend on ed tech’

The Utah state legislature created the personalized learning program in response to concerns that students were falling behind in math. The project would identify software programs that showed evidence of improving student math performance and give free licenses to school districts that applied for them.

But at first, few teachers took note. Halfway through the project’s first school year, 2014-15, just 9 percent of licenses distributed were being used, said Clarence Ames, who coordinates the project for the STEM Action Center, created by the same legislation. So, starting in the second year, the center began requiring software companies to offer in-person instruction for teachers at each participating school before they were paid.

The STEM Action Center made other adjustments too. Because district-level administrators typically requested the software programs, school staff were often unaware of them or learned about them too late for teachers to receive training. So, the center began requiring that district leaders, district IT directors and school principals all sign off. The center also moved up the timeline for schools to get the software — from August to February — so teachers would have ample time to test the products before a new school year.

In addition, Ames rewrote ed tech contracts to require companies to return any unused license to the project for use the following school year. The system operates like a money-back guarantee, putting providers on the hook financially.

Because of these requirements, some companies opt out of partnering, said Ames. The onsite training is expensive. “It’s a challenge for us as an industry because it’s not something companies have typically done,” said Charles Ward, a vice president at ed tech company Derivita, based in Salt Lake City. “But I think that’s on us to figure out.” 

Related: PROOF POINTS: How can tutors reach more kids? Researchers look to ed tech

At a time of increased scrutiny of ed tech, the results from the Utah effort are notable. Since the center retooled its approach, 100 percent of software licenses in participating districts are opened and used.

The state has also made progress in assessing which math software products correlate with improved student achievement. By collecting data for almost 10 years, the STEM Action team identified nine math tools that show a statistically significant impact on student outcomes.

For students using project-approved software, the gains have been real. A 2019 evaluation found that students who used such tools for half an hour or more per week were about 57 percent more likely to test proficient in math on state standardized math tests than a comparison group who didn’t use them.

During the pandemic, when learning went online and school districts elsewhere rushed to find proven tech tools to serve students, Utah had an advantage because of its approved provider list, said Ames. When the emergency hit, the state didn’t have to scramble to find vendors whose products showed evidence of success.

That may have shown up in test scores: Utah students’ fourth and eighth grade math scores on national-level tests fell during the pandemic, but the drops were smaller than those in most states. Ames is cautious about drawing conclusions but said the math software likely played a role in keeping Utah’s numbers from falling off a cliff.

But a lot depends on individual teachers: Those whose students more regularly use the software get better outcomes.

Heidi Watson, a math coach at North Park Elementary in the city of Tremonton, said the training on ed tech tools is invaluable. Using the program’s data, teachers can diagnose individual students’ challenges and more effectively work with them in small groups, she said. Teachers have also learned to refine their assignments — for example, by asking students to complete three modules rather than to spend 20 minutes with the software.

Some believe tech tools should minimize the role of teachers. A state leader once suggested moving entirely to software-driven learning to eliminate educators, calling them “the weak link,” Ames recalled. But if anything, Utah’s data suggests that despite the increasing sophistication of tech tools, educators are needed more than ever, Ames said. “100 percent of our data points to the fact that that is inaccurate,” he said of the argument that teachers have limited value. “The most important variable is the teacher, no matter what.”

Research in 2018 on 48 school districts concluded that a median of only 30 percent of licenses ever got used.

Ames said he’s heard from some other states and districts inquiring about Utah’s model for managing ed tech. A few years ago, the Texas Education Agency adopted Utah’s practice of requiring participating school districts to use only agency-vetted software tools that show evidence of improving student outcomes on state tests.

Math teaching is going better for Pitts this fall. She just had her students take their first quiz on the software, and because she understands the program better, she’s better able to use those results to pinpoint the specific help each student needs. She also knows where on the company’s website to find guidance, including a feature that lets her access other teachers’ real-time tips on how they’re using it, which she didn’t know about last year.

Most important, she sees how the tool fits with her instruction. “It’s not teaching for you,” she said. “It’s a tool to support your teaching.”

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

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This summer, the White House persuaded seven major tech companies to make substantial commitments toward the responsible development of artificial intelligence; in early September, eight more joined in. The companies pledged to focus on researching the societal dangers of AI, such as the perpetuation of bias and abuse of privacy, and to develop AI that addresses those dangers.

This is a huge step forward, given AI’s potential to do harm through the use of biased and outdated data. And nowhere is this conversation more relevant than in K-12 education, where AI holds the promise of revolutionizing how teachers teach and students learn. Legislators must begin regulating AI now.

Take speech-recognition technology, for example, which has transformative applications in the classroom: Students can use their voices to demonstrate how well they can read, spell or speak a language and receive real-time feedback. The data generated helps educators tailor their lesson plans and instruction.

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

However, AI tools can also heighten existing inequities, including when used in speech-recognition tools that don’t adequately reflect the unique speech patterns of many children or account for the breadth of dialects and accents present in today’s classrooms. If the datasets powering voice-enabled learning tools do not represent the diversity of student voices, a new generation of classroom technologies could misunderstand or inaccurately interpret what kids say and, therefore, what they know.

That’s why we must insist on transparency in how AI tools are built and ensure that the data used to build them includes persistent checks and balances to ensure accuracy and bias mitigation before these tools enter the classroom, along with rigorous and continuous testing thereafter.

This will require action from all sides — policymakers, education leaders and education technology developers themselves. As a first step, policymakers around the globe must prioritize writing and enacting policies that establish high bars for the accuracy and equity of AI systems and ensure strong protections for personal data and privacy.

When it comes to AI, we can’t afford the same wait-and-see approach many governments took to regulating social media.

Policy always lags innovation, but when it comes to AI, we can’t afford the same wait-and-see approach many governments took to regulating social media, for example.

Over the last year, I’ve been serving as Ireland’s first AI ambassador, a role designed to help people understand the opportunities and risks of an AI-pervasive society. I now also chair Ireland’s first A.I. Advisory Council, whose goal is to provide the government with independent advice on AI technology and how it can impact policy, build public trust and foster the development of unbiased AI that keeps human beings at the center of the experience.

I’ve been advocating for more than a decade for policies that apply strict safeguards around how children interact with AI. Such policies have recently been gaining appreciation and, more importantly, traction.

The European Union is moving closer to passing legislation that will be the world’s most far-reaching attempt to address the risks of AI. The new European Union Artificial Intelligence Act categorizes AI-enabled technologies based on the risk they pose to the health, safety and human rights of users. By its very nature, ed tech is categorized as high risk, subject to the highest standards for bias, security and other factors.

But education leaders can’t wait for policies to be drawn up and legislation enacted. They need to set their own guardrails for using AI-enabled ed tech. This starts with the requirement that ed tech companies answer critical questions about the capabilities and limitations of their AI-enabled tools, such as:

• What’s the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the dataset your AI model is based on?
• How do you continuously test and improve your model and algorithms to mitigate bias?
• Can teachers review and override the data your product generates?

District leaders should only adopt technologies that clearly have the right safeguards in place. The nonprofit EdTech Equity Project’s procurement guide for district leaders is a great place to start — offering a rubric for assessing new AI-powered ed tech solutions.

And ed tech companies must demonstrate that their AI is accurate and without bias before it is used by young students in a classroom. In this case, by making sure that, when assessing a child for literacy skills, for example, the voice-enabled tools recognize the child’s skill challenges and strengths with as much if not more truth as a teacher sitting with the child. This means frequently testing and evaluating models to ensure they are accessible to and inclusive of a range of student demographics and perform consistently for each. It also means training product managers and marketers to educate teachers about how the AI works, what data is collected and how to apply new insights to student performance.

Independent assessment of bias is becoming recognized as a critical new standard for ed tech companies that use AI. To address this need, organizations like Digital Promise offer certifications to assess AI-powered tools and validate that they are bias-free.

Related: How college educators are using AI in the classroom

So, what’s the endgame of all this work by companies and district leaders? A whole new generation of AI-powered education tools that remove fallible and subjective human judgment when teaching and assessing kids of all backgrounds for reading and language skills.

Doing this work will ensure that educators have access to tools that support their teaching and that meet each child where they’re at in their individual learning journey. Such tools could level the playing field for all children and deliver on the promise of equity in education.

As AI and laws governing it come to fruition, we need to acknowledge just how much we still don’t know about the future of this technology.

One thing is crystal clear, however: Now is the time to be smart about the development of AI, and in particular the AI-powered learning tools used by children.

Patricia Scanlon currently serves as Ireland’s first AI ambassador and is the founder and executive chair of SoapBox Labs, a voice AI company specializing in children’s voices. She has worked in the field for more than 20 years, including at Bell Labs and IBM.

This story about regulating AI 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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It wasn’t the first time Ventrese Curry’s granddaughter had gotten into trouble at school. A seventh grader at a charter school in St. Louis, Missouri, she had a long history of disrupting her classes and getting into confrontations with teachers. Several times, the school issued a suspension and sent Curry’s granddaughter home. 

In each instance, the school followed state law: The punishment was officially recorded and assigned a set length of time, Curry was formally notified and she and her granddaughter had a chance to appeal the decision.

But one day in February, after refusing to go into her classroom and allegedly cursing at her teachers, the seventh grader was sent home to learn online indefinitely. Curry said she wasn’t given any sense of when her granddaughter would be able to return to the classroom, just that the school and administrators would determine the best learning environment for her. In the meantime, the middle schooler would be left to keep up with her schoolwork on her own, on a district-issued tablet that Curry says would often lock her granddaughter out. 

“They’d rather send her home than work on the issues she was going through,” Curry said. “She missed out on a lot of work, a whole lot. It makes me feel bad. It wasn’t fair at all, the way they were treating her.” 

“There’s a pattern that the easiest solution is to remove a student rather than deal with the underlying issues.”

Sabrina Bernadel, legal counsel at the National Women’s Law Center

Lawyers and advocates across the country say that the practice of forcing a student out of the physical school building and into online learning has emerged as a troubling — and largely hidden — legacy of the pandemic’s shift to virtual learning. Critics charge that these punishments can deprive students and their families of due process rights. Students risk getting stuck in deficient online programs for weeks or even months without the support they need and falling behind in their academics. Sometimes, there is no system in place for tracking how many students are being punished this way or how many days of in-person classroom learning they are forced to miss. 

“We are speaking about an equal right, an equal opportunity to access education,” said Sabrina Bernadel, legal counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “Instead of taking traditional or legal pathways,” she said, “there’s a pattern that the easiest solution is to remove a student rather than deal with the underlying issues.” 

Related:Hidden expulsions? Schools kick students out but call it a ‘transfer’

In 2020, nearly every school district in the nation was forced to come up with a way of providing education online. Later, as students returned to in-school learning, that infrastructure remained, making it easier than ever for districts to remove students from the classroom but say they were still educating them. The pandemic showed, however, that the quality of virtual instruction varies greatly and that online classes work best for only a minority of students; vast learning loss and student setbacks resulted. 

Still, districts nationwide are now placing students in online learning in response to misbehavior, in a process referred to in certain circles as “virtualization.”

Some school districts consider virtual learning an alternative to discipline — not a form of discipline itself. Other districts embrace virtualization as a disciplinary measure and have started to develop official policies around using this punishment. 

In Clayton County School District, outside Atlanta, “misdeeds” committed by a student can lead to mandatory online learning until “behavior challenges are identified and mitigated,” according to a statement provided over email by Charles White, a district spokesperson. He said that virtual assignments are intended to be temporary and not to serve as in-school suspensions “or elimination of the expected learning experience.” 

In Toppenish School District in Washington State, serving Yakima County, however, the transfer of a student to online learning for 10 to 20 school days is used as a top-tier disciplinary sanction, according to its student handbook. This action is considered a “long-term out-of-school suspension” and is to be used only after a number of other less drastic methods have failed to achieve behavior change, the handbook says. The district did not respond to requests for comment.

“I have worked on a lot of cases where the attorney gets involved, and suddenly the school lets the kids back in, no questions asked. They aren’t making any arguments as to why the child should be out of school — because they have none.”

Maggie Probert, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri

Paula Knight, superintendent of Jennings School District in Missouri, said students can be placed in online learning for anywhere from a few hours to a full semester as a punishment, calling the virtual option a “game changer” in how the district is able to deliver instruction. 

An afternoon away from the classroom in virtual learning is “almost like a restoration practice, giving them an opportunity to cool down or cool off,” Knight said. For other students, virtualization has its “pluses and minuses,” she said. “It just depends. When the kids are academically on target, for example, you don’t want them to lose that momentum, and we allow [virtual] as an option.”

Knight said that online learning has not yet been written into the district’s disciplinary code, but that there are plans to incorporate it more formally at some point. Currently, students are recommended for involuntary virtual learning by the principal, she said, and these placements are tracked aggregately along with suspensions, which makes identifying the particular impact of virtualization difficult. 

Related:Some kids have returned to in-person learning only to be kicked right back out

Rosalind Crawford moved her five young boys, all in elementary and middle school, to Jennings, just north of St. Louis, in the spring of 2022. A single mom, Crawford left her longtime home of Memphis to get her family away from gun violence near their home. She enrolled her boys in the local schools that April. 

It wasn’t long before she started hearing about two of the boys getting into trouble. Crawford said she could see that they were dealing with trauma and struggling to behave in school as a result. She also believes they were being bullied. She says she met with administrators several times to raise concerns about her kids’ relationships with their peers and their performance in school. 

After a fight broke out involving two of her children and other classmates in October 2022, Crawford and her lawyers say all five of her kids were placed on virtual learning. 

Jennings School District officials did not respond to follow-up questions about Crawford’s case, but a letter addressed to the family said that the boys were transferred to home-school learning at Crawford’s request. She denies making this request and says she sought legal help to get them back into school. 

In the meantime, Crawford said, the boys were provided with laptops and Google Classroom access. 

For the better part of the school year, they tried to learn from home. Crawford says that sometimes they only received two lessons per week and that there was no teacher instruction, which made it hard for them to learn. She watched as they fell behind in everything from academic courses to physical education. Her sixth grader soon was at risk of being unable to move up to seventh grade in fall 2023. 

“I feel like a failure. How do you tell your kids — when you see the devastation — that this isn’t their fault?” Crawford said. “Virtual learning is basically putting the kids somewhere [the school doesn’t] have to deal with them.” 

“I feel like a failure. How do you tell your kids — when you see the devastation — that this isn’t their fault.”

Rosalind Crawford, parent of children placed on virtual learning

Ventrese Curry’s granddaughter was also in danger of falling behind due to the amount of schoolwork she missed while learning virtually, her grandmother said. In all, she missed nearly a month of school. 

“They never gave her homework. I was calling every day asking if they could give me a package of her work,” she said. “They were telling me she might have to repeat the same grade.” 

The school did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Related: How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

The stakes of such discipline playing out in schools across the country “are fairly enormous,” said Sara Zier from TeamChild, a youth advocacy organization in Washington State that also provides legal services. Lost classroom time reduces social and emotional skills, hinders academic progress and can decrease a student’s likelihood of graduating; lower levels of education can lead to lower employment and financial prospects in adulthood. “It’s not something we can solve by representing one kid at a time,” she said. “It’s a much bigger challenge.” 

Yet because many schools don’t separate virtualization from other suspensions or, in some cases, even record it as a removal from the classroom, it’s almost impossible to know how often it’s happening and to whom. 

For example, although Clayton County uses virtual learning as a disciplinary tool, the district has no records of how many students have been put into online programs involuntarily.

Hopey Fink, a lawyer at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, said, “We suspect that there is an attempt to obscure and euphemize the suspension data that’s kind of embedded in part of this” in order to evade accountability. Without data, advocates like Fink worry that disproportionate disciplinary measures against already-marginalized groups could be hiding in plain sight. 

In the 2015-2016 school year, Black students lost 103 days of learning per 100 students, 82 more days than their white peers.

Typically, discipline overwhelmingly and disproportionately affects students of color and students with disabilities. Research from the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies, using data from the 2015-16 school year, concluded that Black students lost 103 days of learning per 100 students, 82 more days than their white peers. Another study found that Latino students were more likely to receive disciplinary action than white students. U.S. Department of Education data from the 2017-18 school year shows that students with disabilities accounted for 16 percent of total enrollment but received 25 percent of in-school suspensions and 28 percent of out-of-school suspensions. Disparities for Black students with disabilities were even worse. 

“We can only extrapolate” that disparities are comparable in other newer forms of discipline, such as virtualization, said Bernadel of the National Women’s Law Center. “Without formal data, we can’t speak to that directly and address that problem, and it’s a huge issue.” 

Related: When typical middle school antics mean suspensions, handcuffs or jail

Getting back into the classroom after being placed on virtual learning can be more difficult than returning after a suspension. Lawyers in Washington State say clients have been required to make behavioral and academic improvement in a virtual setting before returning to the classroom, and when students do return, they’re typically saddled with cumbersome and alienating rules. 

Documents show a laundry list of requirements that a middle-schooler in Washington’s Toppenish School District would need to re-enroll in brick-and-mortar classes: pick-up and drop-off in the main office; random student searches; escorted transition times five minutes before class is over; and chaperoned bathroom trips with a staff member, among others.

For Crawford’s children to return to the classroom in the Jennings School District, she and two of her sons were required to participate in a conflict resolution program through the St. Louis County Juvenile Courts, according to a November 7, 2022, letter from the Jennings School District superintendent and security director. Failure to do so risked “further disciplinary action” that could result in “virtual learning for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year.” 

In all, it took nearly five months and a lawyer’s involvement for Crawford to get her kids reenrolled. The boys also needed to sign a behavior contract, but were ultimately admitted back into the classroom in March.

Indeed, family and student advocates say that the legal credibility of this practice of virtualization is fragile. If families are able to get legal support, school districts tend to quickly allow the student to reenroll, said Maggie Probert from Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. But even free legal aid can be difficult for already-vulnerable families to access. 

Probert worked with Curry to get her granddaughter back into her regular classes after more than three weeks of online learning. 

“I have worked on a lot of cases where the attorney gets involved, and suddenly the school lets the kids back in, no questions asked,” Probert said. “They aren’t making any arguments as to why the child should be out of school — because they have none.” 

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

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A few weeks ago, we took a look at generative AI’s potential to change teaching and learning on college campuses around the country. This week, I spoke with experts and educators in K-12 to see what they think about these new tools.

Jeremy Roschelle, an executive director at education nonprofit Digital Promise and the lead researcher on a new report on the topic developed under contract with the Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, recommends that schools and educators spend the upcoming school year in a phase of cautious exploration of generative AI.*

Roschelle said he wants to see school leaders and educators experiment in ways that don’t carry big risks for students, such as changing a few lesson plans. “I personally would advise school districts not to rush into buying a particular product, but really treat this year as a chance to educate yourself,” he said.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE, which recently published a guide on AI in collaboration with AASA, the School Superintendents Association. What schools need to do, he said, is provide teachers with a better understanding of what AI is and share examples of how to use it.

“Don’t try to make a policy. Don’t try to make a decision. Don’t try to rewrite or curb your curriculum,” he said. “Just dedicate the time to exploring what it can do, what it can’t do.”

Superintendent Louis Steigerwald said that’s exactly the plan in his district, Norway-Vulcan Area Schools in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. While he’s heard from teachers who’d prefer to simply ignore AI, he doesn’t think that’s realistic. Instead, he’s encouraging teachers to use the summer to explore AI, in part by selecting an AI tool of their choice and thinking about how it could be incorporated into the classroom this fall.

The district is also planning to hold several professional development training sessions to help educators learn how to use AI in the classroom, he added. He anticipates that some teachers will be hesitant.

Related: How college educators are using AI in the classroom

“I can almost guarantee you that the first questions are going to be, ‘What are we gonna do about kids who use it to cheat?’” Steigerwald said. His response: The district’s policies around cheating and plagiarism remain unchanged, and the district plans to educate parents and students about the honor code. In addition, teachers are encouraged to use software company Turnitin’s AI detector to check for plagiarism.

Benjamin W. Cottingham, associate director of strategic partnerships at Stanford University’s Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), who recently co-authored a brief urging school districts to use this summer to develop clear guidance on AI use, said there’s little evidence right now that AI detection tools are effective. “It’s maybe a tired cliche, but it’s kind of like the wild west right now,” he said.

Steigerwald, though, said he hopes that if educators acquaint themselves with tools like ChatGPT, they’ll begin to see the limits of AI writing: It lacks the “voice” of student writing.

For now, he said he doesn’t think generative AI tools will have an immediate impact in early elementary classrooms, either as an instructional tool or a cheating risk (“You can’t fake knowing your ABCs,” he said). But in middle school or high school, he said AI could aid teachers by analyzing student work and giving suggestions for improvement, or serving as an aid for students who need remedial help.

“The biggest thing that’s scary right now about AI is how fast it’s come upon us,” Steigerwald said. “We’re not the nimblest of industries typically. We’re going to have to be a little more nimble than we’ve been in the past.”

According to Roschelle, new generative AI tools build on existing AI tools, like intelligent tutoring systems, that educators have used for years to help work individually with students. ChatGPT and other generative AI go steps further, and can create personalized lesson plans and conduct human-like conversations with students.

But, he noted, there’s virtually no research yet on the new tools’ efficacy, so educators need to proceed cautiously.

PACE’s Cottingham recommends some low-risk ways of using the tool, such as for helping students understand misuses of AI, like plagiarizing, or for drafting essay outlines. Cottingham said he’s seen teachers encourage students to use ChatGPT or other generative AI chatbots to help write a first draft of a report, but then require them to write the full essay in class without the tool.

Kusum Sinha, superintendent at Garden City Public Schools in New York, said AI is here to stay — and she wants the educators and students in her district to be prepared to know how to engage with it. This is why providing educator training on how to incorporate generative AI tools, especially for her high school teachers, is a priority for her district this year, she said.

The district has already held sessions on the different types of AI, and how educators can use AI tools to help with lesson planning, administrative tasks and creating materials tailored to a child’s educational needs. Her district has also started introducing generative AI to some of its high school students and plans to develop courses on AI learning for students next school year.

At the end of the day, “AI can’t replace a teacher,” Kusum said. As AI becomes readily accessible to students, it is going to be up to educators to really teach kids to take a cautious, informed approach to AI, she said.

“Because AI [does] not always [have] accurate information. You may get some insights, but you still have to read, you still have to understand the topic that you are referring to. AI doesn’t replace people,” Kusum said.

Read all three reports on AI in K12:

• Artificial intelligence and the future of teaching and learning: Insights and recommendations — The Department of Education’s Office of Education Technology report provides insights from months of listening sessions with school leaders and educators on how they want to see AI influence teaching and learning and what they believe are the biggest risks.
• Bringing AI to schools: Tips for school leaders — This guide from ISTE; AASA, the School Superintendents Association; ASCD, the National Association of Secondary Schools Principals; and the National Association of Elementary Principals is a good place to start for educators just beginning to explore AI. Not only does it break down the various types of AI technologies, it provides examples of tools that can be used in schools.
• The urgent need to update district policies on student use of artificial intelligence in education — This policy brief from Policy Analysis for California Education, at Stanford’s School of Education, provides a summary of action items that districts should be thinking about ahead of this coming school year. It recommends adopting a clear policy on AI, rather than simply banning generative AI tools outright.

*Clarification: This sentence has been updated to clarify the Department of Education’s role in the report.

This story about AI in K-12 classrooms was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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While developers of artificial intelligence and industry leaders debate the risks and precise consequences of the technology, there’s no question that AI will greatly influence teaching and learning in the coming years.

Richard Culatta, CEO of the nonprofit International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE, warns that if the education community sits on the sidelines as the technology is advancing and ethical concerns are navigated, it will be “the century’s biggest wasted opportunity.”

“In five years, we will have something that has been built without any input from teachers and without any shaping around the needs of education,” Culatta said.

In 2018, ISTE and General Motors launched a professional development course to train educators on how to use AI for teaching and learning. Culatta said he’s found educators are very excited about the opportunities and possibilities of using generative AI — a type of artificial intelligence technology with the ability to produce various types of content, including text, images, audio and synthetic data — in their classrooms. They just need context and training.

In the next two newsletters, I’ll be highlighting how educators and students are already engaging with new AI tools in and out of the classroom. This week I’m focusing on higher ed, and next time I’ll feature lessons from K-12.

“They’re learning about, ‘How do I get AI to replicate my work?’ And then ‘How do I take something the AI has produced, and personalize it to the work I’m trying to accomplish?’”

Richard Ross, an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Virginia

At the beginning of this past semester, Richard Ross, an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Virginia, attempted to write a thoughtful email to his students, introducing them to their courses. But as he read over it, he realized it came across as more rigid than he wanted it to be. So, Ross used a generative AI tool — his first experience with it — and prompted it to compose the email “in a kinder tone.”

“And it did that, and it did it so quickly that if I had thought to make some of these changes, I wouldn’t have done it nearly as fast,” Ross said. He didn’t end up using every word or sentence of the AI-written email, but it provided a template.

“The realization for me was this can be a valuable part of what we do,” said Ross. “There are some students who will greatly benefit from the information that this doesn’t replace all your steps, but it might simplify some things.”

This past semester, Ross incorporated generative AI into two of his classes in very different ways. For his class on mathematical statistics, Ross asked his students to research theorems, their inventors and explain how the theorems were proved — without the help of AI. Then, Ross asked students to exchange topics and this time he asked students to supplement their research using generative AI (he recommended BingAI). Students then had to decide whether the AI explanations were clearer and more in depth than the student-provided ones.

In his other class, an undergraduate course on data visualization, students worked together to create a basic web application using the platform R Shiny, a tool for building interactive web apps from code. Once students had manually created the app, they had to figure out how to prompt an AI tool to duplicate it. Students then worked backwards, writing code to make the AI-developed app more complex.

“They’re learning about, ‘How do I get AI to replicate my work?’ And then ‘How do I take something the AI has produced, and personalize it to the work I’m trying to accomplish?’” Ross said. He added it’s valuable for students to learn how to transfer original work to AI and adapt work created by AI code.

“It supports the notion that it’s a tool. It’s not a replacement for skill and coding or the ability to read and understand things,” Ross said.

According to Culatta, the method Ross is using to incorporate AI into his coursework is the most common way AI is being adopted in higher education. In the higher ed space right now, Culatta said, generative AI tools are mainly being used for research by both students and educators.

“Students don’t want a robot to teach them; they might use a robot to help them, but they don’t want AI to teach them.”

Richard Ross, an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Virginia

Students will need to know more about AI and how to use it as they graduate and go into the world of work and as generative AI advances and becomes more commonplace, he said.

Eric Wang, vice president of AI at Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software company used by many higher education institutions, said AI is already subtly steering what we do everyday, whether it’s our Netflix viewing habits or our auto-completed sentences in Gmail. He said that as tech and AI companies release more new tools and models, AI literacy is going to be a vital skill.

Wang said students will need to know how to talk to AI, command it to do certain things and put guardrails in place for its use.

“That’s a skill set. And I think there will come a day where that skill set is going to be as expected as understanding how to use a word processor,” Wang said.

While there are educators like Ross who are eager to introduce students to AI, many others remain skeptical of the tools, Culatta said. His advice: Teachers need more support from school leaders and others to understand how they can use the tools.

As for Ross, he plans to continue incorporating generative AI tools in his classroom. He reassures his peers — who worry about being replaced by technology — that there’s a lot AI can’t do, like interact with students in a nuanced and dynamic way.

“Learning how to use this tool isn’t going to replace instructors. It may demand that some instructors adapt,” Ross said. “But students don’t want a robot to teach them; they might use a robot to help them, but they don’t want AI to teach them.”

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

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RIO RANCHO, N.M. — When Ashley Daniels saw her second grade son earn a high score on a recent test, she knew he had just guessed the answers and gotten lucky. Daniels called his teacher and said he might need some extra support, despite his good performance on the test.

It wasn’t just a mother’s intuition. Daniels watched her son take the test from their dining room table.

The second grader attends SpaRRk Academy, a virtual learning program for elementary students created in 2021 by the Rio Rancho School District in New Mexico. Even as doors reopened to brick-and-mortar schools, administrators here saw the continued need for a virtual option in response to lingering concerns about Covid and to feedback from some parents that their children had thrived in online learning.

The district assigned 10 full-time teachers to provide live, online classes via Zoom. They also organized an in-person component: Once a week, students would gather in reserved classrooms in a local elementary school, for activities such as science experiments, project-based learning and reading groups. More than 250 kids signed up for SpaRRk.

But, two years in, enrollment had dropped to 87 kids, a 65 percent decrease. Costs had soared to $11,327 per pupil, a 121 percent jump from the year prior and nearly $3,000 more than the average in this district of roughly 17,000 students. SpaRRk Academy’s future sat on shaky ground; the school board announced in late 2022 that it would hold a vote this spring on whether to shutter the academy altogether.

Prior to the pandemic, virtual schools were relatively scarce: 691 fully virtual programs enrolled nearly 294,000 students, accounting for less than 1 percent of national public school enrollment, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But after most schools shifted their classes online in early 2020, remote learning caught on with some families, including those who preferred to give their children the flexibility of learning from home, or whose children struggled with social anxiety in school buildings or hadn’t found success in traditional learning environments.

Related: Remote learning has been a disaster for many students. But some kids have thrived

Some 41 percent of districts surveyed in August 2021 by the Clayton Christensen Institute, a nonprofit think tank, said they had opened a full-time virtual school option during the pandemic, and 32 percent planned to maintain these programs after the pandemic subsided.

But today, as Covid fears have waned, many students have tired of screens and employers have begun requiring workers to return in person, a number of those virtual academies are at risk of closing. That’s leaving families like Daniels’ in the lurch, and raising questions about the future of virtual learning. The highest-quality online programs have generally demanded the most resources from school districts, making them the most likely to face closure in the face of budget constraints.

“Do we continue to fund something that is showing declining enrollment?” said Rachel Aaker, the principal of SpaRRK Academy, who spearheaded its creation. “I believe it would take commitment from the district and the board to say we may see an increasing need for this eventually, and we need some years for that to play out.”

Tucked in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains in Northern New Mexico, Rio Rancho is a small but rapidly growing school district. New schools are being built every few years to keep pace with a surge in families moving to the area due to its proximity to technology and engineering firm Sandia National Laboratories and new business hubs for companies such as Intel and NTX Bio. The high desert landscape is dotted with signs of development: brand new farmhouse-style homes, fresh asphalt still jet-black from lack of use and “for sale” placards on empty plots of land.

A longtime administrator in Rio Rancho, Aaker led the district-wide transition of elementary students to online learning when Covid struck. As public health guidelines relaxed over the course of the next school year, Aaker began to hear from parents who weren’t comfortable sending their kids back to in-person learning. She approached the board with the idea of a stand-alone hybrid program run by the district that any elementary student in Rio Rancho could attend.

Since 2005, the district had operated a virtual option, Cyber Academy, for middle and high schoolers, which relied primarily on a third-party platform, Edgenuity, for lessons students could perform on their own at their own pace and offered some in-person academic support and extracurriculars. Aaker’s new elementary option was to be different, though, with its real-time, live instruction designed by district administrators and led by district teachers.

Daniels and another parent, Nicole Garcia, who sent two children to SpaRRk, opted for the program due to Covid fears. Once enrolled, their children grew more confident and their academic performance improved, said Daniels and Garcia, and they became believers in the model for the long haul. That was true for many SpaRRk parents: District surveys of SpaRRk families found that health concerns were the biggest initial draw, but by 2022 parents instead cited the program’s quality, the school’s close collaboration with families and the flexibility as reasons why they stayed. 

Still, that enthusiasm wasn’t enough: The academy lost its biggest class, of 54 fifth graders, when they graduated to middle school in 2022, while other families moved out of the school district or returned to in-person learning as Covid fears dissipated. Enrollment at Rio Rancho’s Cyber Academy for older students also declined, from 285to205 this year.

That mirrors what’s happening in other districts. Overall, total virtual enrollment remains higher than before the pandemic, but, in some cases, it has declined relative to its pandemic peaks, according to Gary Miron, a professor with Western Michigan University’s Department of Educational Leadership, Research and Technology.

In Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, 782 families opted into the district’s full-time online offering during the 2021-22 school year; today that figure is 508. When Salt Lake Virtual Elementary in Utah’s Salt Lake City School District opened for the 2021-22 school year, 257 students enrolled, but that number plummeted to 87 students this year. This June, the school board plans to decide whether to close the school altogether. Nearby Jordan School District’s virtual elementary option, Rocky Peak Virtual Elementary, saw enrollment drop from 604 students during the height of the pandemic to 273 students this year. Wyoming Virtual Academy, a virtual option available to K-12 students statewide, saw enrollment surge from roughly 500 students every year since its founding in 2009 to nearly 1,200 students at the height of the pandemic. Enrollment fell to about 600 students for this school year.

Related: Despite mediocre records, online charter schools are selling families on staying virtual

Less than 20 miles south of Rio Rancho, the Albuquerque eCADEMY High School, a virtual program created by the Albuquerque school district in 2013, saw enrollment jump during the pandemic from 276 students to 726. Seeing this demand, the Albuquerque school board voted in June 2020 to allocate $8 million in pandemic relief to create eCADEMY K8 and expand virtual offerings to lower grades. In its first year, nearly 1,400 students enrolled, according to data made publicly available by APS.

This school year, enrollment dropped for both eCADEMY programs — to about 950 high schoolers and 747 elementary and middle schoolers, though the numbers remain well above pre-Covid figures. While many students stay enrolled in eCADEMY’s high school program for increased flexibility, principal Erin Easley said the program also sees large percentages of students who are coping with debilitating medical conditions or social anxiety, while others come from difficult home environments or have historically struggled to succeed in the classroom.

Virtual enrollment may be dropping due to questions around the quality of remote learning. Student academic performance took a beating during the online learning experiment of the pandemic. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, shows that fourth graders lost the equivalent of two decades of progress in reading and math, and eighth grade math performance fell in all but one state. And research on some online academies that existed pre-pandemic, including for-profit online charter schools, has tended to show poor student outcomes and low graduation rates.

Yet a growing number of educators and researchers caution against making conclusions about virtual learning based on that research. The transition to online learning during the pandemic was haphazard; online programs have continued to evolve and improve. Parents will increasingly expect districts to offer a virtual learning alternative as technology’s role grows and pandemic-era workplace flexibility becomes more commonplace, education experts say.

“The idea that we think our education systems are going to remain paper- and pencil-based and in this face-to-face instructional model — it’s going to change,” said Miron, the Western Michigan University professor. “It is changing.”

But the approach that districts take matters. When the time came to select a middle school for her older child, Garcia said the family chose Cyber Academy, Rio Rancho’s existing virtual program for grades 6-12. She quickly found that it was “not even comparable” to the experience at SPaRRk, she said, and withdrew her daughter after winter break in favor of the local middle school.

“SpaRRk teachers took the time to hang around to go over any questions the students had, and made themselves available throughout the day. They are wonderful. I’ve never dealt with teachers like them,” said Garcia. “At Cyber Academy, the teachers and curriculum were not great, and the teachers didn’t offer help when kids needed it.”

Education experts say the most successful online programs tend to be those that provide individual attention to students, staff the school with dedicated district employees, guarantee low teacher-to-student ratios and rely on curriculum developed by school districts rather than off-the-shelf programs run by for-profit charter schools or other companies. Hybrid programs that incorporate some in-person learning and extracurricular activities, like SPaRRk’s, have been most successful at providing the benefits of online learning while retaining the social skills some fear could be lost in a virtual environment, according to Miron and others. But as Rio Rancho is finding, such programs require significant resources that can be hard to justify if student enrollment falls.

Related: Some families don’t want to go back to in-person schooling. Here’s how one S.C. district is dealing with this demand

At the Rio Rancho Board of Education building overlooking the Sandia Mountain foothills, dozens gathered in February for a vote on the online academy’s future.

Most who spoke favored keeping it open. “At least give us a chance, give the community a chance to know about this program,” pleaded Ruby Holden, a special education teacher at SPaRRk Academy, during public comment. “We just need an opportunity to have our program open for parents and families to know about us and I just don’t feel like we’ve had the opportunity to spread the word about our program.”

But when Aaker was pressed on how many kids she could enroll in the next two years, she said about “one class per grade level,” or 20 to 25 students each, more than current enrollment but not the 300-plus target she had thought might be viable when SpaRRk Academy was first founded.

Less than an hour later, the board voted to close the school after only two years in operation.

“Enrollment is not going in the right direction,” Sue Cleveland, the Rio Rancho superintendent, said at the meeting. “It’s substantially more expensive than what we are spending on other students in the district. I wish we had enough resources that we didn’t have to make hard choices like sometimes we have to make.”

After the vote, SpaRRk families and administrators shared tears and hugs. “We wish we had more time to provide an opportunity for our school to grow,” said Aaker. 

Garcia, who was not in attendance at the meeting, said she’ll enroll her rising fourth grader in the local brick-and-mortar option, which, she said, “is not what we would want at this time.”

Daniels said she plans to homeschool her son for the upcoming school year, rather than sending him back to a local public school. “I think it’s such a loss for the district,” she said. “I feel like they are taking three steps back.”

“Ironically, one of the board members was literally attending the meeting virtually,” she added. “I guess we do board meetings virtually — but not learning.”

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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.

Related: COLUMN: Styrofoam cities and avatars: How the Gehry siblings would redesign education

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.

Related: OPINION: Don’t despair — personalized learning offers promise of better learning for all students

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.

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Public education in America is under attack on multiple fronts.

The toxic and ominous polarization of our politics has arrived in our school board meetings, and educators are getting pummeled by accusations that they are brainwashing children into believing “woke” ideologies. School budgets are getting squeezed as Covid stimulus winds down. Student enrollment is failing to rebound to pre-pandemic levels. And traditional public schools are facing increased competition from charter schools and independent schools.

At the same time, McKinsey & Company estimates that automation and artificial intelligence will displace between 400 and 800 million jobs globally by 2030.

School leaders like myself must respond to these challenges by revamping our visions, instructional practices and organizational systems to meet the needs of today’s kids and families.

Systems change is not easy, though, and in order to transform decades of habits and practices, school leaders need strategies that encourage all stakeholders to play an active role.

It takes courage for school district leaders to turn off the political noise over what teachers can teach and students can learn, to stop obsessing over standardized test results and to focus instead on career preparedness skills and child development. This is what we’ve been doing in my district of about 28,000 students in Anaheim, California. We believe there are lessons to be learned from our strategies.

In the Anaheim Union High School District, we are always searching for new ways to share stories of student learning. As educational leaders, we know we must do a better job of telling our stories by shining a light on our teacher leaders and the positive impacts they make each day. In recent years, we’ve used podcasts and short videos, adding vibrancy to our messaging with examples from the classroom.

We have embraced a new focus on preparing students for meaningful careers, good jobs and active citizenship. We encourage our teachers to focus instruction around student interest and passion. These are goals that appeal to all of our parents, no matter their politics.

In Anaheim Union, our students now demonstrate progress through learning and competencies that show growth in communication, critical thinking, collaboration and compassion.

It takes courage for school district leaders to turn off the political noise over what teachers can teach and students can learn, and to stop obsessing over standardized test results.

Each of our district sites adopts a “North Star” goal that supports teacher leaders at the site in co-creating and innovating classroom experiences. These goals become a priority at every school, every day.

We also prioritize building community and business partnerships that help us drive educational goals. These partnerships require deep commitments, and include job shadowing, internships and apprenticeships in over 90 businesses and dual enrollment in our community and four-year colleges.

For example, Anaheim Union became the first school district in the nation to partner with Google to offer five Google Career Certificates in the growing fields of automation with Python, data analytics, IT Support, project management, and UX Design.

Designed by Google employees as integrated courses and embedded in the school day by teachers, each certificate is available on Coursera and includes practice and graded assessments and quizzes or writing assignments to ensure rigor and mastery.

Certificate course graduates can submit their resumes to an employer consortium of over 130 companies, including California-based employers such as Coursera, Infosys and, of course, Google.

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Within our schools, we believe in strengthening teacher leadership development. School system transformation requires a strong focus on strategic recruiting, hiring, promoting and retaining staff who believe in the district’s vision and mission. Teachers are the lynchpin.

Our teachers have launched new career pathways for students in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and cybersecurity, and are developing a working farm at a school located in a food desert. Students learn about the dangers of these deserts, from childhood obesity to diabetes and heart disease, through data analytics and census data.

Acting on the data they find, students help fill nutritional gaps by growing fruits and vegetables, which are given to district cafeterias, taken home by students or shared with the community.

All of these changes, including our district’s emphasis on career preparedness, not only appeal to parents, our biggest supporters, but also resonate with conservatives and business groups.

In Anaheim, we know that most parents and community members are not thinking about education solely in terms of political perspectives from the left or the right. They simply want their schools to prepare their children to be good citizens and be capable of long-term professional success.

Michael Matsuda is superintendent of the Anaheim Union High School District, where he built a new educational model incorporating career pathways in partnership with higher education, private and nonprofit sectors.

This story about moving past education wars 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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