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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, fewer students from lower-income backgrounds are taking these tests than in years past. The College Board reported that in 2022 only 22 percent of test-takers were from families earning less than $67,084 annually — a steep decline from 43 percent six years earlier. In contrast, from 2016 to 2022, the percentage of test-takers from wealthy households grew slightly or stayed about the same.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Our students are struggling. As a college president and a clinical psychologist, I know this well.

Recent headlines tell a distressing story about the mental health of college students. While the news articles are alarming, it is worth noting that much of the data they cite comes from self-reporting by students.

This self-reporting gives us important insights into how our students are feeling, but it is not equivalent to clinical diagnoses. By equating self-reporting with diagnoses, we risk applying the wrong interventions.

I’ve spent much of my career overseeing clinical services and other student supports, and I know the importance of clinical interventions. They are intended to be matched to specific diagnoses and can involve a variety of treatments, including individual or group and outpatient or inpatient, by licensed mental health professionals.

But I believe we must shift how we support students’ emotional needs. Clinical interventions are not the only way — and often not the most appropriate or effective way — to support young people who may be temporarily struggling with feelings that do not meet the full psychological definition of mental illness.

Rather than needing a clinical intervention, many students may benefit most from support that builds their resilience if they are feeling sad, worried, overwhelmed or anxious. Resilient students are better positioned to cope with temporary periods of heightened emotional stress.

In the past, teaching these skills was usually not seen as central to the mission of a college or university, yet learning how to cope emotionally may be among our students’ most vital and integral lessons.

It is something that will serve them throughout — and well beyond — their time on our campuses.

Related: Congress is starting to tackle student mental health

Data drawn from student self-reporting provides important insights into their needs. Some 44 percent of students reported that they experienced symptoms of depression during the 2021-22 academic year, a Healthy Minds survey of 96,000 U.S. college students shows; 37 percent said they experienced anxiety.

In addition, two out of five undergraduates said that they “frequently” experience emotional stress, results from a Gallup-Lumina Foundation report found, while 36 percent of students pursuing bachelor’s degrees reported that they had considered “stopping out” in the last six months. The most commonly cited reasons were “emotional stress” (69 percent) and “personal mental health reasons” (59 percent).

Researchers have hypothesized that at least some of these self-reported crises may be due to an increased awareness and normalization of mental health conditions.

This awareness is something we should regard as positive and beneficial because it reduces the stigma and isolation that have long impeded students from getting support. But we also must recognize an unintentional, negative impact of this increased awareness: overinterpretation.

Young people experiencing negative emotions and facing normal developmental challenges may be particularly vulnerable to misidentifying those experiences as actual illnesses.

This is not to suggest that the mental health crisis is not real, or that we should not support our students or validate their experiences. Students are struggling every day on my campus and on campuses across the country. Mental illness often first appears or worsens in young adulthood, and for these students, accessing appropriate clinical intervention is critical.

But for many students, what will be most appropriate and effective are supports to develop their resilience and coping strategies and the confidence to rebound from setbacks.

Being a young adult today is not easy. In addition to facing typical challenges, such as forming an identity and developing life skills, they have grown up with pressures from social media, isolation brought on by the global pandemic and the economic and political uncertainties of the twenty-first century.

Rising college costs have also raised the stakes for many students. College is a huge commitment both monetarily and emotionally, and our students know it.

They inevitably face obstacles when they move into the college environment, such as not knowing where they fit in and encountering more challenging coursework than they had previously. Believing they are an outlier, rather than the norm, may undermine their resilience.

That’s why at Lewis & Clark we incorporate resilience-building practices, using research-based belonging exercises as well as intentional peer-to-peer support.

Two of our psychology professors, Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell and Brian Detweiler-Bedell, spearheaded our participation in a multiyear Stanford-led study that aimed to foster a deeper sense of belonging among our incoming first-year students, with the goal of helping them understand that their struggles are normal — and that things will get better over time.

The exercises in the study incorporated stories of obstacles faced by other students and how they overcame them. While the original study’s sample size was small, we saw an increase in retention rates and GPAs, especially among students from underrepresented groups. The results were so compelling that all incoming Lewis & Clark undergraduates now participate in the social belonging intervention.

Related: OPINION: One college president uses board games, bedtime stories, horses and ice-cream sundaes to help students cope

We also initiated a peer mentoring program specifically serving first-year students. The mentors reach out to incoming first-year students and introduce them to campus life with information about academic advising, navigating health and wellness services and various campus clubs and social options. The mentoring relationship begins during orientation and continues throughout the semester. Just as important as what the peer mentors do is how they model resilience.

Of course, approaches like these should be offered with an understanding of what other interventions some students may need. Clinical depression and anxiety disorders do require clinical support. Higher education institutions must continue to expand our capacity to provide such support for those students who need it.

But we must also prioritize programs that bolster resilience. These efforts can reassure and help students (and their families) who may be misidentifying their feelings based on popular rather than clinical understandings of depression and anxiety.

When it comes to setting students up for success in their professional and personal lives, resilience may be the most important skill we can encourage them to develop.

Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan is president of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She has maintained a private clinical psychology and consulting practice for more than three decades.

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I cried the day I gained acceptance to Wesleyan University in 2018. My tears signified relief, joy and excitement. I viewed my acceptance into this elite private institution as a dooropening, a new opportunity for young Black students like me.

As a Sierra Leonean American, I had felt constrained by my public education in the United States. I had to fight against low expectations and conditions that devalued my potential, including “accidentally” being placed into English as a Second Language in elementary school, even though English is my first language. I then had to fight for a spot in upper-level classes when I got into high school.

I was fortunate to become a part of TeenSHARP, a college access program for marginalized students that exposed me to schools like Wesleyan and taught me how to advocate for myself while paving the way for others.

Little did I know that my acceptance to Wesleyan was opening a portal to an academic and corporate world in which I would see even fewer people who looked like me. While many college students experience their first semester as an exhilarating time filled with joining student groups, I spent a lot of my time grappling with what it meant to be the only Black woman in predominantly white classes. With the end of affirmative action, more students will experience what I felt: being the only or one of a few Black students.

I remember exploring Wesleyan for the first time. The halls were filled with pictures of alumni, mostly white men, that sent me on a trip down the institution’s memory lane where, as a Black woman, I didn’t exist.

No matter how much I told myself that I belonged, the insidious history of Wesleyan, from its pictures to its architecture to its racial makeup, was a haunting reminder that while I may have gained entry into this world, Black people generally do not.

I would have loved to go to a historically Black college or university, but the lack of funding for HBCUs means they can’t be as generous with financial aid,leaving me, and many other Black students, with the options of taking on unsustainable debt or trying to get in somewhere else.

My acceptance to Wesleyan came at a time when race could still be considered in college admissions, before the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, effectively ending an avenue of hope for Black and Latino groups.

Related: Will the Rodriguez family’s college dreams survive the end of affirmative action?

However, the gap between the numbers of Black and white college graduates was growing even before the court ruled on affirmative action.

Affirmative action was a meager attempt at leveling the playing field. The Supreme Court’s decision to get rid of it will only continue the caste system in which people with marginalized identities are barred from reaching self-determination because we simply can’t get into spaces that will allow us to thrive.

Ending affirmative action is not only an attack on the benefits of diversity in education, but a direct way to end the mobility of students like me by closing the door to opportunities that were already hard to access.

Historically, race has been a social determinant. Race determined which jobs you could get and which schools you could attend. To ignore race in college admissions will not erase the race problem that plagues our nation. It will only exasperate it.

As long as America refuses to look in the mirror and face the social barriers that necessitated the creation of affirmative action in the first place, brilliant students of color will be overlooked in the admissions process.

Related: OPINION: Legacy admissions are unnecessary, raise moral concerns and exclude deserving students

As I build my career, I often find myself in situations similar to those I experienced as an undergraduate: One of just a handful ofBlack people, or even the only one, in professional settings.

The Supreme Court’s decision has now set a precedent such that initiatives like the Fearless Fund, a nonprofit that provides funding for Black women entrepreneurs, are under attack. And many companies have halted diversity, equity and inclusion programs due to fear of being sued.

Now is the time not to be complacent but to educate ourselves, stay informed and mobilize. The court’s decision is a reminder that the rights and opportunities we have fought for are not a given, and only stay firm when we are.

Alphina Kamara is a development associate at The World Justice Project and a previous Fulbright fellow.

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Millions of families may now face a lack of child care following the recent expiration of pandemic-era federal funding.

The child care “stabilization” funds included in the American Rescue Plan Act were just that — emergency funding to stabilize the sector amid a pandemic.

As vital as that funding was, it was insufficient to address the many systemic problems impacting early childhood education and its workforce, including inequitable wages.

Wages for early childhood workers already lag far behind those of their K-8 colleagues who have similar credentials. These workers, disproportionately Black, Latina and indigenous, face poverty rates an average of 7.7 times higher than other teachers.

This financial condition perpetuates economic inequality and reflects systemic racism, with early childhood education programs continuing to be subsidized through the long hours that Black, Latina and indigenous women work for unjust wages and limited benefits.

Related: Early education coalition searches for answers to raise teacher pay, even as budgets are cratering

This inequity and the end of the crucial pandemic-era federal lifeline for early childhood educators will negatively impact families and workers, The Century Foundation estimates. Some 70,000 child care programs are likely to close; millions of families will struggle to get access to child care; 232,000 jobs could soon be lost; and states will lose $10.6 billion in tax and business revenue every year.

There is one bright note: State and local governments are offering models of innovation and glimmers of hope in the face of such a dire challenge.

In late 2022, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to create a permanent child care fund, making child care free or affordable for many families and increasing early educator wages.

State and local governments are offering models of innovation and glimmers of hope.

Washington, D.C., recently established the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, which aims to achieve pay parity between early childhood educators and their K-12 counterparts. Since 2022, almost $70 million has been distributed to nearly 3,000 early childhood educators. The district is also expanding health insurance for early childhood educators.

In Louisiana, a coalition of state and local government partners is working with a nonprofit to test the impact of projects that increase child care workers’ wages in key communities; if positive, they intend to scale the programs across the state.

Minnesota last year signed into law the Great Start Compensation Support Payment Program to fill the gap following the ending of the federal child care stabilization grants. The program will provide $316 million this fiscal year, and $260 million every two years ongoing, to directly increase child care workers’ pay.

These solutions are critical, because it is our nation’s youngest students who will ultimately suffer the consequences of high teacher turnover and an unstable learning environment at a key time in their development.

Early childhood education directly impacts their future learning outcomes and lifelong success; it deserves our attention and investment.

Building on these efforts, the Early Educator Investment Collaborative — a group of funders that has come together to accelerate progress in the early childhood education profession — recently announced grants for state and local partnerships in Colorado, Louisiana and Washington, D.C.

These grants will bolster innovative approaches to increasing early childhood education workforce pay, including the creation of dedicated revenue streams and pilot demonstration projects to evaluate the impacts of salary increases.

They will also promote greater collaboration between agencies to improve workforce compensation — aimed at increasing the capacity of financial and data systems to support long-term wage and benefits increases.

Related: OPINION: School district leaders must make early education a priority, so children enter school prepared

I’m excited for the solutions these grants will amplify and hope they can provide useful models and encouragement for other states to explore ways to better compensate early childhood educators.

But we also need state and federal legislators to step up for their constituents on this issue. It’s critical for legislators to reflect the majority of voters’ interest in early childhood education reform by increasing investment, enacting legislation to boost compensation and advocating for broader support of early childhood educators.

Philanthropy also has a big role to play. By supporting governments with the funding needed to explore unique solutions, philanthropic organizations can help find what works, scale successful models and support sustainable change.

Along with boosting the rallying cry for increased federal investment in early childhood education and its workers, this moment is an opportunity for states, communities and philanthropists to find truly long-term solutions to fully support early childhood education workers and the families they serve.

Ola J. Friday is the director of the Early Educator Investment Collaborative.

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Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s resignation ends the shortest tenure in the university’s history — six months. It’s not a coincidence that the record is set by the school’s first Black woman president. We were headed for this moment since she started in July.

Some pundits are blaming antisemitism and plagiarism, ignoring the white supremacist politics at the center of her ouster: the same politics shaping higher education at schools like Harvard since the creation of higher education in the United States.

Less than a month before Gay’s resignation, these politics were on display as Ivy League early admissions decisions sparked the annual accusations of reverse racism, with non-Black students and parents blaming Black students for stealing their spots in the class of 2028.

Such accusations are perpetual fallacies in a long narrative about Black people that claims we undeservedly get jobs, opportunities and admittance to the country’s most selective colleges and universities that “should” go to white people.

Gay’s appointment was both applauded as a sign of Harvard’s racial progress and derided as a “diversity hire.”

However, in December, Gay’s controversial testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s hearing on antisemitism on college campuses and, in particular, her repeated defense of free speech on campus, opened the door to calls for her removal. Widely reported accusations of plagiarism against her led to additional scrutiny which facilitated her resignation. On closer inspection, that alleged plagiarism amounted to a relatively small number of “citation errors” in her 1997 dissertation and a few other academic papers. Similar comments on free speech also felled University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill, yet she managed to resign without the racialized questioning of her entire professional career that Gay has had to face.

Related: Students have reacted strongly to university presidents’ Congressional testimony about antisemitism 

After her resignation, Gay noted that she was a victim of a campaign against Black faculty, one that “recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament.”

It is not a coincidence that Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT were targeted for those House Committee hearing. They are representative of the cultural zeitgeist at many prestigious institutions — and a political battleground for those seeking control over American ideology.

Harvard, in particular, has been at the center of these battleground narratives — one about “unqualified” Black leadership and the other by students who believe below-average Blacks have taken their spots.

Established in 1636, Harvard is an institution that prides itself on its lack of access. Initially, Harvard, and schools fashioned after it, were institutions for upper-class white men only; it has always existed at the nexus of white supremacy in the United States.

The goalposts for Black people to display merit keep changing; seemingly no matter our credentials, we are perceived as gaming entrance where we don’t belong.

Harvard’s mission has facilitated the creation of a constant supply of wealthy white politicians and businessmen from the so-called right families and with the “right” education to lead this country. It would be over 300 years until Black people were regularly admitted — and another 70 years before a Black woman would be appointed president of the university.

This was by design. As discussed in my book, “Black Women, Ivory Tower,” Ivy League schools are meant to be exclusionary. Attending Harvard has always been a dream to strive for, a way to perpetuate race and class-based hierarchies — to effectively define who belongs at the “top” of society and who doesn’t.

 As a symbol of a well-working meritocracy, though, Harvard fails. Instead, the goalposts for Black people to display merit keep changing; seemingly, no matter our credentials, we are perceived as gaming entrance where we don’t belong.

Gay’s resignation signals the embeddedness of racism at these prestigious schools. She had to go because she didn’t belong. And the political pressure that was used to get her to resign without just cause provides another opportunity to show Black people they don’t belong, regardless of their professional achievements, and to keep schools like Harvard white. The Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban effectively ensures that they will stay that way.

All of this tells us that the presence of any Black people in prestigious institutions is still a problem for many people. Even when affirmative action was in place, Black students made up less than 7 percent of Harvard’s overall campus population. Harvard accepts less than 4 percent of all applicants.

With those numbers, it is empirically impossible to claim that Black people are inundating Harvard and schools like it; yet there’s still this clear illogic focused squarely on us to explain Harvard’s elusiveness to white people more broadly.

Without Black people to blame, the more than 96 percent of applicants who are not admitted must face the reality of higher ed in America — that schools like Harvard were never likely to admit them, because these schools are meant to perpetuate not only whiteness but also wealth and power.

Admissions offices at Harvard, Princeton and Yale were created in response to concerns about high percentages of Jewish students starting in the 1910s. New admissions policies set quotas on Jewish students in a given class and created checklists of desirable characteristics, including racial and ethnic identities, to more specifically shape the makeup of the student body.

Admissions policies became even more important in the 1940s when the potential for Black student applicants returning from war to use the GI bill to cover tuition again threatened the white wealth culture these schools had established.

Hierarchical ranking systems and the introduction of the “Ivy League” in 1954 further stratified schools by race and class.

Affirmative action policies that came later only slightly increased the percentage of Black students at these schools in any given year.

Related: COLUMN: Colleges decry Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, but most have terrible track records on diversity

A similar fate to Gay’s will likely befall the next Black woman Harvard president, should it ever appoint another, just as every year, nameless, faceless Black students are erroneously accused of taking the spot of “more deserving” white students to assuage those white students’ feelings of failure.

Ivy League schools, the most important gatekeepers of higher education, are institutionally racist. And Harvard is the blueprint.

Black people will never belong there because we weren’t meant to — not then, not now, not ever.

Jasmine Harris, is the author of “Black Women, Ivory Tower,” and an associate professor of African American Studies and coordinator of the African American Studies program at the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

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Education and education access are directly connected to economic growth. Despite the dysfunction in Congress, especially over border issues and foreign aid, there are key education bills that can provide not only solutions for the issues they address but also models for getting things done across a range of other issues.

Two pieces of legislation that could improve our economic future by advancing education and workforce development passed the Committee on Education and the Workforce a few weeks ago with broad and bipartisan support, demonstrating that consensus is not only possible and practical but achievable.

The success of these bipartisan solutions could break down walls of division and better the lives of our nation’s students while bolstering our cities’ economies.

In mid-December, the committee approved the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, with support from both Republican Chairwoman Virginia Foxx and ranking Democratic member Bobby Scott, who co-sponsored the legislation.

The bill would expand Pell Grants to provide needed tuition assistance for short-term education and training directly linked to career opportunities, easing the costs of attaining the education and skills that all students, and especially low-income students, desperately need.

The bill would also fund access to online learning, further cutting costs and making education more flexible and accessible.  A vast array of students across red and blue states would benefit from the bill’s commonsense approach, as would our community colleges, employers and, by extension, all Americans.

Related: ‘August surprise’: That college scholarship you earned might not count

That same House Committee voted, a bit earlier, also with bipartisan support, to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. This legislation includes federal funding to support education and skills-based training directly connected to career opportunities and economic success.

This too will directly impact our nation’s community colleges, which are the key engines of economic mobility.

Under the bill, existing Labor Department funding could be repurposed to provide eligible workers with individual, customized education and training accounts, leading to improved career opportunities.

The bill would also specifically address the education and training needs of our incarcerated youth by providing them with the education and skills needed to ease their transition into a stable future. And it would add accountability provisions to ensure that spending for education will lead to concrete job growth. Like the Pell legislation, the bill has broad support among education and business leaders.

Passing short-term Pell along with passing workforce and education legislation would provide a clear pathway from high schools to colleges and careers, ensuring a brighter future for millions of students across the nation.

Both pieces of legislation could potentially pass the House and the Senate and be signed into law early in the New Year. 

Smart investments in Education can be both the answer to governmental gridlock and spur economic progress.

Of course, as is usually the case with legislation that clears committee hurdles, the bills contain small flaws that demand fixes. 

For example, in the Pell bill, one item that could derail passage in the full House and Senate and set back the nation’s commitment to social mobility for students is a provision calling for a reduction in student loan eligibility for students at some of the most selective colleges. Another flaw is that the legislation could open the door to abuse by predatory for-profit colleges. These parts of the plan can easily be fixed to ensure passage.

Passing short-term Pell and workforce and education legislation would provide a clear pathway from high schools to colleges and careers, ensuring a brighter future for millions of students across the nation. 

Related: OPINION: It’s time to put the brakes on student debt and give more students a shot at higher education

We’ve seen bipartisan support deliver dynamic education and economic growth before, most recently when Democrats and Republicans in both the House and the Senate united behind Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer’s CHIPS and Science Act.

That act mobilized efforts to restore American leadership in the semiconductor industry while creating good-paying jobs and reducing the cost of automobiles, refrigerators and computers.

The CHIPS and Science Act, with bipartisan support, also included a huge investment in education research, and became a model for the progress that can be achieved when parties come together to better the lives of the people.   

Now is the time for more bipartisan progress. Passage of these two critical education bills would be a fine start, fueling job creation and bettering the skills and future incomes of our nation’s students, who need our support now more than ever. And the bills’ passage would provide a model for how to eliminate gridlock and address our core economic challenges in a positive manner.

Most polling suggests that the top-of-mind topics for most Americans are the proverbial “kitchen table issues,” led by the economy and its effect on working-class Americans.

These bills address those issues. Americans with the education and skills to be employed in growing industries will earn higher wages, and the increased tax revenues from those wages will support our nation’s schools at all levels. And these bills’ prioritization of our community colleges will help them become an even stronger engine for jump-starting and sustaining America’s growth.

In recent years, it’s begun to seem that dysfunction is the one thing that Washington can be reliably counted on to provide. But let’s not simply accept that Congress can no longer come together to support initiatives that meet our needs and provide enhanced opportunities.

For many years, education issues have divided Americans; these core education bills can unite us. They deserve prompt action.

Stanley Litow served as deputy chancellor of schools for New York City and as president of the IBM Foundation. He now serves as adjunct professor at Columbia University and as trustee of the State University of New York where he chairs the Academic Affairs Committee.

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Elected officials are pushing university presidents to categorically silence student speech on salient political issues. This runs afoul of the values of academic freedom and free speech.

In the case of public institutions, giving in to such pressure is unconstitutional.

Free speech is a vital liberty that the American Civil Liberties Union has fought to protect at all levels of government, on campuses and across society for over 100 years.

With the rest of the world, we’ve been anxiously watching the catastrophe unfolding in Israel and Palestine. These events have caused inconceivable pain to many and will have untold effects on our collective future.

It is precisely in moments of crisis and fear like this one that free speech is most important.

While the ACLU does not take positions on international conflicts, we must take positions when the rights of Americans to speak out about these crises are endangered.

Universities are supposed to be spaces where people develop, communicate and debate ideas, including the most topical, difficult and controversial ones.

Students, professors and others on campus must have the freedom to publicly speak about and debate matters of public concern — regardless of how radical or offensive their views are.

For that to work, school leaders must resist pressure to conflate protected political speech with prohibited harassment; making that mistake today will not only impact students now but for decades to come. Yet, troublingly, we’re seeing politicians and school administrators seeking to punish and censor students rather than ensure that all students are able to safely and freely speak their mind.

Related: Students have reacted strongly to university presidents’ Congressional testimony about antisemitism 

And the leaders aren’t just taking this problematic approach about speech pertaining to the conflict in the Middle East. For many years now, school administrators have sought to censor controversial speech, whether that’s canceling a book talk by right-wing Milo Yiannopoulos or removing artwork about reproductive health care from a campus exhibit.

The consequences for students are not hypothetical. In late October, the State University System of Florida’s chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, in consultation with Gov. Ron DeSantis, ordered state universities to deactivate the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters, based on nothing more than the national SJP organization’s political advocacy — which is protected political speech. That is a clear violation of the student groups’ rights to free speech and association, which is why we, ACLU of Florida, and Palestine Legal are now representing the University of Florida chapter of SJP in its legal challenge against Florida officials.

Today, some in Congress seem to think there is, or should be, a “controversial speech” exception to the First Amendment.

Once it becomes acceptable to silence one form of political speech, the rights of everyone to speak and dissent are at risk.

But, if we learned anything from the experiences of our country’s universities during the McCarthy era and more recently in the years since 9/11, it’s that viewpoint-based efforts to police speech on campuses destroy the foundations on which academic communities are built.

Throughout U.S. history, people in power have attempted to silence students when they say things that the leaders find unpopular or offensive. During the Vietnam War, for example, universities tried to stop students on their campuses from creating chapters of the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society by refusing to recognize them as a campus organization. This dispute went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the group’s First Amendment rights.

That case, Healy v. James, is not an outlier. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that students have a right to associate and speak out on matters of public concern, with Chief Justice Earl Warren famously stating 60 years ago that either “teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate” or “our civilization will stagnate and die.”

Therefore, schools should not punish students, as some leaders have proposed, for chanting phrases like “From the River to the Sea,” “No Ceasefire,” “Make America Great Again” and “No Justice, No Peace,” regardless of how much they offend others.

To be clear: Antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hate must be condemned and combatted. True threats and incitement are not protected speech. And colleges and universities have a moral and legal obligation to address harassment committed by, or directed at, members of their communities.

Related: How teachers can talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict

Nonetheless, students have a First Amendment right to use controversial slogans and to have differing opinions about what those slogans mean.

Congress cannot expect university administrators to be in the business of deciding which ideas and beliefs are acceptable for students to express and which should be silenced.

To do so would undermine the values of learning and expression on which all academic institutions are built. And while one group is at the center of such affronts today, other students, groups and speech could face similar attacks tomorrow.

Universities must defend against bad actors who conflate suppression of speech with safety, because once it becomes acceptable to silence one form of political speech, the rights of everyone to speak and dissent are at risk.

Drawing the line between protected political speech and targeted harassment isn’t always easy, but the lines our leaders draw today are the ones that will apply across issues, views and debates for years to come.

 Jenna Leventoff is senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

This story about student free speech 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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When I made the challenging, life-altering decision in April 2023 of where to pursue my Ph.D., the University of Texas at Austin seemed like the best fit.

As an underrepresented student, I felt assured by the school’s diverse faculty and student population, along with their embrace of a robust diversity, equity and inclusion mission, and looked forward to continuing my research on improving the quality of mental health care for all families.

Then came Texas Senate Bill 17, which became law on January 1, making it illegal to have DEI offices and programming in public universities. This bill also outlaws mandatory diversity training and does not allow departments to ask prospective faculty about their commitment to building diverse campuses.Texas is not the only state to pass such a bill.

Legislation that bans many DEI initiatives in our universities is already having a significant chilling effect on students like me, creating concerns over the potential impact on the quality of our education and raising questions regarding whether Texas even wants us.

Had the Texas bill passed before my decision to attend UT Austin, I would most likely not have chosen to come here. For me, as a new resident of Texas and a first-year Ph.D. student planning to learn, teach and research for the next four to five years, this bill, now law, creates a hostile environment.

Given that top-ranked programs fight for the most qualified applicants, states that adopt these policies have to realize that they will discourage top diverse talent from attending their schools.

Related: Beyond the Rankings: The College Welcome Guide

Some educational leaders and policymakers argue that institutions will remain true to their values of welcoming diverse ideas and people — despite the bills and their policies.

I disagree. As a first-generation Mexican immigrant in this country, I believe that establishing structural and transparent mechanisms that offer support and keep schools accountable are the keys to creating and preserving spaces of genuine belonging for students and faculty from diverse backgrounds.

I align most with the view expressed in UT Austin’s Change Starts Here strategic plan: Tangible benefits for students and the greater community cannot be accomplished without “creating processes and policies that cultivate a diverse, equitable, and inclusive campus.”

My abuelita taught me that “mas hace una hormiga andando que un buey echado” (“an ant on the move does more than a dozing ox”).

During my post-master’s work at the Yale Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine, I vividly remember navigating a difficult situation with the support of the chief diversity officer.

While no institution has it all figured out, that experience allowed me to appreciate the tangible benefits of having DEI structures in place.

Lawmakers, university presidents, deans and all those who decide on and carry out educational policies should understand that students like me are no longer settling for simply being allowed into higher education institutions. We now demand what we all deserve: structures and mechanisms that support our educational growth.

Related: STUDENT VOICE: Poor and first-generation transfer students often don’t feel welcome on college campuses

While many academics may genuinely hold values that align with diversity, equity and inclusion, fear of the retaliation empowered by legislation like Senate Bill 17 (e.g., losing their campus positions, department appointments, etc.), and a sense of powerlessness, may override those values.

But my Abuelita taught me that “mas hace una hormiga andando que un buey echado” (“an ant on the move does more than a dozing ox”).

This expression, or “dicho,”reminds me that while I may be no more than a tiny ant compared to massive systems, I can still act. Additionally, coming from a multigenerational migrant farmworker family taught me the importance of planting seeds.

That is why I am confident that if enough of us collectively call for additions to DEI efforts (e.g., expanding DEI offices and resources), we can help reverse the backlash against DEI.

During this liminal period, as we decide if we will move forward or backward as it pertains to DEI, we must remember the new message introduced by the University of Texas at Austin: “What starts here changes the world.”

We need decision-makers to plant seeds that bear fruit to nurture all community members and have roots strong enough to break the concrete foundations of inequitable systems.

Hector Chaidez Ruacho is a doctoral student at The University of Texas at Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work and a recipient of the Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship and Graduate School Mentoring Fellowship.

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The recent rise of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools has inspired growing anxiety on college campuses while fueling a national conversation about faculty attempts to thwart students from using the tools to cheat.

But that prevalent narrative around AI and cheating is overshadowing the technology’s true potential: Artificial intelligence holds great promise for dramatically enhancing the reach and impact of postsecondary institutions and improving outcomes for all students.

Last month, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order aimed at better mitigating the risks and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, while also arguing for the need to “shape AI’s potential to transform education by creating resources to support educators deploying AI-enabled educational tools.”

Biden’s call to action could not have been more timely.

The question now is not whether generative AI can positively transform educational access and attainment, but whether higher education is ready to truly democratize and personalize learning with these tools.

Related: Future of Learning: Teaching with AI, part 1

AI’s transformational potential is perhaps greatest at community colleges, minority-serving institutions and open-access universities. These schools’ diversity necessitates a broader set of supports. Dedicated faculty and staff not only serve a very broad range of students — including first-generation and low-income learners, returning adults, those for whom English is a second language and those balancing academic pursuits with family and work responsibilities — but they do so with fewer resources than instructors at elite and flagship institutions. Generative AI tools can augment critically needed services such as advisers, tutors and coaches.

Exploring the possibilities of AI is not cheap, however. While some low-cost or free tools can make a difference, the largest impacts will be achieved through more advanced — and costly — tools that are developed with specific learner populations in mind and blend academic material with students’ sociocultural and language contexts rather than providing generic solutions.

Challenges around cost and availability could further disenfranchise the very learners who could gain the most from AI tools by denying them access to the experts, resources and development opportunities they need to benefit from them. Institutions may struggle to bring the true power of AI to bear on addressing their students’ needs.

Similarly, too often, the datasets and algorithms behind AI tools reflect historical inaccuracies and intrinsic biases that only further disenfranchise learners. This will continue to be the case until we collectively confront the inequitable ways that AI systems are designed and resources are distributed.

That’s why we need to think about AI differently, shifting our focus from debates about academic integrity and concerns about cheating to how we can leverage artificial intelligence in equitable ways that will boost college completion for all students.

Related: How college educators are using AI in the classroom

Let’s focus on how AI advances could provide all learners with the kinds of high-touch support already offered to students who attend wealthier institutions. AI tools could have a transformative effect on access, progression and completion for learners who were previously constrained by limitations of time, space and resources.

Imagine if generative AI tutors could provide 24/7 individualized support, along with AI-powered virtual reality tools that would widen access to experiential learning opportunities. What about having adaptive learning tools enabling students to learn at a pace that best suits their level of preparation? And personalized learning materials that reflect their backgrounds and lived experiences?

A technology that has incredible potential to help expand access to the many benefits of higher education should not become a mechanism through which inequity is exacerbated.

Such steps could augment engagement and outreach efforts to lower the barriers that prevent students from underserved communities from earning degrees.

This is not a speculative vision of a not-too-distant future, but an emerging reality on some campuses. Arizona State University, for example, has assembled a team of engineers and data scientists to develop AI tools to enhance learning and improve student outcomes.

For now, such experimentation is limited to colleges and universities with the resources for scaling the benefits of the technology and developing the guardrails necessary for mitigating risks to learners.

Related: OPINION: The world is changing fast. Students need data science instruction ASAP

According to a new report from the Brookings Institution, many of the nation’s most selective and affluent colleges and universities are clustered in the same coastal metro areas long home to Big Tech — and now to AI innovation and job growth.

That’s unfortunate. Access to new technology — and the ability to play a role in shaping its design — should not be limited by geography or institutional type. A technology that has incredible potential to help expand access to the many benefits of higher education should not become a mechanism through which inequity is exacerbated.

That’s why the newly convened Complete College America Council on Equitable AI plans to bring together organizations representing over 1,000 access-focused two-year and four-year colleges and universities in January. We hope to influence and initiate policies and practices to encourage equitable engagement of AI technologies.

We hope that college leaders, policymakers and technologists will join us to make sure that AI helps to realize, rather than hinder, higher education’s promise as an engine of equity, prosperity and hope.

Yolanda Watson Spiva is president of Complete College America.

Vistasp M. Karbhari is a professor of engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he also served as president from 2013 to 2020, and is a fellow and board member of Complete College America.

This story about AI in higher education 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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Since the introduction of ChatGPT, educators have been considering the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) on education. Different approaches to AI codes of conduct are emerging, based on geography, school size and administrators’ willingness to embrace new technology.

With ChatGPT barely one year old and generative AI developing rapidly, a universally accepted approach to integrating AI has not yet emerged.

Still, the rise of GAI is offering a rare glimpse of hope and promise amid K-12’s historic achievement lows and unprecedented teacher shortages. That’s why many educators are contemplating how to manage and monitor student AI use. You can see a wide range of opinions, including some who would like to see AI tools outright banned.

There is a fine line between “using AI as a tool” and “using AI to cheat,” and many educators are still determining where that line is.

Related: How AI can teach kids to write – not just cheat

In my view, banning tech that will become a critical part of everyday life is not the answer. AI tools can be valuable classroom companions, and educators should write their codes of conduct in a way that encourages learners to adapt.

Administrators should respect teachers’ hesitation about adopting AI, but also create policies that allow tech-forward educators and students to experiment.

A number of districts have publicly discussed their approaches to AI. Early policies seem to fall into three camps:

Zero Tolerance: Some schools have instructed their students that use of AI tools will not be tolerated. For example, Oklahoma’s Tomball ISD updated its code of conduct to include a brief sentence on AI-enhanced work, stating that any work submitted by a student that has been completed using AI “will be considered plagiarism” and penalized as such.

Active Encouragement: Some schools encourage teachers to use AI tools in their classrooms. Michigan’s Hemlock Public School District provides its teachers with a list of AI tools and suggests that teachers explore which tools work best with their existing curriculum and lessons.

Wait-and-See: Many schools are taking a wait-and-see approach to drafting policies. In the meantime, they are allowing teachers and students to freely explore the capabilities and applications of the current crop of tools and providing guidance as issues and questions arise. They will use the data collected during this time to inform policies drafted in the future.

A recent Brookings report highlighted the confusion around policies for these new tools. For example, Los Angeles Public Schools blocked ChatGPT from all school computers while simultaneously rolling out an AI companion for parents. Because there isn’t yet clear guidance on how AI tools should be used, educators are receiving conflicting advice on both how to use AI themselves and how to guide their students’ use.

New York City public schools banned ChatGPT, then rolled back the ban, noting that their initial decision was hasty, based on “knee-jerk fear,” and didn’t take into account the good that AI tools could do in supporting teachers and students. They also noted that students will need to function and work in a world in which AI tools are a part of daily life and banning them outright could be doing students a disservice. They’ve since vowed to provide educators with “resources and real-life examples” of how AI tools have been successfully implemented in schools to support a variety of tasks across the spectrum of planning, instruction and analysis.

AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.

This response is a good indication that the “Zero Tolerance” approach is waning in larger districts as notable guiding bodies, such as ISTE, actively promote AI exploration.

In addition, the federal government’s Office of Educational Technology is working on policies to ensure safe and effective AI use, noting that “Everyone in education has a responsibility to harness the good to serve educational priorities” while safeguarding against potential risks.

Educators must understand how to use these tools, and how they can help students be better equipped to navigate both the digital and real world.

Related: AI might disrupt math and computer science classes – in a good way

Already, teachers and entrepreneurs are experimenting with ways that GAI can make an impact on teacher practice and training, from lesson planning and instructional coaching to personalized feedback.

District leaders must consider that AI can assist teachers in crafting activity-specific handouts, customizing reading materials and formulating assessment, assignment and in-class discussion questions. They should also note how AI can deter cheating by generating unique assessments for each test-taker.

As with many educational innovations, it’s fair to assume that the emergence of student conduct cases within higher education will help guide the development of GAI use policy generally.

All this underscores both the importance and the complication of drafting such GAI policies, leading districts to ask, “Should we create guidelines just for students or for students and teachers?”

Earlier this year, Stanford’s Board on Conduct Affairs addressed the issue and its policies, clarifying that generative AI cannot be used to “substantially” complete an assignment and that its use must be disclosed.

But Stanford also gave individual instructors the latitude to provide guidelines on the acceptable use of GAI in their coursework. Given the relative murkiness of that policy, I predict clearer guidelines are still to come and will have an impact on those being drafted for K-12 districts.

Ultimately, AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.

It will, however, not be enough for schools just to write codes of conduct for AI tools. They’ll need to think through how the presence of AI technology changes the way students are assessed, use problem-solving skills and develop competencies.

Questions like “How did you creatively leverage this new technology?” can become part of the rubric.

Their exploration will help identify best practices and debunk myths, championing AI’s responsible use. Developing AI policies for K-12 schools is an ongoing conversation.

Embracing experimentation, raising awareness and reforming assessments can help schools ensure that GAI becomes a positive force in supporting student learning responsibly.

Ted Mo Chen is vice president of globalization for the education technology company ClassIn.

This story about AI tools in schools 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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