CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Lizette Valles is a former teacher and librarian who runs a Los Angeles school that she believes represents a promising alternative to U.S. public education.

It has three fourth-grade students, including her son, and just one other teacher: her husband. There’s no building, so they share space in a warehouse with a race car garage and plant nursery – when students aren’t out hiking, fishing or cycling.

“We have ripped the doors off the classroom. We learn anywhere, anytime,” Valles told me, noting that she is looking for a new location so she can recruit more students for the so-called microschool. Interest is growing in these small, independently run  “learning pods,” which are often operated by parents and enroll an estimated 1.2 to 2.1 million U.S. students.

Valles was among the enthusiastic would-be innovators and entrepreneurs I met at least week’s Harvard Kennedy School conference, Emerging School Models: Moving From Alternative to Mainstream. The event often felt like a pep rally for options beyond traditional school districts, where enrollment fell in the pandemic and is expected to drop another five percent by 2031.

I came to learn more about some of these alternatives at a time when parents and politicians are increasingly paying attention to homeschooling and other public school substitutes, accompanied by a rise in new networks, foundations and companies like Prenda and funds like Vela that provide growing financial and logistical support.

These options include microschools like Valles’ Ellemercito Academy, homeschooling co-ops like Engaged Detroit, “classical” options such as Haven School (focused on nature) in Colorado and Bridges Virtual Academy in Wisconsin, among others that spoke about their work.

Some are nascent and small, and they don’t necessarily have much in common. It seemed a stretch to see them as becoming “mainstream” — especially because scant evidence exists of their effectiveness in serving students, or even of how many students they enroll. And most American children — close to 50 million — remain enrolled in traditional public schools.

Still, a growing number of states – more than a dozen this year – have either expanded or started voucher programs that steer taxpayer money to these new options, which can include private and religious schools. Late last month, North Carolina became the latest state to pass a universal voucher program. 

It’s not always clear, however, that this money goes directly to schools and parents: In Arizona, millions of dollars also went to businesses and non-school spending, a recent investigation found. The Network for Public Education, an advocacy group, last month published an interactive feature chronicling “voucher scams.”

And choice efforts are faltering in some parts of the country like Texas, due in large part to public support for local school systems, although Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has called a special session later this month where lawmakers are expected to focus on school choice.

There’s also been plenty of pushback: North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper has declared “an emergency for public education” in the state because of diminishing funding for it, along with the legislative push for vouchers. During a virtual panel Thursday sponsored by Parents for Public Schools, Cooper insisted that “the majority of people of North Carolina and across this country still support our public schools,” while calling complaints over so-called culture wars and indoctrination of students “nonsense.”

“We have seen an erosion [of support] and a legislature that has not only underfunded our public schools but chosen to essentially choke the life out of them,” Cooper said. “We cannot give up on public education even though some government leaders have.”

Related: School choice had a big moment in the pandemic but is it what parents want for the long run?

Speakers at last week’s conference, sponsored by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, offered no such dissenting views. They repeatedly urged the audience to “join the [school choice] movement,” one that Valles sees herself as part of, in her position as the California field coordinator for the National Microschooling Center, a support network launched with start-up funding from the Stand Together Trust.

An email sent to participants afterward called the conference “an engaging and motivating event for proponents of educational choice,” one reason why Michigan State University professor Joshua Cowen, who was not invited, dubbed it a “political operation disguised as an academic conference.”

“It’s not a movement,” he said. “It’s a coup, with the idea to overthrow existing institutional structures.”

I spoke to Cowen because he’s spent years researching choice options such as vouchers, and has concluded they do more harm than good and often lead to worse outcomes for vulnerable children. He sees the latest push as a way to create a product – then build up a demand for it.

“Instead of focusing on how to improve existing supply (public schools) what they’ve done is start from the premise that taking down public schools is the first, necessary condition,” Cowen told me. “Think about how this works with advertising in our daily lives: microschools, the solution you never knew you needed!”

Related: After decades of studying vouchers, I’m now firmly opposed to them

Vouchers have meanwhile run into snags: In Florida, they often don’t cover the full cost of private school and many parents have had trouble finding space in the schools their children need or want. Yet demand for the vouchers is such that Florida parents and schools are having trouble accessing them.

At Harvard, the state’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., chalked up any snags to “growing pains,” while bashing the state’s public school system as “an employment program” for teachers and other staff members.  When asked about evidence of school choice effectiveness, Diaz said he believes “the ultimate arbiter is the parent themselves.”

“To me, the answer is a system that is based on the needs of the students and families. If we do that, we’ll have a better society and a better structure.”

Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the advocacy group EdChoice

Conference goers also heard from (and cheered) keynote speaker Republican Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, who said he hoped a lawsuit over the planned opening of the nation’s first religious charter school in his state would ultimately land before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Stitt called an Oklahoma state board’s approval – one being challenged by parents, clergy and education activists – a “win-win for religious and education freedom,” and repeated a popular stock line adopted by right-leaning politicians: “No parent wants to hand their kids over to a one-sized fits all education.”

Other familiar phrases spoken throughout the conference included calls for freeing students from failing schools, funding students instead of systems, supporting parent and family rights and fighting so-called “woke indoctrination.”

Related: School choice had a big moment in the pandemic but is it what parents want for the long run?

Much of what I heard dovetailed with conclusions in Cara Fitzpatrick’s exhaustively researched new book, “The Death of Public Schools:  How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America.” In it she notes that conservatives are aiming to both “radically redefine public education in America,” and “use public dollars to pay for just about any educational option a family might envision.”

Dissent over choice options comes at a time of much hand-wringing in both political parties over how to improve lagging test scores and the country’s overall education performance. During a conversation with Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute this week, former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan lamented a lack of bipartisan support for education initiatives, while repeating his oft-proclaimed dismay for a “one-size fits all” approach.

Duncan, who served under President Obama, also acknowledged that many parents consistently say they like their children’s schools, a conclusion supported by recent polls.

“It’s not a movement. It’s a coup, with the idea to overthrow existing institutional structures.”

Joshua Cowen, Professor, Michigan State University

Beyond the underlying politics, conference speakers pushed for removing obstacles to expanding microschools, by finding physical spaces for the schools and getting around what they described as a frustrating maze of regulations that prevents them from serving more children.

Bernita Bradley spoke passionately about ways she’s helping parents via Engaged Detroit, which offers support and coaching for homeschooling parents. “Traditional education has not worked for our children,” Bradley said, calling it “punitive for Black students.”

Choice programs “have to be based on what parents want,” said speaker Robert C. Enlow, president and CEO of the advocacy group EdChoice. “To me, the answer is a system that is based on the needs of the students and families. If we do that, we’ll have a better society and a better structure.”

Valles, meanwhile, envisions a new building with room for 10 students who, in addition to learning math and reading skills, might spend a day hiking, fishing, landscape painting or simply lying on the ground listening to the sounds of nature.

“A lot of people want this for their children,” Valles told me. “Microschooling offers a different pathway. …The questions it asks have more to do with what brings your child joy, peace, excitement and creativity, rather than rigidity, regurgitation and standardization.”

This story on microschools 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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NEW YORK — I strap on a virtual reality headset. A screen appears and dramatic music pounds into my ears. I’m told there has been a nasty avalanche and that it’s my job to restore power to the grid.

The exercise is part of a new program that encourages learning middle school math through real world problem-solving, now in use in 190 school districts across 36 states.

The concept caught my attention during a demonstration at HolonIQ’s ‘Back to School’ summit in New York City earlier this month. The lesson seemed a lot more relevant than copying a row of equations from a chalkboard, which I remember from my own more traditional (and boring) math education so many years ago.

I was also intrigued because of the urgency of making math and science more meaningful for middle schoolers – these are the students who lost the most ground in math during the pandemic. It’s a little too early to know if VR lessons like this one will improve lagging test scores, but Anurupa Ganguly, founder and CEO of Prisms, the company behind the platform, is convinced it will.

“This is a whole new way of experiencing math instruction,” Ganguly, a former math and physics teacher, told me, pointing to promising early studies from the non-partisan research group WestEd, along with feedback from teachers and students on Prisms, which is hosted on the Meta Quest platform.

Instead of memorizing equations, students develop structural reasoning skills from solving real-life problems (such as a damaged power grid or limited hospital-bed capacity in a pandemic) with guidance from teachers trained in the purpose of the lessons.

Related: Inside the middle school math crisis

I sat through other new simulations at the summit as well, including Dreamscape Learn, something I’d heard and read about from a colleague who took a trip through its virtual Alien Zoo) and YouTube Player for Education, which is creating virtual lessons, content and assessments.

It’s never surprising to see and hear enormous enthusiasm for technology solutions at conferences: There are always a host of new apps and products on display that come and go. Entrepreneurs and investors packed Holon’s conference, eager to hear more about the global research and analytics platform’s latest survey results and reports on latest trends and ed tech for teaching and learning.

Naturally, that included lots of sessions on artificial intelligence, which many believe will be a bright spot for ed tech investing.

Instead of memorizing equations, students develop structural reasoning skills from solving real-life problems (such as a damaged power grid or limited hospital-bed capacity in a pandemic) with guidance from teachers trained in the purpose of the lessons.

Still, it’s impossible to ignore growing skepticism about the power of digital tools. Sweden moved away from tablets and technology this month in a return to more traditional ways of education – a backlash to its digital-heavy push that many in the country are blaming for student decline in basic skills. 

Sweden is instead embracing printed textbooks, teacher expertise, handwriting practice and quiet time. In addition, the recent UNESCO report entitled “An Ed-Tech Tragedy” documented vast inequality from pandemic-related reliance on technology during remote online learning, and concluded that lower-tech alternatives such as the distribution of schoolwork packets or delivering lessons via radio and televisionmight have been more equitable.

“The bright spots of the ed-tech experiences during the pandemic, while important and deserving of attention, were vastly eclipsed by failure,” the UNESCO researchers said in the report, which encourages schools to prioritize in-person learning and make sure that emerging technologies, including AI chatbots that many public schools are now banning, clearly benefit students before they are used.

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

For her part, Ganguly is quick to note that Prisms is not an ed tech program, nor designed for remote learning: Once the VR headsets come off, teachers take over and guide students through the lessons. “Ninety percent of our resources are not in VR but in teacher training,” she told me.

I also raised questions about the use of ed-tech and screens during a session I moderated on early childhood education, where entrepreneur Joe Wolf, co-founder of the nonprofit Imagine Worldwide, described bringing solar-powered technology programs to remote areas in Africa, where few children have electricity and less than five percent have internet access; there’s also a dearth of trained teachers.

“There is no other technology in their lives,” Wolf noted, pointing to studies of a trial showing that children in Malawi not only loved using the program, they made significant gains in math and literacy using the program, despite pandemic disruption. Imagine Worldwide works with governments, communities, funders and other partners as it attempts to expand throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

“The bright spots of the ed-tech experiences during the pandemic, while important and deserving of attention, were vastly eclipsed by failure.”

UNESCO report, ‘An Ed-Tech Tragedy’

Ultimately, all of the problems both entrepreneurs and educators are trying to solve require a lot more research, noted Isabelle Hau of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, who was also on the panel, a view endorsed by Kumar Garg, vice president of partnerships at Schmidt Futures.

Garg spoke about “learning engineering,” and noted that pushback against education technology is a direct result of how quickly these tools rolled out in the pandemic.

“A billion kids got sent overnight home and we tried on the fly to create an online learning system with very little scaffolding,” Garg said, noting that it was impossible to know how many students were unenrolled and never even got online. “The crisis came, and everyone was like, ‘What’s the answer?’ ”

I suspect there never was one, as our team at The Hechinger Report found during this unprecedented interruption of education worldwide. But there is one result that is absolutely worth paying attention to: Plenty of entrepreneurs, foundations, nonprofit outlets, foundations and investors are looking for answers, and have new ideas that might (or might not) make a difference.

Regardless, we are eager to listen.

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

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If there is any hope following the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action and overturn more than 40 years of precedent last week, it might be this: Selective colleges and universities are suddenly pledging “unwavering commitment” to access and inclusion.

If only many of them had really made that effort in the first place.

I’m still reading through heartfelt statements from college presidents touting the importance of race-conscious admissions and having people from different backgrounds represented on their campuses.  

Yet our years of reporting and collecting data on this issue at The Hechinger Report show little evidence they’ve actually done much to diversify their student bodies, even before the affirmative action ruling. Black student enrollment in colleges and universities has been dropping steadily, while many flagship universities lag way behind when it comes to enrolling their state’s Black and Hispanic high school graduates.

And nearly 700 schools have been raising prices paid by their lowest-income students – who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic – more than the prices paid by their highest-income ones.

Related: Many flagship universities don’t reflect their states Black or Latino high school graduates

Many college presidents are spinning another narrative now that the Supreme Court has struck down the use of race in admissions, expressing dismay and promising to do better, although many acknowledge they aren’t sure what that will look like legally.

Let’s take, for example, six selective upstate New York liberal arts colleges where estimated annual costs top $81,000, according to The Hechinger Report’s newly updated Tuition Tracker tool, based on federal data derived from first-year, first-time students.

Together, these colleges, which all filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court case, put out a joint statement after the decision, pledging their commitment to “creating a living and learning community that reflects diversity of thought, interests, backgrounds, and experiences.”

Of these, both St. Lawrence University and Hamilton College have enrollments that are just 3 percent Black, according to our tuition tracker tool. All are less than 15 percent Hispanic. Similar sentiments and commitments came from the acting president of Kenyon College in Ohio (3 percent Black), and the president of Whitman College in Washington (2 percent Black).

Other reassurances to do better came from schools like Wesleyan University in Connecticut, which is 6 percent Black and 12 percent Hispanic. “We are determined to create a diverse community, and our admission and financial aid teams have been preparing over the last several months to craft policies that will do that,” said the statement from President Michael Roth and Amin Abdul-Malik Gonzalez, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid.

Related: Many flagship universities don’t reflect their states Black or Latino high school graduates

None of the statements addressed why it has been so hard for these highly competitive elite colleges to diversify when the use of race in admissions was an option, at least in the nine states that never banned affirmative action, although the need for full-pay students certainly plays a role.

“Even with affirmative action, many colleges were slow to act,’’ said Atnre Alleyne, co-founder of TeenSharp, a national organization that has placed hundreds of high-performing Black, Hispanic and low-income students in top colleges.

Alleyne told me he’s not sure what the new landscape will mean as even fewer slots are available in schools he counted on to not only recruit and offer substantial scholarships to his students, but help them feel welcome on campus.

“Even with affirmative action, many colleges were slow to act.’’

Atnre Alleyne, co-founder of TeenSharp, a national organization that has placed hundreds of high-performing Black, Hispanic and low-income students in top colleges

Jeff Selingo, a longtime higher-education author whose latest book took him inside three college admissions offices, said during a live discussion last week that many colleges “have been kind of lazy about recruiting and finding students all over the place,” although he believes the affirmative action decision “will force colleges and universities … to look at their practices going forward.”

Alleyne said he hopes so: He’s heartened that more of his students got into selective colleges that recently went test-optional and eliminated SAT and ACT test score requirement. He also emphasized how life-changing it is for students from underrepresented backgrounds with few resources and connections to find their way into the nation’s elite institutions.

“Many of these schools have a huge endowment that can help our students go debt free,” Alleyne said, rattling off examples of TeenSharp students who graduated recently without loans from places like Cornell University in New York and Carleton and Macalester Colleges in Minnesota, and are now becoming leaders in their fields and helping out their parents financially.

“We should not resign ourselves that these schools are not for our children. … Many were built on the backs of slavery, and they should do right for them,” Alleyne added. “We are going to continue to push and fight for them.”

Related: New problems, recycled solutions and lots of hand wringing: how can we restore faith in higher education?

One disheartening example of what that fight ahead could look like comes from California, a state that banned affirmative action in 1996. A quarter of colleges there said they were unable to meet their diversity and equity goals, according to an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in support of Harvard’s and UNC’s race-conscious admissions programs.

At the University of California at Berkeley, the freshman class in 2021 was 20 percent Hispanic, in a state where 54 percent of high school graduates are Latino. Just 2 percent were Black.

OiYan Poon, the co-author of Rethinking College Admissions and a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, is among those watching the aftermath of the court’s decision, to determine how and if colleges are capable of change.

At the University of California at Berkeley, the freshman class in 2021 was 20 percent Hispanic, in a state where 54 percent of high school graduates are Latino. Just 2 percent were Black.

“There is so much work that needs to be done,” Poon told me, including on her list changes in admissions offices, greater state investment in higher education and more money for ethnic studies departments and cultural centers.

Poon joined me on a panel I moderated on the topic at SXSW.edu in March, and is also among those who believe colleges must re-examine athletics applicants – some 85 percent of student athletes are white – and drop legacy admissions.

We speculated what colleges might have to say if the court told them they could no longer prioritize children of donors, something for which panelist Natasha Warikoo, a Tufts sociology professor and author, has long advocated. Some colleges have actually done so, including Amherst, where the proportion of applicants admitted who had some kind of family connection to the school has dropped from 11 percent to 6 percent since the college decided to stop giving preference to legacy students in 2021. Many Ivy League schools enroll some 15 percent legacy students.

President Joe Biden has also taken aim at legacy admissions, noting last week that he instructed the Department of Education “to analyze what practices help build more inclusive and diverse student bodies and what practices hold that back — practices like legacy admissions and other systems that expand privilege instead of opportunity.”

Warikoo is skeptical that more colleges will roll it back, though.

“They worry about the financial implications, and also, without increased financial aid, they [legacies] will just be replaced by other high-income kids,” she pointed out.

Still, there’s new momentum to end legacy admissions: On Monday, Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of Black and Latino community groups in New England, alleging that legacy admission gives an unfair boost to children of alumni, who are most often white, and discriminates against students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Related: The Hechinger Report and Equal Protection

Meanwhile, we can count on college presidents to remain simultaneously confused – and outraged.

And critics, like Evan Mandery, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us, will continue to call them out, as he did in an Apple News podcast I listened to last week.

Mandery also wants highly selective colleges to get rid of early admissions, which overwhelmingly favors the wealthy, and wants them to drop consideration of SAT and ACT scores given that students with money can pay for preparation and take the tests many times.

He’d also like colleges to assign more value to applicants who have actual jobs (like working at Taco Bell) and participate in activities that don’t require money, instead of playing pricey club sports like fencing and squash and other pursuits that are often limited to the affluent.

He isn’t optimistic though. “These preferences are massive,” he said. The court did nothing to stop colleges from considering these “proxies for wealth,” he said, or from moving accepted students through a pipeline of privilege that follows them to the workforce.

Until they do, based on last week’s decision, the most elite U.S. colleges will most likely look even whiter and become increasingly out of reach.

This story about affirmative action in college admissions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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Dixie Ross has taught every level of math offered in Texas public high schools and trained hundreds of AP calculus teachers in summer institutes. Over 40 years, she’s developed strong views on what’s wrong with American math education, but one problem has rankled her since she first walked into a classroom: unequal access to higher-level courses.

Too many students are held back from advanced math that could provide direct pathways into college level math and STEM jobs, said Ross, a former presidential awardee for her teaching. What irks her most is that decisions about who gets tracked into or out of these higher-level courses are too often based on a student’s race.

“There are kids who can be successful in math, but the opportunities are not there for them,” Ross told me, in an eye-opening conversation that came in response to a survey The Hechinger Report sent to our readers last month. “I wish I had some magic bullet solution but haven’t found it yet. And I have been looking for four decades.”

Ross was among more than 465 Hechinger Report readers who responded to our survey, with thoughtful feedback that is already informing our coverage of America’s math crisis. We welcome hearing from readers as we visit classrooms and campuses, digging into questions about what kind of math should be taught at what age, and how best to boost lagging performance, close racial achievement gaps and help students catch up after the pandemic.

“There are a lot of holes and gaps from distance learning. The math content got shrunk down and the fluency just wasn’t there. It’s heartbreaking.”

Giavanni Coleman, math teacher in Haywood, California

Several people pointed to gaps in availability of courses in STEM classes, which should not come as a surprise: Two out of five Black and Latino students surveyed for a recent joint report from the Education Trust and Equal Opportunity Schools said they have a passion for studying science, technology and engineering and want to go to college, yet only three percent were enrolled in AP STEM classes.

The issue of learning loss and recent NAEP test score declines – the largest ever recorded – also loomed large in survey responses, highlighting the devastating impact the pandemic had on students and families, in particular in schools that serve large numbers of Black and Latino students.

So did the issue of U.S. student performance compared with other countries: Our 15-year-olds rank behind 30 countries and one region on one international test, while our fourth graders trail 14 countries on another. So it makes sense that some teachers who answered the survey want to know how high-performing countries are teaching math, along with what cultural barriers might be in the way.  “Are there schools that replicate best practices of countries like Japan and Finland and demonstrate better outcomes?” one educator asked.

Related: Plunging NAEP scores make clear the long and difficult road ahead to pandemic recovery

Survey results also confirmed there is a lot of anxiety about math. Some of it arises from recent test scores showing dismal middle school performance: Students who started middle school early in the pandemic lost more ground in math than any other group and are still struggling. 

Fears that teachers are insufficiently trained in math and that poor math skills harm America’s competitiveness and weaken our ability to fill critical jobs came up often in our survey. So did worries that high schools are placing too much emphasis on calculus and not enough on practical skills like data analysis and statistics for an increasingly high-tech world.

Several readers noted that families need more support than ever in overcoming their own math fears, along with additional tools and strategies for playfully supporting and supplementing their children’s math knowledge. That means challenging age-old assumptions that some people simply aren’t good at math.

And some teachers had specific ideas about what must change in math education: Giavanni Coleman, a 20-year veteran who teaches fifth- and sixth-grade math in Hayward, California, told us that schools must build a stronger foundation in math early on, and wants to see more investment in teacher training and early childhood math to help infuse a love of numbers at a young age.

“It takes time, and money, and human capital and training,” Coleman told me in a follow-up conversation.

Coleman was also among the many teachers worried about pandemic learning loss. “There are a lot of holes and gaps from distance learning,” she said. “The math content got shrunk down and the fluency just wasn’t there. It’s heartbreaking.”

Here are a few top themes that concerned our readers:

• Reducing anxiety or fear of math among students and helping them to understand why it matters. 
• Highlighting the importance of basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) in math teaching and focusing on establishing strong foundations before advancing to more conceptual lessons.
• Learning in more detail about what effective math instruction looks like for preschoolers and kindergarteners
• Understanding why subjects like algebra and calculus have become so important in college admissions and whether statistics or data science should matter more, along with how curricula are chosen and which work best
• Tracing how math instruction has changed throughout history and ensuring that math lessons aren’t outdated
• Analyzing how math instruction and student performance changed after the introduction of the Common Core standards

Related: After common core a mysterious spike in failure rate among New York High School students

We also discovered common themes that concerned particular groups.

Parents were most likely to mention concerns about math curricula, math anxiety and their hope that math instruction would place greater emphasis on problem-solving instead of memorization and repetition.

Respondents from higher education were also most likely to mention reducing anxiety or fear of math among their students, along with the hope they can learn to both love math and understand why it matters to their careers.

And all groups worry that there aren’t enough sufficiently qualified and experienced math teachers, in part due to low pay and poor working conditions.

Teacher Ross believes in recruiting great math students to become math teachers and wants to put all students on track to take advanced math unless they opt out of it. They should then be required to take any classes they fail until they pass, she thinks.

“Are there schools that replicate best practices of countries like Japan and Finland and demonstrate better outcomes?”

Educator who replied to Hechinger’s survey

“We need to make sure kids understand that their decision to take or not take certain math classes will largely determine the economic opportunities that will be available to them,” she said.

The survey results will be enormously helpful, but one of the most important ways of improving math came from a student I contacted after speaking with Ross. Carla Edith Brayton was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico living in Texas when she landed in Ross’s math classes. She worked after school and nights at a local McDonald’s, and while she’d always been good at math and loved the subject, she often fell asleep in class and felt discouraged.

Ross never allowed her to give up and pushed her to apply for scholarships and attend college. Brayton is now 29, a civil engineer and mother of two, the first in her family to attend college – she graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2017 – and to own a home. She loves her job and said none of her success would have happened if Ross had not encouraged her.

“Someone simply took the time to notice and believed in me. That’s what changed my life,” Brayton told me, noting that she has found a way to pay it forward by speaking at school career days, describing her background and the higher-level math classes she might otherwise have been shut out of.

“Education is the key for all people,” she said. “It certainly was for me.”

This story about math education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. The Gates Foundation has recently begun a major funding effort for math education projects around the country, and is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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Activism has been part of Safiyah Suara’s young life since her politician mother hauled her along to demonstrations in a baby carrier. That’s why she’ll be spending this week protesting guns and the expulsion from the Tennessee House of two Democratic lawmakers by their Republican colleagues.

She’s hoping more young Tennesseans will join her.

“The most important thing is to keep speaking out, and to show the legislature and the rest of the world that we won’t stop fighting,” said Safiyah, an 18-year-old senior at Hume-Fogg, a magnet high school just a few blocks from the state capitol.

Some 7,000 students who walked out of school in Nashville on April 3 did exactly that, after three children and three adults were killed by an assailant armed with semi-automatic weapons at a nearby church-affiliated school. They confronted lawmakers in the capitol, then later watched in dismay as a Republican majority ousted Rep. Justin Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones for interrupting debate by leading a gun-control protest on March 30 inside the chamber.

On Sunday, the day before yet-another mass shooting left five dead in Louisville, I spoke via Zoom with Safiyah and two of her Hume-Fogg classmates, along with their English teacher Courtney Shultz. They described what they see as an attack on democracy, one that has trained the nation’s eyes on their home state. Despite anguish over gun violence and the legislature’s failure to act on the issue, the high school seniors hope to build a better Tennessee, a state with a history of racism and segregation that only recently removed the bust of the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from the state capitol.

“Unfortunately, it’s up to our generation to push back and let them know we are not going to be silent anymore,” said Ren Peters, 18, who plans to study oceanography in college this fall in Florida, but wants to come back to his home state and continue fighting for stricter gun control. “We are going to be heard. You are not going to push us around. This isn’t a dictatorship.”

Related: Weary but energized, students in conservative states mobilize around roe v. wade leak

Shultz, who is also the school’s debate team coach, described the lesson in democracy she and about 25 Hume-Fogg students received last Thursday, when student government leaders from the school held a peaceful demonstration in support of Pearson and Jones in front of the capitol. Many waited in a packed tunnel for two hours to enter the building before they were confronted by state troopers who told them the building was full and they couldn’t enter, Schultz recalled.

The students carried small signs (after being warned they could not be larger than 8.5 x 11) with slogans like “Make Murder More Difficult,” and “We Just Want to Live Through High School.”

They led chants and songs, including the renowned gospel tune “This Little Light of Mine.” Several said they have been angry at the lack of stricter gun control laws in Tennessee and elsewhere for years, along with their legislature’s more recent focus on banning books, abortion and drag shows.

“We have been repeatedly asked to be patient. At this point, patience is ignorance,” Hume-Fogg senior Wyatt Bassow wrote in a letter to Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, published in USA Today. “The reason this keeps happening is not drag shows or video games or a leftist agenda or books or schools or dress code or ‘wokeness’ or civil rights.”

Related: Our children are paying the price for the culture wars and witch hunts in public education

Like Ren, Wyatt plans to attend college in Florida, but told me he sees a future for himself in Tennessee, perhaps in politics. He’s both outraged and energized by what he witnessed in the state capitol.

“This is fascism. We are looking at it straight in the face, and the first step to fascism is silence,” Wyatt told me. “That’s why I want to come back here and make havoc. I know I can make change, even though our democracy is fragile.”

Safiyah, a member of the mayor’s youth council, has more practice at protesting than her classmates Ren and Wyatt. She’s the daughter of at-large Metro Council member Zulfat Suara, who came to the U.S. from Nigeria in 1993 and was with Vice President Kamala Harris when she visited Nashville on April 7 and told protestors: “Your voices are part of the conscience of our country.”

Safiyah has already led a rally to stop Republicans from changing part of a Tennessee street named for Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis to Donald Trump Boulevard. She’s met members of Lewis’s family in Alabama, and knows both Jones and Pearson.

The ouster felt even more personal because Safiyah knows both men. The two legislators, both of whom are Black, were ousted while Rep. Gloria Jones, who is white and who also joined the protestors, was not. Collectively they’ve become known as “The Tennessee Three,” but only Jones and Pearson must now fight to get their positions back.

Once school is out today, Safiyah will head back to the state capitol in support of Jones and Pearson, where a special meeting of the city’s metro council will be held to discuss the vacant seats. She said she feels tired. But when Safiyah enters Rhodes College in Memphis next fall, she’ll continue fighting and protesting, she said, making the kind of “good trouble” Rep. John Lewis personified.

The most important thing is to keep speaking out, and to show the legislature and the rest of the world that we won’t stop fighting.

Safiyah Suara

“He would be sick to his stomach seeing everything that is happening,” Safiyah told me. “He’d be sad for the state of Tennessee.”

She’s certain that he would also be heartened by the voices of young students, pushing back, just as Safiyah was taught to do from the time she was born.

“My mom,” Safiya told me, “has always taught me that if you don’t have a seat at the table, pull up a folding chair.”

Update: On Monday evening, Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, was reappointed to his seat by the Metro Nashville Council, after being expelled from the Tennessee House for interrupting debate by leading a gun-control protest.

This story about the Tennessee expulsion was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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Whenever you hear the phrase “parental rights in education,” listen carefully.

What sounds like increased protection for children is part of a Republican campaign slogan, one that may or may not resonate with our country’s fragile public-school parents, teachers and children in the post-pandemic era. Republicans hope it will, though many parent groups and Democrats disagree.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would guarantee parents access to more information online, including curriculum, budgets, reading lists and library books, while requiring them to be notified of student requests to change their gender-identifying pronouns.

“This is about empowering the parents, it’s about opening up the schools to the parents,” said Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“Orwellian to the core,” countered Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said it has no chance of passing the Senate. The bill some Democrats dubbed “the politics over parents” bill passed the House 213 to 208, in part because five Democrats were absent.

Empowered by a new era of book bans, GOP lawmakers are ramping up their push for federal control over what topics teachers teach and what books children read. The blatant hypocrisy was not lost on Schumer: Republicans who once treasured small government are now asking for more governmental oversight.

“If passed, schools across the nation would be forced to adhere to a panoply of federal regulations that take power away from parents and school districts,” Schumer said.

Still, GOP arguments – fueled by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” restrictions and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s hardline stance against transgender students – have become part of the national education conversation, drowning out talk about immediate and pressing post-pandemic issues of learning loss, teacher pay and student mental health.

Related: Pop quiz: What state just banned a high school advanced placement American studies course?

Book banning and federal oversight will likely become a feature presentation of the next presidential election, but is the Republican agenda what a majority of public school parents really want?

Right now, at least 10 states have proposed bills requiring school administrators to list activities, books and readings that teachers use in their lessons, and some want parents to review all library additions and curriculums.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would guarantee parents access to more information online, including curriculum, budgets, reading lists and library books, while requiring them to be notified of student requests to change their gender-identifying pronouns.

At the same time, The Hechinger Report has been documenting dire post-pandemic struggles in all 50 states, including vastly unequal funding; crumbling school facilities; overly large class sizes; a lack of committed, qualified teachers, and enormous disparity in the quality of course offerings, resources and college and career preparation.

Overwhelming post-pandemic challenges are looming, including an exodus of public-school students, plunging test scores and learning loss. Parents are increasingly concerned about school safety in the wake of high-profile school shootings, anxious for contract issues to be settled following the strike that shuttered Los Angeles schools last week and worried about their children’s mental health.

Related: A surprising remedy for teens in mental-health crisis

Concerns remain about state takeovers of schools like the one underway in Houston, where parents, educators and students are pushing back hard, while new research and our own reporting show fewer students are going to college at a time of increasing disillusionment with higher education.

In my years as an education reporter, I’ve covered many fights over book bans. As the ideological debates fade, the giant challenges facing the nation’s public schools loom ever larger.

To me, the GOP’s push to empower parents seems far removed from these painful realities. DeSantis is instead bent on energizing school officials to take stronger action against teachers, even proposing expanding a Florida ban on restricting teaching young children about sexuality and gender issues through 12th grade.

Parents are increasingly concerned about school safety in the wake of high-profile school shootings, anxious for teacher contract issues to be settled and concerned about state takeovers of schools like the one underway in Houston.

Last week, a Florida charter school fired a principal after parents objected to their kids being shown a picture of Michelangelo’s David. DeSantis has even proposed banning all discussion of menstruation before sixth grade.

For his part, President Joe Biden insists none of this is what helps parents support their children at school. “Legislation should not politicize our children’s education. It should deliver the resources that schools and families actually need,” Biden said in a statement.

And many parent groups have reacted angrily, as has the American Library Association. The bill is “nothing more than a scare tactic by extremist politicians trying to make it harder for educators to work with parents to teach children what they need to learn,” noted Heather Harding, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign for Our Shared Future.

Politics, as always, will continue to play a big part in what happens to our students and their parents going forward. Former President Donald Trump is adding his own spin to “parental rights,” as he prepares to run for office again, pushing for abolishing teacher tenure, reducing the number of school administrators and adopting a parental bill of rights.

Meanwhile, Democrats have proposed their own version of a parent rights bill, backed by dozens of advocacy groups like the NAACP, the National Parents Union and the National Parent Teacher Association. It calls for “responsive and inclusive” public schools, the protection of students’ civil rights and instruction that prepares kids to think critically and actively participate in a democracy.

To drill down further on what parents really want, I looked back at a CBS poll released early last year. In it, more than eight in 10 Americans said they don’t think books should be banned from schools for “discussing race and criticizing U.S. history, for depicting slavery in the past or more broadly for political ideas they disagree with.”

Related: Let’s listen to what parents and not politicians really want from their public schools

What’s more, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, isn’t a fan of the bill Congress passed last week: The group has long pushed school choice, including vouchers that allow parents to choose alternatives such as homeschooling  and religious institutions.*

Even some Republicans oppose this bill, which is more consistent with their longstanding belief that the federal government should have less involvement and a smaller role in curriculum.

That leaves us at The Hechinger Report with many questions about what parents want.

More than ever, it’s time for public school parents across the U.S. to make their voices known, before politicians with little knowledge of what is happening in their children’s classrooms drown them out.

*Clarification: This sentence has been updated to reflect that the Cato Institute is a libertarian organization.

This story about parental rights in education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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LOS ANGELES – A group of fifth graders assemble around an enormous cardboard-covered table, designing a city from recycled materials. There’s tremendous excitement in this Venice, California, classroom as they discuss ideas for creating an imaginary metropolis from scratch.

“We need transportation!” one student shouts.

“A train going all through the city,” another offers.

Later, armed with protractors, they stand on street corners and beaches, digging holes and surveying land parcels. They elect a mayor, contemplate traffic problems and look clearly enthralled as they learn by doing, guided by Doreen Gehry Nelson and her brother, the renowned architect Frank Gehry.

The classroom teacher is less pleased. “Not in keeping with normal procedure,” she says at one point in the recently restored 1972 documentary, “Kid City.” Within weeks, the Gehry siblings are sacked, their dismay on full display as they pack up and leave.

“All we are talking about is trying things and taking chances,” a disappointed Frank Gehry says to the teacher on camera, as his younger sister Doreen, who came up with city-building as part of her design-based learning method, looks on. “As far as I’m concerned, you kill any creativity.”

Undeterred, Doreen Gehry Nelson, now 86, went on to start her own nonprofit, win a slew of awards and share her city-building teaching methods with thousands of classroom teachers and other education professionals around the world, though not nearly as many as she would like.  Frank Gehry, who turned 94 on Tuesday, designed some of the most famous buildings in the world, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall and The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

The design-oriented superstar siblings, raised in Toronto before relocating to Los Angeles and becoming leaders in their fields, will appear on stage together in a keynote discussion at SXSW EDU in Austin that I’ll be moderating on March 7. They’ll be discussing Gehry Nelson’s book “Cultivating Curiosity: Teaching and Learning Reimagined,” a call for breaking away from formulaic teaching.

Watching the dated but still relevant documentary “Kid City” is a great way to understand the Gehrys, as they showcase their shared persistence and willingness to challenge norms – themes that permeate their respective life’s work in architecture and education. Observing eager kids and frustrated adults in the film, I also recognized the enormous tension that still exists in the U.S. over how and what students are taught.

I’ve all too often heard about the latest trend that will fix education: blended, competency-based, deeper, outdoor, social and emotional, skills-based, personalized learning, to name a few labels. Post-pandemic, a new urgency to address lagging test scores, mental health, falling  enrollment, widening achievement gaps and teacher disillusionment is replacing conversation about creativity and risk-taking, something Gehry Nelson laments.  

She is more concerned about keeping students engaged than she is about catching them up post-pandemic. She’s not only convinced there’s a lotwrong with the way students are often taught, she has many ideas about what should change.

“I want teachers to feel comfortable, energized and focused as they learn something new, and to know they can make mistakes,” she told me during my recent visit to her home in Los Angeles.“It’s the job of our educators to make it so compelling and so much fun, they [students] just want to learn things.”

To Gehry Nelson, that means having students design, build and run their own cities, which isn’t always an easy sell; California is the only state with districts that use her method. Students not only build cities, they create governments, infusing civics into the curriculum, too. It’s a way of reimaging classroom practice, weaving creative thinking into the entire K-12 curriculum and connecting many subjects to cities built by students, with the help of educators she wishes were also thought of as artists.

“Mistakes and revisions are part of the creative process and everyday life,” she said. “We need more hands-on learning by doing. In my heart, I value the contribution of architects and great thinkers in the field.”

Both Gehrys embrace conflict as an important part of learning, having devoted their careers to overhauling conventional expectations. Frank Gehry’s desire “to design something that one would want to be a part of, something one would want to visit and enjoy in an attempt to improve one’s quality of life,” is his driving philosophy. And he has walked away from major projects where he didn’t have sufficient collaboration and control.

He’s also a big fan of his sister’s work, one reason why he’s at her side building mock cities in the Kid City film, part of a National Endowment for the Arts project at the time.

“Once you start a pattern of being curious you can go to the moon,” Gehry told me, in a brief conversation about his sister’s city-building methods. “It’s simple to understand. You can go anywhere. You are enabling curiosity.”

Frank, it turns out, is  “a wonderful teacher,” Gehry Nelson told me, while I tried out his iconic sculptural wiggle stool of corrugated cardboard and admired the earrings he designed and recently gave her as a birthday present.  “He doesn’t tell kids what to do; he lets them experience what is going on.”

Related: Teacher Voice: With hands-on activities, my chemistry students are building cities of the future

In her own 15 years as classroom teacher, that’s what Gehry Nelson attempted, though she ran into many obstacles and says she often felt stifled. She’s keenly aware that many teachers are struggling these days, leaving the profession in droves, and still draws inspiration from the legendary educator John Dewey, who believed in the joy of learning via captivating, hands-on projects, rather than sitting in rows memorizing and reciting facts.

It’s why she founded the nonprofit Center for City Building Education and developed her own reform movement, a nod to “the great architects and thinkers in the field.”  She also established and led a master’s program for 25 years at California State Polytechnic University Pomona, a program that ended over disagreements with the administration.

Gehry Nelson then became the founding director, in 2019, of the Designed-Based Learner at Center X at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, after Frank endowed a $2 million chair in her name.

“Once you start a pattern of being curious you can go to the moon. You can go anywhere. You are enabling curiosity.”

Frank Gehry, on his sister Doreen Gehry Nelson’s teaching philosophy

To get a better idea of what DBL is all about, I spoke with Georgia Singleton, a veteran fifth-grade teacher in the San Gabriel Unified School District who teaches in a high-poverty school, in a class with 31 students from all over the world, most of them new English language learners.

“I love teaching it, because the kids guide it,” Singleton told me, via Zoom from her colorful, perfectly organized classroom, where I could see photos of the so-called creatures, or avatars, that her students created for their city-building project on a shelf over their portraits. “They love their creatures, they love their city, and they have ownership. It’s fun, and a lot of school isn’t.”

One recent assignment involved rebuilding a small 3-D city from cardboard and other materials to keep their avatar creatures safe after an earthquake, using Gehry Nelson’s trademark backward thinking, which asks teachers to start with creativity and high-level thinking, followed by discussions of the information they’re trying convey.

Related: Proof Points: Four new studies bolster the case for project-based learning

In the same district, science teacher David Cameron uses design-based learning in the chemistry and computer science classes he teaches at Gabrielino High School, while a middle school in Walnut, California, is successfully using DBL to teach science standards.

Gehry Nelson wishes more schools and districts would do the same, saying, “There are no fancy materials required, no textbooks for students.”

Expansion is more complicated than it sounds. School districts must pay for DBL training with grant money or designated professional development (training) funds, and while introductory trainings are offered, the proponents suggest longer term partnerships that require a commitment of one to two years, followed by regular coaching and in-depth support. It’s one of many projects and offerings at UCLA’s Center X.

“He’s a wonderful teacher. He doesn’t tell kids what to do, he lets them experience what is going on.”

Doreen Gehry Nelson, on her brother Frank Gehry

“We have so many things coming at teachers these days,” Jessica Heim, who directs the DBL center at Center X, told me. “We don’t always fit in as a curriculum, because it’s really a methodology to transform the classroom environment.”

Design-based learning is not project-based learning, as Heim and Gehry Nelson are often asked to explain. “It requires a shift in thinking about teaching and learning and a lot of collaboration and reflection,” Heim told me.

It also means trying new ways of teaching and taking risks as a way of creating change, something Frank Gehry has devoted his life to. He once noted that architecture, and any art, “can transform a person, even save someone.”

That is not far from the way Gehry Nelson views the role of design-based learning.  “It is about saving somebody,” she said, adding that she and her brother have much in common in that sense. “We are like a dog with a bone, we know what we want to do.”

Teachers, she believes, must do the same, even if it means confronting recalcitrant administrators. “What do I tell teachers whose administrators and parents won’t let you do it?” she said. “I tell them to close the door and do it anyway.’

This story about design-based learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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LOS ANGELES — It’s no secret that Americans are doubting the value of higher education these days.

Perhaps that’s why years of dramatic enrollment declines, mounting student debt and threat of a recession led American Council on Education (ACE) president Ted Mitchell to issue sharp warnings last week to a group of college administrators.

“What do families need most? It comes down to three words: jobs, jobs and jobs,” Mitchell said at a conference convened by the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California (USC). He called for stronger messages from college leaders about the value of a degree, along with more transparent financial aid letters, improved college and career counseling and clearer transfer pathways – all topics we’ve been reporting on for years at The Hechinger Report.

“The voting public thinks we care not a whit about whether our students have gainful employment, they think [colleges] just want our money,” Mitchell added, emphasizing a major theme that emerged from focus groups he convened at ACE.

Related: How higher education lost its shine

Combating public skepticism over college’s worth, and confusion over how admissions and financial aid works, came up repeatedly during the conference. USC, where estimated annual costs now top $85,000, also happens to be ground zero for bad admissions behavior, thanks to the Varsity Blues scandal that exposed a web of lies and corruption around elite college admissions.

“Higher ed is getting a major black eye every time we turn around,” Sharon Alston, the former vice provost for undergraduate enrollment at American University, said during the annual exchange of new research and ideas.

“Have you yet heard of a college president who was fired for a lack of campus diversity?”

Jerome Lucido, USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice

Student rejection of costly bachelor’s degrees (sometimes in favor of high-paying trade jobs), along with political attacks and interference about what can and cannot be taught, also emerged as hot topics, as did confusion over “test optional” policies and other factors contributing to post-pandemic enrollment declines.

There was deep concern about how to admit diverse freshmen classes at selective four-year colleges if the Supreme Court overturns the use of race-based college admissions. The upcoming ruling is one reason in-person gatherings like this one with so-called “enrollment managers” have become critical.

Related: College admissions is already broken. What will happen if affirmative action is banned?

Enrollment managers, employed by colleges to oversee admissions and financial aid, have a name problem that speaks to the crisis facing higher education. After all, the term enrollment management can reinforce perceptions that colleges care more about their own bottom line than their students.

None of this should be surprising: Higher education is, among many other things, a business, and it’s well established that merit aid too often goes to rich students with high test scores and to wealthy out-of-state students who boost university revenue, according to Stephen Burd of the New America Foundation, who is editing and contributing to an upcoming book with Harvard Education Press about the little-known field of enrollment management.

“It’s remarkable that despite the pivotal role enrollment management has played in transforming how colleges recruit students and award financial aid, few people … know what it is or what it does,” Burd told me.

“We moved the needle, you can move the needle. People thought we couldn’t but we did. It’s a lot of hard work, it cost money, but we did it.”

Youlonda Copeland Morgan, former vice chancellor for enrollment management at UCLA

The Varsity Blues scandal did little to help public cynicism. That’s partly why Robert Massa, a former college vice president and adjunct professor at USC, noted that enrollment managers — even those who push hard to admit more Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students and those from low-income families — get a bad rap.

Massa even referenced remarks by the late Gordon Winston, who was an economist at Williams College, who called enrollment management “a brilliantly analytical process of screwing the poor kids” by devoting fewer financial aid dollars to those who need it and doling out merit pay to those who don’t. Massa emphasized, though, that “it is the exact opposite of what we are trying to do.”

Many of the enrollment managers I spoke with in Los Angeles pointed out that they are not the ones who set policies and make big decisions. Some fight hard for qualified low-income students who need aid and deserve to be admitted. Still, they are often overruled by college presidents and trustees, who don’t approve ideas like eliminating early decision or alumni preferences, and are instead preoccupied with sustainability, prestige and moving up in rankings.

“What do families need most? It comes down to three words: jobs, jobs and jobs.”

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education

Nonetheless, conference speakers were exhorted to take more leadership in creating diverse classes and finding ways to reach out to and retain poor and underrepresented students, first by Pedro Noguera, dean of the Rossier School at USC, then by Youlonda Copeland Morgan, former vice chancellor for enrollment management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Morgan, who tried vigorously while at UCLA to diversify its student body, gave a rousing speech about building relationships with faith-based leaders and local businesses to help students get ready for college. She spoke of setting up college advising meetings with students at local Starbucks to explain essay writing and financial aid applications, and working with high schools and churches to recruit students who might not otherwise apply.

“We moved the needle, you can move the needle,” Morgan said. “People thought we couldn’t but we did. It’s a lot of hard work, it cost money, but we did it.”

Related: After Varsity Blues scandal, lots of talk about overhauling college admissions. Will there be action?

Others at the conference urged figuring out ways as well. “If Pell is a priority, you’ve got to budget for it,” said Cornell B. LeSane II, vice president for enrollment management at the College of the Holy Cross, referring to federal grants for low-income students. LeSane and many others at the conference pointed out how woefully inadequate today’s Pell allocations are in meeting student need, or lamented that their institutions have limited aid pools.

Mitchell of ACE pushed for replacing notoriously confusing financial aid letters, noting that letters should spell out how much aid a student will actually get as well as the difference between grants and loans. “What’s it going to cost me? Every aid letter should be able to say that. And not just for now, for next year, and the year after … We need to fix this,” Mitchell said.

The need to address these sorts of obstacles has long been on the minds of both Massa – who told me after the conference that “we’ve been having so many of the same conversations today that we were having twenty years ago” – and Jerome Lucido, the outgoing director of the USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice and the conference’s organizer. Lucido dutifully compiles an annual list of ideas, suggestions and best practices for change, including a code of ethics.

This time, he urged boldness.

“Have you yet heard of a college president who was fired for a lack of campus diversity?” Lucido asked the audience. No one answered.

This story about enrollment managers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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Earlier this week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stood before an audience at a private, Christian all-boys school, ostensibly to celebrate the life of slain civil rights hero Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Not surprisingly, the Republican governor, who is pushing hard to overhaul education in the Sunshine State, had more than King’s legacy of fighting racial inequality on his agenda.

“Dr. King understood that our rights are not given to us by the government, but are ours by the grace of God,” the governor said. King “would be very pleased with the work you’re doing at this school,” he noted, adding that he is committed to expanding scholarships for more low-income students to attend private, religious schools like Piney Grove Boys Academy.

DeSantis made no mention of how King might feel about a letter the Florida Department of Education sent to the College Board earlier this month, banning a new Advanced Placement course in African American studies now being piloted in 60 U.S. schools. DeSantis’ education department is claiming the course is not “historically accurate” and is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law,” while saying it “lacks educational value.” 

Right now, it’s unclear exactly what is in the curriculum of the first course in African American studies to be offered by the College Board, which also administers the SAT and AP exams. That’s because the course framework isn’t complete and the syllabus isn’t publicly available yet.

Florida’s latest ban follows a series of steps DeSantis, a potential Republican presidential candidate, has taken recently, including imposing speech codes on university professors and pushing the so-called “Stop WOKE Act” that restricts conversations on race and prohibits instruction that might cause guilt or shame for historic wrongdoings like slavery.  

“Florida is doing its best to tilt the scales and shut down important, much-needed discussions of race, slavery, stolen lands, and undeniable history that have led us to where we are as a society today.”

Democratic State Senator Shevrin Jones

There is also his “Don’t Say Gay” law that limits discussion on sexual orientation and gender identity, all part of his efforts to exploit backlash against the recent Black Lives Matter movement and the country’s reckoning with racism, inequality and intolerance.

Of course, there are plenty of parents and school board members in Florida who applaud the governor’s reactionary stance, at least publicly, although others are appalled at the power he is wielding over educators. 

“Florida is doing its best to tilt the scales and shut down important, much-needed discussions of race, slavery, stolen lands, and undeniable history that have led us to where we are as a society today,” Senator Shevrin Jones, a Florida Democrat, said in a statement.

Marvin Dunn, a former professor of psychology at Florida International University and a specialist in the state’s Black history, told the Daily Beast on Thursday that the latest African American studies ban “means an insult to me, it means an injury to me.” 

He added a dire warning: “What just happened in Florida … is coming your way. This suppression of Black history is going to become a national thing if DeSantis and people who support him gain control of the federal government and the White House.”

Related:  In the wake of don’t say gay lgbtq students won’t be silenced

Clearly, though, it takes a lot of courage to confront or speak out against this governor, a national leader in restricting what teachers teach in their classrooms. 

Here’s a great example: Presidents of the 28 state and community colleges in the Florida College System, which serves nearly 650,000 students, issued a collective statement this week, promising to not “support any institutional practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts.”

This came after DeSantis’ budget office demanded that all the state’s colleges submit information detailing how much they are spending on programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion, along with critical race theory, the legal concept holding that racial disparities in the U.S. are systemic. 

The Florida Department of Education has also barred teaching lessons about The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which reframes the national narrative by centering slavery’s consequences and the contributions of Black Americans.

In our own reporting on these issues at The Hechinger Report, we’ve found that it is students who are often taking the lead and finding courage to combat the governor’s agenda. Last spring, students at Winter Park High School organized to fight back, leading a school wide walkout and protesting the Parental Rights in Education Act that bans instruction on gay, lesbian or gender identity topics from kindergarten through third grade.

Florida, meanwhile, ranks second in the U.S. behind Texas with the most book bans, with 21 districts banning some 566 titles, most containing themes or characters related to the LGBTQ community and race.

Related: A lesson in hypocrisy what’s really behind the parent choice movement

Among the more frustrating aspects of Florida’s latest ban is the lack of information about what it is actually in the pilot African American studies course that DeSantis finds objectionable. A spokesman for the governor, Bryan Griffin, said in a statement to CNN that the course “leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material, which we will not allow,” although he added that DeSantis might reconsider if the course is amended and incorporates “historically accurate content.” 

Sharon Courtney, a history teacher using the course in Peekskill, New York, maintains that the course is factual, and told the Associated Press her students were shocked to learn of the ban.

“There’s nothing objectional. It’s history that hasn’t been traditionally taught in the United States in a K through 12 setting,” she said, “but it’s also history that once known and understood could change race relations and improve them.”

What happens next, though, is unclear, as the course right now is just a pilot, and the first AP exam in the topic won’t be administered until the spring of 2025. “We look forward to bringing this rich and inspiring exploration of African-American history and culture to students across the country,” the College Board said in a statement to CNN.

The National Parents Union called the ban dangerous and said it will challenge the governor’s decision, but here’s another idea: Perhaps a courageous Florida teacher will take a stand and introduce students to some of the very same historical concepts DeSantis objects to.

That could take us all back to 1925, when biology teacher John Scopes was tried – and found guilty – for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school after a bill had made it illegal.

Here we go again?

This story about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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From the man behind an audacious scam to manipulate who gets into elite colleges, we now have a very public acknowledgment about how admissions decisions really work – and the role money and connections play.

This time, the admission comes with a prison sentence.

“The fraudulent testing scheme, bribing of university officials, lying on students’ applications and profiles, I did all of it,” William “Rick” Singer, the man at the center of the nationwide cheating scandal known as Varsity Blues, acknowledged in a Boston courtroom on Wednesday, where a federal judge sentenced him to 42 months in prison and ordered Singer to pay the IRS more than $10 million in restitution.

Singer pled guilty in 2019 to racketeering and other charges and had been cooperating with prosecutors. In court Wednesday, Singer said he was very sorry, to the students he worked with, to families who paid him to help get their kids into college and to the universities he scammed.

 He even said he was “ashamed of myself” – a statement that matters little right now.

“The fraudulent testing scheme, bribing of university officials, lying on students’ applications and profiles, I did all of it.”

William “Rick” Singer, the man at the center of the nationwide cheating scandal known as Varsity Blues.

What does matter, and what will always matter, is how stacked and outrageously unfair elite college admissions is. After a repentant Singer is hauled off to prison for three and half years (prosecutors had asked for six), will money and connections play less of a role in who gets in?

Not likely, say those who prosecuted Singer, a private admissions consultant who funneled millions of dollars to coaches and college administrators in his quest to get wealthy parents admitted to sought-after institutions such as Yale, University of Southern California and Stanford, in some cases using a “side door” to portray them as athletes.

More than 50 people were charged, including prominent actresses, coaches, CEOs and test administrators.

“There is ultimately no surefire way to safeguard against criminal ingenuity,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “Loopholes — and those willing to exploit them for money — will remain.”

The rabid desire for spots in the nation’s most exclusive institutions shows no signs of abating either, even as annual estimated costs in some cases top $82,000 for those who don’t get financial aid and are willing to pay the sticker price.

“Honestly, you can’t do much until you dramatically increase financial aid or dramatically reduce spending. Colleges need a certain number of full fee students and parents who will donate generously to cover their costs.”

Natasha Warikoo, sociology professor, Tufts University

“Singer got less time than it takes to complete the degree he helped so many rich and powerful families steal,” Anthony Jack, a sociologist who researches inequities in education and teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Education, told our partners at GBH after Singer was sentenced.

Jack, the author of “The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students,” once told me the scandal “felt like an old wound being ripped open anew. So many first-generation college students, lower-income students and students of color had to overcome entrenched inequalities to apply to college, often with minimal help.”

And while colleges and universities have pledged reforms in the wake of the scandal to prevent such abuses, no one should hold their breath that immediate change is on the horizon – even though the case startled even those who prosecuted Singer, while highlighting the role wealth, privilege and outright corruption plays in who gets into our nation’s top colleges.

“I was never foolish enough to believe it was a meritocracy, but I had absolutely no idea how corrupt and infected the admissions process was until this case exposed everything,” Rachael Rollins, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, told reporters after the sentencing, drawing on her own frustrations as a parent.

Rollins also noted what has become obvious to anyone who watched the Netflix documentary on Singer or read books and articles about the case: “The conduct in this case was something out of a Hollywood movie.”

Related: After Varsity Blues, will there be action on college admissions?

All that attention, once again, matters little to those without money and connections who are trying to gain access to the nation’s most elite and competitive colleges simply on – gasp! – merit.

Colleges love to announce, year after year, just how hard it is to get in; for example, Yale last month offered admission to just 776 early action applicants, out of a pool of 7,744, noting it was the lowest acceptance rate in 20 years.

A few years after the scandal captivated public attention, I attended a conference at USC in California (one of the schools that played a prominent role in the scandal) and heard a number of ideas for change and reform. As far as I know, none of them have been put into place in widespread ways, though it’s hard to know exactly how individual colleges reacted.

Angel B. Pérez, who is CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, told our partners at GBH that Trinity College, where he was working as vice president of enrollment and student success when the scandal broke, did its own investigation “to make sure that there wasn’t anything we could not stand behind in terms of our process.” He added, “Colleges and universities realized that they had to regain the public trust.”

Related: As elite college applications soar, legacy admissions still give wealthy and connected students an edge

I reached out to Natasha Warikoo, a professor at Tufts University and the author of a new book on equity in college admissions, who is also closely watching how an expected U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down affirmative action might change enrollment patterns. She was not without hope for change.

“I do think that these very public criticisms are making colleges take a close and careful look at their practices,” Warikoo told me in an email. “I’m cautiously optimistic that the very public discussions are pushing colleges to, at the very least, reduce the influence of the development office, coaches (particularly those of sports that mostly serve elites), and alumnae.”

Still, it will take a lot more than public discussion to really make a big difference, she noted. “Honestly, you can’t do much until you dramatically increase financial aid or dramatically reduce spending,” Warikoo said. “Colleges need a certain number of full fee students and parents who will donate generously to cover their costs.”

Indeed, as our reporting at The Hechinger Report has previously shown, colleges, with some exceptions, have been notoriously reluctant to stop giving a leg up to legacy students, whose parents attended the schools they hope to attend. These students are up to eight times more likely to be accepted at elite colleges, according to one estimate.

The reason is not complicated. As Warikoo pointed out, colleges need money; tuition is their only source of revenue. One study our columnist Jill Barshay reported on found that 42 percent of legacy graduates were flagged as potential donors, while only six percent of non-legacy students were. Legacy admissions are just another way college admissions policies overwhelmingly benefit white, wealthy students whose parents can afford full tuition or can give donations.

Related: Legacy admissions is already broken what will happen if the affirmative action precedent is overturned

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court dominated by conservatives could disrupt more than 40 years of legal precedent in how race and ethnicity are considered in college admissions.

If neither can be used as part of decision making going forward, campuses that are already predominantly white and wealthy will become even more so, no matter how hard the gatekeepers of college admissions try to level the playing field and steer clear of the Rick Singers of the world.

This story about Rick Singer was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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