major issues in education 2023

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The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2023

Following our annual tussle with hundreds of studies of merit, we’ve pared them down to 10 you shouldn’t miss—from what AI can (and can’t) do to the neuroscience of brain synchrony.

For those of us hoping for a quiet, back-to-normal kind of year, the research coming out of 2023 might disappoint. A rising tide of teenage mental health issues sent researchers scurrying for answers, and the sudden ascendance of AI posed a new threat to codes of academic conduct and caused some educators to forecast the end of teaching as we know it (we’re here to dispel that myth).

There was plenty of good news in the mix—and fascinating news, too. Neuroscientists continued to push the envelope on mapping the human brain, using cutting-edge technology to get a sneak peek at the “brain synchrony” between students and teachers as they learn about complex topics, and a comprehensive review of social and emotional learning confirmed, once again, that there’s no substitute for caring, welcoming school environments.

Finally, we did our due diligence and unearthed classroom strategies that can make a big difference for students, from the use of math picture books to a better, more humane way to incorporate tests and games of knowledge into your classroom activities.

1. AI MAY CUT AN EDUCATOR’S PLANNING TIME DRAMATICALLY

In case anyone thought the jury was still out on the Turing test, which proposes a hypothetical threshold at which humans and machines respond indistinguishably to a prompt— more evidence recently came in, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell who’s testing who.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina set a “deep neural” AI model to work on a college-level anatomy and physiology textbook, after first training the software to recognize important information. The AI took stock, pondered in its fashion, and then dutifully produced 2,191 test questions tied to learning standards, which a panel of teachers judged to be “on par with human-generated questions in terms of their relevance to the learning objectives.” Remarkably, the instructors also said they’d consider adopting the machine-generated questions for their courses.

That’s spooky, but not without its silver linings. Test creation is time-consuming for teachers, and one knowledgeable educator who took AI for a test drive says that it performs well on other tasks like planning lessons, writing instructions, and even composing emails to parents. New AI-powered tools like Diffit, Curipod, and MagicSchool.ai, meanwhile, are starting to sound like revolutionary teaching aids.

Concern that the end of human teaching is one software release away is premature: Studies we’ve reviewed suggest that AI still requires a lot of fine-tuning, and in July of 2023 , researchers concluded that without human intervention, AI is atrocious at mathematics, performing poorly on open-ended problems and routinely flubbing even simple math calculations. To be useful, it turns out, AI may need us more than we need it.

2. A FASCINATING GUIDE TO BETTER QUIZZING

No one likes tests—except the three authors of a 2023 study , apparently. The trio, who have experience as teachers and researchers, sing the praises of virtually every kind of test, quiz, and knowledge game, asserting that such assessments should be frequent, low-stakes, highly engaging, and even communal. Their rationale: When properly designed and stripped of dread, tests and quizzes dramatically improve “long-term retention and the creation of more robust retrieval routes for future access,” a well-established phenomenon known as the testing effect .

The study is a fascinating, granular look at the mechanics of testing and its impacts on learning. Here are some of the highlights:

Mix it up: To maximize student engagement, quiz students frequently—but don’t let the format get stale. In their analysis, the authors endorse testing formats as varied as multiple choice, cued-recall tests, clickers, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and contests of knowledge.

Be competitive: When designing multiple-choice or true-false tests, opt for “competitive alternatives” in your answers. For example, when asking “What is the hottest terrestrial planet?,” proffer Venus , Mars , and Mercury instead of Venus , Uranus , and Saturn —because “Uranus and Saturn aren’t terrestrial planets.” Competitive alternatives require students to scrutinize all options, the authors hypothesize, leading them to retrieve and consider more learned material.

Pretest: Quizzing students on material they haven’t yet learned improves long-term performance “even if [students] are not able to answer any of those questions correctly,” according to the researchers. Notably, pretesting can also lead to “a reduction in mind wandering” during subsequent lessons.

Get communal: Asking students to take tests in groups can improve retention and motivation while reducing anxiety. Consider focusing on specific rather than open-ended questions, the authors caution, since students can sometimes “recall and remember information less accurately” when working together.

Pass it on: Teach students to self-test by “summarizing the main points from a lecture… without looking at any notes,” or by meeting in “small study groups where the students practice testing one another—an activity that many students already report doing.”

3. HOW TONE OF VOICE CHANGES CLASSROOM CULTURE

Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, subtle shifts in a teacher’s tone of voice—a sharp rise in volume or a sudden barrage of repeated instructions born of frustration—can be the first sign that something’s awry in the classroom, disturbing a fragile equilibrium and leading students to clam up or act out, a study published late in 2022 suggests.

Researchers observed as teens and preteens listened to instructions given by teachers—“I’m waiting for people to quiet down” or “It’s time to tidy up all of your belongings,” for example—delivered in warm, neutral, or controlling tones. While the effect was unintended, an authoritative tone often came off as confrontational, undermining students’ sense of competence and discouraging them from confiding in teachers. Warm, supportive tones, on the other hand, contributed to a classroom environment that reinforced learning across multiple social and academic dimensions like sense of belonging, autonomy, and enjoyment of the class. 

It takes years to find the right tonal balance, says experienced middle school teacher Kristine Napper. “Neither high expectations nor kind hearts can do the job alone,” she coaches . Instead, teachers should strive for a warm, supportive tone and then draw on that “wellspring of trust to hold students to high standards of deep engagement with course content.”

4. BRAINS THAT FIRE TOGETHER WIRE TOGETHER

In 2021, we reported that as students progressed through a computer science course, the learning material left neural fingerprints that mirrored brain activity in other students, the teacher, and experts in the field. “Students who failed to grasp the material,” we wrote, “exhibited neural signatures that were outliers; they were drifting.” But the brain patterns of students who performed well on a later test aligned strongly with other top performing students—and with the teacher and experts, too.

Intriguingly, even abstract concepts—those that lack any physical attributes—appeared to trigger similar mental representations in students’ minds, attesting to the remarkable cognitive flexibility underlying human communication and knowledge sharing.

A 2023 study using electroencephalography (EEG) largely confirms those findings. High school science teachers taught groups of young adults fitted with electrodes about science topics such as bipedalism, habitats, and lipids. Researchers found that stronger “brain synchrony” between peers—and between students and teachers—predicted better academic performance on follow-up tests, both immediately and a full week later.

Together, these studies underscore the importance of scholarly expertise and direct instruction, but also hint at the downstream power of peer-to-peer and social learning. As knowledge passes from teachers to learners to greater and lesser degrees—some students grasp material quickly, others more slowly—an opportunity to distribute the work of learning emerges. When advanced students are paired with struggling peers, assisted by nudges from the teacher, groups of students might eventually converge around an accurate, common understanding of the material.

5. IN SUM, MATH PICTURE BOOKS WORK

The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words—and two are worth two thousand—might be expressed, mathematically, as a simple multiplication formula. But can reading math picture books really multiply learning?

A 2023 review of 16 studies concluded that math books like Are We There Yet, Daddy? and Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi improved student engagement and attitudes toward math; strengthened kids’ grasp of math representations like graphs or physical models; and boosted performance on tasks like counting to 20, understanding place value, and calculating diameters. In early childhood, in particular, math picture books worked wonders—one study found that young students “tend to anticipate and guess what will happen next, resulting in high engagement, aroused interest in understanding the problems, and curiosity in finding solutions”—but even middle school students seemed mesmerized by math read-alouds.

Importantly, math picture books weren’t a substitute for procedural fluency or mathematical practice. Typically, the authors noted, teachers bracketed math units with picture books, introducing a mathematical concept “in order to prepare [students] for the upcoming practice and activities,” or, alternatively, used them to review material at the end of the lesson.

6. TO IMPROVE STUDENT WRITING, REDUCE FEEDBACK (AND PUT THE ONUS ON KIDS)

It’s hard to move the needle on student writing. Hours of close reading followed by the addition of dozens of edifying margin notes can swallow teacher weekends whole, but there’s no guarantee students know how to use the feedback productively.

In fact, without guidance, revisions tend to be superficial, a new study suggests—students might correct typos and grammatical mistakes, for example, or make cursory adjustments to a few ideas, but leave it at that. A promising, time-saving alternative is to deploy rubrics, mentor texts, and other clarifying writing guidelines.

In the study, high school students were graded on the clarity, sophistication, and thoroughness of their essays before being split into groups to test the effectiveness of various revision strategies. Students who consulted rubrics that spelled out the elements of an excellent essay—a clear central thesis, support for the claim, and cohesive overall structure, for example—improved their performance by a half-letter grade while kids who read mentor texts boosted scores by a third of a letter grade.

Rubrics and mentor texts are reusable, “increase teachers’ efficient use of time,” and “enhance self-feedback” in a way that can lead to better, more confident writers down the line, the new research suggests.

7. A NEW THEORY ABOUT THE TEEN MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

Parents, teachers, and medical professionals are wringing their hands over the alarming, decades-long rise in teenage mental health issues, including depression, feelings of “ persistent hopelessness ,” and drug addiction.

The root causes remain elusive—cell phones and social media are prime suspects—but a sprawling 2023 study offers another explanation that’s gaining traction: After scouring surveys, data sets, and cultural artifacts, researchers theorized that a primary cause is “a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”

Scholarly reviews of historical articles, books, and advice columns on child rearing depict an era when young children “walked or biked to school alone,” and contributed to their “family’s well being” and “community life” through meaningful chores and jobs. If that all feels vaguely mythical, data collected over the last 50 years reveals a correlation: frank admissions by parents that their children play outdoors independently less than they did, and significant drops in the number of kids who walk, bike, or bus to school alone or are allowed to cross busy roads by themselves. In the U.S., for example, a government survey showed that 48 percent of K–8 students walked to school in 1969, but by 2009 only 13 percent did.

Risky play and unsupervised outdoor activities, meanwhile, which might “protect against the development of phobias” and reduce “future anxiety by increasing the person’s confidence that they can deal effectively with emergencies,” are often frowned upon. That last point is crucial, because dozens of studies suggest that happiness in childhood, and then later in adolescence, is driven by internal feelings of “autonomy, competence, and relatedness”—and independent play, purposeful work, and important roles in classrooms and families are vital, early forms of practice.

Whatever the causes, young children seem to sense that something’s off. In one 2017 study , kindergartners who viewed images of fun activities routinely struck pictures that included adults from the category of play, rejecting the role of grown-ups in a domain they clearly saw as their own.

8. DIRECT INSTRUCTION AND INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING ARE COMPLEMENTARY

It’s an often-fiery but ultimately dubious debate: Should teachers employ direct instruction, or opt for inquiry-based learning?

At its core, direct instruction often conveys information “by lecturing and by giving a leading role to the teacher,” researchers explain in a 2023 study examining the evidence supporting both approaches. Critics typically focus solely on its passive qualities, a straw-man argument that ignores activities such as note-taking, practice quizzes, and classroom discussions. Opponents of inquiry-based learning, meanwhile, characterize it as chaotic, akin to sending students on a wild goose chase and asking them to discover the laws of physics on their own—though it can actually unlock “deep learning processes such as elaboration, self-explanation, and metacognitive strategies,“ the researchers say.

Both sides misrepresent what teachers actually do in classrooms. Instructional models are “often combined in practice,” the researchers note, and inquiry-based learning is usually supported with direct instruction. Teachers might begin a lesson by leading a review of key concepts, for example, and then ask students to apply what they’re learning in unfamiliar contexts. 

Let the debate rage on. Teachers already know that factual fluency and the need to struggle, flail, and even hit dead-ends are integral to learning. Teaching is fluid and complex and spools out in real time; it resists every effort to reduce it to a single strategy or program that works for all kids, in all contexts.

9. A TRULY MASSIVE REVIEW FINDS VALUE IN SEL—AGAIN

It’s déjà vu all over again. The researcher Joseph Durlak, who put social and emotional learning on the map with his 2011 study that concluded that SEL programs boosted academic performance by an impressive 11 percentile points, was back at it in 2023—working with an ambitious new team, led by Yale professor Christina Cipriano, on a similar mission.

The group just published a comprehensive meta-analysis that surveyed a whopping 424 studies involving over half a million K–12 students, scrutinizing school-based SEL programs and strategies such as mindfulness, interpersonal skills, classroom management, and emotional intelligence. The findings: Students who participated in such programs experienced “improved academic achievement, school climate, school functioning, social emotional skills, attitudes, and prosocial and civic behaviors,” the researchers concluded.

Intriguingly, SEL remained a powerful driver of better cultures and student outcomes into the middle and high school years, a reminder that there’s no cutoff point for building relationships, teaching empathy, and making schools inclusive and welcoming.

While politicians continue to stoke controversy on the topic, there’s actually widespread support for SEL, as long as it’s connected to better academic outcomes. A 2021 Thomas B. Fordham Institute survey revealed that parents reacted negatively to classroom instruction labeled “social and emotional learning,” but were favorably disposed when a single clause was added—calling it “social-emotional & academic learning” turned the tide and secured parental buy-in.

10. MORE EVIDENCE FOR MOVING PAST “FINDING THE MAIN IDEA”

In the United States, the teaching of reading comprehension has ping-ponged between skills-based and knowledge-based approaches. In 2019, things appeared to come to a head: While reading programs continued to emphasize transferable skills like “finding the main idea” or “making inferences,” the author Natalie Wexler published The Knowledge Gap , an influential takedown of skills-based methods, and a large 2020 study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute concurred, noting that “exposing kids to rich content in civics, history, and law” taught reading more effectively than skills-based approaches.

Now a pair of new, high-quality studies—featuring leading researchers and encompassing more than 5,000 students in 39 schools—appears to put the finishing touches on a decades-long effort to push background knowledge to the forefront of reading instruction.

In a Harvard study , 3,000 elementary students participated in a yearlong literacy program focused on the “knowledge rich” domains of social studies and science, exploring the methods used to study past events, for example, or investigating how animals evolve to survive in different habitats. Compared to their counterparts in business-as-usual classes, the “knowledge based” readers scored 18 percent higher on general reading comprehension. Background knowledge acts like a scaffold, the researchers explained, helping students “connect new learning to a general schema and transfer their knowledge to related topics.” In the other study , a team of researchers, including leading experts David Grissmer, Daniel Willingham, and Chris Hulleman, examined the impact of the “Core Knowledge” program on 2,310 students in nine lottery-based Colorado charter schools from kindergarten to sixth grade. The approach improved reading scores by 16 percentile points, and if implemented nationally, the researchers calculated, might catapult U.S. students from 15th to fifth place on international reading tests.

The pendulum is swinging, but the researchers caution against overreach: There appear to be “two separate but complementary cognitive processes involved in development and learning: ‘skill building’ and ‘knowledge accumulation,’” they clarified. We may have the balance out of whack, but to develop proficient readers, you need both.

Distracted students and stressed teachers: What an American school day looks like post-COVID

Pandemic in rearview, schools are full of challenges – and joy. step inside these classrooms to see their reality..

After a day full of math and reading lessons, third grader Ashley Soto struggles to concentrate during a writing exercise. She’s supposed to be crafting an essay on whether schools should serve chocolate milk, but instead she wanders around the classroom. “My brain is about to explode!” she exclaims. 

Across the country, fourth grade teacher Rodney LaFleur looks for a student to answer a math question. He reaches into a jar filled with popsicle sticks, each inked with the name of one of his students. The first student’s name he draws is absent. So is the second. And the third.

Principal Jasibi Crews goes through her email: She has seven absent employees and too few substitutes to fill in. She texts a plea to a group chat – are any coaches or support staff available to fill in? Dozens of children could be without teachers today if she doesn’t come up with a plan. 

These recent moments from public schools thousands of miles apart reveal a troubling fact confronting educators, parents and students: More than three years after the COVID outbreak began, some children are thriving but many others remain severely behind . This reality means recovering from COVID could be more costly, time-consuming and difficult than they anticipated, leaving a generation of young people struggling to catch up.

This isn’t what lawmakers and education leaders had envisioned. Many were hopeful the 2022-23 school year would be the one when things would return to normal – or, at least, closer to what they were like pre-pandemic. Schools were brimming with money to test new ways to accelerate learning and hire more staff. The new hires and the educators who stuck things out were determined to help kids make progress. There was no longer a health emergency.

USA TODAY education reporters spent six months observing elementary-school students, teachers and principals at four public schools in California and Virginia and asked them to keep journals to better understand the post-COVID education crisis and recovery. Districts in California and Virginia stayed remote for longer than those in many other states. Virginia also had some of the sharpest declines in test scores in the country. 

What the reporters observed and data confirms: Kids are missing more class time than before the pandemic because parents’ attitudes about school have changed. Educators encountered students who are severely behind in reading and math yet can hardly sit still after three years of shape-shifting school days. School administrators discovered that a deluge of cash doesn’t go very far in filling jobs too few people are willing to do. Staff shortages and experiments with new curriculum – sometimes intended to cram several years of lessons into one – collided with the everyday problems of many public schools: children and families without enough food or a consistent, safe home life. 

To tell this story, USA TODAY reporters cataloged moments they witnessed while visiting schools at different hours and days. What follows is a reconstructed timeline based on reporting that began last fall and an approximation of the challenges schools and students face on any given day. 

Teachers find new ways to cope with stress 

After rotating through sets of ab saws, leg lifts and battle ropes, a sweaty but grinning Daisy Andonyadis leaves her 6 a.m. high-intensity interval training class early so she can make it to school on time. Equipped with a piece of her mom's homemade Easter bread, Andonyadis – or Ms. A, as students and colleagues call her – is ready to start the school day. 

Ms. A, 32, started doing the class more regularly this school year to deal with the stress of teaching. She almost quit when she first started at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, six years ago, overwhelmed by the pressure to do everything perfectly. “Just being able to breathe – the exercise really helps with that,” she says. 

Educators’ mental health has significantly worsened since the onset of the pandemic: Nearly 3 in 4 teachers in a survey last year reported frequent job-related stress, compared with a third of working adults overall. More than a quarter of teachers and principals said they were experiencing symptoms of depression.

Later, now showered and nibbling on her bread, Ms. A kicks off the school day as she always does: with a lesson on social and emotional skills. Kids move magnets with their names on them to emoji-like faces representing different emotions. Each classroom at Cora Kelly has one of these posters, and teachers and kids alike reposition their eponymous magnets throughout the day as their moods change. Today, lots of kids put their magnets on “tired.” 

There aren’t enough substitute teachers

Principal Jamie Allardice has many items on his day’s to-do list: preparing for state testing, planning for next school year and attending to the varying needs of school staff.

It will all have to wait.

Like Principal Crews, Allardice has trouble finding substitutes at times. So he’ll be filling in for a kindergarten teacher at Nystrom Elementary School in Richmond, California.

Most of the country’s public schools reported last year that more teachers were absent than before the pandemic, and they couldn’t always find substitutes when needed. The substitute teacher shortage predates COVID – and it’s getting worse, particularly at low-income schools . 

Allardice anticipates spending the day teaching the school’s youngest kids how to read sentences like “Is the ant on the fan?” and “Is the fat ant in the tin can?”

Everyday reminders of the pandemic’s effects 

Circles under her eyes, fourth grade teacher Wendy Gonzalez speedwalks into E.M. Downer Elementary in San Pablo, California, ahead of the first bell. The hallways are lined with student work. “My goal for this year is to actully learn,” one sheet reads, with the misspelling, “because I didn’t learn last year.” 

Another wall displays photographs Downer sixth graders took during the pandemic as an ever-present reminder of the damage inflicted by the pivot to remote learning. Above pictures of an empty tetherball court, a dog sitting on a stoop and a frog in darkness looking up to light, one student wrote, “We had to go to school at home for about 13 months.”

Ms. G, 45, who has taught for 19 years in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, including three at Downer, is in a hurry to see what condition her class is in after a substitute filled in the two days she was absent last week. She had a ministroke in March, which she blames in part on stress from teaching this year. 

In her classroom, her copy of a new Spanish textbook, "Caminos al Conocimiento Esencial,” is on her desk next to a set of Black history flashcards, a San Francisco Giants bobblehead and a can of Sunkist. On top of all the other academic targets her students must meet this year, the principal and literacy coach want her to test new lessons for teaching kids how to read and write in Spanish. 

“If I didn’t love my community I would be gone,” says Ms. G says after taking a seat. Notes of thanks and praise are tacked onto a bulletin board next to her. 

If I didn’t love my community I would be gone .

Principals have to be ‘there for everyone’

As part of her morning rounds, Principal Crews, 45, stops by a fourth grade classroom in the middle of a lesson on future careers. 

She notices a boy’s face is swollen and pulls him to the side. She feels his forehead, asks him if he’s feeling OK, if he was playing out near the poison ivy. He says he was playing there and it feels like a mosquito bit his face. She escorts him to the school nurse. 

Crews worked for more than 15 years in Virginia and California schools before becoming principal of Cora Kelly six years ago. She knows every student by name, greeting each one as they arrive at school. She’s also keenly attuned to each child’s individual needs on any given day – whether it’s for clothes or a first-aid kit.

Cora Kelly uses a framework known as a multitiered system of support, which is a fancy way of saying it works to address the core issues, in and out of the classroom, that may be affecting a child’s behavior or academic performance. That can mean home visits if a student misses a lot of school or help from a social worker if a child needs shoes or a screening. 

It’s emotionally grueling but gratifying work, Crews says, as is the job of supporting her own staff’s mental health.

“The hardest part of being an administrator has been coming back and making sure (the teachers) were OK so they could be there for the kids,” Crews says. “I wasn’t prepared for the tremendous emotional strain that that’s had on me. I had to be there for everyone, to make sure to take care of them so they could take care of the kids.”’

Rewarding good behavior

Ding. The students in Ms. A’s class are familiar with this chime. It means their teacher has given one of them a point using an app called Class Dojo that tracks their behavior. It has other functions, too, such as managing homework and communicating with parents.

Throughout the day, soft chimes signify when Ms. A has given a student a point. She rewards all kinds of things – being quiet, sitting nicely, getting an answer right, helping a classmate, simply attending. At other times, a different noise erupts when she’s deducting points. Maybe a kid wasn’t listening or following instructions. Maybe two students got into a tiff. 

Kids with lots of Dojo points can exchange them for prizes such as a gift card to Chick-fil-a. These incentive systems, Ms. A says, help reinforce the behaviors and habits – from respecting others’ physical space to coming to class on a consistent basis – that many students failed to learn because of remote schooling.

Kids’ attention spans have shrunk

Ashley and her classmates at Cora Kelly are in math class with the other third grade teacher. An assistant is out, the teacher announces, so the kids have to work independently while she consults with small groups. 

Today’s lesson is on imperial measuring units for liquids – gallons, quarts, pints, cups – and the teacher says she has a story that will help them memorize valuable information for their upcoming state math tests. The story is called The Kingdom of Gallon, she explains: The kingdom has four queens – in other words, four quarts. Each queen has a prince and a princess – two pints. Each prince or princess has two cats – two cups. 

Kids proceed to cut and paste pictures of different items – a gallon of paint, a carton of milk – onto papers with labels for the unit. Many, including Ashley, are distracted. She spins her notebook around a pencil. One of her knees bobbles from left to right. She gets up to tap a pencil on the table, to the projector to wave her hand under the camera. She yawns and plays with her shoe. 

Teachers and parents nationwide report kids’ attention spans are even shorter since the pandemic, perhaps in part because it led to unprecedented amounts of screen time among children . Educators strive to make lessons engaging but kids can’t always concentrate, especially when there’s only one adult in the classroom.  

Ashley pastes an image of a large water bottle under the wrong label – gallon when it should be quart. She quickly realizes it’s a mistake and tries to unstick the image. Ashley, who in her spare time loves drawing and making jewelry and collecting rocks, is careful to reposition the square so it doesn’t cover the face of a girl displayed on the worksheet. 

No multiplication charts allowed

Mr. LaFleur tells the class they'll review skills for a state math exam that will cover multiplying, long division and fractions. Jada Wilson groans when he says they can’t use multiplication charts on the test.

Jada, 10, has improved on fractions and expanded division this year but worries how she’ll do without the aid. She began fourth grade with the skills of a kid halfway through second grade, LaFleur said, but has made up most of that ground. 

Jada’s progress is an exception: Other students’ scores moved backward mid-year. 

“I really questioned myself and my teaching. It can’t get any worse than that feeling. But it helps to look at students like Jada who’ve grown each time,” LaFleur says. 

I really questioned myself and my teaching. It can’t get any worse than that feeling. But it helps to look at students like Jada who’ve grown each time.

Missing class instead of making up for lost time

As Mr. LaFleur’s class begins a reading lesson at Nystrom, several seats are empty. One of them belongs to Jayceon Davis. 

Jayceon’s mom, Georgina Medrano, works nights and occasionally gets home at 2 a.m. Sometimes she dozes off after waking her kids, and they don’t make it to school on time. Jayceon said he is sometimes confused doing his homework because he misses the lessons and hasn’t turned much of it in. 

For kids who are already behind this school year, every minute of learning this year was critical, but far more for students who missed more school days than before the pandemic. Chronic absenteeism – generally when kids miss more than 10% of the school year – increased in more than 70% of schools nationwide last school year, federal data shows.

Jayceon began the year with low test scores in reading and math, unbeknownst to Medrano, who says she’s frustrated no one told her about it at the beginning of the school year. “He reads to me at home, so I don’t understand how he’s behind,” she says.

Medrano says she also knew nothing about Jayceon’s missing assignments until March, when she got a text from LaFleur, who says he tried several times early in the school year to call Jayceon’s mom about the homework with no success. Then he gave up, hoping she would see notes sent through the school’s online messaging system. She, like many parents this year, didn’t have a real sense of how their kids were doing in school.

Reading, writing and riding

Ashley, like many kids in her class, has never ridden a bike without training wheels. Today in P.E. class, she and the other novices learn on a special bike designed without pedals. The purpose: to learn how to balance.

It takes a while, but before the end of class Ashley, her long curls streaming behind her, manages to glide for 10 seconds without touching her feet to the ground. She graduates to the stationary bike.  

She’s thrilled.

It may have nothing to do with phonics or probability or photosynthesis, but this learning matters, too. It’s the kind of lesson that was impossible to replicate during the pandemic, and one that students seem to enjoy most. 

Turkeys and monkeys

It’s just before recess and lunch in Ms. A’s class. She issues constant reminders to pay attention and be quiet. Yet some students lie on the ground, chit-chatting. Others make animal noises, gobbling like a turkey and grunting like a monkey. 

Ms. A moves her magnet on the classroom’s mood chart to “annoyed.”

Eventually she says to the group: “ I think we need to refresh. Everyone’s a little tired. And it’s Fri-Yay! But we are here to learn.” 

One boy sneaks out to get a pack of Gushers candy from his backpack hanging near the classroom door. With a smirk, Ms. A orders him to hand the gummies over, saying she doesn’t want him to get a sugar high. 

It’s the kind of thing she’s now able to brush off, a skill she didn’t have as a new teacher. She ignores children who are bickering, keeping her voice gentle and smooth as she delivers instructions. 

Despite all the distractions, she successfully engages most of the children in a game that quizzes them on their reading skills. 

Phonics time

Gathered at a half-moon-shaped table in the back of Lisa Cay's third grade classroom at Sleepy Hollow Elementary in Falls Church, Virginia, four students sound out rhyming words – search and perch, dead and lead – as they review phonics skills ahead of the state's reading tests. It's one of countless intensive phonics sessions these and other elementary schoolers have had this school year amid a renewed push for a more scientific approach to reading instruction partly in response to learning gaps deepened by the pandemic . 

Mrs. Cay, 58, then passes each student a copy of “The Wump World,” about creatures who live on an imaginary planet. One by one, they read aloud with the help of Mrs. Cay, who on a small white board, writes words they stumble over – “broad,” for example, and “chief.” After each passage, she reviews the problem word with them. The room is quiet with the exception of this group’s hushed voices, their peers reading independently elsewhere. 

Mrs. Cay hopes the district’s greater emphasis on phonics – and its distancing from an approach that focuses on helping kids dissect a text’s meaning without first showing them how to sound out words – helps boost Sleepy Hollow kids’ literacy. But “it’s going to take a few years” before the effects kick in, Mrs. Cay says. The local school district adopted the new phonics program last school year and started requiring it in the fall. 

New educators consider leaving

Seated at his desk at lunchtime underneath a pennant of his alma mater, University of California, Berkeley, LaFleur says it could take some students as many as five years to catch up to where they should be. He expects just a fifth of his own students to pass the state math test. LaFleur, 25, came to Nystrom in the 2020-21 school year through Teach for America, an organization that places recent college grads in high-needs classrooms.

“This is the only normal I’ve ever known,” he said.

But LaFleur recently decided he wants out. 

Teacher turnover has increased in recent years: More teachers left their jobs in at least eight states after last school year, and educator turnover was at its highest point this year than in the past five years, data shows.

LaFleur hopes he’ll get the new job for which he’s being considered. Otherwise he will return next year to Nystrom, as he wrote in his journal, to face “the same problems, move through the same cycles, and feel the same feelings.”

‘It’s been a long day’

Principal Crews planned an end-of-day assembly for all of Cora Kelly’s students about simple machines such as wheels, levers and pulleys. Given the day’s nonstop rain, which forced kids to have indoor recess, they’re in need of something fun and to channel their energy. But the traveling troupe scheduled to perform at the assembly is running late. 

Whipping out her walkie-talkie, she tells school leaders to prepare to pivot if the troupe doesn’t arrive in time before dismissal. Crews then unzips her black fanny pack – filled with Band-Aids and plastic gloves and Cora Kelly-themed play cash – and pulls out a bottle of Excedrin. Crews takes two. “It’s been a long day,” she says.

Catching up on reading time lost

During a class read along of “Esperanza Rising” for the Spanish portion of Ms. G’s class, students erupt in debate about whether Esperanza’s mother should marry for stability. Valeria Escobedo Martinez, 9, shouts “This is like a telenovela!” The scene reminds her of a TV show she watches at home with her mom, she says.

Even though Valeria says Ms. G’s classroom can be too loud, classroom discussion during reading lessons has helped her make up for reading time she and other kids lost out on during the pandemic. 

“I think I’m still leveling up,” she says. Ms. G says “she’s close” to meeting expectations for reading in English and may shed her “English learner” designation next year..

Ms. G is familiar with students who are behind on reading. She spends most school mornings teaching fourth, fifth and sixth graders how to read words using phonics, which is new to Downer this year. 

Intervention time

It’s time for Ms. A’s students to break out into small classes – enrichment for students who are advanced and intervention for those who are behind. Ashley and about half a dozen of her peers head to reading intervention class, which she spends laughing along with her peers at the teachers’ jokes, earnestly scanning her dictionary and reciting lines from a passage during a group read-aloud. At one point during the read-aloud, she notices the teacher accidentally skipped a paragraph. The teacher commends Ashley for noticing – what if, she asks, I had skipped a paragraph while taking the state reading test? 

Later, as kids independently fill out worksheets, Ashley erects her dictionary as a privacy shield. She doesn’t want others to copy her answers.

Ashley wasn’t always this confident. She needs glasses and while she proudly wears a pair of pink frames now, during the pandemic her vision problems went undiagnosed. Schools usually provide vision screenings but they were one of the services that went away with COVID closures. Her inability to see the screen and understand homework left her feeling frustrated and defiant. 

‘Never going back to normal’

Maria Bustos picks up her son Erick from Ms. G’s class. Pre-pandemic, Bustos may have spent the afternoon on Downer’s campus, helping her son’s teachers or planning a school event with fellow parents. Now, lingering pandemic restrictions don’t allow for her to be as active in the school community as she used to be.

“I feel like we're never going to go back to normal – and not just in schools but in everything and everywhere,” Bustos says. “We used to do a Halloween parade, and even celebrate kids' birthdays by bringing pizza." 

She is optimistic about being able to volunteer next year, though, given she was able to attend Erick’s music performance on campus at the end of the school year and an in-class party three days before the end of school in Ms. G’s classroom. 

I feel like we’re never going to go back to normal – and not just in schools but in everything and everywhere.

Leadership turnover creates further challenges

As the new leader of her school, Ruby Gonzalez, 61, is in the midst of two separate video calls in her office: one about the education plan for a student with disabilities and another that includes other school administrators.

She took over when Downer’s longtime principal, Chris Read, found out he had colon cancer. Read began chemotherapy in March and took a six-month leave to avoid other sickness. After Principal Gonzalez filled in, she tapped Ms. G to take over given her past experience as a vice principal. Ms. G lasted for two days before deciding she didn’t want to abandon her fourth graders. “The kids notice when I’m gone,” she says.

She still helps out often.

Two other substitute principals stepped in months before the end of the school year. One quit after a few days. The other comes a few days a week to help out. It’s unclear who will lead next year. Once Read returns from leave, he will have a new job overseeing visual and performing arts education districtwide, a role he’s long wanted.

Recent data shows that more principals last year quit their jobs than early on in the pandemic.

“This has been one of the most difficult years I think; even more than last year,” Ms. G says. “There’s multiple things: Our principal is out and Ruby’s trying to do the best she can. … And there are new things we're all trying to learn. On top of that there's more work and discipline. The kids are feeling it.”

Not enough time

It’s time for kids in Cora Kelly’s after-school tutoring to be dismissed, but Ashley doesn’t want to leave. She’s eager to master the skill of reading an analog clock. She begs her tutor, the same math teacher she had earlier in the day, to stay longer. 

“I love, love, love learning,” Ashley says.

But it turns out her school year is ending earlier than she may have liked, too, much to Principal Crews’ frustration. Ashley and her family will be traveling to her mom’s home country of El Salvador a week before the last day of school. Experts say absenteeism remains widespread in elementary schools, whose students’ attendance relies on their parents’ decisions and schedules. 

Giving in to a calculator

Jada is stationed in the school cafeteria trying to solve a multiplication problem while she and her younger sister wait for their mother to pick them up from Nystrom’s after school program. She sighs, leans her face on her fist on the cafeteria table and says, “This is too hard!” A few seconds later, she pulls out a calculator to solve the problem.

Despite her growth this year – end-of-year math tests show Jada jumped from having middle-of-second-grade skills to working at a mid-fourth-grade level – she and many classmates are behind where they should be.

Her mom, Michaela Alexander, rushes into the cafeteria to get the girls. Alexander tells Jada she isn’t too worried she’s behind on math: She understands Jada had a very different experience from a lot of kids in elementary school who learned in a classroom setting uninterrupted by a global pandemic. She has faith that the teachers at Nystrom will help her catch up. 

‘She’s better than me’

At her small white trailer in a mobile home park in San Pablo, Valeria, her mom, Maira Martinez Perez, and her grandma, who is visiting from Mexico, sit on separate benches next to each other in a tidy combined living room and kitchen. It’s the same home in which Valeria would pull out her Google Chromebook each morning, log onto school and start the day with jumping jacks to loosen up, as instructed by her teacher, when school shifted online.

Just as Downer pivoted to remote learning, Valeria’s mother lost her job cleaning at another school. Now her mother is working again, and though a kid herself, Valeria has taken on some of the care of her younger sister Itzel. Valeria is sometimes interrupted by the 5-year-old when she tries to read at home.

Itzel peeks out from the only bedroom in the home closed off by a sliding door. 

At school, “she’s better than me,” Valeria says of her sister. 

No pandemic interrupted Itzel’s schooling.

Story editing by Nirvi Shah

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Major Issues in Education: Hot Topics

By Publisher | Last Updated August 28, 2024

In America, issues in education are big topics of discussion, both in the news media and among the general public. The current education system is beset by a wide range of challenges, from cuts in government funding to changes in disciplinary policies—and much more. Everyone agrees that providing high-quality education for our citizens is a worthy ideal. However, there are many diverse viewpoints about how that should be accomplished. And that leads to highly charged debates, with passionate advocates on both sides.

Understanding education issues is important for students, parents, and taxpayers. By being well-informed, you can contribute valuable input to the discussion. You can also make better decisions about what causes you will support or what plans you will make for your future.

This article provides detailed information on many of today's most relevant post-secondary education issues.

7 Big Issues in Higher Education

1. Student loan forgiveness

Here's how the American public education system works: Students attend primary and secondary school at no cost. They have the option of going on to post-secondary training (which, for most students, is not free). So, with costs rising at both public and private institutions of higher learning, student loan debt is one of the most prominent issues in education today. Students who graduated from college in 2022 came out with an average debt load of $37,338. As a whole, Americans owe over $1.7 trillion in student loans.

Currently, students who have received certain federal student loans and are on income-driven repayment plans can qualify to have their remaining balance forgiven if they haven't repaid the loan in full after 20 to 25 years, depending on the plan. Additionally, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program allows qualified borrowers who go into public service careers (such as teaching, government service, social work, or law enforcement) to have their student debt canceled after ten years.

However, potential changes are in the works. The Biden-Harris Administration is working to support students and make getting a post-secondary education more affordable. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education provided more than $17 billion in loan relief to over 700,000 borrowers. Meanwhile, a growing number of Democrats are advocating for free college as an alternative to student loans.

2. Completion rates

The large number of students who begin post-secondary studies but do not graduate continues to be an issue. According to a National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report , the overall six-year college completion rate for the cohort entering college in 2015 was 62.2 percent. Around 58 percent of students completed a credential at the same institution where they started their studies, and about another 8 percent finished at a different institution.

Completion rates are increasing, but there is still concern over the significant percentage of college students who do not graduate. Almost 9 percent of students who began college in 2015 had still not completed a degree or certificate six years later. Over 22 percent of them had dropped out entirely.

Significant costs are associated with starting college but not completing it. Many students end up weighed down by debt, and those who do not complete their higher education are less able to repay loans. Plus, students who do not complete college miss out on the formal credentials that could lead to higher earnings. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in 2023, students who begin college but do not complete a degree have median weekly earnings of $992. By contrast, associate degree holders have median weekly wages of $1,058, and bachelor's degree recipients have median weekly earnings of $1,493.

Students leave college for many reasons, but chief among them is money. To mitigate that, some institutions have implemented small retention or completion grants. Such grants are for students who are close to graduating, have financial need, have used up all other sources of aid, owe a modest amount, and are at risk of dropping out due to lack of funds. One study found that around a third of the institutions that implemented such grants noted higher graduation rates among grant recipients.

3. Student mental health

Mental health challenges among students are a growing concern. A survey by the American College Health Association in the spring of 2019 found that over two-thirds of college students had experienced "overwhelming anxiety" within the previous 12 months. Almost 45 percent reported higher-than-average stress levels.

Anxiety, stress, and depression were the most common concerns among students who sought treatment. The 2021 report by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) noted that the average number of appointments students need has increased by 20 percent.

And some schools are struggling to keep up. A 2020 report found that the average student-to-clinician ratio on U.S. campuses was 1,411 to 1. So, in some cases, suffering students face long waits for treatment.

4. Sexual assault

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that more than 75 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to law enforcement, so the actual number of incidents could be much higher.

And the way that colleges and universities deal with sexual assault is undergoing changes. Title IX rules make sure that complaints of sexual assault or harassment are taken seriously and that the accused person is treated fairly.

Administrators were also required to adjudicate such cases based on a preponderance of evidence, meaning that they had to believe that it was more likely than not that an accused was guilty in order to proceed with disciplinary action. The "clear and convincing" evidentiary standard, which required that administrators be reasonably certain that sexual violence or harassment occurred, was deemed unacceptable.

Critics argued that the guidelines failed to respect the due process rights of those accused of sexual misconduct. Research has found that the frequency of false sexual assault allegations is between two and 10 percent.

In 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidelines. The intent was to institute new regulations on how schools should handle sexual assault allegations. The changes went into effect on August 14, 2020, defining sexual harassment more narrowly and only requiring schools to investigate formal complaints about on-campus incidents officially filed with designated authorities, such as Title IX coordinators. The updated guidelines also allow schools to use the clear and convincing standard for conviction.

Victims' rights advocates were concerned this approach would deter victims from coming forward and hinder efforts to create safe learning environments.

The Biden administration is expected to release their proposed revisions to Title IX in October 2023, which could see many of the Trump administration changes rescinded.

5. Trigger warnings

The use of trigger warnings in academia is a highly contentious issue. Trigger warnings alert students that upcoming course material contains concepts or images that may invoke psychological or physiological reactions in people who have experienced trauma. Some college instructors provide such warnings before introducing films, texts, or other content involving things like violence or sexual abuse. The idea is to give students advance notice so that they can psychologically prepare themselves.

Some believe that trigger warnings are essential because they allow vulnerable people to prepare for and navigate difficult content. Having trigger warnings allows students with post-traumatic stress to decide whether they will engage with the material or find an alternative way to acquire the necessary information.

Critics argue that trigger warnings constrain free speech and academic freedom by discouraging the discussion of topics that might trigger distressing reactions in some students. They point out that college faculty already provide detailed course syllabi and that it's impossible to anticipate and acknowledge every potential trigger.

In 2015, NPR Ed surveyed more than 800 faculty members at higher education institutions across the U.S. and found that around half had given trigger warnings before bringing up potentially disturbing course material. Most did so on their own initiative, not in response to administrative policy or student requests. Few schools either mandate or prohibit trigger warnings. One notable exception is the University of Chicago, which in 2016 informed all incoming first-year students that it did not support such warnings.

6. College accreditation

In order to participate in federal student financial aid programs, institutions of higher education must be accredited by an agency that is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. By law, accreditors must consider factors such as an institution's facilities, equipment, curricula, admission practices, faculty, and support services. The idea is to enforce an acceptable standard of quality.

However, while federal regulations require accreditors to assess each institution's "success with respect to student achievement," they don't specify how to measure such achievement. Accreditors are free to define that for themselves. Unfortunately, some colleges with questionable practices, low graduation rates, and high student loan default rates continue to be accredited. Critics argue that accreditors are not doing enough to ensure that students receive good value for their money.

7. College rankings

Every year, prospective college students and their families turn to rankings like the ones produced by U.S. News & World Report to compare different institutions of higher education. Many people accept such rankings as authoritative without truly understanding how they are calculated or what they measure.

It's common for ranking organizations to refine their methodologies from year to year and change how they weigh various factors—which means it's possible for colleges to rise or fall in the rankings despite making no substantive changes to their programs or institutional policies. That makes it difficult to compare rankings from one year to the next since things are often measured differently.

For colleges, a higher ranking can lead to more visibility, more qualified applicants, and more alumni donations (in short, more money). And the unfortunate reality is that some schools outright lie about test scores, graduation rates, or financial information in their quest to outrank their competitors.

Others take advantage of creative ways to game the system. For example, U.S. News looks at the test scores of incoming students at each institution, but it only looks at students who begin in the fall semester. One school instituted a program where students with lower test scores could spend their first semester in a foreign country and return to the school in the spring, thus excluding them from the U.S. News calculations.

Rankings do make useful information about U.S. colleges and universities available to all students and their families. However, consumers should be cautious about blindly accepting such rankings as true measures of educational quality.

Explore Your Educational Options

Understanding the issues in post-secondary education is crucial so you can make informed decisions about your future. And finding a school that aligns with your goals and values is vital. You can get started right here, right now. Our school finder search tool can help you find a school that can help you learn the skills and achieve the education you need to succeed.

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5 of the biggest education trends in 2023

As new education trends lead to innovative teaching and learning, here are some of the top trends to look for.

With the start of a new year and education conference season just beginning, educators and industry leaders are discovering the biggest education trends for 2023. The past few years have seen a significant transformation for education and edtech, and 2023 will continue to bring new ideas and emerging technologies.

This year, schools are placing a focus on supporting students’ individual needs and recovering pandemic learning loss. Because of this, we will see an increase in edtech to support learning, better accommodations for students, a focus on wellbeing, and new approaches to teaching that engage with students’ interests and future careers.

Here are five of the biggest education trends for 2023:

1. Social and Emotional Wellbeing

The pandemic prompted the need for a stronger focus on supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of students and teachers alike. As we rebound from the academic, emotional, and community challenges that arose during the pandemic, schools will need to ensure they’re offering the support and resources that students and teachers need.

Children and teens are currently experiencing higher rates of depression , anxiety, and suicidal thoughts than before the pandemic, and the academic and emotional pressures that come with recovering pandemic learning loss continue to affect student wellbeing. In 2023, we will see schools working to improve mental health programs, provide new academic support systems and resources for students, and implement technologies and programs focused on social-emotional learning and student wellbeing.

Teachers are struggling too: The demands of teaching have led to high rates of teacher stress and anxiety, and K-12 educators have the highest burnout rate of any profession in the U.S. To support teacher wellbeing and retain valuable, talented educators, schools will embrace new ways improve teachers’ work-life balance and wellbeing, including implementing new edtech tools, offering mental health resources, or even redesigning school spaces to better support educators in the classroom.

2. Personalized and Self-Led Learning

Personalized learning is by no means a new education trend, but learning models focused on an individualized or personalized approach will continue to evolve in 2023. Learning gaps widened during the pandemic, and as students continue to work to recover this learning , they will benefit from individualized learning opportunities. Schools will continue to provide struggling students with tutoring services, while advanced students will find new learning opportunities through online courses or internships outside the classroom.

Self-led, active learning will also see a rise as teachers enable students to work at their own pace and make more decisions about their learning––from what types of assignments they complete to how they want to work in the classroom. We expect this to motivate schools to create more flexible, active learning spaces that can be modified to fit a wide variety of learning needs. This will include the addition of modular pieces, tech-enabled learning areas, and a variety of different seating options to ensure student comfort and encourage movement.

3. Game-Based Learning and Esports

Ninety-seven percent of adolescents play at least one hour of video games per day, so bringing games into the classroom is intuitive for students. Gamified learning motivates students to engage with educational content in a different way, keeping students excited about their progress and helping to synthesize learning. Bringing games into the classroom also gives students an opportunity to explore social-emotional principles, increasing their adaptability and communication and improving their ability to work with others.

In the past several years, schools have also seen an increase in esports team participation. In 2023, we expect this trend to continue, with schools investing more resources into building esports teams and creating comprehensive esports spaces where teams can gather, practice, and compete. Evidence shows that academic esports benefits students’ overall academic performance and social emotional learning. Plus, students who are successful in esports competitions earn significant opportunities for college and scholarships.

4. Microlearning and Nano-Learning

“Microlearning,” or “nano-learning,” is a learning approach that has been successfully used in corporate training for a while, but it’s expected to really emerge in K-12 education in 2023. This bite-sized learning technique targets small chunks of learning content, which are presented to students in short, easily digestible tutorials or mini-lessons. Lessons focus on repetition of the same concepts spaced out over time, with the goal of increased retention.

The rapid growth of short-form video content like TikTok and Instagram Reels has illuminated the possibilities of using microlearning to engage students. Students are already turning to TikTok for homework help , which can expose them to new ideas and topics, but also opens students up to potential misinformation. Microlearning emerging as a K-12 education trend will enable teachers to better curate the bite-sized content students seek out for their learning, providing them with engaging content that breaks down complex topics into less intimidating chunks.

5. AR, VR, and AI

Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) are all projected to become more prevalent as educational tools and resources in 2023. These technologies will be working behind the scenes in some of the ways they will benefit education, such as AI being used to target students’ learning through edtech tools and platforms.

In other applications, AR, VR, and AI will be used directly by students. Students will participate in VR and AR experiences, gaining access to more immersive learning experiences through these tools. With easy-to-use AI art generators becoming more popular, they may use AI in creative endeavors. There are also AI programs available to help students find quality resources for research assignments, help them refine their writing, explain complex math problems, and more. When students graduate, they will encounter and use these technologies in college and their careers, so early exposure will prove beneficial.

We anticipate that this year will be exciting as new education trends transform learning in classrooms far and wide.

Related : 37 predictions about edtech’s impact in 2023

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Four of the biggest problems facing education—and four trends that could make a difference

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic , which was a follow up to,  Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About , which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of the private sector, education technology, inequality, and pedagogy.

Unfortunately, we think the four biggest problems facing education today in developing countries are the same ones we have identified in the last decades .

1. The learning crisis was made worse by COVID-19 school closures

Low quality instruction is a major constraint and prior to COVID-19, the learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was 57% (6 out of 10 children could not read and understand basic texts by age 10). More dramatic is the case of Sub-Saharan Africa with a rate even higher at 86%. Several analyses show that the impact of the pandemic on student learning was significant, leaving students in low- and middle-income countries way behind in mathematics, reading and other subjects.  Some argue that learning poverty may be close to 70% after the pandemic , with a substantial long-term negative effect in future earnings. This generation could lose around $21 trillion in future salaries, with the vulnerable students affected the most.

2. Countries are not paying enough attention to early childhood care and education (ECCE)

At the pre-school level about two-thirds of countries do not have a proper legal framework to provide free and compulsory pre-primary education. According to UNESCO, only a minority of countries, mostly high-income, were making timely progress towards SDG4 benchmarks on early childhood indicators prior to the onset of COVID-19. And remember that ECCE is not only preparation for primary school. It can be the foundation for emotional wellbeing and learning throughout life; one of the best investments a country can make.

3. There is an inadequate supply of high-quality teachers

Low quality teaching is a huge problem and getting worse in many low- and middle-income countries.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 . In addition, in many countries teachers are formally trained and as such qualified, but do not have the minimum pedagogical training. Globally, teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects are the biggest shortfalls.

4. Decision-makers are not implementing evidence-based or pro-equity policies that guarantee solid foundations

It is difficult to understand the continued focus on non-evidence-based policies when there is so much that we know now about what works. Two factors contribute to this problem. One is the short tenure that top officials have when leading education systems. Examples of countries where ministers last less than one year on average are plentiful. The second and more worrisome deals with the fact that there is little attention given to empirical evidence when designing education policies.

To help improve on these four fronts, we see four supporting trends:

1. Neuroscience should be integrated into education policies

Policies considering neuroscience can help ensure that students get proper attention early to support brain development in the first 2-3 years of life. It can also help ensure that children learn to read at the proper age so that they will be able to acquire foundational skills to learn during the primary education cycle and from there on. Inputs like micronutrients, early child stimulation for gross and fine motor skills, speech and language and playing with other children before the age of three are cost-effective ways to get proper development. Early grade reading, using the pedagogical suggestion by the Early Grade Reading Assessment model, has improved learning outcomes in many low- and middle-income countries. We now have the tools to incorporate these advances into the teaching and learning system with AI , ChatGPT , MOOCs and online tutoring.

2. Reversing learning losses at home and at school

There is a real need to address the remaining and lingering losses due to school closures because of COVID-19.  Most students living in households with incomes under the poverty line in the developing world, roughly the bottom 80% in low-income countries and the bottom 50% in middle-income countries, do not have the minimum conditions to learn at home . These students do not have access to the internet, and, often, their parents or guardians do not have the necessary schooling level or the time to help them in their learning process. Connectivity for poor households is a priority. But learning continuity also requires the presence of an adult as a facilitator—a parent, guardian, instructor, or community worker assisting the student during the learning process while schools are closed or e-learning is used.

To recover from the negative impact of the pandemic, the school system will need to develop at the student level: (i) active and reflective learning; (ii) analytical and applied skills; (iii) strong self-esteem; (iv) attitudes supportive of cooperation and solidarity; and (v) a good knowledge of the curriculum areas. At the teacher (instructor, facilitator, parent) level, the system should aim to develop a new disposition toward the role of teacher as a guide and facilitator. And finally, the system also needs to increase parental involvement in the education of their children and be active part in the solution of the children’s problems. The Escuela Nueva Learning Circles or the Pratham Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) are models that can be used.

3. Use of evidence to improve teaching and learning

We now know more about what works at scale to address the learning crisis. To help countries improve teaching and learning and make teaching an attractive profession, based on available empirical world-wide evidence , we need to improve its status, compensation policies and career progression structures; ensure pre-service education includes a strong practicum component so teachers are well equipped to transition and perform effectively in the classroom; and provide high-quality in-service professional development to ensure they keep teaching in an effective way. We also have the tools to address learning issues cost-effectively. The returns to schooling are high and increasing post-pandemic. But we also have the cost-benefit tools to make good decisions, and these suggest that structured pedagogy, teaching according to learning levels (with and without technology use) are proven effective and cost-effective .

4. The role of the private sector

When properly regulated the private sector can be an effective education provider, and it can help address the specific needs of countries. Most of the pedagogical models that have received international recognition come from the private sector. For example, the recipients of the Yidan Prize on education development are from the non-state sector experiences (Escuela Nueva, BRAC, edX, Pratham, CAMFED and New Education Initiative). In the context of the Artificial Intelligence movement, most of the tools that will revolutionize teaching and learning come from the private sector (i.e., big data, machine learning, electronic pedagogies like OER-Open Educational Resources, MOOCs, etc.). Around the world education technology start-ups are developing AI tools that may have a good potential to help improve quality of education .

After decades asking the same questions on how to improve the education systems of countries, we, finally, are finding answers that are very promising.  Governments need to be aware of this fact.

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5 education innovation trends worth watching in 2023

• Format Julia Freeland Fisher
• Format January 3, 2023
• Postsecondary Business Models
• Social Capital

2022 marked a confusing year in the world of education innovation. As a friend and school leader said to me a few months ago, “Innovation is dead, right?” 

She was half joking while perfectly summing up something in the air last year in schools: a pandemic hangover mixed with ongoing, day-to-day challenges of running complex systems. Together, these made many “new” approaches to education feel too overwhelming to even entertain. 

Lurking behind that, a surreal dynamic was unfolding across both K-12 and higher education: as emergency closures subsided, schools quickly regressed to their pre-pandemic approaches, despite new or worsening challenges at their doorstep. That re-entrenchment makes good sense given the resilience of traditional business models . Yet, it doesn’t match up with new realities like stark learning gaps, worsening mental health crises, significant enrollment declines, and a cooling job market. Business as usual is a rational response for a taxed and weary education system, but it’s also risky in light of all the ways the world has changed.

Given this tension, in the year ahead, I’ll be watching innovations that explicitly add new capacity and connections to the mix, at once expanding schools’ ability to innovate and also upping the relationships and resources available directly to students. Here are five on my radar:

1. Building relationships that power recovery

Arguably the top theme of this year in K-12 circles was learning recovery. I’ll be watching programs that are recruiting volunteers and staff beyond teachers to help students accelerate their learning. Significant ESSER investments are powering new tutoring programs. At the same time, the National Partnership for Student Success is calling for districts to enlist a broad array of supports, such as success coaches and mentors, to rally around students. Aligned with that vision, the Biden administration just made a major investment in the Americorps Volunteer Generation Fund . In sum, the next year will offer a powerful testbed for what it takes to build out a network of “people-powered supports” that supplement classroom teachers and school counselors . 

This presents a huge learning opportunity for the field. The rightful focus on these interventions is moving the needle on learning—in particular, upping the pace of learning–for students who fell the furthest behind during the pandemic. But they also offer an opportunity to ask questions about the upsides of students having more relationships—with tutors, mentors, and coaches—at their disposal. What developmental assets are students gaining through these additional relationships? What’s motivating non-teacher adults to partake in coaching and tutoring? How are schools effectively brokering communication between teachers and other supportive adults? And which relationships tend to outlast interventions, remaining in students’ lives as part of their webs of support that can step in if new challenges arise? 

Answers to questions like these could be critical to schools’ student support strategies long after the learning recovery agenda fades. They could shape how schools move beyond the one-teacher, one-classroom model (and one-counselor, hundreds-of-students model) that has dominated the last century.

2. Rebooting career services 

Ironically, the notion of “learning recovery” was hardly a topic of conversation in higher education circles. That’s not surprising. Widespread, rigorous data on postsecondary students’ outcomes remain a pipedream of policy advocates. 

But declining enrollment and looming doubts about the value of college are pushing some institutions to pay more attention to graduate outcomes. Core to that conversation is whether a college degree ultimately pays for itself, and for whom. Does going to college guarantee a good job? And is access to better jobs equitable across lines of race, class, and gender?

When it comes to securing jobs, many campuses leave students to their own devices. Most offer only a small, underfunded office ill-equipped to tackle opportunity gaps that underlie employment and wage gaps: career services. Average student-to-staff ratios are laughable, with an alarming 1 career services professional to 2,263 students, according to NACE . 

This year I’ll continue to watch two different trends among schools overcoming the constraints of traditional career services. First, some colleges and universities are integrating “career services” more expansively across their entire enterprise. These initiatives often sit in the president’s cabinet, like work afoot at Colby College , Wake Forest , or Johns Hopkins , where leaders are putting significant resources behind ensuring all students have for-credit career preparation experiences, access to work-integrated learning and internships, high-touch mentoring, and deeper alumni access. 

Promising as these holistic approaches are, they remain the exception rather than the rule, especially at lesser-resourced campuses. In light of that, the second career services trend I’m watching is the rise of more modest programs supplementing on-campus offerings, specifically geared towards expanding students’ networks and providing targeted, personalized guidance on everything from interview prep to industry norms.  

These emerging models rely heavily on resources and networks beyond capacity-constrained campuses. For example, Social Capital Academy (SCA), founded by Cal State Fullerton (CSF) business professor and social capital scholar David Obstfeld, offers CSF students virtual, personalized coaching over the course of four Saturday morning sessions. SCA is powered by a cohort of volunteer professionals that Obstfeld has recruited from a variety of employers and colleagues. Another model, CareerSpring , founded by the former head of Houston’s Cristo Rey high school, Paul Posoli, offers an open network of virtual career advisors to first-generation students, as well as job placement services. While these efforts aren’t as comprehensive as college-wide initiatives, they’re poised to scale much faster. They’re also addressing the acute cost that network gaps can exact on first-generation college students’ chances of converting their hard-earned degrees into higher earnings post-graduation.

Together, these trends point to a future of career services that is more distributed and networked, either within or beyond campuses, rather than housed in small, centralized, and understaffed career offices.

3. Scaling well-resourced conversations

One of the reasons the emerging career services models noted above are worth watching is that they are built to scale students’ access to well-resourced career conversations, not just generic career information. I’m stealing the phrase “well-resourced conversations” from Rebecca Kirstein Resch, a Canadian entrepreneur running inqli —an employee engagement platform that helps employees and students alike get answers to their career questions—that came out of beta late last year. 

Kirstein Resch’s phrase strikes me as a metric worth considering in the world of networking technologies and guidance more generally. There’s a tendency to assume young people are “more connected than ever,” as enterprise tools from Handshake to TikTok have rapidly gained Gen Z users. But accessing new connections is only half the battle: whether a given connection opens the door to new resources—like information, advice, support, or even job offers—is, arguably, the difference-maker for students. Understanding how young people experience conversations, what resources stick and which don’t, and unearthing best practices for seeding well-resourced conversations could unlock real value as more networked technology tools continue to emerge and scale. 

This year I’ll be watching tools and models that are anchored on sparking new and more conversations with learners and workers about their future possibilities, like the models described above—and others like Mentor Spaces and Candoor —and endeavoring to better understand what users deem a helpful conversation and why. 

4. Enlisting near peers for far reach

For many of the tutoring, mentoring, or career-coaching models described above, the current assumption is that someone much older and wiser ought to be delivering support and advice to students. But strong and growing research on the power of near-peer coaches and mentors challenges that assumption. 

Near peers are those who are close in age and experience to students. Students certainly benefit from expert faculty and professional staff with more experience; but they are also, in some cases, more likely to trust the advice of their peers as credible messengers with whom they can relate. 

Trust isn’t the only advantage near peers may have. They also offer a promising path to scale in a human capital-constrained system. 

Take COOP , a nonprofit helping underemployed, low-income, first-generation college graduates break into tech jobs. COOP hires recent program alumni who have successfully secured full-time employment as part-time paid coaches. COOP’s founder Kalani Leifer summed up the insight guiding its approach: “What’s exciting is how quickly someone can go from receiving to providing social capital.”.

Leifer’s sentiment could push schools to reflect on how the skills, knowledge, and resources students are gaining could be reinvested back into their institutions. In other words, what if students were appreciated as experts in whatever content or skill they just learned or experienced? How might they be given opportunities to share that expertise back with the students that come after them?

Unlocking the power of near peers could supercharge the reach of “high-touch” efforts that seem impervious to scale. In Leifer’s estimation, unlocking that value has been a game changer: “The only reason we’re combining incredibly high-touch support with lower costs is that alumni do everything for each other,” Leifer said. 

This year, I’ll be digging in on how exactly near-peer models work: how they determine readiness and support for those near peers, how near peers are compensated, and where traditional schools and colleges might adopt near-peer models themselves. My gut is that these models are growing much faster in the postsecondary space—where near peers are a known driver of retention—than in K-12 schools where age-based cohorts tend to keep students further apart. But I’ll be testing that hypothesis while also watching how schools and colleges are using tech tools—like NearPeer , MentorCollective, and Alumni Toolkit—to better coordinate and scale near-peer connections. 

5. Pairing cash and connections to drive upward mobility

More coaches, tutors, mentors, career conversations, and near-peer connections could all help schools better serve students, especially those on the wrong side of opportunity gaps. But after looking at research on economic mobility and racial wealth gaps, I’ve become increasingly convinced that efforts to increase mobility would get further faster by pairing connections with cash. (For more on why these “currencies” matter so much, check out Stephanie Malia Krauss’ great book Making it ).

Investing in both relationships and resources has research in its favor. Earlier this year, Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights made headlines with a new study that revealed the significant role that cross-class connections appear to play in increasing economic mobility. The media’s blunt takeaway was effectively “befriend rich people to get ahead.” For me, however, the more powerful insight was that a well-resourced network supports mobility. 

Connecting young people from low-income households to wealthy peers and mentors is one way to foster well-resourced networks. Another might be building tight-knit networks and infusing them with resources at the same time. To that end, this year I’ll be looking more closely at models like Uptogether (formerly Family Independence Initiative), Union Capital Boston , and a newer startup, Backrs , that all provide their participants with financial resources at the same time they expand access to support and career networks.

Understanding what can arise at the intersection of building cash and connections is an exciting frontier in policies and practices aimed at helping young people from low-income households move up the income distribution ladder. There are many existing connection-only interventions, such as mentoring programs, and many cash-only interventions, such as scholarships and ESAs, as well. If these models could start supplementing their approaches with cash and connections respectively, existing efforts to address opportunity gaps might make more headway .

Looking ahead to 2023, education systems could remain stuck in a vortex of capacity constraints perpetuated by ongoing COVID concerns and a looming recession. Together, these five trends offer an alternative reality: opportunities for education systems to broaden their networks, capacity, and reach—and their ability to ensure that more learners thrive this year and beyond.

Julia Freeland Fisher leads a team that educates policymakers and community leaders on the power of Disruptive Innovation in the K-12 and higher education spheres through its research.

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National experts find major manufacturing workforce issues in the region

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - Experts are finding that the South Central Kentucky region is seeing a troubling statistic in the job market.

With more than 9,000 workers needing to fill regional manufacturing jobs over the next decade, and thousands of jobs expected to arrive in the area over the next five years, they are seeing a huge gap in the job-to-work ratio.

To help combat the issue, the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce contracted national workforce development experts Dr. Audrey Theis and Brent Weil to conduct a regional analysis to survey and create a plan of action.

“Almost 20 percent of the economy here is based on manufacturing. That’s one of the highest percentages in the country,” Weil said. “It really reflects a strength in this region and everybody should be really thinking about what it provides to us collectively. It could just be the right job for you, as you think about what’s coming on for your career.”

On Tuesday, both experts presented their findings to regional manufacturers, public and private education and workforce partners, legislators and elected officials.

According to Ron Bunch, the president and CEO of the chamber, the gap is caused by the baby boomer generation retiring.

“Probably 40 plus percent of it is being driven by the aging and retirement of the baby boomers. Same jobs that were here before are now available, but you don’t have people to backfill them,” he said. “So a good number of the jobs are tied to that phenomenon that’s happening for the first time ever in our country’s history, and we’re just talking about the local effects of that.”

The presentation of the analysis also shows a growing need for people with advanced technical, digital and soft skills.

Theis and Weil focus on how building these skills up through education and training is one of the key solutions to this workforce problem.

“Many companies want to hire people and especially people that have a great attitude, able to learn, able to work independently, work in a team,” Wiel said. “The other thing is that there are often short-term training programs that can focus on specific manufacturing-related skills to help people stand out in that way, get a great start to their career or as they’re changing careers.”

These statistics affect those in and out of the manufacturing sector.

“Longer waits where you go places. It might be a longer path to seeing a doctor when you have a need. It may mean that your students are picked up by a bus at a drop-off location versus in front of your house because this district couldn’t find bus drivers,” Bunch said. “So there’s a lot of changes to our lives that are going to happen as a result of the fact that we don’t have enough people for the job opportunities we have because of the movement of the baby boomers.”

He noted that manufacturing is thriving in the region and there are plenty of growth opportunities. And even if someone did not go to a trade school or get licensed, there is always a chance to apply what they learned in their past work or school experiences to the manufacturing environment.

Bunch also said that solving the problem means working together to include every individual in the labor market, not creating competition.

Copyright 2024 WBKO. All rights reserved.

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What Brown Center scholars will be watching in education policy and politics in 2023

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, daphna bassok , daphna bassok nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy michael hansen , michael hansen senior fellow - brown center on education policy , the herman and george r. brown chair - governance studies douglas n. harris , douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university katharine meyer , katharine meyer fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy rachel m. perera , rachel m. perera fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy jon valant , and jon valant director - brown center on education policy , senior fellow - governance studies kenneth k. wong kenneth k. wong nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

January 10, 2023

From the continued response to pandemic disruptions to culture war issues that have surfaced in schools, 2022 was an eventful year for U.S. schools and education policy. That looks to be true for 2023 as well.

Below, experts from the Brown Center on Education Policy identify the education stories that they’ll be following in 2023, providing analysis on how these issues could shape the learning landscape for the next 12 months—and possibly well into the future.

In 2023, I’ll be watching innovative state and local efforts to better fund childcare and better support early educators. The pandemic highlighted the essential role childcare plays in the lives of children, families, and the U.S. economy. It also made clear that without greater public support, childcare providers cannot pay teachers adequately and cannot offer families essential supports. The high teacher turnover rates common in early childhood settings compromise quality, and during the pandemic, they also compromised access to care.  In Virginia,  two thirds of publicly funded childcare centers  shut down classrooms or turned families away because they could not recruit and retain teachers.  

Pandemic relief dollars provided an essential lifeline to childcare. However, as these funds run out, states are now facing a stark funding cliff which will exacerbate staffing challenges considerably.  New Mexico  recently passed a ballot measure to establish a permanent funding source in the state constitution, making it the first state in the country to do so . Washington, D.C. approved funding  to work towards childcare compensation that approaches the pay of other D.C. teachers.   Virginia  recently changed their approach to funding subsidized childcare to better account for the true cost of childcare, including better compensation. I’m hopeful other states will follow with big investments and that as the federal funding cliff approaches, we’ll finally see large federal investments in childcare.  

Heading into 2023, I am monitoring the status of the K-12 teacher workforce and reports of teacher shortages. The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched many schools’ human resources in recent years, with teachers reporting heightened burnout and intentions to leave . Combined with preexisting trends of a weakening teacher pipeline and anemic application pools for certain positions and settings , many worried that we may tip into a full-scale crisis.  

I am pleased to report that recent evidence increasingly points in the direction of the teacher workforce weathering the storm, even if the rains haven’t yet fully subsided. For example, district surveys from the spring of 2022 pointed to expected turnover in the current school year (2022-2023) likely being slightly less taxing than last year (2021-2022). New evidence from Washington State shows even the elevated turnover experienced in 2021-2022 was within the range of historical teacher turnover spanning nearly four decades. Finally, another new study from Illinois points to increased staffing levels, particularly among non-teacher staff, as the primary driver of elevated vacancies in schools, even as student enrollments are falling. These reports and other data points give me confidence that we’ll make it through.  

Don’t celebrate just yet, though. We still have work to do shoring up localized shortages in spots that have persistent hiring problems and doing what we can to make the teaching profession more attractive , especially among people of color .  

The first thing I’m looking for in 2023 is a sign that educators, families, and students have responded to COVID-19 by making permanent and systemic improvements in schooling. As I’ve written before , COVID-19 forced everyone into novel practices. Did they develop new habits that are having lasting positive influence, such as using new kinds of devices and software? Or did remote learning create bad habits (e.g., distraction from smart phones) that are making it even more difficult for students to rebound? Anecdotally, I think the answer is “both,” but I hope some enterprising researchers and journalists are looking into this.  

There’s also something I’m not looking for: I don’t expect a noticeable student rebound from COVID-19 learning loss anytime soon. The early evidence doesn’t provide much reason for hope. I think this is because: (a) if educators knew how to get students to catch up from a massive upheaval like this, they would have already been doing this for struggling students before COVID-19; (b) hiring more educators or bringing in new programs with the ESSER funds has proven difficult because of the tight labor market and temporary nature of the funds; and (c) the take-up rate on voluntary, after-school learning activities has been low .   

I’m not exactly optimistic that we’ll “solve” this quickly, but hopefully there’s at least a silver lining in the form of better teaching that will help address the problem gradually, over the long run.  

In 2023, my eyes are on the Supreme Court for two consequential higher education decisions. First will be an expedited hearing on the Biden administration’s  proposed student loan forgiveness  program. The administration accepted  26 million applications  for debt relief this fall; however, forgiveness is on hold until the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in February about the legality of the program. For now, the administration has extended the pause on loan repayment. But regardless of the Court’s ruling, restarting payments on remaining balances after a three-year pause will be a significant shift in individuals’ budgets. It is incumbent on the Department of Education to provide borrowers with clear, advance communication about repayment options and resources to avoid default.  

Second, the Court heard arguments in  October   2022  about the consideration of race in college admissions in two separate cases. I anticipate the Court will rule in favor of the plaintiff in both cases, effectively ending the use of affirmative action. This raises the question of how colleges will shift their recruitment and admissions processes to  advance their goals  of a diverse community of scholars. Colleges will need to examine what other admissions practices, such as legacy admissions or the review of test scores, they may need to adjust to achieve their mission.  

In 2023, I will be following two issues in K-12 education policy that have important implications for equity.   

First, the Biden administration has signaled that new guidance on how public schools can avoid racial discrimination in school discipline may be forthcoming. Any new guidance is expected to mirror guidelines published in 2014 by the Obama administration (and rescinded by the Trump administration in 2018). The Obama-era guidelines relied on a broader definition of racial discrimination (“disparate impact”) than had been used by prior Republican administrations (“disparate treatment”). This is notable because a “disparate impact” theory of discrimination is better aligned with contemporary understandings of how racial discrimination shapes school outcomes.   

I will also be following how school districts spend their remaining COVID-19 relief aid and the implementation of COVID-19 recovery interventions in schools. Emerging research and journalistic reports indicate that school districts are facing significant challenges implementing evidence-based interventions to support students recovering from the varied harms of the pandemic. Other work suggests that the scale of COVID-19 recovery funding provided to schools may be insufficient to meet the current needs of U.S. schools and students. To ensure that students, families, and educators get the support they need, it is critical that we continue to track how COVID-19 recovery in schools is faring.  

In 2023, I’ll be watching what happens with Republicans’ push for “parents’ rights” in schools. Several states have enacted so-called parents’ rights legislation already, with several others—including Texas , Missouri , and Kansas —poised to consider bills (or constitutional amendments) as the new legislative sessions begin. Even the new GOP House majority might pursue a Parents’ Bill of Rights despite decades-long skepticism from Republicans about federal action in K-12 education. With Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, that federal effort won’t go anywhere legislatively, but it could become a model for Republican-led state governments.   

That’s important because the details of these bills matter and have varied quite a bit. (FutureEd has a helpful policy tracker .) Some bills explicitly target teaching about race, gender, and/or sexuality—despite the potential harms to vulnerable students —while others read more like bureaucratic sets of reporting requirements. Some call for major reforms to school choice policies while others sidestep those issues entirely.   

Democrats may have something to say about parent supports, too, with continued interest in cutting childcare costs and reinstating an expanded child tax credit that slashed the child poverty rate . But even if it’s possible, with enough squinting, to see hope for bipartisan legislation , it certainly doesn’t feel like 2023 will be a year for bipartisanship in education.  

Results of the local, state, and national elections in 2022 have shifted the landscape of education governance in 2023. Institutional tension is likely to intensify re quir ing extra efforts by elected officials and stakeholders to resolve their policy differences . At the national level, Republican control in the House will likely slow down, and in some cases, reverse President Biden’s education equity agenda. Congressional oversight will intensify over functions of the U.S. Department of Education and in civil rights enforcement conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. Challenges against the Biden administration’s polic ies will also come from states where Republican governors and state attorneys have received strong electoral support . These state leaders will launch legal challenges and legislative actions to resist Biden’s executive initiatives .  Finally, at the local level, school board elections have become a contested terrain. While Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group, reported victory for about half of their endorsed board candidates, the National Education Association claimed electoral success for about 70% of their endorsed candidates .  A critical issue is whether and how divided governance at all levels will affect schooling opportunity, accountability, and quality for all students in 2023.    

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More From Forbes

The Top 5 Education Trends In 2023

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The world is changing, which means that the way we study and learn in order to thrive in the world has to change, too. For a long time, education has involved us spending a good chunk of our early years sitting in a classroom absorbing information before heading out to put it to use. But the pace of change today means that what we learned one day might be redundant the next.

This means that the way we learn has to change – embracing technology and concepts such as life-long learning to ensure that we are better equipped for the fast-changing world of today. So, here’s my rundown of the most important trends that will drive this change over the next 12 months and beyond.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI), described as the most transformative technology of the 21 st century, is reshaping every industry and field of human activity, including education. In the classroom, it is found in the form of virtual assistants that can help both students and teachers to manage their time and complete their assignments; tutoring systems that can provide personalized learning experiences for students of all ages and abilities; powering remote and online learning systems where it can adapt the pace of teaching to match students’ needs; language translation in educational settings where pupils speak a wide variety of languages, and many other applications. It’s even been reported that some schools in China have implemented facial recognition technology using computer vision systems to monitor whether or not students are paying attention in class!

According to UNESCO , AI has the potential to help tackle some of the toughest challenges in education today, including addressing inequalities in the way schooling is provided around the world and improving access to knowledge globally. However, it also creates challenges of its own – with effort required to ensure that the rollout of this highly disruptive technology is done in a way that is fair and doesn't itself contribute to those inequalities.

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Remote, Online, and Hybrid Learning

The global Covid-19 pandemic forced schools, universities, and course providers to develop the capabilities to deliver education at a distance. But even before this, a revolution was taking place in the domain of online learning, with massive online open courses (MOOCs) exploding in popularity. In schools, remote and online learning means that educators can reach students no matter how isolated their communities are. This could mark a huge step forward in providing equality of access to education in a world where nearly 270 million children do not go to school due to living in remote or rural locations.

Even for those living in cities, the rise of online and remote learning facilities provides an opportunity for us to continue with education even when our busy adult lives mean it would be difficult for us to regularly attend classes in person. This is driven by the emergence of online education technology (ed-tech) platforms such as Udacity, Coursera, Udemy, and EdX. These platforms are designed to enable the "lifelong learning" approach, which is likely to become prevalent thanks to the accelerating pace of technological advancement, which will require skills to be frequently updated and “topped up” through new models such as micro-learning or nano-learning. One trend that has recently emerged within the field of online learning is courses taught by celebrities and renowned practitioners. The Masterclass and Maestro platforms (the latter created by the BBC) offer opportunities such as learning children’s writing from Julia Donaldson, filmmaking from Martin Scorsese, or business from Bob Iger.

Not Just College

In 2023, high schools will increase resources dedicated to preparing students for future paths that lead to places other than traditional college courses. Vocational and technical courses teaching a diverse range of skill sets are likely to become more popular as schools work with employers to develop new solutions to problems caused by the skills gap . In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that 43 percent of high school graduates go on to study at college. Nevertheless, a disproportionate amount of school resources are focused on preparing this minority group, while less teaching focuses on students who plan to continue their education in less traditional ways, such as apprenticeships or on-the-job training. As the demands of the new labor market shift away from seeking purely college-educated graduates and towards developing a workforce with the necessary skills, we can expect to see this change in the future. In Europe, 2023 has been designated the European Year of Skills. This recognizes that a focus on vocational education and training alongside traditional academic, subject-based training may be the key to developing new drivers of economic growth in the face of global slowdown or recession.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two forms of extended reality (XR) that are becoming increasingly important within education systems. VR allows users to step into a virtual world, and there are a vast and growing number of "experiences" that let us do everything from step back in time and experiencing history through our own eyes to training for difficult and dangerous tasks such as conducting repairs in hazardous environments. Other use cases which will grow in popularity during 2023 include virtual classrooms , which allow remote learning and class activities to be delivered in a more immersive and experiential setting. In healthcare training, VR is already being used for everything from enabling nursing students to experience delivering emergency care to training doctors to perform surgery .

Augmented reality still requires a device (e.g., a phone, tabled, or a headset) but is different from VR, as it involves superimposing computer-generated images onto what the user is actually seeing. The advantage here is that it can provide real-time information – for example, warning a trainee in a manufacturing environment that a piece of machinery may be dangerous. This is possible thanks to computer vision algorithms that analyze the images captured by cameras in the headset. In schools, AR textbooks are becoming available that contain images, and models that "come alive" when looked at through a smartphone camera, enabling students to get a closer, more in-depth look at anything from ancient Roman architecture to the inner workings of the human body. Museums and sites of historical or scientific interest are also increasingly adding AR to their environment and exhibits to create more immersive education opportunities.

Soft Skills and STEM

Soft skills include communication skills, teamworking, creative thinking, interpersonal problem-solving, relationship management, and conflict resolution. In other words, they are human skills that are unlikely to be replicated by machines anytime soon. They will become increasingly important in a world where AI takes on many of our routine and mundane technical responsibilities. This means that these skills will increasingly be taught as part of technical education as they become more highly valued by employers and industry. According to HR experts , soft skills are increasingly important to company success but far harder to measure and assess than "hard skills" such as mathematics, engineering, and computer programming.

In 2023 we will see STEM education placing a growing emphasis on these vital skills, as well as increased efforts when it comes to measuring and assessing organizational capabilities in this area.

To stay on top of the latest on new and emerging business and tech trends, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter , follow me on Twitter , LinkedIn , and YouTube , and check out my books ‘ Future Skills: The 20 Skills And Competencies Everyone Needs To Succeed In A Digital World ’ and ‘ Business Trends in Practice , which won the 2022 Business Book of the Year award.

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7 higher education trends to watch in 2023

Federal financial aid will continue to hog the spotlight, but we’re also waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on race-conscious admissions.

The 2023 calendar year is the first since COVID-19 arrived when every higher education trend doesn’t have to be viewed through a pandemic lens.

Effects of the coronavirus crisis linger, but new topics are taking center stage, like potential reworks to the federal financial aid system, as well as fresh scrutiny — and the rejection of — U.S. News & World Report’s highly influential college rankings. 

As Higher Ed Dive looks ahead to the new year, we anticipate keeping you updated on these seven stories, plus whatever else the new year brings.

Efforts to fix financial aid in the limelight

Calls for colleges to be more transparent about their financial aid offers have come from most corners of the higher education world — lawmakers across the political spectrum, associations and consumer-protection advocates.

Students and their families who receive financial assistance often have to decipher a complex web of aid sources, including federal loans, grants and work-study, which can leave them guessing how much they’ll actually end up paying.

The issue seemed to come to a head toward the end of 2022, as 10 higher education organizations late in November said they would convene a task force aimed at standardizing financial aid information. 

Following the associations’ announcement, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, dropped a bombshell report finding that more than 9 in 10 colleges downplay their net price or don’t offer any details about it in financial aid offers. 

Republicans were angry. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a leading candidate to be the new chair of the House’s education committee, called the GAO’s findings “egregious and unacceptable.”

Foxx also promoted the College Cost Transparency and Student Protection Act, a Republican-led bill that would call on the U.S. education secretary to establish consistent terms and definitions for financial aid. 

Some experts also expect the U.S. Department of Education to propose financial aid standardization regulations, as the Biden administration has moved to establish several rules thus far that aim to shore up flaws in the student aid system. 

Student loan forgiveness keeps center stage

U.S. higher ed may have gained the widest attention in 2022 for President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe away broad amounts of student loan debt for individual borrowers earning up to $125,000.

Each borrower was set to receive up to $10,000 in debt forgiveness — $20,000 if they got a federal Pell Grant in college. The move intended to assuage Democrats' progressive flank, some of whom had called on the president to cancel more debt. It also acknowledged continued financial pain points from the pandemic. 

However, lawsuits ground the plan to a halt. Rulings in federal lawsuits paused it while raising questions about whether the administration had overreached its authority. Now, debt forgiveness sits before the U.S. Supreme Court, which expedited the case and expects to hear oral arguments in February. 

Legal experts have expressed doubts the conservatives who dominate the high court will back uniliteral debt forgiveness. Conservatives generally argue the debt forgiveness plan is financially reckless and spits in the face of taxpayers who did not attend college.

Meanwhile, Biden extended a pandemic-era pause on loan repayments while the Supreme Court hears the case. The moratorium, which had been scheduled to expire at the end of 2022, will now last until 60 days after litigation is resolved or 60 days after the end of June — whichever comes first.

The attempt at debt forgiveness looks to have ramifications regardless of whether it ultimately succeeds. Foxx in September said she would investigate whether Biden administration officials who worked on the plan would personally benefit from the money.

Race-conscious admissions policies under threat

The Supreme Court will finally decide this year on long-simmering legal challenges to policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that consider applicants’ race during the admissions process.

A conservative legal organization taking on the two institutions, Students for Fair Admissions, has a long history of suing over colleges' race-conscious policies. But this time around, court watchers say SFFA seems almost certain to succeed, as the justices'  conservative tilt almost certainly give them the votes to strike down these practices.

Those who tuned into oral arguments in 2022 noted several justices’ skepticism toward Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill’s reasons for defending race-conscious admissions. Colleges that consider race, however, only use it as one metric in admissions decisions and argue diverse student bodies bring strong educational benefits.

Practically, only a small slice of colleges would need to reshape their admissions practices should the court strike down race-conscious policies, as most institutions accept a majority of applicants. Still, college leaders have shared fears that a ruling against race-conscious admissions would signal to historically marginalized applicants that they aren’t welcome in higher ed. They also worry campus diversity would take a significant hit.

Experts have advised admissions offices to talk with other departments early about strategies on messaging in the event of a ruling against race-conscious policies and to develop strategies to continue crafting diverse classes. 

Can U.S. News & World Report rankings recover?

Higher ed officials watched with great interest as Yale University’s law school, and then Harvard University’s, in November announced they would no longer cooperate with U.S. News & World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings, one of the publication's many college lists that carry major clout. 

The rankings, in particular the Best Colleges undergraduate list, have long been the subject of complaints that they preoccupy institutional decision making to the detriment of colleges’ missions. U.S. News’ methodology also often comes under fire for measuring reputation, wealth and exclusivity — and not the actual quality of institutions' education, how accessible it is or how much it changes the lives of the students served. 

Since Yale and Harvard said they wouldn’t send U.S. News the necessary data, a contingent of other law schools — top-ranked and not — have followed suit. 

These law schools generally say the rankings disadvantage institutions that want to lift law students into public service careers.  U.S. News opened the new year by announcing changes to its law school ranking methodology. But it wasn’t enough for at least some law deans to buy back into the system.

A major unanswered question is whether law schools' rejection will spur a similar movement among undergraduate colleges. While no undergraduate college has shared that they are revolting against the rankings, some experts wonder if they are biding their time until closer to when the Best Colleges list publishes, typically in September. 

Regardless, the law schools’ actions only add to long-building animus against the U.S. News rankings, which suffered other reputational blows in 2022. The publication booted Columbia University from its Best Colleges rankings after questions about data it submitted were raised by one of the university's mathematics professors. It then kicked several other colleges from its 2022 rankings, alleging they also misreported data.

More college consolidations on the horizon

Experts in higher ed finance predicted the financial stresses early in the pandemic would lead to some low-enrollment colleges’ demise, only for federal pandemic support to somewhat shield institutions .

However, no new federal aid appears to be coming down the pipeline. Some institutions had already turned to austerity measures, as the pool of traditional-age college students starts to run dry.

Among the major closings and consolidations announced in higher ed in 2022 were Lincoln College, a predominantly Black institution in Illinois that shut down after a cyberattack added to already mounting stresses, and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, which is splitting up into separate operations run by its constituent research universities.

As colleges continue to feel the pandemic’s lingering financial pinch on top of demographic trends placing downward pressure on the sizes of their student bodies, more institutions will likely meet similar fates. 

Enrollment woes continue

As pandemic-related restrictions eased and life seemed to settle more into normalcy, higher ed leaders held out hope a COVID-19-era enrollment decline would rebound.

That doesn’t appear to be the case. Enrollment fell by 1.1% in fall 2022 from the prior year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center .

Institutions suffered across the board — community colleges, four-year public colleges and for-profits. Less-selective colleges and two-year institutions bore the brunt of these declines.

Some data points, however, should encourage the sector. Enrollment at historically Black colleges and universities rose by 2.5% between fall 2021 and fall 2022. And between fall 2020 and today, enrollment at HBCUs inched up by just under a percentage point. 

Also, undergraduate enrollment at primarily online colleges jumped by more than 3% between fall 2021 and fall 2022.

Skepticism of colleges’ value could push down student counts. And the so-called birth dearth during the Great Recession is arriving for higher education, shrinking the contingent of high school graduates available to enroll in college — and meaning enrollment will likely continue to wane. 

Scrutiny over OPMs grows

Ed tech investors and other observers will be watching closely to see whether online program management companies, or OPMs, will be able to recover from a rocky year marked by layoffs and heightened scrutiny of their business models. 

2U, one of the most prominent OPMs in the U.S., completed across-the-board layoffs last year that led to a 20% reduction in personnel expenses . Coursera, a high-profile MOOC platform with a small OPM business, also announced in November that it was reducing its workforce, though the company did not disclose how many employees were let go. 

But economic headwinds aren’t OPMs’ only trouble. Many of these companies rely on tuition-share agreements, in which they provide upfront capital for online programs in exchange for a cut of their future revenue, often between 40% and 60%. 

Democratic lawmakers asked the U.S. Department of Education late last year to formally investigate whether the agency should continue to allow colleges to enter tuition-share contracts with OPMs that provide recruiting services. They questioned whether these models incentivize OPMs to use aggressive recruiting methods . 

Legal trouble is also brewing. 

A lawsuit brought in December by former University of Southern California students made a similar argument as Democrats. Their complaint focuses on online education programs USC launched with 2U’s help. They allege the university and company worked together to lure students into programs by advertising artificially inflated rankings in U.S. News.

Natalie Schwartz contributed to this report.

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Five big issues for the education debate in 2023

Society has changed, and the way we teach our children must also change. in recent years, for a variety of reasons including the emergence of new technologies precipitated by the covid-19 pandemic, education has gained prominence in the social debate and is undergoing substantial changes. what will the big issues at the centre of the educational agenda and debate be in this year that is just starting we can hazard a guess..

Artificial intelligence and data science

They beat us at almost every game, identify our faces, tell us where to go, recommend what to listen to, watch and read, diagnose illnesses and now, as well as learning and imitating, they are also capable of creating. The boundaries of artificial intelligence and data science are being pushed a little bit further every day and further than we could have imagined just a few years ago. Almost all sectors have embraced this technology and education could not remain on the sidelines. The potential contributions of AI to education are vast and promising.

In this interview, Carlos Martínez Miguel, global director of IoT (internet of things), big data and artificial intelligence solutions and services at Telefónica Tech explains, among other things, the relationship between artificial intelligence and data analytics, how to avoid the risks involved in the application of this technology and what role it can play in the future of education.

However, and as Wayne Holmes , UNESCO advisor on education and AI, tells us, we must work to improve and enhance teacher qualifications, especially in vulnerable settings.

Teachers’ digital competencies

Integrating technology into education comes with the challenge of training a new professional, a new teacher who knows how to incorporate these technologies into their pedagogical practice in order to promote learning in their students. Transposing outdated pedagogy to digital will not bring about the transformation we need in education. This is because, according to Wendy Kopp , founder and CEO of the international organisation Teach for All, “technology is the easy stuff. What’s difficult is developing ourselves and the teaching profession so that we know how to make the best use of this technology and ensure the children get the most out of it.”

The thing is, as Lùcia Dellagnelo, director of the Brazilian Innovation Centre for Education puts it: “Technology has to emerge to transform pedagogy, to allow the teacher to perform new roles, mediator roles, to support the students’ development and construction of knowledge, instead of being a mere transmitter of content, a conveyor of information to students”.

In this interview , we talk to this education and technology expert about what these connected schools should be like, what the role of teachers should be in this new education and what competencies they need to develop in order to become digital teachers. We also spoke with her and other experts, whom the ProFuturo Observatory brought together at the event “Digital teachers. The assessment of teachers’ digital competencies as a tool to meet the challenges of the classrooms of 2030” , in this post you will learn how to measure and assess these competences in order to guide their professional development: the challenges of assessment, digitally competent schools, cascade training, teacher involvement and motivation… In this post you can read about all these topics in more detail.

Education and technology: the perfect team to fight the divide and inequality

The pandemic showed us the great power of technology to accelerate learning and make it more accessible. For example, it enables differentiated learning tailored to each student’s needs, and ensures that everyone has constant access to learning.

However, we also know that, if not correctly blended, technology does not improve learning and may even widen existing inequalities. How can technology be used to overcome challenges such as the access, quality and equity gaps? What are the main risks and how can we prevent them? How can technology be appropriately incorporated into education systems in vulnerable environments? We talk about all of this in this post about the GEM Report 2023, focusing on the role of technology in education.

Here, Robert Hawkins, global director of education technology and innovation at the World Bank, talked about the five basic principles that every policy-maker should keep in mind when planning public policy in this direction, which can be summarised as: asking why, at what scale and for all, to empower teachers, engage the ecosystem and be data-driven.

Personalisation of learning: the eternal dream of education, made easier with technology

Since Rousseau unwittingly became one of the first theorists of personalised learning in 1762 with his work Emile , this approach has taken a great leap forward thanks to the development of information technologies (ntelligent tutoring systems, free access to numerous learning platforms, methods using computers to adapt the complexity of content to users’ needs)…

At the ProFuturo Observatory we have talked a lot about personalised education. In the post Personalised learning: the great dream of education we tell you what this approach to learning is and how it can be a great tool for education in vulnerable environments.

Once its origins and fundamental elements have been established, in this post we will look at three ways of personalising learning in the classroom: flipped learning, challenge-based learning and place-based learning. If you read it, you will know what each of these methodologies consists of and what their main advantages are.

And, of course, we had to talk about personalised learning and technology. Thus, in Adaptive learning in five questions we talk about some of the keys to this method of instruction which, with the invaluable collaboration of artificial intelligence, can take adaptive learning to another level.

Finally, and to demonstrate that in this Observatory we do not only theorise, in Putting personalised learning into practice we tell you about three interesting experiences that implement flipped learning, challenge-based learning and place-based learning in the classroom. We are referring to the Crab Project, the 2030 Club and the Forest Schools. Don’t miss them.

Critical, safe, secure and responsible digital citizenship

Is knowing how technology works the same as knowing how to use technology? Are our children truly digital natives? How can they develop a positive digital identity? Equipping students with the tools and training to become good digital citizens should be one of the key subjects in the educational debate. But is it? Are we really aware of its importance? Are we teaching digital skills well?

Experts agree that the main problem is not technology, but the way in which the 21st century citizen is being educated. Young people must acquire digital skills and learn to use technology safely, ethically, critically and responsibly. Some studies have shown that while young children (digital natives) are fluent with new technologies, they lack the technical, critical and social skills needed to deal with the dangers they present.

In this article , we have told you what it means to make a critical, safe and responsible use of new technologies and what a teacher should do to encourage and promote it. And in this one , we bring together some practical resources for teaching the little ones to be good digital citizens.

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Dear Annie: Our daughter is complaining of ‘major issues’ in her marriage. But we just don’t see it

• Published: Aug. 27, 2024, 4:20 p.m.

Our daughter has been married for about a year and claims there are "major issues" in her marriage. boykovi1991 - stock.adobe.com

This column originally ran in 2021

Dear Annie: My husband and I are trying to figure out how to emotionally support our adult daughter, who is 40 years old. She is going through a very emotional period in her life.

She has been married for about a year, has “major issues” with her spouse and is not certain she can “stay in the relationship.” But from our conversations with her and what we’ve observed, the issues she describes seem to be all “her.”

For example, she expects her spouse to give his undivided attention to her all day on his day off from work. She is not even willing to allow chores such as mowing the lawn or doing the laundry to interfere. She doesn’t want him to be reading, talking on the phone or checking emails -- just paying full attention to her.

Her sister is extremely concerned about her as well.

Her behavior is wacky, and she is highly offended that we are not “supporting” her when she obsessively describes arguments with her spouse. We are all concerned about mental health issues but are at a loss. We’ve encouraged her to seek therapy, which she has started, but she is already looking for a different therapist. Her sister is going to ask her own therapist for advice on how to be more supportive. We’ll do the same.

But we can’t bring ourselves to agree with her that the spousal behaviors are abusive, because they simply are not. This opinion is based on what we’ve observed firsthand; not by what she says about what happens.

We can say, “we are so sorry you are unhappy,” but this is not the affirmation she is seeking from us. This family dynamic is new to us and is stressing us all out. Any advice? -- Stressed Out Family

Dear Stressed Out Family: It does sound like your daughter could be suffering from a mental illness, or maybe just extreme insecurity or narcissism. Regardless of the diagnosis, which hopefully her new therapist will be able to make, you are also suffering.

The best thing to do is to consult a professional yourself about how best to support your daughter during this difficult time of her life -- and yours.

Send your questions for Annie Lane to [email protected] .

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Public School Forum

A think-and-do tank committed to North Carolina public schools

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Get connected with an expert, top education issues.

Public schools are the cornerstone of our communities, our democracy, and our economy. We must put aside political differences and put our students at the center of policy decisions to secure a better future for our state. The challenges and deep inequities facing our schools today are largely the result of decades of disinvestment, compounded by a global pandemic. All of this has led us to a breaking point for our system of public education. In 2023, we urge our lawmakers and stakeholders to recognize the responsibility we all have and the urgency to act quickly to meet the needs of each and every student in North Carolina.

Read Our 2024-25 Top Education Issues

Our Top Education Issues represent the Public School Forum’s policy agenda for the current biennium.

Read Our 2023-24 Top Education Issues

Top issues at a glance.

• North Carolina ranks 38th in the nation in teacher pay with an average salary of $53,458 in 2020-21 . Beginning teacher pay in NC starts at $37,000, falling 17% below Alabama and well below the NC minimum living wage of $48,346 . 
• Adjusting for inflation, the average teacher salary in NC dropped 11.5% between 1999-2000 to 2020-2021 , while the national average salary increased by .3% over the same period.
• Teachers in North Carolina make approximately 24.5% less than similarly educated peers in other sectors. This is one of the largest teacher pay penalties in the nation.

2023-24 Policy Actions:

• Increase state-funded base pay for teachers by 24.5% to reach the national average and eliminate the teacher pay penalty.
• Reinstate masters pay for teachers.
• Compensate teachers for additional duties and workload.
• Provide funding to pay student teachers .
• Teacher licensure exams, such as PRAXIS Core, can serve as a barrier for the recruitment and retention of a diverse teacher workforce and are not necessarily predictive of teacher quality .
• Teacher vacancies topped 3,600 at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year. Districts also reported that more than 3,600 certified teaching roles were filled by staff who were not fully licensed to teach in NC. Vacancies spanned all grade levels and subject areas, and showed a significant increase from the previous year.
• Teacher diversity is linked to increased graduation rates, improved attendance and suspension rates, and social-emotional and academic gains for all students. However, the teacher workforce in NC is not representative of the student population.

2023-24 Policy Actions

• Eliminate requirements for teacher licensure exams that are not predictive of educator effectiveness, i.e. PRAXIS Core.
• Open the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program to prospective teachers in all subject areas and structure financial support as scholarships, rather than forgivable loans.
• Increase the diversity and number of National Board Certified Teachers by reimbursing certification fees and providing support for teachers of color during the process.
• Collect more actionable data on teacher satisfaction, disaggregated by race, on the Teacher Working Conditions Survey to better inform recruitment and retention efforts.
• Provide flexibility in how districts can utilize position allotments to address instructional needs.
• In North Carolina, the number of youth suicides has doubled in recent years. Since the COVID pandemic began, there has been a 46% increase in youth with one or more major depressive episodes .
• North Carolina’s ratios of Specialized Instructional Support Personnel to students are far higher than recommended ratios.  

• Since Columbine, more than 236,000 K-12 students have experienced gun violence in their schools. Gun violence in schools can have mental health consequences even for those who are not injured or directly exposed. 
• 4.6 million children in the United States have one or more loaded, unlocked firearms in their homes .  
• Safe, well-maintained school buildings are necessary for student health and academic success . The 2020-21 K-12 facility needs survey calls for $12.8 billion of investment in school buildings and repairs over five years.
• Increase the number of school counselors, social workers, psychologists and nurses in public schools. Raise salaries for counselors, social workers, psychologists and nurses to levels comparable with other states and practitioners in other settings. 
• Provide funding for professional development in trauma-informed practices for educators. 
• Examine codes of conduct, eliminate use of nebulous discipline categories, and end exclusionary and inequitable discipline practices. Direct attention toward creating positive school culture, building accountability through relationships, and practicing conflict resolution and repair.
• Pass a state statute requiring safe storage of firearms . Reinstate the federal ban on assault weapons and require universal background checks for gun purchases in all 50 states. 
• Close the nearly $13 billion funding gap to address school facilities needs across the state.
• Social-emotional learning (SEL) builds the critical skills of empathy, self-management, communication, and relationship-building, all of which are aligned with the NC Department of Public Instruction’s Portrait of a Graduate . 
• Culturally responsive pedagogy can improve students’ brain processing, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, strengthen their racial and ethnic identities, promote feelings of safety and belonging, and increase engagement and motivation.
• The current A-F School Performance Grades, which are calculated using a formula based 80 percent on proficiency and 20 percent on growth over time, are more indicative of the percentage of students living in poverty than a measure of student learning.
• Ensure that standards and curriculum reflect the diversity of student identities and address historical truths and systemic inequities that persist today.
• Provide funding for preparation and ongoing professional development in culturally responsive/sustaining pedagogy and social emotional learning.
• Implement robust SEL and equity plans in every district , as required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
• Replace A-F school grades with an accountability model with multiple measures that  emphasizes growth, equity, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• The NC Supreme Court has ruled in the Leandro case that North Carolina is not fulfilling its constitutional duty to provide every student with a sound basic education.
• North Carolina ranks 48th in the country on per-student spending when adjusting for regional cost differences, falling more than $4,600 below the national average . 
• Our state ranks 50th in the nation on funding effort , or the amount of funding per student relative to the state’s wealth overall. 
• The Comprehensive Remedial Plan is law, and implementation of the plan will provide additional funding for evidence-based supports for teacher and principal recruitment and retention, early childhood education, literacy instruction, and mental health. This will have an immediate impact on students, schools, and districts across the state, particularly those with the greatest need. 
• Transfer funds for years 2 and 3 of the Comprehensive Remedial Plan (supplementing, not supplanting), and provide support for districts to efficiently and appropriately distribute and manage the influx of new funds. 
• Build on progress by fully funding investments for years 4 and 5 of the Comprehensive Remedial Plan in the new state budget (supplementing, not supplanting). 
• Track data on progress towards providing a sound basic education for every child over time, with a focus on equitable opportunities for children from low-income families, students of color, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners.

Hear from our Executive Director.

Read our Top Education Issues from past years.

2023 education highlights: Keeping up the momentum to transform learning

International Day of Education 2023 dedicated to Afghan girls and women

UNESCO dedicated this year's International Day of Education on 24 January to girls and women in Afghanistan who have been deprived of their right to pursue secondary and higher education. The Organization renewed its call to immediately restore their fundamental right to education. “No country in the world should bar women and girls from receiving an education,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. “The international community has the responsibility to ensure that the rights of Afghan girls and women are restored without delay. The war against women must stop.” 

In Afghanistan’s Logar province, most girls and women are illiterate. Even before the decision of the de-facto authorities to suspend girls’ access to beyond primary education, most families did not let their girls go to school. Today, over 1,000 women and young girls aged 15 to 45 are learning how to read, write and calculate for the first time in their lives through UNESCO’s Community-based Basic General Literacy Classes. During UNESCO’s visit to two literacy classes , women and girls shared their motivations, challenges and inspirations for attending the classes. Nationwide, the Organization is currently reaching over 40,000 illiterate and semi-literate youth and adults – over 60% of whom are women – in 20 provinces. 

Supporting learners and teachers in Ukraine

UNESCO and Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science launched an online training in digital pedagogy for 50,000 teachers, while the education of many Ukrainian students is still disrupted by the war. They are also training 15,000 school psychologists to withstand the impact of the war on the mental health of Ukrainian learners and teachers. “Since February 2022, UNESCO has continuously supported Ukrainian teachers to ensure that students continue learning in the midst of war,” said UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini. “I pay tribute to their work, resilience and continued dedication. As the new academic year has just begun, UNESCO reaffirms its commitment to them. Because education is the cornerstone on which Ukraine's future is built.”   Read more    

Monitoring country commitments made at the Transforming Education Summit

The latest UNESCO data shows that the global number of out-of-school children has risen by 6 million since 2021 and now totals 250 million. The figures, compiled by the Global Education Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, reveal that education progress continues to stagnate globally. The annual finance gap for helping low and lower-middle income countries achieve their national education targets is almost US $100 billion. UNESCO remains committed to supporting countries and partners to acquire the financing needed to meet their goals. The Organization is also monitoring country commitments made at the UN Transforming Education Summit in 2022 through its new dashboard . Read more

Urgent call for appropriate use of technology in learning and global guidance on generative AI in education

UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education highlights the lack of appropriate governance and regulation. It urges countries to set their own terms for the way technology is designed and used in education so that it never replaces in-person, teacher-led instruction, and supports the shared objective of quality education for all. The report proposes four questions that policy-makers and educational stakeholders should reflect upon as technology is being deployed in education. Read more

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools have far-reaching implications for education and research. Yet the education sector today is largely unprepared for the ethical and pedagogical integration of these powerful and rapidly evolving technologies, as UNESCO Assistant Director-General Stefania Giannini reiterated in her think piece . UNESCO developed the first-ever global guidance on GenAI in education. Launched during UNESCO’s flagship Digital Learning Week , it calls on countries to quickly implement appropriate regulations, policies, and human capacity development, for ensuring a human-centred vision of GenAI for education and research. Read more

UNESCO calls for an upgrade of teachers’ status to reduce the global shortage

“We must better value, better train and better support,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay on World Teachers’ Day (5 October). UNESCO and the Teacher Task Force’s first global report shows that globally, 44 million teachers are still needed to achieve the goal of providing primary and secondary education for all by 2030. This includes a demand for seven out of ten teachers at the secondary level and a need to replace over half of the existing teachers leaving the profession. The problem is not only one of funding, but also the unattractiveness of the profession. Read more

UNESCO adopts landmark guidance on education’s cross-cutting role in promoting peace

On 20 November 2023, the 194 UNESCO Member States adopted the Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development at UNESCO’s General Conference . This is the only global standard-setting instrument that lays out how education should be used to bring about lasting peace and foster human development through 14 guiding principles. For the past two years, UNESCO has been revising this visionary tool to ensure it responds to today's greatest challenges and future shocks. Read more  

UNESCO at COP28: Making education the long-term solution to the climate crisis

UNESCO is accelerating climate change education and greening initiatives through its coordinating role of the  Greening Education Partnership  and extensive work on  education for sustainable development . At COP28, UNESCO played a key role in the various dialogues on accelerating climate change education and emphasized the significance of sustainable learning in fostering long-term solutions for the climate crisis. The Organization presented at the COP the drafts of two new normative and groundbreaking resources: A global curriculum guidance for climate change education; and a green schools quality standards, which will be finalized and rolled-out next year. A major highlight of the gathering was launch of the Declaration for Climate Change and Education , focused on adaptation, mitigation and investment – which was signed and endorsed by 41 countries. Read more  

Exploring how rights should adapt as education evolves

The world has considerably changed since the key treaties on the right to education were conceived and adopted over half a century ago. Education can no longer be only confined to traditional classrooms and textbooks but has expanded to encompass lifelong and life-wide learning. UNESCO's Initiative on the evolving right to education launched its formal dialogue in December to explore how international human rights instruments can be reinforced and further developed to address today's needs and challenges. Read more  

Looking into 2024, the  International Day of Education will be celebrated on 24 January under the theme “learning for lasting peace”. The world is seeing a surge of violent conflicts paralleled by an alarming rise of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and hate speech. An active commitment to peace is more urgent today than ever: Education is central to this endeavor, as underlined by the  UNESCO Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development .

Key UNESCO publications on education in 2023

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The Ongoing Challenges, and Possible Solutions, to Improving Educational Equity

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Schools across the country were already facing major equity challenges before the pandemic, but the disruptions it caused exacerbated them.

After students came back to school buildings after more than a year of hybrid schooling, districts were dealing with discipline challenges and re-segregating schools. In a national EdWeek Research Center survey from October, 65 percent of the 824 teachers, and school and district leaders surveyed said they were more concerned now than before the pandemic about closing academic opportunity gaps that impact learning for students of different races, socioeconomic levels, disability categories, and English-learner statuses.

But educators trying to prioritize equity have an uphill battle to overcome these challenges, especially in the face of legislation and school policies attempting to fight equity initiatives across the country.

The pandemic and the 2020 murder of George Floyd drove many districts to recognize longstanding racial disparities in academics, discipline, and access to resources and commit to addressing them. But in 2021, a backlash to such equity initiatives accelerated, and has now resulted in 18 states passing laws restricting lessons on race and racism, and many also passing laws restricting the rights and well-being of LGBTQ students.

This slew of Republican-driven legislation presents a new hurdle for districts looking to address racial and other inequities in public schools.

During an Education Week K-12 Essentials forum last week, journalists, educators, and researchers talked about these challenges, and possible solutions to improving equity in education.

Takeru Nagayoshi, who was the Massachusetts teacher of the year in 2020, and one of the speakers at the forum, said he never felt represented as a gay, Asian kid in public school until he read about the Stonewall Riots, the Civil Rights Movement, and the full history of marginalized groups working together to change systems of oppression.

“Those are the learning experiences that inspired me to be a teacher and to commit to a life of making our country better for everyone,” he said.

“Our students really benefit the most when they learn about themselves and the world that they’re in. They’re in a safe space with teachers who provide them with an honest education and accurate history.”

Here are some takeaways from the discussion:

Schools are still heavily segregated

Almost 70 years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, most students attend schools where they see a majority of other students of their racial demographics .

Black students, who accounted for 15 percent of public school enrollment in 2019, attended schools where Black students made up an average of 47 percent of enrollment, according to a UCLA report.

They attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 67 percent, while Latinx students attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 66 percent.

Overall, the proportion of schools where the majority of students are not white increased from 14.8 percent of schools in 2003 to 18.2 percent in 2016.

“Predominantly minority schools [get] fewer resources, and that’s one problem, but there’s another problem too, and it’s a sort of a problem for democracy,” said John Borkowski, education lawyer at Husch Blackwell.

“I think it’s much better for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy, when people have opportunities to interact with one another, to learn together, you know, and you see all of the problems we’ve had in recent years with the rising of white supremacy, and white supremacist groups.”

School discipline issues were exacerbated because of student trauma

In the absence of national data on school discipline, anecdotal evidence and expert interviews suggest that suspensions—both in and out of school—and expulsions, declined when students went remote.

In 2021, the number of incidents increased again when most students were back in school buildings, but were still lower than pre-pandemic levels , according to research by Richard Welsh, an associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education.

But forum attendees, who were mostly district and school leaders as well as teachers, disagreed, with 66 percent saying that the pandemic made school incidents warranting discipline worse. That’s likely because of heightened student trauma from the pandemic. Eighty-three percent of forum attendees who responded to a spot survey said they had noticed an increase in behavioral issues since resuming in-person school.

Restorative justice in education is gaining popularity

One reason Welsh thought discipline incidents did not yet surpass pre-pandemic levels despite heightened student trauma is the adoption of restorative justice practices, which focus on conflict resolution, understanding the causes of students’ disruptive behavior, and addressing the reason behind it instead of handing out punishments.

Kansas City Public Schools is one example of a district that has had improvement with restorative justice, with about two thirds of the district’s 35 schools seeing a decrease in suspensions and expulsions in 2021 compared with 2019.

Forum attendees echoed the need for or success of restorative justice, with 36 percent of those who answered a poll within the forum saying restorative justice works in their district or school, and 27 percent saying they wished their district would implement some of its tenets.

However, 12 percent of poll respondents also said that restorative justice had not worked for them. Racial disparities in school discipline also still persist, despite restorative justice being implemented, which indicates that those practices might not be ideal for addressing the over-disciplining of Black, Latinx, and other historically marginalized students.

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Ten Major Issues Facing Higher Education Institutions In 2023

Contributor.

The last few years have been eventful and, at times, difficult ones for institutions of higher education. Institutions have been deeply impacted by issues ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic, to debates over free speech, to changes in immigration law, and to the ever-increasing pace of technological change, to name but a few. These impacts have been felt by institutions in numerous ways, including through increased legal risk and litigation. But notwithstanding all that has happened, 2023 may be one of the most impactful years for higher education in recent memory. Some of the issues we present below represent challenges for institutions of higher education while others represent opportunities. But all of these issues are important, interesting, and worthy of careful consideration as the year progresses.

#1 Race-Conscious Admissions

The Supreme Court is expected to decide two lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in June 2023. The petitioner in both cases, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), alleged that Asian-American applicants were denied undergraduate admission because of race-conscious admissions programs that benefit certain minority groups but disadvantage Asian Americans. The Court's decision could overturn 40 years of precedent—including Bakke , Grutter , and Fisher — permitting the consideration of race in admissions for the purpose of furthering student body diversity. 1

While oral argument in November 2022 reflected a sharply divided court, the conservative majority appeared prepared to overrule at least significant parts of Grutter and thus prohibit the explicit consideration of race in higher education admissions. Such a decision would obviously mark a sea change for admissions policies and would be one of the most significant court decisions regarding higher education in decades. Because the Supreme Court's decisions in these cases will likely not come out before June 2023, colleges and universities should be able to largely complete this year's admissions cycle in accord with the Court's existing precedent. Nonetheless, institutions of higher education should be prepared for the need to reformulate policies before the next admissions cycle to comply with the Court's forthcoming decisions.

To read more on this issue, please click here .

#2 Artificial Intelligence

The exponential rate of development in AI poses challenges and opportunities for colleges and universities. The use of AI technology, particularly AI-based facial recognition, has become commonplace for remote assessment proctoring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and its use is likely to grow. Used in this manner, AI can be a useful means of stemming academic misconduct.

On the other hand, the growth of AI presents substantial challenges, too. For example, institutions have already faced suit under statutes such as the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act for capturing of students' biometric information, including through use of online remote proctoring tools. 2 Moreover, facial recognition technology, including AI-based proctoring software, is better at detecting light-skinned people than dark-skinned people and better at detecting men than women, raising issues of discrimination and equity. 3 Students with accessibility needs, learning disabilities, neurodivergence, or mental health conditions may also be at risk for discrimination by AI proctoring systems, as may transgender students. 4

Recent well-publicized developments in generative AI—algorithms, such as ChatGPT, that can be used to create new content, including text, audio, code, images, and video—will require institutions of higher education to consider how to address AI use in assessments like essay writing and adjust academic integrity policies to address such technology. And the proliferation of generative AI will also raise copyright questions for institutions of higher education. Courts will soon consider the "fair use" of input data—i.e., the training data that is ingested and used by AI algorithms. 5 As owners of tremendous amounts of intellectual property, colleges and universities will have to consider how best to protect their data and other intellectual property.

#3 Immigration: DACA Under Threat (Again)

Once again, colleges and universities will be forced to confront significant challenges related to immigration in 2023. The most high-profile issue remains the ongoing challenge to the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Originally brought in 2018, the lawsuit by Texas and several other states seeks to end the DACA program. 6 It is being litigated in the Southern District of Texas before the same district court that ended the DAPA program during the Obama administration. 7

The federal district court and Fifth Circuit have already signaled that they believe DACA is unlawful. 8 They are currently evaluating whether the rule promulgated by the Biden administration to formalize the DACA program alters that legal calculus. 9 The litigation is proceeding in the district court, on remand from the Fifth Circuit, but a decision is anticipated later this year.

If the district court finds that the codified rule is unlawful, the temporary reprieve given to existing DACA recipients could end, subjecting hundreds of thousands of existing DACA recipients to removal and threatening their ability to work legally in the United States.

Given the importance of the DACA program to colleges and universities, this is litigation that schools will want to follow closely as it continues to work its way through the federal courts. And should the courts ultimately end the DACA program, universities will likely play an important role in the compelling push for a legislative solution, which at that point may be the Dreamers' only option.

#4 Antitrust Scrutiny for Institutions and Athletic Conferences

The NCAA, conferences, and institutions of higher education will continue to respond to the Court's ruling in NCAA v. Alston , 10 which held that certain NCAA restrictions on education-related benefits for student-athletes violated federal antitrust laws. For example, in In re College Athlete NIL Litigation , a potential class of football players, men's basketball players, women's basketball players, and other Division I athletes are challenging the NCAA's former NIL ban and current NIL rules as violative of antitrust laws. 11 Plaintiffs' motion for class certification is currently pending, and the case is set for trial in mid-2024. At the same time, although the Court in Alston left the conferences free to impose many of their own restrictions on student-athlete benefits, some have speculated that antitrust concerns may come to the fore in light of the continued, and perhaps expanded, dominance of the SEC and the Big Ten conference. 12, 13

In addition, ongoing litigation in the Northern District of Illinois raises questions related to a former statutory antitrust exemption, called Section 568, and financial aid methodologies used by institutions across the country. The case, Corzo et al. v. Brown University, et al. , is currently proceeding through discovery. 14

#5: College Athletics

The coming year will likely bring numerous important changes related to college athletics. For one, in Johnson v. NCAA , 15 the Third Circuit will rule on whether student-athletes can constitute "employees" under the FLSA. 16 The Seventh and Ninth Circuits have already considered the question and ruled that student-athletes cannot be deemed employees, so a contrary ruling by the Third Circuit would create a circuit split, which could elevate the issue to the Supreme Court. 17

Meanwhile, in the 18 months since the NCAA began allowing college athletes to make money off their names, images, and likenesses (NIL), 32 states have passed legislation to set rules for this process. 18 Given the variation across this "patchwork" of legislation, there have been calls for Congress to pass a uniform federal law that would even the playing field amongst all colleges and universities. So far, none of the bills introduced have made it to the floor for debate, but this will be a topic to watch in 2023. 19

Ongoing litigation over concussions in college sports is another issue likely to make news in 2023. In November 2022, a jury in Los Angeles County found the NCAA was not responsible in a wrongful death action brought by the estate of Brian Gee, a former USC football player whose death was allegedly caused by CTE. 20 But this trial is just the beginning; there are a number of other concussion cases against the NCAA working their way through state courts around the country, starting with a trial this February in Indiana. 21

#6: New Title IX Rules

In 2023, the Department of Education is expected to promulgate its highly anticipated rule clarifying the scope of Title IX protections and revising processes for handling Title IX grievances. Based on the Department's notice of proposed rulemaking, the rule is likely to make several key changes.

As to the scope of Title IX's substantive guarantees, the new rule will clarify that Title IX protects against discrimination based on sex-based stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy. And the rule plans to restore the longstanding standard for when sex discrimination liability is triggered: harassment must be "severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive." (This standard had been abandoned by the Trump administration in its 2020 regulations in favor of a requirement that harassment be "severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.") The new rule's revised definition means that a single instance of sex harassment could give rise to a Title IX violation if the incident is sufficiently severe or objectively offensive (such as an assault). The new rule will also clarify Title IX's coverage for conduct that occurs off-campus. In particular, it is expected to reverse the Trump administration's policy that study abroad programs are not included.

As to the procedures universities must use to respond to and adjudicate Title IX claims, the new rule will return the standard of proof for sex discrimination to the familiar "preponderance of the evidence" standard, meaning it is more likely than not that the alleged conduct occurred. This standard had been the express federal policy dating back to the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, but the Trump administration abandoned it in 2020 for the heightened "clear and convincing evidence" standard. In reversing the Trump administration's approach, the new rule may leave universities some flexibility; if schools use the "clear and convincing" standard for all comparable disciplinary proceedings (including complaints alleging other forms of discrimination), then they will be permitted to use that heightened standard for Title IX complaints, too.

More broadly, the new rule will embrace a framework for adjudicating Title IX complaints that takes account of universities' different environments, resources, and needs—reversing the one-size-fits-all approach of the Trump administration's procedural requirements. Especially noteworthy, universities are expected to be allowed to return to a single-investigator model, a practice banned by the Trump-era regulations. That change will, in turn, have downstream effects, including that universities will no longer be required to hold live hearings to evaluate evidence; however, they must have in place a process to evaluate witness credibility through live testimony where desirable and must afford the parties equal opportunity to present and respond to relevant evidence. The new rule will also roll back the Trump administration's requirement that cross-examination be available to the parties. That said, the Department is likely to allow universities to use cross-examination if they so choose. Finally, the new rule is expected to reiterate principles of evenhandedness and a commitment to fair process. In particular, it is likely to mandate that universities withhold disciplinary action any accused person unless and until it determines that sex discrimination has occurred.

#7 Department of Education Office of Civil Rights Complaints

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is tasked with enforcing civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, and age in programs that receive Department of Education funding. Complaints may be filed with the OCR by anyone who believes that an institution receiving federal financial assistance has discriminated against someone on these prohibited bases. Over the course of the 2022 fiscal year, the Office of Civil Rights received nearly 19,000 complaints, more than doubling the number received in 2021 and surpassing the record 16,000 complaints received in 2016. 22 Although the Office has not yet released its annual report, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon spoke with The New York Times about the upward trend, noting that the jump in the number of complaints "reflects confidence in the Office of Civil Rights as a place to seek redress." 23 In its most recent annual report, which correctly predicted that 2022 would be a record-breaking year in the number of complaints filed, the Office acknowledged that "addressing the rising number of civil rights complaints will be challenging" given staffing limitations. 24 The Office has not provided any statement to suggest the uptick in complaints will stall in 2023.

Notably, in recent years, a small number of individuals have filed a large number of OCR complaints. 25 For example, in 2017, 23 percent of the total cases were filed by three people. 26 One individual, Mark Perry, Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of Michigan – Flint, has filed hundreds of complaints, including some as recently as December 2022 against programs designed to support minorities and other historically disadvantaged groups. 27 The prevalence of frequent complainants, too, shows no sign of slowing.

#8: Challenges to Faculty Diversity Initiatives

This past year saw an increase not only in suits challenging universities' student diversity initiatives, but also in suits seeking to invalidate faculty diversity initiatives. Notably, America First Legal, a conservative legal organization, 28 has sued Texas A&M University for its fellowship program seeking to hire faculty "from underrepresented minority groups" in order to "move the structural composition of its faculty towards parity with that of the State of Texas." 29 The plaintiff, Richard Lowery, is a white professor at UT Austin who sued, alleging that he represented a class of "white and Asian men who stand 'able and ready' to apply for faculty appointments at Texas A&M." 30

Lowery poses new potential risks for universities, not just because many universities may similarly seek to foster diversity among their faculties, 31 but also because the plaintiff's decision to sue under Title VI (addressing discrimination in institutions receiving federal funding) rather than Title VII (addressing employment discrimination) potentially presents novel legal questions. The use of Title VI, however, also provides universities with strong defenses against these claims. Universities may argue that disgruntled job applicants do not fall within the ambit of Title VI's intended protections, as they are not the intended beneficiaries of the federal funds. They may also argue that a Title VI claim requires that the federal financial assistance have the "primary objective of ... providing employment," which is not the case with most of the federal assistance universities receive. 32 Texas A&M has raised these defenses in its motion to dismiss the suit, although the court has not yet ruled on the motion. The district court's receptivity to these novel arguments could determine whether suits like this one proliferate in the coming months.

#9: A New, GOP-Controlled House of Representatives

Higher educational institutions should brace themselves for a host of challenges and scrutiny likely to be presented by the new, GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Universities should be prepared to receive information requests from several House committees—the Committee on Education and the Workforce, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and the new "Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party."

Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, recently announced her intent to launch "vigorous and sustained oversight" of the Department of Education, 33 renewed demands for investigation and briefing on free speech at colleges and universities, 34 and listed among her priorities "stopping Biden's radical changes to federal student loans." 35

Meanwhile, Representative James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, sent a letter to the University of Pennsylvania on January 18 demanding a wide range of information purportedly related to "President Biden's recent mishandling of classified information." 36 The letter sets forth allegations of improper influence of the Biden administration by both UPenn and China, and demands documents and communications related to donations to UPenn originating from China, efforts to solicit donations for the Penn Biden Center (a think tank affiliated with UPenn), and all persons with access to or who had visited the Penn Biden Center. 37

The new Select Committee on China will be chaired by Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed that the committee would not be partisan and that it would focus on issues such as bringing jobs and supply chains back from China and securing intellectual property. 38 It remains to be seen whether this committee will put university funding issues in its crosshairs.

Separate from potential inquiries launched by these committees, other challenges could be presented by the mere fact of a divided Congress. For instance, a divided Congress is unlikely to pass a budget doubling the amount of the Pell Grant from $6,500 to $13,000 (which most involved with higher education agree is much needed) or to fund the scientific research part of the CHIPS and Science Act. 39 Medical research funding could also face sharp cuts if House Republicans are able to fulfill their promise to decrease spending to 2022 levels. 40

#10: Student Debt Relief

In two cases, Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown , the Supreme Court will hear challenges to the legality of the Department of Education's student debt relief plan. While these decisions may not directly impact universities, they could meaningfully expand or contract the Department of Education's authority to change financial assistance programs by rule, and regardless will undoubtedly affect students and alumni in ways that could be felt on campus.

Last year, the Biden administration announced that borrowers earning less than $125,000 (or $250,000 if married and filing taxes jointly) were eligible to receive either $10,000 or $20,000 in debt forgiveness on non-commercially held loans. 41 Millions of federal borrowers are expected benefit from this program. 42 Plaintiffs in these two cases argue that the Biden administration failed to follow the proper procedures when enacting the policies, that the Secretary of Education lacks statutory authority to implement such a program, and that the program was arbitrary and capricious. 43 The Department of Education claimed the legal authority to implement this debt-relief program under the HEROES Act, 44 which authorizes the Secretary to "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs" under Title IV "as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with ... a national emergency." 45 But the plaintiffs in these suits—both private individuals and a collection of states opposed to the program—maintain that the Secretary cannot simply wipe away millions of dollars in debt through executive rulemaking, and instead require express congressional authorization.

Both the private individuals and the states face threshold challenges to their suits, such as whether they can show injury from the program. But should the Court reach the merits of the case, its decision could have serious ramifications for the Department of Education's broader authority to modify financial assistance programs to meet changing needs—not to mention major financial consequences for millions of university alumni. If the Court requires more explicit authorization from Congress, for example, the Department of Education's ability to provide meaningful assistance to students will be sharply curtailed; and if the Court blesses this exercise of authority, the Department of Education could conceivably use the ongoing national emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic to justify further changes to the federal financial aid landscape.

1 See Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke , 438 U.S. 265 (1978); Grutter v. Bollinger , 539 U.S. 306 (2003); Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin , 579 U.S. 365 (2016).

2 See, e.g. , Powell v. DePaul Univ. , No. 21 CV 3001, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 201296 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 7, 2022) (dismissing BIPA suit against DePaul University because the university fell within BIPA's "financial institution" exemption); Doe v. Northwestern Univ. , 586 F. Supp. 3d 841 (N.D. Ill. 2022) (same).

3 Larry Hardesty, Study Finds Gender and Skin-Type Bias in Commercial Artificial-Intelligence Systems , MIT News (February 11, 2018), http://news.mit.edu/2018/study-finds-gender-skin-typebias-artificial-intelligence-systems-0212 ; Meredith Whittaker et al., AI Now Report 2018 , AI Now Institute, at 16 (December 2018), https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2018_Report.pdf (citing Joy Buolamwini & Timnit Gebru, Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification , Proceedings of machine learning research (2018), http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a.html) .

4 Liane Colonna, Legal Implications of Using AI as an Exam Invigilator , Stockholm Faculty of Law Research Paper Series no. 91 (May 5, 2021), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3839287 .

5 See Sharon Goldman, Why generative AI legal battles are brewing , The AI Beat, VentureBeat (Oct. 21, 2022), https://venturebeat.com/ai/why-generative-ai-legal-battles-are-brewing-the-ai-beat/ .

6 See Texas v. United States , No. 18-cv-00068 (S.D. Tex., filed May 1, 2018).

7 See Texas v. United States , 86 F. Supp. 3d 591, 604 (S.D. Tex. 2015).

8 Texas v. United States , 549 F. Supp. 3d 572, 624 (S.D. Tex. 2021); Texas v. United States , 50 F.4th 498, 528 (5th Cir. 2022).

9 See Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, 87 Fed. Reg. 53152-01 (Aug. 30, 2022) (to be codified at 8 C.F.R. pts 106, 236, and 274a).

10 NCAA v. Alston , 141 S. Ct. 2141 (2021).

11 In re College Athlete NIL Litigation , 4:20-cv-03919-CW (N.D. Cal., filed June 15, 2020).

12 Kevin Harrish, Big Ten potential conference expansion legal problems revealed , The Comeback (Aug. 4, 2022), https://thecomeback.com/ncaa/big-ten-conference-realignment-legal-problems-pac-12.html .

13 James Parks, College football realignment: CA Regents to discuss litigation amid UCLA move , Fan Nation Sports Illustrated (July 12, 2022), https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football/college-football-realignment-ucla-big-ten-regents-legal-issues .

14 Corzo, et al. v. Brown University, et al. , 1:22-cv-00125 (N.D. Ill., filed Jan. 9, 2022).

15 No. 22-cv-1223 (3d Cir., filed Feb. 8, 2022).

16 Oral argument in the case was recently postponed from January 18, 2023, to February 15, 2023. Id. at Dkt. 68 (Jan. 17, 2023).

17 Babak G. Yousefzadeh & Skyler Hicks, What the Third Circuit's Looming Decision Regarding Whether College Athletes Can Constitute "Employees" Will Mean for Universities and Employers of Unpaid Student Interns , The National Law Review (Jan. 18, 2023), https://www.natlawreview.com/article/what-third-circuit-s-looming-decision-regarding-whether-college-athletes-can .

18 Alex Lawson, Sports & Betting Legislation And Regulation to Watch In 2023 , Law360 (Jan. 2, 2023), https://www.law360.com/articles/1560997/sports-betting-legislation-and-regulation-to-watch-in-2023 .

20 Gee v. NCAA , No. 20-STCV-43627 (Cal. Super. Ct., Los Angeles Cty.); see also Brian Melley, Jury: NCAA not to blame in ex-USC football player's death , The Seattle Times (Nov. 23, 2022), https://www.seattletimes.com/business/jury-ncaa-not-to-blame-in-ex-usc-football-players-death/ .

21 Finnerty v. NCAA , No. 49D14-1808-CT-033896 (Ind. Super. Ct., Marion Cty.); see also, e.g. , Campion v. NCAA , No. 27-CV-21-10480 (Minn. Dist. Ct., Hennepin Cty.); Greiber v. NCAA , No. 600400/2017 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., Nassau Cty.).

22 Erica Green, Strife in the Schools: Education Dept. Logs Record Number of Discrimination Complaints , The New York Times (Jan. 1, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/01/us/politics/education-discrimination.html .

24 Safeguarding Students' Civil Rights, Promoting Educational Excellence , U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights Report to the President and Secretary of Education (2021), https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/ocr/report-to-president-and-secretary-of-education-2021.pdf .

25 Id. at 41, n.4.

26 Erica Green, DeVos Education Dept. Begins Dismissing Civil Rights Cases in Name of Efficiency , The New York Times (Apr. 20, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/us/politics/devos-education-department-civil-rights.html .

27 Kim Elsesser, Stanford University Under Investigation For Sex Bias – Against Men , Forbes (Nov. 30, 2022), https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2022/11/30/stanford-university-under-investigation-for-sex-bias-against-men/?sh=68fbf1c93c17 .

28 "The Mission," America First Legal, https://aflegal.org/about/ .

29 Kate McGee, In lawsuit, UT-Austin professor accuses Texas A&M faculty program of discriminating against white and Asian men , The Texas Tribune (Sept. 12, 2022), https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/12/texas-a-m-lawsuit-diversity-discrimination/ .

31 Charlotte Huff, Building a better, more diverse faculty , 52 Monitor on Psychology 25 (Nov. 1, 2021), https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/11/news-diverse-faculty .

32 Nat'l Ass'n of Gov't Emps. v. City Pub. Serv. Bd. of San Antonio, Tex. , 40 F.3d 698, 706 n.9 (5th Cir. 1994).

33 Press Release, Foxx Named Chair of Education and the Workforce Committee , Committee on Education & The Workforce (Jan. 9, 2023), https://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=408753 .

34 Letter from Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman, Committee on Education and the Workforce, to Miguel Cardona, Secretary, Department of Education (Jan. 12, 2023), https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/jan._2023_follow_up_letter_to_ed.pdf .

35 Press Release, Foxx on Fox Talks Student Loans, Parents' Rights, and the Dignity of Work , Committee on Education & The Workforce (Jan. 18, 2023), https://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=408770 .

36 Letter from James Comer, Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Accountability to Mary Elizabeth Magill, President, University of Pennsylvania (Jan. 18, 2023), https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023-01-18-Letter-UPenn-Penn-Biden-Center.pdf .

38 Patricia Zengerle, New U.S. House creates committee focused on competing with China , Reuters (Jan. 11, 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-us-house-creates-committee-focused-competing-with-china-2023-01-10/ .

39 Nathan M. Greenfield, Republicans tighten their grip on higher education agenda, University World News (Jan. 8, 2023), https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230105121324377 .

40 House GOP Spending Freeze Would 'Devastate' Medical Research , Bloomberg Law (Jan. 11, 2023), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/house-gop-spending-freeze-would-devastate-medical-research .

41 Federal Student Aid Programs, 87 Fed. Reg. 61512 (Oct. 12, 2022), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2022-10-12/pdf/2022-22205.pdf .

42 Adam Liptak, Supreme Court to Hear Student Debt Forgiveness Case , The New York Times (Dec. 1, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/us/politics/supreme-court-student-loan-forgiveness.html .

44 20 U.S.C. § 1098bb (2003).

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Seattle Mariners Top Prospect Headed to Doctor For Concerning Arm Problems

Brady farkas | aug 27, 2024.

• Seattle Mariners

More arm troubles have sidelined Seattle Mariners prospect Teddy McGraw.

McGraw, who was drafted with the No. 92 overall pick in the 2023 draft out of Wake Forest, is going to see a doctor because of "tightness in his arm," according to Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times.

Pitching prospect Teddy McGraw is going to visit Dr. Keith Meister after feeling tightness in his arm during his start. — Ryan Divish (@RyanDivish) August 26, 2024

While this doesn't explicitely say that McGraw is dealing with elbow problems, that's the natural worry. He's had Tommy John surgery twice already, according to Joe Doyle at Overslot.

Teddy McGraw already had TJ once in high school and again at Wake Forest. Hoping for the best for him. I really grew to like the kid getting to know him and his story at Wake. He was great to me. According to , Jonny Venters is the only player to pitch in MLB after 3 Tommy John surgeries. It is believed Jason Isringhausen may have also pitched after three Tommy John surgeries, though each elbow surgery is unverified as TJ specifically. Cincinnati Reds RHP Tejay Antone is attempting to do the same.

Teddy McGraw already had TJ once in high school and again at Wake Forest. Hoping for the best for him. I really grew to like the kid getting to know him and his story at Wake. He was great to me. According to @Jay_Jaffe , Jonny Venters is the only player to pitch in MLB after 3… https://t.co/lSixixemHU — Joe Doyle (@JoeDoyleMiLB) August 26, 2024

McGraw has only appeared in four games this season for Single-A Modesto. He's thrown 8.2 innings, pitching to a 4.15 ERA.

He is currently ranked as the No. 14 prospect in the organization, according to MLB.com. The following comes from a portion of his MLB.com prospect profile:

 A healthy McGraw operated in the 93-96 mph range on his fastball, which generated more grounders than whiffs due to its sinking action. His upper-80s changeup has the fade and tumble to miss bats. But it’s the slider that’s his best offering -- with plus-plus potential -- and which he consistently lands in the zone.

There’s much potential for each of his three pitches, though if there is a knock on McGraw, it’s that he has not harnessed them all at once on a consistent basis, evidenced by walking 5.8 batters per nine innings in his first two seasons at Wake Forest.

The outlet also called McGraw one of the M's most intriguing arms, so here's hoping that we get a chance to see him fulfill his potential.

The Mariners will play the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night at 6:40 p.m. PT.

BRADY FARKAS

Breaking News

Supreme Court temporarily bars latest Biden student debt relief plan

The Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily barred the Biden administration from implementing one of its latest efforts to provide debt relief to Americans with student loans. In a brief unsigned order , the justices declined to allow the Department of Education to put into effect a July 2023 rule, known as the SAVE Plan, intended to provide debt relief for lower-income borrowers while challenges to the rule continue in the lower courts.

There were no dissents recorded from Wednesday’s order, which instructed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, which is currently considering the government’s appeal, to act quickly.

In a second order issued on Wednesday , the justices turned aside a request from a different group of states to bar the Biden administration from implementing the July 2023 rule. That brief unsigned order pointed to a letter from lawyers for the states indicating that they did not need the Supreme Court to step in as long as a related order by the 8th Circuit remains in place – which, with Wednesday’s order, it now does.

Either or both cases could return to the Supreme Court once the federal appeals courts rule on the merits of the dispute.

The Department of Education issued the rule at the center of the dispute last year after the Supreme Court quashed an effort by the Biden administration to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In that decision, Biden v. Nebraska , a divided court ruled that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority when it announced the debt relief program, which relied on the HEROES Act, a law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that gives the secretary of education the power to respond to a national emergency by “waiv[ing] or modify[ing] any statutory or regulatory provision” governing the student-loan programs so that borrowers are not worse off financially because of the emergency.

The 2022 debt relief program, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, did not waive or modify the existing student loan laws, but instead “created a novel and fundamentally different loan forgiveness program.” The 2022 debt relief program, Roberts continued, also ran afoul of the “major questions” doctrine, which is the idea that if Congress wants to give an administrative agency the power to make decisions of vast economic or political significance, it must say so clearly. In this case, Roberts said, the HEROES Act did not authorize the debt-relief program at all, much less clearly.

The Higher Education Act of 1965 requires the Department of Education to offer student loan borrowers repayment plans tailored to their incomes. The SAVE Plan, announced in July 2023, is a new repayment plan intended to provide debt relief for low-income borrowers. Among other things, the plan modifies how a borrower’s “discretionary” income (which is used to determine the repayment amount) is calculated, allows borrowers to pay 5%, rather than 10%, of that discretionary income toward their undergraduate loans, and shortens the repayment periods for borrowers whose original balances were smaller.

Two different challenges, both filed by groups of Republican-led states, followed. A federal appeals court in Denver allowed the government to implement most of the plan, while a different appeals court in St. Louis blocked the government from implementing the major provisions of the plan.

Eleven states brought the first challenge in March of this year. A federal district court in Kansas allowed three states – Alaska, South Carolina, and Texas – to continue the challenge to the SAVE Plan. It found that they had “just barely” established a legal right to sue, known as standing, because each of them has state agencies that service federal loans and will lose money as a result of the plan.

The district court entered an order barring the Biden administration from implementing the provision that reduced the percentage of discretionary income used to calculate payments from 10% to 5%, and it also blocked other provisions of the rule that had not yet taken effect. It declined, however, to block the two other provisions of the July 2023 rule because they had already gone into effect, and so the challengers could not contend that they had been permanently harmed by their implementation.

On June 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit temporarily put the district court’s order on hold, and it agreed to fast-track the government’s appeal (as well as the states’ appeal of the portion of the district court’s order that ruled against them) and heard arguments on Aug. 21. (It later temporarily discontinued review of the appeal in light of the 8th Circuit’s order.) 

The states came to the Supreme Court on July 5, asking the justices to reinstate the district court’s order and grant review without waiting for the court of appeals to weigh in. They argued that the justices “will rarely see a more clear-cut case where the Court is likely to grant” review and rule for the states.

In a letter to the justices on Aug. 10 , Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson urged the court to either take the very unusual step of ordering the district court to strike down the SAVE plan now, without any additional briefing, or at the very least “set this case for argument.”

The second challenge to the SAVE Plan was filed by seven states in Missouri in April of this year. A federal district judge on June 24 blocked the provision of the rule that shortens the timelines for loan forgiveness for borrowers whose original loan balances were smaller. But on Aug. 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit issued an order that temporarily put most of the SAVE Plan on hold while that appeal continues.

The Biden administration came to the Supreme Court on Aug. 13, asking the justices to lift the 8th Circuit’s order and allow it to implement most of the SAVE Plan. The filing by U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar characterized the plan as a “straightforward exercise” of the Department of Education’s power to set the “parameters of income-contingent repayment plans.” To invalidate the plan, Prelogar contended, the court of appeals “relied almost entirely on an (unofficial and inaccurate) estimate of the rules aggregate cost” – an analysis, she argued, that was a “caricature of the major-questions doctrine, which is supposed to be a tool for discerning Congress’s intent using text and context,” rather than “a license for reflexive judicial veto of any policy a court deems too expensive.”

Prelogar suggested that if the justices do not lift the 8th Circuit’s order, they might instead want to hear oral argument on the merits of the dispute, fast-tracking the case for review in November.

The justices rejected both of Prelogar’s suggestions in their brief order on Wednesday, instead turning down the request to allow the Department of Education to implement the July 2023 rule in a brief order. Although the court did not provide any explanation for its decision, it noted that it “expects that the Court of Appeals will render its decision with appropriate dispatch.”

The student loan dispute is one of several now pending on the court’s emergency appeals docket, sometimes known as the “shadow docket.” The justices are also currently considering (among others) requests to reinstate federal grants for family planning services to Oklahoma, which lost the funding after it refused to provide referrals for abortions to patients in the state, and to temporarily block the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing a rule regulating emissions from power plants.

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court. 

Posted in Featured , What's Happening Now

Recommended Citation: Ellena Erskine, Supreme Court temporarily bars latest Biden student debt relief plan , SCOTUSblog (Aug. 28, 2024, 4:12 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/08/supreme-court-temporarily-bars-latest-biden-student-debt-relief-plan/

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Surging Methane Emissions Could Be a Sign of a Major Climate Shift

New studies suggest global warming boosts natural methane releases, which could undermine efforts to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas from fossil fuels and agriculture..

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A 2021 pledge by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions from anthropogenic sources 30 percent by 2030 might not slow global warming as much as projected, as new research shows that feedbacks in the climate system are boosting methane emissions from natural sources, especially tropical wetlands. 

A new trouble spot is in the Arctic, where scientists recently found unexpectedly large methane emissions in winter. And globally, the increase in water vapor caused by global warming is slowing the rate at which methane breaks down in the atmosphere. If those feedbacks intensify, scientists said, it could outpace efforts to cut methane from fossil fuel and other human sources.

Methane traps about 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and scientists estimate it’s responsible for 20 to 30 percent of climate warming since the start of the industrial age, when atmospheric methane was at a concentration of about 0.7 parts per million. It has zig-zagged upward since then, spiking with the first fossil gas boom in the 1980s, then leveling off slightly before a huge surge started in the early 2000s. The amount of methane in the atmosphere reached about 1.9 ppm in 2023, nearly three times the pre-industrial level.

About 60 percent of methane emissions are from fossil fuel use, farming, landfills and waste, with the rest coming from rotting vegetation in wetlands in the tropics and Northern Hemisphere. In a paper published July 30 in Frontiers in Science, an international team of researchers wrote that “Rapid reductions in methane emissions this decade are essential to slowing warming in the near future … and keeping low-warming carbon budgets within reach.”

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The scientists found that the abrupt surge in methane emissions in the early 2000s is probably due mainly to the response of wetlands to warming, with additional contributions coming from fossil fuel use, “implying that anthropogenic emissions must decrease more than expected to reach a given warming goal.”

Increasing rainfall, a well-documented impact of global warming, is making wetlands larger and wetter, and a warmer world fosters more plant growth, which means more decomposing material that emits methane.

The increase of methane from natural sources should spur even more efforts to cut emissions wherever possible, including from fossil fuel use and agriculture, said lead author Drew Shindell , an Earth scientist with Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. 

Recent measurements by a specially equipped jet show that methane emissions from oil and gas operations in the United States are more than four times higher than EPA estimates and eight times greater than fossil industry targets. Addressing methane emissions from anthropogenic sources is a crucial part of the climate action equation, Shindell said, including those from agriculture.

“If we reduced those we’d see a large decrease in atmospheric concentrations,” he said. “But cutting emissions from agriculture in particular is improbable in the near-term, and maybe even in the long term.”

The study re-affirmed that rapid methane cuts are “essential to slowing warming in the near future, limiting overshoot by the middle of the century and keeping low-warming carbon budgets within reach.” The researchers noted that the costs of reducing methane emissions are low compared to many other climate mitigations, and that “legally binding regulations and widespread pricing are needed” to encourage the deep cuts that are required.

Study Finds New Methane Sources From Dry Permafrost

Scientists determine the source of methane by examining its carbon isotopes, and since 2007, those evaluations show that the signal of methane produced from biological sources “has been getting much stronger,” said Euan Nisbet , an atmospheric scientist and methane expert at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the new paper. 

“There are two explanations, both of them probably correct,” he said. “One is that there are a lot more cows puffing out. But the other one is that the natural wetlands are turning on. That happens in the tropics first, and then the permafrost melts in Canada, and suddenly you get all sorts of methane coming off the Canadian swamps and the Siberian swamps as they wet up.”

Even cold, dry regions in the Arctic contribute to climate-warming methane pollution more than previously thought, according to a July 18 paper in Nature Communications that looked at dry permafrost areas called upland Yedoma Taliks found predominantly in northern Siberia, where ​​permafrost thaw likely will speed up methane production as microbes break down organic material.

“Dry upland soils spatially dominate the 17.8 million square kilometer permafrost region,” the researchers wrote, describing silt-dominated, ice-supersaturated areas that have been frozen since they first formed in the steppe-tundra regions of Siberia, Alaska and Northwest Canada during the late Pleistocene, about 100,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The study found annual methane emissions from thawing upland Yedoma taliks were, acre for acre, almost triple those of emissions from northern wetlands; much larger than currently predicted by climate models, the authors of the Nature study said.

The findings are of concern because existing permafrost models don’t distinguish between permafrost soil types or account for winter emissions, the researchers wrote. The world’s permafrost holds three times as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere, in a region warming three to four times faster than the global average.

For Nisbet, the recent findings, along with his own research , are warning signs that methane emissions may be reaching the level of what paleoclimate researchers call “climate terminations,” which in the recent geological past marked the shift from long, cold glacial periods to warmer interglacial times. 

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The transitions generally took thousands of years, with slow warming initially, and then a very fast shift that signals the onset of ice caps melting. During the most recent termination, about 15,000 years ago, there was a period when Greenland’s temperature rose by about 18 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few decades.

“In those phases, methane levels climb very steeply,” Nisbet said. The increase in emissions since the early 2000s is a worrisome parallel to those climate terminations, with the current trajectory of methane similar to that at the end of the last ice age, he said.

A Climate Shift?

There are other signs of Earth at a tipping point, including the ominously rapid increase of Earth’s annual average temperature in the past year, during which every month set a new record high. 

In a March essay in Nature, Gavin Schmidt , director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, wrote that the unexpected 2023 heat surge of heat shows a “knowledge gap” that may call into question the reliability of some climate models. 

Other leading scientists, including Johan Rockström , director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , have voiced similar concerns.

“The planet is changing faster than we have expected,” he said during a July TED Talk . “We are, despite years of raising the alarm, now seeing that the planet is actually in a situation where we underestimated risks. Abrupt changes are occurring in a way that is way beyond the realistic expectations in science.” Later he wrote on X, “Tipping points are approaching fast.”

At the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last year, Rockström was part of a team of scientists warning about climate tipping points “of a magnitude that has never been faced before by humanity.”

Another recent study , published July 11 in Science, found that methane persists in the atmosphere longer than most climate models estimate. The gas is not breaking down in the atmosphere as fast as thought because global warming has added more water vapor to the atmosphere.

At the current level of warming, about 2 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial baseline, the atmosphere can hold about 7 percent more moisture, and the study shows that water vapor absorbs some of the ultraviolet light, which is needed for the creation of hydroxyl radicals, key molecules that break down methane. 

Those molecules “are called the detergent of the atmosphere,” said Nisbet, the Cambridge climate researcher. “They go and clean up all the nasties.” The finding that methane may persist longer than believed makes the global goal of cutting methane emissions by 30 percent in six short years even more important, he added.

In keeping with the 2015 Paris climate accord, the methane goal is aimed at holding global heating well below 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, and as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible, to avoid tipping points that could bring rapid changes to the climate system.

He said that, along with the increases in methane and the recent global temperature surge, the recent winter heatwave in Antarctica is yet another possible sign of a major climate disruption in progress.

“It’s almost as if the planet is doing a stick shift, and what happens then?” he asked.

“What happened before is the ocean currents rearrange themselves, the wind belts rearrange themselves. The ocean currents move. The Atlantic overturning circulation changes, and that’s one of the real markers of a major climate shift. And, of course, that’s what’s happening at the moment.”

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