K-12

Redefining success: Wellbeing, engagement, belonging

Olivia Peterkin — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 17:23:59 +0000

Redefining success: Wellbeing, engagement, belonging Olivia Peterkin Fri, 09/12/2025 - 10:23

K-12 | Research and Practice | Social and Emotional Learning

In this episode of School’s In, the show’s co-host and GSE Senior Lecturer Denise Pope discusses student success and the role that wellness, engagement, and belonging play in supporting learning.

October 2, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

What does it mean for students to succeed in an academic setting? And how can parents, schools, and educators create the conditions to advance learning?

According to �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) Senior Lecturer Denise Pope, it has less to do with perfect grades and college entrance, than with student wellness, engagement, and belonging.

“You have to be healthy enough to get out of bed in the morning and go to school,” said Pope, who is also co-founder of Challenge Success, a nonprofit that partners with schools to use research-based methods of ensuring student flourishing. “You [also] want to like what you're doing … and think that what you’re doing has meaning and value in your life.”

“[Lastly,] you need to feel like you have someone who has your back, that you feel known, safe, and like you’re part of a community. And that forms a little acronym: wellbeing, engagement, belonging, called WEB.”

Pope joins co-host GSE Dean Dan Schwartz as a guest as they discuss student success and research-backed methods for creating balanced and engaging learning experiences.

“What we know from research is there’s lots of ways to engage kids in classes. And how you do it is interactive learning, small group work, … gamification, bringing in outside technology that’s exciting and also helping them think,” she said. “Not just standing up in front of the class, giving a lecture or saying, ‘Open the textbook, turn to page three and then answer these questions.’"

They also discuss key takeaways like practical school-level solutions, and what parents can do to support their students.

“We’re trying to get people to step back and look at the big picture,” Pope said. “In the grand scheme, you’re not gonna remember your kid’s grade of C+ in math class, and it’s not gonna affect their life.

“You want someone to be healthy, you want someone to feel like they belong to a community, and you want them to be excited about what they do every day.”

Transcript

Denise Pope (00:01):

In fact, these three things, they correlate with academic mastery. That's the dirty little secret.

(00:12):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages. I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:36):

And I'm Dan Schwartz. I'm the dean of the Graduate School of Education and the faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:45):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed.

Dan Schwartz (00:54):

Hi, Denise.

Denise Pope (00:56):

Hi, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:57):

So, that's a little switcheroo. We're doing some changes for the first episode of the season. You, my co-host, are actually gonna be the first person that we interview.

Denise Pope (01:07):

I'm excited. I'm- I'm very honored to be a guest.

Dan Schwartz (01:11):

Well, I'm very honored to have you as a partner. You know? So, for people who don't know, Denise is a senior lecturer, beloved senior lecturer, at the Graduate School of Education. She's doing, uh, research on AI in education and how teachers and students are responding to it. She's doing work on schools that are exceptionally successful at developing wellbeing. But today, we're gonna talk about her work on Challenge Success. So, Challenge Success, it partners with school communities to elevate student voice and implement research-based, equity-centered strategies to improve wellbeing and engagement for K-12 students. So, my peripatetic friend, are you ready?

Denise Pope (01:51):

(laughs) I am so ready. Very excited.

Dan Schwartz (01:54):

Okay. So, it's called, uh, Challenge Success. Why?

Denise Pope (02:00):

Oh, my goodness. Well, a couple of reasons. We came up with Challenge Success because we're challenging this very narrow notion of success. So, before I get into that, I wanna know, what do you think- what do you think that narrow notion of success is that we might be challenging with our title?

Dan Schwartz (02:17):

Hmm. The illusory dream that there's a single thing that will make everything better, which i- in this-

Denise Pope (02:22):

That's partially right.

Dan Schwartz (02:24):

... which in this case is probably college admissions.

Denise Pope (02:29):

Kind of. Yes. So, when I do talks all over the place for parents or teachers or students, my first question always to the audience is, "How do you define success?" And you're right, a lot of them will say college.

Dan Schwartz (02:42):

You didn't ask me how I would define success.

Denise Pope (02:45):

Dan, how do you define success?

Dan Schwartz (02:48):

Uh, after the fact. (laughs)

Denise Pope (02:49):

What? (laughs) Okay. Totally not fair.

Dan Schwartz (02:53):

If something works well, I say, "Boy, that was a success." (laughs)

Denise Pope (02:58):

(laughs)

(02:58):

Let's just take a guess. I'm asking a- a group of parents sitting in an audience at a school, "How do you define success for your child?" What do you think most of them say?

Dan Schwartz (03:07):

Uh, geez. That they're happy.

Denise Pope (03:08):

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Dan Schwartz (03:08):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (03:11):

That is the number one thing that adults will say. "I want my kid to be happy." Sometimes they'll say, "I want my kid to be healthy. I want them to give back to society. I want them to find a- a partner who's loving. I want them to be a good friend." All these, like, lovely things, right? And when I ask the students what they think their parents would say about defining success, the students say, "Get into a prestigious college. Make a lot of money. Get good grades." Right? Very, very different from what the parents say. So-

Dan Schwartz (03:48):

So, that's fascinating.

Denise Pope (03:48):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (03:51):

So, how- how do you explain that?

Denise Pope (03:53):

Well, what I... I usually do this exercise, and then I say to the parents, "Guess what? The kids are hearing this from all over, but partially from you. So let's talk about some of the things that you do that are messaging almost the exact opposite of what you're trying to do as a parent. Things like, the minute the kid ho- comes home from school, the first thing you ask is, 'How'd you do on the history test?' Hmm. That's sending a message that, like, the grade on a test is more important than 'How did you treat a friend today? How exciting was school? Did you do anything cool or creative?'" Right? So, we're- we're messaging- we're often messaging the wrong things about success.

(04:34):

And we also have... We do this other exercise that's really fun, which is, "How do you think your community defines success?" And for that, they're all ready to just, you know, slam the community as being so worried about these extrinsic, external things, like grades and popularity and money and college. And then I say, "Well, the kids kind of think that you believe it," right?

(04:56):

So, why are we called Challenge Success? We are challenging that really narrow notion of success, that "You have to do this, this, this, and this, and then poof, you're gonna be successful and happy." There's a quote from my book. One of the students that I shadowed said, "We don't go to school to learn. We go to get good grades, which brings us to college, which brings us a high-paying job, which brings us to happiness." So, it's, like, that really narrow, linear notion of success. And that if you get a bad grade, or you don't get into XYZ school, or you don't get that job, your life is over or you're gonna be poor or destitute or unhappy.

Dan Schwartz (05:34):

Okay. So, you've beat us down, Denise. What is the correct definition of success?

Denise Pope (05:39):

Well, I don't know that there's a correct definition. We do like people to think about what is best for them and their circumstances. But what we know from the literature is there are three pillars that pretty much we talk about all the time at Challenge Success and we measure and look at. And one is wellbeing. You have to be healthy enough to get outta bed in the morning and go to school. You ha- You can't be exhausted. You can't be completely anxious or depressed if you're going to be successful in school and out. So, wellbeing is one.

(06:08):

The second one is engagement. You want to like what you're doing. You wanna be interested in it. You wanna think that what you're doing has meaning and value in your life.

(06:18):

And the third is belonging, which is, you need to feel like you have someone who has your back, that you feel known, that you feel safe, that you feel like you're part of a community. And that forms a little acronym, wellbeing, engagement, belonging, called WEB. And that's how you remember it.

Dan Schwartz (06:33):

Okay. I like WEB better than SOS.

Denise Pope (06:36):

Yeah. (laughs) So do I.

Dan Schwartz (06:37):

Uh. So, when I think of success, uh, and I'm thinking about my kids, I think of very long-term goals. Whereas these are all really proximal. It's like, uh, wellbeing right now, engagement right now, belonging right now. Right? So, it's kind of a different framing of success, or these are enablers of some future goal of success that I may not know what it is?

Denise Pope (07:00):

Right. They're foundational. Right? And- and if you think, you know, back to Maslow's hierarchy, right, the bottom is safety. Uh. You can't get to enlightenment until you have safety and belonging. Um, so we- we... You gotta start out, like, with the basics. If you're exhausted, it's not gonna work now or later. Right?

Dan Schwartz (07:20):

Okay. But there, it- it- it should be called challenge enabling success.

Denise Pope (07:26):

Yeah. (laughs)

Dan Schwartz (07:28):

Or something.

Denise Pope (07:28):

Okay, that's just not as catchy.

Dan Schwartz (07:29):

(laughs) Okay. Okay.

Denise Pope (07:29):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (07:31):

So, how- how'd you come up with these three? Right? And, you know, good- good grades. Uh, self-efficacy could have been one. You feel like you're- you're competent, things like that.

Denise Pope (07:42):

Absolutely. So, what- what we've done for years and years, we've- we've been around for over 20 years now, is we've given these surveys and we've done quantitative surveys and we've also collected qualitative research. And we've done this now for, you know, 15-20 years. The survey started a little bit after we got started. 350,000 middle school and high school students, 500 different schools, public, private, charter, you name it. And-

Dan Schwartz (08:07):

Geez. Do you feel... Do you feel guilty about all the time you've taken from the 350,000 kids to fill out your survey?

Denise Pope (08:15):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (08:15):

That's a lot of survey hours. (laughs)

Denise Pope (08:17):

Here's what we say. Here's what we say to the students. "If you do this, we promise we will not only get the results back to your school but you will know the results as well and you will be able to use these results to make change." So, we're finding out how exhausted are you. Let me tell you, kids are exhausted. Over 90% of our sample qualifies as sleep-deprived. Our average amount of sleep is 6.8 hours a night. And the average teen needs between 8 and 10 hours a night. We've got a huge group just getting 4 or 5 hours a night. So, wellbeing is more than just sleep. There's... 80% are experiencing self-reported chronic stress, um, headaches, ulcers, difficulty falling asleep.

Dan Schwartz (09:02):

So, you ask 'em questions like, "Do you have headaches?" Is that how you- you find-

Denise Pope (09:06):

We'll- we'll say, "In the past month, how often have you experienced the following symptoms?" And we'll ask them about their top sources of stress, which, interesting is grades, tests, assessments, homework, workload. Right? It's not romantic involvement, it's not sick parent, it's not parents getting divorced. The top one as a- as a severe source of stress that kids say is always about load and grades and tests.

Dan Schwartz (09:34):

Wow.

Denise Pope (09:34):

Because this is their world.

Dan Schwartz (09:35):

Wow.

Denise Pope (09:36):

Um, and- and so that's... So, on the wellbeing side, we know that there's issues. On the engagement side, we also know there's issues. Uh, over half of them are basically not engaged. They're just going through the motions, what we call doing school. And we- we don't ask them, "Are you engaged in school?" We ask them lots of different questions that get at this concept of engagement.

Dan Schwartz (10:01):

Examples of a question?

Denise Pope (10:03):

Yeah. So, in- in the engagement world, we kind of look at engagement in three parts. And it's... Uh, I call it the ABCs of engagement. The A is affective. So, are you enjoying it? Are you interested in it? Right? The B is behavioral. Are you doing it? Are you putting in effort? And the C is cognitive engagement. Do you find it meaningful? Do you think what you're doing is helping to build your skills? Um. Do you see purpose in your learning? And so, we have questions on the A, the B, and the C.

Dan Schwartz (10:30):

So, how do you... Do you ask the question in algebra class as opposed to, like, when they- when they're in their- their, uh, project-based class?

Denise Pope (10:39):

Totally. You can- you can find out about engagement in different classes. You can find out about engagement in different parts of a class, right?

Dan Schwartz (10:47):

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Denise Pope (10:47):

"When are you most- when are you most excited about what you learn?" A lot of times they'll say, "When I'm with my friends, when the teacher's excited, when I'm interested in the topic," right? We've- we've got- we've got crazy data.

Dan Schwartz (10:58):

Sure. Sure. No.

Denise Pope (11:00):

(laughs) So, yeah. So, for engagement, I mean, what's kind of crazy is 10%, now think of that sample size, 350,000, 10% are disengaged. They're not enjoying it, interested in it. They don't think it's valuable or meaningful. And they're not doing it. That's a lot of kids. And 50%-

Dan Schwartz (11:15):

You said 10- you said 10%? 10%-

Denise Pope (11:15):

10%.

Dan Schwartz (11:18):

... are completely disengaged?

Denise Pope (11:19):

Completely disengaged.

Dan Schwartz (11:21):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (11:21):

And then, 50% are just what we call doing school. They're behaviorally engaged. They're doing the work. But they don't enjoy it. They don't like it. They're not interested in it. And they don't think it's valuable or meaningful to what they do. So we call them, like, little robo students. They're just kind of going through the motion.

Dan Schwartz (11:36):

So, I'm- I'm a parent, and I hear this, and I say, "Yeah, my school experience was like that and I turned out just fine."

Denise Pope (11:44):

Mm. Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (11:46):

Right? So, this is part of doing- part of school is you just gotta do it. You gotta memorize that poetry that you're never gonna use.

Denise Pope (11:52):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (11:52):

That's just part of the deal.

Denise Pope (11:54):

Take your medicine.

Dan Schwartz (11:55):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (11:55):

Shut up and take your medicine.

Dan Schwartz (11:57):

So, but, you know, this... I mean, this drives me nuts. I- When I suggest that we could change education, the number one response is, "I went to school just like that and I turned out fine."

Denise Pope (12:05):

Right. So, I have-

Dan Schwartz (12:06):

So...

Denise Pope (12:07):

... a couple of different ways of responding to that parent who have definitely come up to me and said this-

Dan Schwartz (12:10):

Yes, I imagine.

Denise Pope (12:12):

Okay. So, one is, would you go to your cardiologist and say, "You know what? I don't- I don't like this newfangled stuff that you're talking about. Just let's go back to leeches. Let's go back to the old days-"

Dan Schwartz (12:24):

(laughs)

Denise Pope (12:24):

"... Don't give me the new stuff." Right? No one's gonna question the newer procedures of a medicine professional. But because everyone's been to school, been through school, and think that the way they went through it is right, and- and they blame their success, or they- they give credit to their success for that, um, they feel like they can question our field. They also don't know that we are a field and we study this, and we put people in MRI machines and watch what parts of their brain light up when they're doing problems. Like, we actually are evolving (laughs) and school should not look like when you, sir, went to school. And I say that with, like, great respect to the-

Dan Schwartz (13:04):

But- but- but- but, Dr. Pope, I turned out fine.

Denise Pope (13:07):

You did-

Dan Schwartz (13:08):

Ev- even- even the leeches worked. (laughs)

Denise Pope (13:11):

Yes. The- the- the- the leeches worked. But if I told you that we could do it in a way that you also didn't have to hate it, that you didn't have to suffer, that you didn't have to be bullied, that you didn't have to feel isolated, that you actually could learn in a way that would help you remember not just the words of the poem disembodied but why you use it and why we need to study the humanities and get you excited. See, the bigger problem now is we are having a lot of issues with attendance.

Dan Schwartz (13:36):

Hmm.

Denise Pope (13:36):

We have kids who don't wanna come to school, who are dropping out of school. We have kids who are really suffering in school. So this n- not just feeling like they don't belong, which is about a third of our sample, but we have kids, particularly students of color and gender diverse students, who are actively feeling bullied. So, they don't wanna go to school. It's- it's- it's not just a neutral. It's actually a place that's hurting them.

Dan Schwartz (14:02):

Yeah, yeah. So, uh, let- let's... We've- we've done wellbeing and that- that's, uh, sleep, stress. We've done engagement. Like, are you actually minds on or are you just going through the motions or just not showing up? And then belonging? What i- What is belonging?

Denise Pope (14:20):

Yeah. So, we have lots of different questions on this. So, we have one set of questions that ask, "Is there an adult at the school, any adult, that you feel you could go to if you had a problem?" So, we're looking at student-teacher relationships, which we know is- are really key to school success. And the average that we have is about 70% of the students feel like they have an adult to go to. If you're a glass-is-half-full kind of person, you might think, "Well, that's not bad." But this is a school. We ask them any adult at the school, right? It should be 99.9%. Um, and I've had to report back to schools as low as 50-56% of the kids feel like they have an adult to go to.

Dan Schwartz (14:59):

Wow.

Denise Pope (15:00):

We ask them, "Do they have at least one buddy that they feel they can go to with a problem?" That's usually higher. That's usually in the 80 percentile. And then we also ask a lot of questions like, "People here respect me for who I am," or, "I feel like I can really be myself at this school." So, a typical belonging scale. And about 33% of them are feeling like they don't really belong, at least in some of their classes or in some of the places at school.

Dan Schwartz (15:26):

So, uh, that's painful.

Denise Pope (15:29):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (15:30):

Tough to spend all day at a place where you're sleepy, you're not really engaged, and there's no reason that you wanna be there because nobody else really cares about you.

Denise Pope (15:39):

Very depressing.

Dan Schwartz (15:40):

That's horrible. My God. What's happened to our school system, Denise? I now understand what the challenge is. Like, you- you've been doing these surveys a long time. Has there ever been a period where they're going in the right direction? Or are we just slowly rolling into a dark, dismal high school with dirty bathrooms and snotty kids around corners?

Denise Pope (16:02):

So, some of the things have been very stable.

Dan Schwartz (16:04):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (16:04):

We- we did a report for the U.S. Surgeon General, looking at- longitudinally at the data. And some of the things have been very stable, like sleep, right?

Dan Schwartz (16:13):

Mm-hmm.

Denise Pope (16:13):

They've always been sleep-deprived. They will continue to be sleep-deprived. Part of that is just the institution of school itself. It starts too early for these nocturnal adolescent brains that really have different circadian rhythms than the rest of the world. And we work on that, right? We- we-

Dan Schwartz (16:28):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (16:28):

... ask them to change start times. We ask them to change bus schedules, et cetera. So, part of that isn't surprising that that's been sort of a straight line, almost longitudinally. We do see a change after the pandemic, that engagement numbers got even lower, and they're starting to creep back up again. That gives me some hope. Yes, the pandemic was a really tough time for kids, and schools were closed. It's really hard to get someone engaged through a screen, right? We're starting to see engagement numbers tick up again, um, slightly,

Dan Schwartz (16:59):

But not through a podcast. All you out there in the audience, thank you for being engaged.

Denise Pope (17:03):

(laughs) Yes. Oh, my gosh. You- you're listening and you're-

Dan Schwartz (17:06):

(laughs)

Denise Pope (17:06):

... driving your truck and you're just loving us. (laughs)

Dan Schwartz (17:11):

Okay. Uh, belonging. So, belonging is kind of a new construct. You know, we didn't use to talk about belonging 10-15 years ago.

Denise Pope (17:18):

Right. There's more f- I mean, even folks here at �� who study it very, very in depth know it's important. We're looking at it and trying to help find ways to- to do it, even little ways. Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (17:30):

But no, the- the question is- is, uh, are people feeling more alienated than they used to be?

Denise Pope (17:35):

Um-

Dan Schwartz (17:37):

So it's less belonging.

Denise Pope (17:38):

Certain groups are.

Dan Schwartz (17:39):

Mm-hmm.

(17:39):

Marginalized groups.

Denise Pope (17:42):

Marginalized groups are. So- some traditionally marginalized groups have felt this all along. Students of color, traditionally, um, students who identify as female. We're seeing a new- a newer group or a larger group, I should say. They've always been traditionally marginalized, but gender diverse students, uh, more and more are reporting much lower scores than the rest of the kids.

Dan Schwartz (18:10):

Okay. We- we've hit rock bottom. We know the challenge. Now it's time to figure out how we can do something about it. Do you want to take all three webs at once? Or you wanna pick 'em off one at a time? Uh, are you, like, setting up therapy sessions for children? Like, how- how do you do this?

Denise Pope (18:29):

Well, there's a lot of different ways to do it, but the way that Challenge Success does it is we work with the school and the school policies and practices. So we're trying to change things at the school level, whereas other people might come in and do individual work with kids and counseling and try to get more, um, you know, money for healthcare and-

Dan Schwartz (18:50):

Right. So-

Denise Pope (18:50):

... all that kind of stuff.

Dan Schwartz (18:51):

So, a later start time would be a school-level action.

Denise Pope (18:55):

Exactly. A later start time.

Dan Schwartz (18:57):

Engagement. Like, how do you do that at the school level? You- you throw a candy in the middle of class, like-

Denise Pope (19:02):

Yeah, no, we- we- we try not to just bribe students to learn. Uh-

Dan Schwartz (19:06):

Okay. (laughs) I like it. Bribing to learn. I mean... (laughs) Somebody needs to write a chapter on that.

Denise Pope (19:11):

Yeah, I know, bribing. You might like that, Dan. No. Um, we... And so what we know from research is there's lots of ways to engage kids in classes. And how you do it is interactive learning, small group work, some of the stuff that you've studied, Dan, right? Gamification, bringing in, uh, outside technology that's exciting and also helping them think, right? Not just standing up in front of the class, giving a lecture or saying, "Open the textbook, turn to page three and then answer these questions."

Dan Schwartz (19:43):

So, trying to make, uh, the educational experience more interactive. Is that kind of the-

Denise Pope (19:48):

More- more interactive, giving students... We have a little mantra called voice, choice, revision, and redemption. Voice means they want it to be about what interests them, right? So personalize it, bring it, and help them understand why they need to learn this in the first place and how it relates to their lives immediately and also in the future, right? Choice is giving little baby choices here and there, like a couple math problems from this section, a couple math problems from this section, instead of slogging through all 60. That would be a little example. Revision is... How many of us just take a test and then get the grade and then you move on to the next unit? Like, the- there's not learning happening there. We've had shows on this about assessment. So, revision is giving them the opportunity to reflect on what they've learned, revise the test, the paper, the project, whatever, with feedback and scaffolding. That's more how people work in the real world.

Dan Schwartz (20:40):

What, I get peer review and they want me to revise. It's, like, the least engaging thing on earth.

Denise Pope (20:44):

No-

Dan Schwartz (20:44):

Or is it...

Denise Pope (20:45):

... well, but- yes, but do you... We want you to learn, right? So, your peer review is probably not engaging, but giving a kid a second chance on a test or a quiz or on a paper is huge-

Dan Schwartz (20:55):

Oh, I see. I see.

Denise Pope (20:56):

... is huge for that kid. It reduces stress, right? It-

Dan Schwartz (21:00):

I see. Yeah, yeah.

Denise Pope (21:00):

... gets you more, like, "Oh, okay, I get it." And then here's the redemption part that you'll like. In the world of school, you might never turn in your homework, but you've got good grades on your tests and quizzes. Doesn't matter. You have all those zeros on your transcript, it's gonna add in and you're not be able to redeem yourself. You're not gonna be able to get to that grade or that thing that you want, right? So, we want voice, choice, revision, and redemption. We want kids to be able to redeem themselves. Maybe you eliminate zeros. Maybe you don't grade homework. If the kid- especially if the kid's doing well on the test. Maybe you rethink your policies around assessment. So, we work, uh, in certain categories around schedule, pedagogy, assessment, SPA, climate of care, C, and then the E is educating parents. So, that spells out SPACE.

Dan Schwartz (21:50):

So, how about, uh, how about belonging? Like, uh, how do you make people be nicer?

Denise Pope (21:57):

It's not so much being nicer. (laughs)

Dan Schwartz (21:58):

Well, to- to make a context where I- I can belong, the people around me have to be kind of nice, don't they?

Denise Pope (22:05):

Well, they have to accept you for who you are.

Dan Schwartz (22:07):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (22:08):

And- and you have to feel it. You have to... You can't just say, "Poof, someone's gonna be nice to me." You have to feel like you belong. You have to feel that you're a valued member of the community. And it's actually easier- easier to do than you would think. We just have to help teachers remember why they're teaching in the first place, right? It's about the kids. It's about the relationships. So, in a busy world where you've got, like, you know, eight classes of kids coming in every day, can you get to know the kids more as individuals? Can you set up advisory periods where there's one adult and a handful of kids and you get to know each other and you move through all four years with them, let's say? Can you, um, greet them at the door? Can you show-

Dan Schwartz (22:48):

Yeah, I know- I know this one. So, there- there was-

Denise Pope (22:50):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (22:51):

Yeah. I was a substitute for a while in Los Angeles. And, you know, you get a phone call at 5:00 AM that you have to go, like, two hours away. And I learned, stand at the door and greet each kid and look in their eyes.

Denise Pope (23:02):

Right.

Dan Schwartz (23:03):

You know, and then you'll... You can talk to 'em later. Otherwise-

Denise Pope (23:06):

Sh- Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (23:06):

... they- they're sort of alienated and...

Denise Pope (23:09):

Show that you care. Even things like moving the test on a day that when they're not ready to take it... Like, the students really appreciate you dialing in and understanding what they're going through. So, we have teachers shadow students from bus stop all the way through all the classes, and real- and then, you know, go home and attempt to do the homework. We have all sorts of exercises that we ask people to do. We have an I-wish campaign. "I wish my teachers knew."

Dan Schwartz (23:35):

Denise.

Denise Pope (23:36):

We got lots of ways to build belonging.

Dan Schwartz (23:37):

So, your solutions are interesting. They're not like, "Blow up the system," right? So, a lot of people who wanna fix schools say, "We need to build school a brand new way." Yours is more, uh, "These schools are here. They're giant enterprises, you know, these urban districts. Billions and billions of dollars. Uh, we can go in and do, you know, things that are executable within the system that you've got." I mean, some are tough, like changing the bus schedule a bit, but...

Denise Pope (24:04):

Well, some things that I think are easy or not, and some things that I think are tough are easy-

Dan Schwartz (24:08):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (24:08):

It depends on the school. But I would say it doesn't make sense to blow up a system when we are the second-biggest (laughs) system next to healthcare in the United States.

Dan Schwartz (24:18):

Right.

Denise Pope (24:18):

Right? Like-

Dan Schwartz (24:18):

Right.

Denise Pope (24:19):

... I would love to blow up some things. And I have some examples of schools that have been blown up and are doing great. But it's just not realistic on a scale level.

Dan Schwartz (24:28):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (24:29):

Whereas these changes, hopefully, are.

Dan Schwartz (24:34):

You know, I- I see that- that you could- a lot of them you could implement. They- it's- it's- they're just not- not huge. I think that testing thing may be tough, but... So- so, I'm a parent and, uh, my kid's not sleeping enough. I'm worried he's not- he's sort of just doing school and, I don't know, he sort of belongs. But then sometimes... And so, what do I do? Do I call up this- the school principal and say, you know, "WEB. Implement WEB"?

Denise Pope (25:01):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (25:01):

Like, what- what do I do?

Denise Pope (25:02):

I don't think that's gonna get you that far. The person might think you're kind of a loony tune if you just call up and say WEB.

Dan Schwartz (25:07):

(laughs) [inaudible 00:25:08].

Denise Pope (25:07):

Um. There's lots of things you can do at home. Um, right? So much of what we think is out of our control because our kids are in school for so many hours a day. If you really look at the whole schedule, you do have a lot of control over what happens to your child from, you know, 3:00 PM to 7:00 AM, right? So, sleep is a huge thing. How you talk about school is a huge thing, right? Are you only worried about grades? Are you only messaging that you're worried about grades? Are you only talking about college? Are you... Are you obsessed with, um, the status of other people's kids getting, you know, awards and accolades? And the way you talk about learning with your kid, it actually is really important. So, just a quick another mantra. I'm, like, big on mantras today. It's not what you earn, it's what you learn. So, as a parent-

Dan Schwartz (26:01):

(laughs) Nice.

Denise Pope (26:02):

... you kind of say, "Okay." Right? Like-

Dan Schwartz (26:04):

Nice. And-

Denise Pope (26:05):

... "Hey mom, you know, I got a B-." The parent can, like, go crazy. Or you can say, "Hey, let's look at this. What'd you learn from this?"

Dan Schwartz (26:11):

So, Denise, could- could you make some bumper stickers?

Denise Pope (26:14):

(laughs).

Dan Schwartz (26:14):

Like, I could- I- I- I'd like- No, I ha- I- I have meetings with faculty and they talk about, uh, what success out of college looks like.

Denise Pope (26:23):

Mm.

Dan Schwartz (26:23):

And and they often talk about money. And I'm just sort of like, "Well, you know, I was a philosophy major. I'm deeper than you are. That's my- that's my success out of it." So-

Denise Pope (26:31):

I mean, but you could be joking, but, like, what they're saying now, there... We know that the correlation between happiness and earnings, there's a plateau after your basic needs are fulfilled, right?

Dan Schwartz (26:43):

Yeah. Yeah. No, there's quiet... Everybody has quiet desperation. But, uh, no, that- that's interesting. It- it is... How about me sort of s- trying to get the school to do something?

Denise Pope (26:56):

Well, we would love that.

Dan Schwartz (26:57):

Does that work? Or...

Denise Pope (26:58):

What we say to parents is, "If you're noticing a lot of stress at home, if you're noticing homework overload, and it's a battle, if you're noticing that your kid really doesn't wanna go to school, you actually- we do want you to reach out to someone at the school, whether that's a teacher, whether that's a counselor, probably not the principal as a first move." But the school has no way of knowing what your at-home life looks a- like, right?

Dan Schwartz (27:23):

Right.

Denise Pope (27:23):

So they... If they need to know and you need to bring them into the equation, and then together you can find a solution.

Dan Schwartz (27:30):

Oh, I like that. I like that. Yeah. Just, uh, give them a heads-up.

Denise Pope (27:33):

Mm-hmm.

Dan Schwartz (27:34):

Okay. Well, thank you, Denise, for sitting in the hot seat today. I hope you liked the turnaround.

Denise Pope (27:39):

Oh, my gosh. I did. I did. But, Dan, can I put you a little bit in the hot seat? Usually, I say, "Dan, as always, what are some takeaways?" So, now I think it's only fair, Dan, as always, what are some takeaways that you heard from me?

Dan Schwartz (27:57):

Oh, that Denise Pope rocks.

Denise Pope (28:01):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (28:01):

This is... This i-

Denise Pope (28:01):

Oh, I like that takeaway.

Dan Schwartz (28:02):

Yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, uh, everybody wants what you're describing, you know, kids with wellbeing, kids that are engaged, kids who feel like they belong. And, uh, I- I think you- you sort of let the significance of that fade into the background as you're trying to solve all these other things, like getting the kid outta school on time, or there's this one problem they didn't get. So, kind of bring it to the forefront and reminding people this- these are just, like, things that you want for your child or that your child wants, or as a teacher, this is what you want. Uh, I think that's a big deal. And then sort of saying, "And you know what, it's- it's not that hard to get a lot of these things." I like the WEB. I like the three things. Everybody wants 'em, you know, but we forget about it 'cause so much else is going on. How about you, Denise? What are your takeaways, as Dan-

Denise Pope (28:54):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (28:54):

... as a podcasting host?

Denise Pope (28:56):

You did a great job, first of all-

Dan Schwartz (28:57):

Thank you, Denise.

Denise Pope (28:57):

I really... No, I me- I mean it. And great job on the takeaways because that really... I mean, we- we're trying to get people to kind of step- step back and, like, look at the big picture. In the grand scheme, you're not gonna remember your kid's grade of C+ in the math class, and it's not gonna affect their life-

Dan Schwartz (29:15):

Uh-huh, yes.

Denise Pope (29:16):

So, oh, do you-

Dan Schwartz (29:17):

I-

Denise Pope (29:17):

... do you think you... Do you remember... You probably remember your worst grades. But foundationally, in the big picture, in the grand scheme-

Dan Schwartz (29:25):

I know.

Denise Pope (29:25):

... you want someone to be healthy. You want someone to feel like they belong to a community. And you want them to be kind of excited about the- what they do every day.

Dan Schwartz (29:31):

Right. And then it doesn't displace learning. It helps it. It's- it's- you're not-

Denise Pope (29:35):

Uh, 100%.

Dan Schwartz (29:36):

... you're not- you're not, like, spoiling the kid by not having them learn.

Denise Pope (29:39):

No. In fact, these three things, wellbeing, engagement, and belonging, they correlate with academic mastery. That's the dirty little secret.

Dan Schwartz (29:49):

Well, so, Denise, thank you. And thank all of you for joining this episode of School's In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Dan Schwartz.

Denise Pope (30:03):

And I'm Denise Pope.

Podcast

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Faculty and Research

Alumni

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�� partners with San Francisco schools to get to the bottom of racial disparities in special education

Carrie Spector — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:44:57 +0000

�� partners with San Francisco schools to get to the bottom of racial disparities in special education

Carrie Spector Thu, 09/25/2025 - 13:44

A new �� research initiative is working to identify what’s driving racial disparities in special education referrals. (Photo: iStock)

K-12 | Learning Differences | Race and Equity

GSE Professor Alfredo J. Artiles leads a new research initiative to design changes in a system where Black students are far more likely than all other students to be referred to special education.

September 25, 2025

By Carrie Spector

For decades, educators and researchers have raised concerns about students of color, particularly Black students, being disproportionately enrolled in special education. At San Francisco’s public schools, disparities persist, despite the district’s many efforts to address the problem.

A new �� research initiative is reaching further upstream to find solutions. Led by �� education Professor Alfredo J. Artiles, a team of interdisciplinary researchers from across the country has partnered with leaders at San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and California Education Partners to identify what’s driving the disproportionate enrollment and, based on their findings, design new approaches to change those conditions and create an environment where Black students can thrive.

“Some kids need special education, but when you look at the data on how students in different subgroups are identified with a disability, you see trends that make you question how and for what purposes the tools of disability policy are being used,” said Artiles, the Lee L. Jacks Professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is leading the initiative as part of a research-practice partnership between �� and SFUSD that began in 2009. “There might be racialized patterns that make you wonder if disability identification is being used to push students out. How can we use special education to provide the resources that some kids need, without making it a tool for exclusion? That’s the challenge.”

Here, Artiles talks more about the persistent issue of racial disparities in special education, what makes this new initiative different from previous efforts, and what they’ve found so far.

GSE Professor Alfredo J. Artiles

What has past research shown about disproportionality in special ed?

The first time this was addressed in the research community was in 1968, in an article published in the journal Exceptional Children, and from that point on, there have been debates about this issue.

Disproportionality isn’t just about overidentification — some groups tend to be underidentified for intellectual, learning, and emotional disabilities, and that’s a problem, too. But most of the attention has been on patterns of overidentification.

Two explanations have prevailed over time. One view attributes disparities to poverty – that children who are disadvantaged by high poverty don’t develop the dispositions and skills that prepare them to do well in school, so they struggle. We know that poverty, particularly persistent and intergenerational poverty, has a significant impact on children’s development. But Latinx groups, for instance, tend not to be overidentified for special education at the national level, even though there are high poverty levels in this community. There are Asian American subgroups that experience high poverty levels but do not experience disproportionality in special ed.

An alternative explanation focuses on factors in schools, like teacher bias or a school climate that is less conducive to learning. In other words, it is not clear if these students’ difficulties in school are because of a lack of opportunity or a low-quality education. We have less evidence on the role of these types of institutional and systemic factors in producing disproportionality, and the findings are somewhat mixed.

But nobody is questioning the overrepresentation of Black students, right?

Some researchers do question whether overidentification exists, finding that students of color are underidentified and reporting an absence of racial bias. But scholars have raised a number of conceptual and methodological concerns about these studies.

Another issue is that the federal government started requiring districts to monitor special education placement by race in the late 1990s. If districts report disproportionate levels of identification for distinct groups, they are cited and have to develop and implement plans to address the problem. Federal guidelines to determine disproportionality were also vague. So districts began to game the system by changing the criteria required to determine disproportionality, often resulting in a relatively small group of school districts being designated as disproportionate.

You’re now working with SFUSD, which has documented disparities in special ed in the district and tried for years to address them. What’s different about the approach you’re taking?

For one, we recruited a group of scholars from a variety of disciplines — sociology, learning science, linguistic anthropology, data visualization, digital technology – many different fields in addition to special ed, because we wanted to disrupt the way the issue has traditionally been framed. The district has worked hard over the years to deploy policies and interventions to address the problem, and we wanted to find a new way of understanding it.

We’re focusing our attention on the conditions that exist before a student is identified with a disability. We spent the first year reviewing and analyzing district-wide data on the history of the problem and interventions to address it. We consulted administrators, educators, parents, and community and religious leaders about the problem and alternative solutions.

We’re also prioritizing the design of a system in which Black families are part of ongoing decision-making in the district. Throughout SFUSD’s history of disproportionality, Black parents have provided a lot of input and suggestions. But they’re not experiencing meaningful participation, and many express involvement fatigue, like, ‘Here comes another team of researchers to do focus groups, and then they go away and nothing happens.’ A shared governance model offers a way of participating in a legitimate fashion about investments, priorities, problem-solving, and so on at the district level, where systemwide change happens.

“We found that on average, Black students at the elementary and K-8 schools were five times more likely than all other students to be referred to special education. At 50 of 70 of the schools in the district, Black students were at least three times more likely to be referred, which means the problem isn’t driven by a few schools — it’s a district-wide problem.”

Alfredo J. Artiles

Professor, �� Graduate School of Education

What’s the reason for looking at students’ experience before they’ve been assessed and formally identified with a disability?

Prior research on this problem has looked at identification rates – how many students in various groups are being placed into special education and the predictors of identification. We wanted to examine the precursors of these processes, to see who was getting referred.

The referral decision is a key marker that a student is already on a different trajectory. By the time you get to that point, the system has likely done interventions, provided extra support and accommodations, and you have a high chance of being identified or designated as having a disability. We’re interested in understanding the support systems available and how they’re implemented in general education before an educator decides to refer a child for special education assessment.

What has your research revealed about referrals at the district?

We found that on average, Black students at the elementary and K-8 schools were five times more likely than all other students to be referred to special education. At 50 of 70 of the schools in the district, Black students were at least three times more likely to be referred, which means the problem isn’t driven by a few schools — it’s a district-wide problem.

We calculated a referral risk index by school, so we could identify high- and low-referring school sites. Then we began taking a more in-depth look at both types of schools and asking contextual questions: What do they do when a kid begins to struggle? What are the systems of support? Do kids have access to specialists? Are parents involved? We also have access to school climate data collected by the State of California, so we can see the connection between the sense of belonging and trust in relation to the risks of referral.

What will you do with the information?

Right now we’re mapping the distribution of disproportionality, finding the hot spots with high referral rates and exploring factors shaping disproportionality at the district level as well as in a small set of pilot school sites. We’re also broadening our analysis beyond the schools, looking at ‘ecologies of learning’ — features of neighborhoods that are potential resources for learning and nurturing, like libraries, community centers, advocacy organizations, anything that might offer opportunities for kids to stay engaged. They might have nothing to do with disproportionality, but they might allow us to identify assets that could be brought to a school’s efforts. A geographer and a data visualization specialist are collaborating with us to create visualizations of this information.

The data we’re collecting is incredibly rich, and having tools that show the cultural and spatial dimensions of the problem can help us to see it in a new light. The goal is to design district-wide systems that can be sustained over time, and to create learning environments where educators don’t have to resort to expulsion or pushing students out.

This initiative has been supported by a vision grant from the Spencer Foundation, as well as funding provided through the ��-SFUSD Partnership.

Research Stories

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Alfredo Artiles

How is ChatGPT impacting schools, really? �� researchers aim to find out

Carrie Spector — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:22:35 +0000

How is ChatGPT impacting schools, really? �� researchers aim to find out

Carrie Spector Thu, 08/14/2025 - 14:22

Image: Hanna Barakat & Cambridge Diversity Fund / Better Images of AI

Innovation | K-12 | Technology

A new collaboration between ��’s SCALE Initiative and OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, strives to better understand how students and teachers use the popular AI platform and how it impacts learning.

July 29, 2025

By Chris Agnew

Education is one of the fastest-growing use cases of AI products. Students log on for writing assistance, brainstorming, image creation, and more. Teachers tap into tools like attendance trackers, get curriculum support to design learning materials, and much more.

Yet despite the rapid growth – and potential – a substantial gap remains in knowledge about the efficacy of these tools to support learning.

A new research project from the Generative AI for Education Hub at SCALE, an initiative of the �� Accelerator for Learning, aims to help fill that gap by studying how ChatGPT is used in education. The research will explore areas such as how specific features like ChatGPT’s new “study mode” affect student learning. In schools specifically, the research will examine how both K-12 teachers and students use ChatGPT.

The research will map the landscape of adoption and analyze patterns of use. Most importantly it will dig into whether use of the large language model impacts the metrics that matter in learning, including proficiency skills, knowledge retention, and engagement.

“We urgently need this kind of research,” said Susanna Loeb, professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the faculty director of SCALE, which conducts research that supports better decision-making in education. “AI tools are flooding K–12 classrooms — some offer real promise, others raise serious concerns — but few have been evaluated in any meaningful way. Education leaders are being asked to make consequential decisions in a data vacuum.”

SCALE and OpenAI—the creator of ChatGPT, the most widely used generative AI platform—are collaborating to launch this new research. OpenAI will share data from real K–12 classrooms with �� education researchers to support the study of how their product is used and how it affects a range of student outcomes. Both organizations follow government and academic guidelines on data privacy and security.

Research will take place in K-12 schools nationally and globally, and study:

How are students and teachers using AI tools like ChatGPT?
What drives usage up or down?
Do certain types of AI use improve academic learning?
How can tools like ChatGPT support deeper learning outcomes such as self-regulation and metacognition?

“AI holds enormous potential for education, but without research to understand what truly works, we risk locking in the flaws of our current system—or worse, creating new problems we never intended,” Loeb said.

The new project builds on the broader research ecosystem at the �� Accelerator for Learning that studies tools and systems, and designs new evidence-based supports for educators and students, including:

The GenAI Hub’s Research Study Repository, a comprehensive collection of academic research on generative AI in preK-12 education;
The National Student Support Accelerator, also part of SCALE, that provides education leaders with guidance on high-impact tutoring;
CRAFT, a project by �� education Professor Victor Lee that creates materials to support AI literacy; and
AI + Learning Differences: Designing a Future with No Boundaries, a new white paper from scholars at the Learning Differences Initiative at the Accelerator that recommends how tech, education, and policy leaders can adopt inclusive-development and design principles when rolling out AI tools.

District leaders, policymakers, product builders, or parents trying to make sense of AI in schools can subscribe to the GenAI Hub newsletter, AI Compass in Schools, to get early insights from this collaboration.

For more on the GenAI Hub, visit scale.stanford.edu/genai

Research Stories

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Susanna Loeb

Student absences increased under threat of deportation efforts, �� study finds

Carrie Spector — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 21:27:16 +0000

Student absences increased under threat of deportation efforts, �� study finds

Carrie Spector Sun, 06/15/2025 - 14:27

New �� research shows a sharp rise in student absences at school districts in California's Central Valley, coinciding with the escalation of immigration enforcement actions. (Photo: iStock)

Diversity and Identity | K-12 | Students

New research finds a 22% increase in student absences in California school districts subject to intensified immigration enforcement in recent months.

June 16, 2025

By Carrie Spector

Amid a recent surge of federal immigration enforcement activity, educators across the country are reporting growing concerns that immigrant families fearing deportation have started keeping their kids home from school.

New �� research substantiates their suspicions, showing a sharp increase in student absences starting in January at schools in California’s Central Valley, a region with a high population of Latin American immigrants.

Analyzing three years of daily attendance data from five school districts in the Central Valley, the study found on average a 22% increase in student absences in January and February 2025, compared with the same months in previous years.

Considerable jumps were seen in all age groups but particularly for younger students, with the increase among K-5 students more than triple the effect among high schoolers.

“The findings indicate lost learning opportunities, but this isn’t just about kids missing out on instructional time,” said Thomas S. Dee, the Barnett Family Professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), who conducted the study with support from Big Local News, a project of the �� Computational Journalism Lab. “The stress that’s being put on these young children and their families is serious, and the increased absences are a leading indicator of broader developmental harm.”

The study, released as a working paper on June 16, evaluated absences day by day in each of the districts during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, as well as the current 2024-25 school year through the end of February. With a daily time series of data over the three years, Dee could observe seasonal patterns typically associated with student absences, such as the days before major school breaks or community holidays like Day of the Dead.

“That allowed us to credibly answer the question of whether the patterns from this school year differ significantly from prior years,” said Dee, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research, and faculty director of the GSE’s John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.

GSE Professor Thomas Dee

In the months prior to the intensification of immigration enforcement in the Central Valley that began on Jan. 7, absence data for the current school year was indistinguishable from previous years.

“But in January, we saw a sharp and unusual increase in absences that was coincident with the raids,” said Dee. “And the fact that the increase was similarly high in February indicates that these effects were not transitory.”

The effects were grouped into four different grade spans: pre-kindergarten, grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12. The impact was significant at all levels, with an approximate increase of 30% in pre-K, 27% in grades K-5, 17% for middle school, and 8% among high schoolers.

The study cites two factors likely contributing to the higher rates among the youngest students: first, that children living with undocumented immigrants are more concentrated at younger ages; and second, that undocumented individuals might be especially concerned about being separated by an immigration raid when the family includes young children.

Beyond learning loss

More than 5 million children under age 18 live with a parent who is an unauthorized immigrant in the United States, and the vast majority of these children are U.S. citizens, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center report.

Dee pointed to past research that has documented the effects of immigration enforcement activity on children’s academic achievement as well as emotional well-being, including increased levels of anxiety and depression.

In addition to educational and developmental harms to the affected students, the increased absences can impose negative impacts on schools more broadly, Dee noted. Teachers may need to backtrack instruction to help students who missed earlier lessons, slowing the pace of learning overall. Meanwhile, increased absenteeism could deepen the challenges facing school districts that were already confronting the financial implications of enrollment losses from the pandemic.

For educators, the findings suggest strategies to address or offset potential harm, such as offering virtual instruction or adopting trauma-informed teaching practices to support affected students.

“Teachers can be more effective when they’re aware of what’s going on in their students’ lives, and when they better understand the learning challenges and barriers students are bringing with them into the classroom,” said Dee.

Research Stories

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas S. Dee

Helping every child succeed: Scaling support that works

Olivia Peterkin — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:09:34 +0000

Helping every child succeed: Scaling support that works Olivia Peterkin Mon, 05/05/2025 - 13:09

K-12 | Research and Practice | Technology

In this episode of School’s In, GSE Professor Susanna Loeb discusses how to scale education research for the greatest impact on student learning.

May 15, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

From online tools that screen student reading levels, to studies linking school environment to brain development, each year advancements in education research shed light on new ways to foster and support student learning.

However, once these discoveries are made, the next hurdle is scaling them so that as many students can benefit as possible.

“In order to do that, we really have to think about the world that we’re trying to affect, and who decision makers are – who gets to select whether or not a student gets access to some resource that we found is really effective,” said Susanna Loeb, professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE).

Loeb joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss research that makes a difference in student learning, how to apply research in context-sensitive ways, and how to ensure equitable access to the most effective innovations in learning. They focus on high-impact tutoring as an example of a scalable, equitable learning intervention.

“We’ve seen from the research that this kind of individual attention focused on academics, but with a consistent tutor who also builds motivation and makes it fun to do … is the most effective way that we know of accelerating students’ learning, and we have really unequal access to it,” said Loeb, who is also the faculty director of the SCALE Initiative at the �� Accelerator for Learning. “So we’ve been trying to think about how you get students across the country access to [tutoring] when they need it.”

They also discuss how teachers and parents can advocate for students.

“Most of SCALE is really focused on school districts, the state level and somewhat at the federal level…But there are so many people, particularly families and parents, that can be helpful in bringing these approaches to the minds of the decision makers,” Loeb said. “We are in this really complex world of decision makers … trying to think about how we can get the full range of the decision makers and stakeholders to speak in a similar language and communicate clearly so that we have the best chance of getting this to as many students as we can.”

Transcript

Susanna Loeb (00:00):

We've been trying to think about how you get students across the country access when they need it.

Denise Pope (00:09):

Welcome to School's In. Your go to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages.

(00:25):

I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:32):

And I'm Dan Schwartz. I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:42):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed.

(00:51):

Hi, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:53):

Hi Denise. How are you?

Denise Pope (00:55):

I am okay. How are you doing?

Dan Schwartz (00:57):

I'm good. Today we're going to talk about how you bring sort of knowledge and discovery from the university to scale, but before we do that, I thought I'd ask you what is scale anyway?

Denise Pope (01:10):

What is scale? Okay. So to me, scale means to take something that is kind of little or just homegrown and make it bigger, have more influence in the world. So an example would be like maybe you start a little mom and pop kind of restaurant chain or whatever, and then all of a sudden it becomes like McDonald's. That's a huge example, but taking something small and then getting it bigger. Would you agree? Am I close?

Dan Schwartz (01:42):

I might refine it a little bit, but it sounds like scale is sort of the number of people you get it to. More people is better.

Denise Pope (01:49):

Yeah, like if you have a good idea and it really helps people, you would want more people to benefit from it. Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (01:56):

We do have the world's expert on how you scale knowledge, so I want to jump straight to it. So this is Professor Susanna Loeb. She is at the Graduate School of Education. She was one of our best faculty and one of the things she's doing is she's really leading an initiative that is providing new models for how you scale knowledge from the university. Guess what its name is?

Denise Pope (02:19):

Scale.

Dan Schwartz (02:24):

Yes.

Denise Pope (02:24):

Okay. I cheated because I knew. I knew.

Dan Schwartz (02:24):

So welcome Susanna. Thank you for joining us.

Denise Pope (02:26):

Welcome.

Susanna Loeb (02:27):

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you both.

Dan Schwartz (02:29):

So your model of scaling is probably different than what most people have in mind. Most people think of translation, sort of like they discover a drug and then how do you get it into all the pharmacies or something like that. Yours is different where you are scaling both the dissemination of knowledge but also the gathering of knowledge. Could you talk about this a little bit?

Susanna Loeb (02:50):

Yeah. So when we think of scale, sometimes you'll think like, "Oh, I have a product and I want to get it to very many people." But a lot of the scaling that we do is really something that we think is really important for students to have or schools to have like individual attention, something like that. And we think, "Okay, how do we really affect the world at scale?" And in order to do that, we really have to think about the world that we're trying to affect and who those decision makers are, who gets to select whether or not a student gets access to some resource that we found is really effective or that the world has found, the researchers have found is really effective? And so we think about who all those decision makers are and in some countries in the world, there's just kind of one group that's making all the decisions.

(03:42):

But in the US, we have devolved a lot of the decision making to school districts and that's 12 to 14,000 decision makers there and then they devolve some of that to schools. So we have to think about how to reach a lot of different people. And so that's one aspect of it. And then they're each operating in different contexts. So they might have these opportunities that differ across all sorts of different places in how they get this resource to students. So we really need to collect data to understand how you can do this thing that research has told us is important to think about doing in all these different places. So it's kind of context specific studies of effectiveness. We have to think about what resources are available. There's some place where it's really easy to hire people with expertise and maybe you need people with expertise.

(04:36):

And so in those places they can just hire and we can build an approach to getting to scale by that kind of hiring. But in other places you can't do with that. And so maybe you need to think virtually or you need to think in other ways about how you would get those resources. So I think there's all of this knowledge even when we know something is good, that you need to have about how you do things effectively across contexts for different kinds of students. And also the kind of how to get it implemented well when you're talking about places that have lots of different opportunities.

Denise Pope (05:12):

Wait, I have to just say something because

Dan Schwartz (05:13):

-fine, fine.

Denise Pope (05:13):

It's totally different from my McDonald's example. When you think of scale, and the way I thought of it is sort of mass production. We take something and then we mass produce it to scale and everybody gets the same Big Mac and fries and whatever, and they all taste the same across, you know, the globe. And what I love about what Susanna is doing with Scale is understanding that you don't want to produce a bunch of Big Macs, right? You want to actually make it work for the very different contexts that you're going to use this intervention in. So I think that's brilliant. I just wanted to say that.

Dan Schwartz (05:54):

Just to defend McDonald's, I think in Hawaii they have a pineapple hamburger.

Denise Pope (05:58):

Yeah, they do. They do. I know, in different places. Okay, defend McDonald's. But for the most part there's this level of mass production. And I love that Susanna understands that in education we're not just making widgets and we are literally having to work within context. So I think that's brilliant.

Dan Schwartz (06:16):

Yeah, no, I agree. So the concrete example here is tutoring, helping people- helping districts figure out how to use tutoring. So there's so many different contexts. I mean, are you exhausted? How do you do this?

Denise Pope (06:30):

Well, yeah. And just also explain what you mean by tutoring cause I think what comes to mind is hire a tutor for my kid's math grade to go up. So what do you mean by tutoring?

Susanna Loeb (06:41):

Yeah, I think in some ways it comes back to hiring a tutor to get my kid's math. So that if we look across what's happened in the world for many, many years is that lots of kids have gotten tutoring, but those have tended to be kids from families who could go hire a tutor for their kid when they were struggling. And across the board, kids have times when they are just working really well and what's going on in school, and then times when they struggle. And if you can hire that tutor, they can help them get over that struggle and get right back on track. But if you're in a place where you can't get that resource to your child, maybe you don't have the resources or for some reason, other reason you don't have access to it, then you're not getting that and it really creates a lot of inequality across students in that kind of access.

(07:30):

And so we've seen from the research that this kind of individual attention focused on academics, but with a consistent tutor who also builds motivation and makes it fun to do it, that's the most effective way that we know of accelerating students' learning and we have really unequal access to it. So we've been trying to think about how you get students across the country access to that when they need it. And again, this is a place where there are going to be different ways of doing that. Some places, there are a lot of adults already in schools and you can reallocate those adults to provide some of that one-on-one or small group attention to students over time.

(08:11):

In other places, you'll need to go out and pull in new people who can do that, whether they're local college students or other community members, whether it's a new group of paraprofessionals that come into the school. There are all sorts of different ways of doing this, but the real fundamentals that you want to make sure you hold onto is that students are getting high-quality instruction intensively on just what they need so that they can quickly pick up the material that they've been struggling with and then get right back on track and feel really like they can be successful as a student.

Dan Schwartz (08:47):

So you see there is the same burger patty in every burger.

Denise Pope (08:54):

But the bun is different, is that what you're saying? How it's done is different.

Susanna Loeb (08:58):

I don't want to compare it to a hamburger. Okay, we'll take the tomato or something. The tomato is always in there.

Denise Pope (09:03):

But this is complex. This is not easy.

Susanna Loeb (09:06):

It's interesting to try to figure out how to do this too. It's complex, but if you can do it in partnership, I think the most exciting part of our work is that we create these strong partnerships with districts and schools across the country. Not every school, but we get this real variation so we can understand these differences in how schools might pull this off and then with that variation that can apply to lots of different places. And those partner schools help us get access to other schools that are interested and we also can just create materials that help other places that we're not in such close contact with implement it because we've thought about, "Oh, you are a school that has these resources but not those resources. So try it this way."

Dan Schwartz (09:56):

So God, I have so many questions for you. Let me go with a context one, have you reduced it to four or five contextual variables that you focus on? So context could be sort of infinite in the level of variation that you look at.

Susanna Loeb (10:10):

Yeah, so I think it's less that we've kind of put the boxes into four, but we do have these processes schools go to try to understand how they want to do it. So one of our tools is a district playbook that kind of walks districts through creating first, for example, a landscape analysis of what are your real needs. So some districts really need help in early reading. So that's what they identify that as the area. And if you need help in early reading, it's actually quite a different kind of tutor that you need than if your area of need is, for example, in algebra or in high school mathematics and so you want to kind of figure that out. And you want to figure out whether this is really for all students.

(10:58):

Often in early reading for example, tutoring can be super useful for every student in the class because so many students need help, individual help, they missed this one sound or this one identification in phonics that will help them get to the next stage and so that kind of individual attention is really important there. As you go up in the grades, maybe not all students needed at all times and so then you have a different kind of approach. So this landscape analysis is a way of identifying first, your area of need and then what resources that are available near you can you use. And sometimes what districts do is they say, "Oh, okay, I have this labor force I can pull on. I have a university nearby." Something like that. Others say, "I don't have time to do this and I really want to find a program that can provide all of this to me."

(11:52):

And so there are a bunch of programs around the country that districts can partner with to provide tutoring. And those programs already have really good curriculum for different age groups in different subject areas, and they do some of the hiring and you can actually get them to do everything or just the things that the district is struggling with. So there's a process of identifying that. But a lot of those things that go into the district playbook, we've learned from research. So one of the things we learned, for example is that in the high school, probably the biggest barrier is the master schedule. And so we really have them think about the master schedule in how they're going to get this resource to students. That's much less of an issue in the early grades. So the research has really informed these tools that go out to the districts.

Dan Schwartz (12:44):

You're kind of doing this research, right? You like, convince districts to try two different ways, and then you look at the kids' test scores or... How do you collect data on which of the approaches given the contextual variable mattered?

Susanna Loeb (12:58):

Yeah, so that's a really great question. So some of the research is just observing in districts, where do they run into problems? But a lot of the research we do are these what we call randomized control trials where we systematically vary some things. So we'll try one-on-one versus one-on-two tutoring, or we'll try tutoring with extra coaching for tutors. Often, we've tried one program just versus nothing. So how important is it that students get access to this? But these randomized control trials are really nice because they give you the precise difference between very similar students who got this resource and these very similar students who didn't. So you get a really nice way of identifying the effect of it.

Dan Schwartz (13:44):

This is such a great virtuous cycle. So then you get this information and you then sort of update your guidance, your document or your decision tree for the districts?

Susanna Loeb (13:57):

That's just right.

Dan Schwartz (13:57):

Yeah, no, that's such a great virtuous cycle. It's really good.

(14:05):

So Denise, where do you think you've had the most success in scaling? So you do different things with challenge success, which is your main vehicle for scaling. Which aspect of it do you think is the most successful at going to scale?

Denise Pope (14:21):

Okay, that is a really good question. I would say the number of schools that we've actually worked with that either took our survey and then we give right back that information. We have a talk with them, we talk about what they should do and the number of schools who have come to our conferences, because I think those are the two areas where we make the most impact. We have a much smaller group of schools that we work go really deep with. But if we're talking about scale and influence and thinking about student well-being and engagement and belonging, I'd say the over 500 schools that have surveyed with us.

Dan Schwartz (15:00):

Interesting.

Denise Pope (15:02):

How would you answer?

Dan Schwartz (15:03):

Well, I'm glad you asked. So I think my most successful scaling besides my students that have gone out and done a lot more than I have is, since I've been dean, we've replaced almost 60% of the faculty.

Denise Pope (15:18):

Wait, is that because so many people were retiring?

Dan Schwartz (15:21):

Yeah, mostly retirements. And so that's sort of hiring with the other faculty, the knowledge makers, and so maybe that's the place of the biggest scaling effect. It's a big multiplier effect.

Denise Pope (15:34):

Because you're also building a new building and I would say that's going to last forever, ever, ever. But the scale of making a difference is through these people who are going to then pass on that knowledge to more students and so on and so on and so on.

Dan Schwartz (15:46):

Unless the building has a hell of a lobby and it just changes everybody's view of education.

Denise Pope (15:52):

Just from the lobby alone.

Dan Schwartz (16:01):

Susanna, the thing that I always stumble at is this is a lot of partnerships to hold and it sounds like each one, you actually have a broker, an interpersonal relationship with this district, you find someone that may not be the superintendent. Is this correct? And then if so, can you bring it to parents because you can't hold relationships with all the parents?

Susanna Loeb (16:22):

Yeah, though those are great questions and I think actually one of the innovations of our initiative is that we have part of it called ERPN, Education Research Partnership Network. And I think the idea is that we do hold these relationships and we have some people at �� who hold those relationships with districts around the country with some partner- with some umbrella organizations like Chiefs for Change or the Council of Great City Schools, which holds partnerships themselves and have trusting relationships with a number of districts so that we can see what those districts are and if their interests align with what we think would be useful in skills goals of getting the most promising practices to reach as many students as possible. We have access to that. It builds on our more traditional research practice partnerships where we get really, really deep relationships and it takes that idea of trust but really tries to do it so that we can get information across a large number of contexts in the US.

Dan Schwartz (17:27):

And then parents, you have a website where they can go and learn what they might think and do?

Susanna Loeb (17:33):

Yeah, most of scale is really focused on school districts and at the state level and somewhat at the federal level, those policy decisions and how those policy decisions can help things scale. But there are so many people, particularly families and parents, that can be helpful in bringing these approaches to the minds of the decision makers, to the minds of these district and state leaders. And so we do have materials on our website about how families can advocate for their students to get access to these kinds of things, how teachers and teachers unions can help advocate for these kinds of things. So we are in this really complex world of decision makers and we've really been trying to think about how we can get the full range of the decision makers and stakeholders to speak in a similar language and communicate clearly so that we have the best chance of getting this to as many students as we can.

Dan Schwartz (18:35):

Oh, that's awesome. The idea of focusing on all decision makers throughout the system as opposed to just at the top government level. I think this is- and your solution's really interesting.

Denise Pope (18:47):

Especially for parents. I mean, I think as parents you often feel powerless because, "Well, what can I do to change a policy at my school?" So can you give a concrete example of something a parent might do to advocate for this? Is it like vote for a school board member who's for this? Give an example.

Susanna Loeb (19:06):

Yeah, I mean I do think just some of the decisions are made at the school level where principals decide how they allocate the time of the different adults in the school. And so you can talk to your teacher and your principal about how much your own student would benefit from these kinds of supports, how you've seen it done in other places and the materials we give, we'll give you examples of where it's done so that you can talk to the people that are closest to you and that you might see more regularly but certainly then being able to advocate more collectively at school board meetings through letters and things that you could send to state officials. All of those are good, but I think thinking locally and thinking where you have access regularly is kind of the first step.

Dan Schwartz (19:56):

So I'm going to switch topics but not that much. So Susanna, your work was really meet the moment and it's on a well-defined topic, tutoring. So now the moment, moment is AI, right? It's like, all AI all the time. So are you taking that on? Are you going to give advice about what chatbot to use? How do you do this?

Susanna Loeb (20:22):

Yes. It was a really interesting time after the pandemic because students had gone through so much upheaval and there was a real interest in how can we meet students where they are and help them learn all of the things, or at least the most important things that they'd missed during the pandemic and if you looked at the research, there was this great research on how effective tutoring could be. And so that's why we started NSSA, which is the National Student Support Accelerator, and to kind of take that knowledge and move it forward. This AI example is our second area that we're moving into, and we're in a very different state there.

There isn't the evidence that this particular approach, this one AI tool versus this one is most effective, but we do have huge demand from schools, from districts, from states to figure out what is the best approach for moving forward. And so it really does align with this same process of doing research that helps us understand effectiveness and use and how to get the best stuff into schools. And we're doing that kind of research. And then again, we're going to be creating these materials for all the different stakeholders so they can decide most effectively how to leverage generative AI to meet their goals for the students in their schools.

Denise Pope (21:47):

Okay. This sounds a little bit interesting here because there's people who will say, "Wait, I want the human tutor. I don't want the computer as tutor. That doesn't sound like that's going to be as warm or friendly or have the insight or whatever." How are you going to deal with that?

Susanna Loeb (22:03):

Yeah, I mean that's just why research is so useful here because there's such an excitement about AI tutors, but all the evidence that we've seen so far is that the current AI tutors may be able to give the student an idea of what the underlying math is or help them get to the next level of math, but they don't have that motivating and engaging part that the human tutor brings. And so we actually don't think that schools should be shifting fully to AI tutors, but who knows where it will go in the future. So I think that's why you need to have this research to see that very few students tend to engage for extended periods of time with the AI tutor to realize that that's not going to be an effective approach right now to helping students learn. And it's not a one-time thing, it's something we're going to have to do as these tools develop over time.

Denise Pope (23:01):

Can I ask a question? There's lots of ways to get districts to do this, right? And one way that I know that you're very familiar with is through legislation. There's a reason why all schools have to have doorways that are wide enough for wheelchairs to get through and you can't just decide as a school that you're not going to do that. So how do you see policy and policy changes and legislation fitting into this scale in general and particularly with this initiative?

Susanna Loeb (23:31):

Yeah, that's a great question. So I gave you an example of what we provide to districts. We take the research that we're doing and give this really detailed playbook of how districts could go about choosing what they do and implementing what they do. We take a kind of similar approach at the state level or at the federal level for policy makers, but there you really need to get it down to kind of one or two pages. What are sample policies that could really affect what's going on?

And just as an example, in tutoring, there were resources coming out of the pandemic that could be used for tutoring and some states might say use this for tutoring, but we got some example language in there that described guardrails that could be put on that so that the tutoring was much more likely to be intensive and with a consistent tutor so you got that engagement, that kind of mentoring part of it in there. So those kinds of sample state policies are one approach that we take. And then there's also thinking about what are the funds available that would help make this better, help make more people take up the most promising approaches. And so we think about having states both put money towards that and advise districts on how they could use the funding that they already have to get students access to the most effective approaches.

Denise Pope (24:58):

So I mean, it's sort of mind-boggling what your center does, Susanna, because you are both working at a local level, a very intense student to tutor level in some sense. I know you're not doing it, but you're brokering those, right? But you're also working at this massive level of the federal level and the state level and then the district level. And you're kind of saying at each piece of this system, what is the role that we should play to make sure that kids are getting these research-based interventions? And it's just- it's mind-blowing sort of how intense that is, how different it is to work at the federal level versus with an individual school. And so it's really impressive and gives me hope for others to learn from you how to really take the things we know from research and get them out into the world. We've been doing research for so long in schools, and schools look so sadly, often the same as 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, right. So I don't know, it gives me hope.

Dan Schwartz (26:06):

What you were saying, Denise, made me wonder is Susanna's approach to scaling, it's self-scalable? So can anybody else do this besides you, right? I mean, it's pretty amazing what you've pulled off. Can you give me a little playbook for how to do this or is my personality just wrong?

Denise Pope (26:19):

Wait, don't answer that question, Susanna. Let's go with the playbook.

Susanna Loeb (26:21):

Okay, I like that second question better. Oh, I definitely think other people can do this. I think it's really a recognition that we have so many different decision makers and that it can be really helpful if people are speaking the same language so that if we can share the way that we're talking about something, we're much more likely to come to a similar agreement. Certainly, we vary on what we value or what approach we would really like to get out there, but I think a lot of it comes down to not really communicating in the ways that are most productive for getting students what we want. And so we think that this kind of cross decision maker look where we make it so that they each understand each other better is actually really productive and that other places can do that as well.

Dan Schwartz (27:08):

That's pretty amazing.

Denise Pope (27:09):

That's awesome. So Dan, putting you on the spot as always, what's one takeaway from today's show?

Dan Schwartz (27:16):

Susanna said this to me a long time ago that the way she thinks of policy is trying to decide who are the right decision makers in the system and then how do you get them the information. I think this is different than what most people think of policy. And so the fact that she's built this amazing network, it's pretty impressive. It's a different theory of decision making and policy and then an execution on that theory. So it's amazing.

Denise Pope (27:43):

I agree. And I also think one very key takeaway for me is this is a different kind of scaling. This is not mass production. Everyone's going to use it the same way. Even if it's like McDonald's and they have a little different hamburger, Susanna's not even doing that. Susanna's really helping to contextualize and make it work at the local level, which is I think the only way that you're going to get real school change. So kudos to you, Susanna. Thank you so much for being on the show. I think we all learned a lot and thank all of you for joining this episode of School's In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (28:24):

And I'm Dan Schwartz.

Podcast

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Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Susanna Loeb

Healthy homework? Legislation for student well-being

Olivia Peterkin — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:29:45 +0000

Healthy homework? Legislation for student well-being Olivia Peterkin Mon, 04/21/2025 - 12:29

Education Policy | K-12 | Research and Practice

In this episode of School’s In, California Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo discusses the pros and cons of homework, its effect on youth mental health, and the Healthy Homework Act.

May 1, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

When students look back on the most stressful part of their K-12 careers, homework is often the first thing that comes up. Hours spent solving problems and writing papers, on top activities like sports, mean students have little time left for hobbies or down time with family and friends.

When California State Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo looked at the research showing homework both before a certain age and over a certain amount decreased in efficacy and negatively affected student mental health, she decided to act. She co-authored Assembly Bill 2999, also known as the Healthy Homework Act, to encourage California schools and districts to develop a homework policy.

“The bill really starts a conversation,” said Schiavo, who previously worked in education for a Tribal Head Start program. “It doesn't create a requirement, so it's not a required policy. That's one of the amendments we had to make. The goal is to have homework policies in place by the fall of 2028.”

Schiavo joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss the Healthy Homework Act, youth mental health, and the pros and cons of homework, among other topics.

“I think it's an opportunity for us … to really make conscious choices about homework. And really take a step back and look at the homework policies and see, is it really working for people?,” Schiavo said. “I think that there's a lot of work that can be done and that sometimes you do things by habit, or because this is what I experienced, or this is what my mentor taught me.”

They also discuss key takeaways for parents, teachers, and schools, including questions of how much homework is beneficial for student learning, and students’ need for downtime as part of healthy development.

“I really think that this (bill) can be a useful tool for parents, students, and educators to bring to their administration and school boards and to start this conversation,” Schiavo said. “They can reach out to our office if they need help doing it. We are going to try to do that ourselves and start some of these conversations with some of the bigger school boards in the state, and see if we can get the ball rolling on moving this policy forward.”

Transcript

Pilar Schiavo (00:00):

Can you write a law that bans homework?

Denise Pope (00:06):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting edge insights in learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages. I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:30):

And I'm Dan Schwartz. I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:40):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed. Today we are talking about a subject that has been so controversial for years and years and years, and it's probably going to surprise you. It's not what we would normally think as controversial, but for years and years and years, homework has been not only the bane of students' existence, but a topic that is hotly contested by parents and teachers as well.

Dan Schwartz (01:17):

So Denise, I know where you come down on the debate about homework, given that you just said it's the bane of kids' existence. So how did you treat homework for your kids? Did you give them M&Ms for every right answer? What did you do?

Denise Pope (01:34):

Oh my God, no. No, no, no. You know me, I'm not about extrinsic motivation and bribing. But I will say as an educator, it's really hard because my kids had homework in elementary school and my kindergartners would come home with a bunch of homework and I'd have to sort of bite my tongue and say, "Don't spend a lot of time on it," or "maybe we should just throw it away and I'll talk to your teacher." But it's really hard to find that balance as a parent because you want to be respectful of the teacher. But I also had all this knowledge of the research that showed there's really not a huge correlation between homework, particularly in the early, early grades like kindergarten and student achievement.

Dan Schwartz (02:14):

Wow. So now I know the reason for homework, it's to teach the parents restraint.

Denise Pope (02:18):

Yeah, exactly.

Dan Schwartz (02:18):

I always wondered what it was for, and now I know.

Denise Pope (02:21):

That's it, that's it.

Dan Schwartz (02:23):

I sort of passed along my attitudes towards homework to my kid, so I'd watch TV and shout at him to do his work. That was kind of the sum total of it.

Denise Pope (02:33):

So was he also watching TV? You were both watching TV and he was supposed to do his work at that time or?

Dan Schwartz (02:38):

Maybe, maybe. Okay, so today we are very lucky to have, uh, State Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, and she is in southern California and introduced a very interesting bill called Healthy Homework. And so welcome, Pilar. Thank you for coming.

Pilar Schiavo (02:58):

Thank you for having me.

Dan Schwartz (02:59):

And it'd be great to hear sort of what motivated you to create the bill. Did you channel Denise and decide this is something to do, or how'd this happen?

Pilar Schiavo (03:09):

I channeled her and I didn't even know her yet. You know, I was channeling my child really. I have a now 12-year-old in seventh grade, but when I was running for office just a couple of years ago, I had picked her up from school and we were driving home and she said, "What can you do..." We were kind of talking about what I could do when I got elected. And I said, "Well, we get to write laws." And she said, "Oh, can you write a law that bans homework?" And, you know, I think probably every fourth grader's dream. And it got me thinking though, obviously the bill does not ban homework, but it did get me thinking about, you know, what are things that we could do about homework? Because like Denise, when my kid was in kindergarten, she was coming home with a huge packet of homework on Monday and it was due on Friday.

(04:01):

And my first job out of college was early childhood education, I worked for a tribal head start program. And so I learned a lot about early childhood brain development and how play and socialization and all of those things were so important for brain development. And so it really, uh, when she started coming home with this homework, I started researching what's normal homework for kindergartners and what do other countries do? And I started seeing that other countries are emphasizing play and all the other ways that kids learn. And so when I finally got elected, you know, I wanted to do it my first year, but I knew it was a controversial bill and we had to do a lot of legwork and conversations to do it. So we did a lot of that that first year. And then I was so excited to find Denise and partner on the bill in my second year and be able to get it across the finish line.

Dan Schwartz (04:54):

That's great. So Denise, just to give some broader contextualization, do we know where homework came from? Like was this something the Ancient Greeks did? Where did this idea of homework come from? It's really diffuse, the number of reasons people give homework are sort of poorly defined and generally, well, because I did homework. Who started this?

Denise Pope (05:16):

Well, that's a very good question. I can't point to the exact person who started homework, but it started to come when there were certain things that needed to be covered in terms of the people who were setting curricula way, way, way, way back when. And this idea of coverage and what makes someone a full human being. And so if you, kind of jokingly, but going back to the Greeks, right, there's a conception that a full human being has both mental and academic capability, but also physical capability. And so schooling was really kind of the whole day, right. You would do these things, you would read, you would enter into debates and sort of town hall meetings, but you would also do physical activity. So you couldn't fit it in just the time that you needed to work. And if you kind of fast-forward to the Agrarian calendar where there was only certain times of the day that kids were in school and the rest of the time they were actually out helping working the fields, et cetera,

(06:20):

your time for schooling got shorter and shorter. And so this idea of we have to fit it in, when are you going to do it? You're going to do it almost as a third shift. And that's what Pilar and I talk about all the time. The first shift is what you do in school. The second shift is if you have a job or you work, which back then everybody was doing, now you have extracurriculars or a job or you have home responsibilities. And then kids have this third shift which is doing homework.

Dan Schwartz (06:49):

I see.

Pilar Schiavo (06:50):

And that was really powerful when you said that to me, Denise, because I come out of the labor movement where we fought for an eight-hour day and the weekend. And so kind of putting that lens on it to think about you know, yeah, we're not asking anyone else to do this, to do three shifts a day where they go to school all day and then they go to an after-school day program, and then they come home and they sit at the table and they do homework until it's time to go to bed. We're not asking other people to do that. We see the value of that downtime and time with your family and time to pursue your interests.

Denise Pope (07:28):

Yeah, one of the biggest things that we find with homework is the interference with sleep and the interference with what we would call playtime, downtime, family time, really time to spend with family which we know is a protective factor. Time to play, which as you said, Pilar, that is how people learn. It's actually the job of a child is to play. And downtime, like the last thing you want to do when you come home from work is to sit down and do homework. Even though Dan, I know in your job you probably have to do that and I have to do that and Pilar has to do that, but you know, it would be really nice if kids did not have to do that. And the impact on sleep is huge, absolutely huge.

Dan Schwartz (08:09):

So this is the against homework argument. So when you brought the bill forward, were there people who stood up and said, "No, kids still need to do homework because..." What came after the because?

Pilar Schiavo (08:23):

I was really surprised at how few people actually said how important homework is, because I literally talked to anyone who said they were an educator. I talked to them, I said, "Hey, I got this bill I'm working on, want to know what you think about it?" Because I really wanted to hear from people. And a lot of people were talking about how, especially educators about how they don't give homework anymore. They give very little homework just if you don't finish something in class. And you know, I think I ran into a teacher when I went to speak to some students at a school, a sixth grade teacher and she was saying that, "Well, if we don't give them homework, then they're just going to be on their screens all evening. And that's not any better." Which I get and as a parent I struggle with that too. But also it felt a little bit like micromanaging kids' time after school. The arm of the educator can come through into after school and kind of control what's happening all evening at home, which I think all teachers and educators have their kids' interest at heart, right?

(09:33):

They're trying to make sure kids are learning and they're making their learning goals that they need to make. And it's coming from a really sincere place. But I think that there does have to be that downtime. I see my kid just come from school exhausted and how important that downtime is after school for her. And we know we have a mental health crisis right now. And that was the other really big impetus for me to do the bill, is that when we talked about Dr. Pope's research and how it's one of the top stressors in kids' lives. And we literally overnight could do something about it if we wanted to you know, and take one of the major stressors off kids' plates, it just seemed like it was time for us to have a real conversation about it.

Denise Pope (10:17):

One of the biggest things that I hear is "We've always had homework, there must be a reason for it. It's not sort of real school if you don't send homework home." Right? We've been doing it for years, so there must be a good reason for it. And there's also people who feel that it builds and teaches responsibility, right. Well, you should know to take the paper home and then sit and fill out the paper and then bring the paper back and turn it in. But what I always say is if we were going to design a curriculum to teach responsibility, that would not be how we design the curriculum. Just take the paper home, do this thing, take the paper back. We would have a whole different curriculum around responsibility. So that didn't work for me. I do hear the, "Well, we need to keep kids busy because otherwise they'll get into trouble."

(11:02):

Kids are going to get into trouble or not get into trouble with or without homework, right, is what I usually say. So I sort of have heard every excuse in the book for homework with one exception, which is we can't send a non-reader to third grade or there's certain things we need to cover. And if I don't send them to this next grade or class with that information, that teacher's going to come back and say, "Hey, you're handicapping me. You're making this really hard for me." So the coverage excuse comes up a lot. There's a whole equity issue that we talked about when we were putting the bill together as well, which is one in five students actually don't have the technology at home to be able to do their homework. So already we have an equity issue. Think about people whose parents don't speak English, who literally don't know how to do something and don't have the resources around them to get the help. So that raises a whole bunch of other problems with homework.

Pilar Schiavo (11:59):

Yeah, they don't have parents to help them or kids who take care of their younger siblings. That's what I did growing up when my mom was working outside the home. Luckily later they had a home-based business and my mom was around. But yeah, I was watching my brothers and had to help them with homework.

Dan Schwartz (12:17):

But you were thankful they had homework, so you didn't have to entertain them.

Pilar Schiavo (12:22):

No, because if they didn't do homework, they'd be outside playing and that was much better because they were out of my hair.

Dan Schwartz (12:27):

Okay, okay.

Denise Pope (12:27):

Nice.

Dan Schwartz (12:30):

What was the substance of the bill?

Pilar Schiavo (12:32):

The bill really, I think like I said, starts a conversation. It doesn't require school districts to do anything. It still preserves local control. And I think one of the important things that we also did in the bill is that we require input from everyone who's kind of involved in students education, from parents, from students, from teachers obviously administrators, school counselors or social workers, mental health workers, educators who work with students with disabilities, that they all have to have input into that policy. It doesn't create a requirement, so it's not a required policy. That's one of the amendments we had to make. But we did say that it's optional for them to take on and then they can update the policy every five years. The goal is to have homework policies in place by the school year that starts with 2028, in the fall of 2028, but could have model or draft plans that they're working on the year before.

(13:33):

And at this point, I think it's an opportunity for us to start a conversation with school districts, with educators, with parents, with students to kind of really make conscious choices about homework. And really take a step back and look at the homework policies and see is it really working for people? Through this process obviously, I looked at different homework policies and some of them are just how do you make up missing homework, was basically the policy. And so I think that there's a lot of work that can be done and I think that, you know, just sometimes like you're saying, you do things by habit or you do things because this is what I experienced or this is what my mentor taught me. Or one of the interesting things when I was talking to all of these teachers about homework is that I don't think not one of them said that they were taught about what was effective homework in their teacher training when they were getting certified.

(14:33):

And so it was kind of whatever their mentor, teacher did was what they did or what they experienced that they thought was fair. Or what it says at the end of the book in the chapter that they're teaching to give for homework. And so it's really kind of willy-nilly all over the place a little bit and seems like a lot of people don't even know about the research on homework, what's effective, what's not, when is homework actually detrimental?

Dan Schwartz (14:59):

I didn't know that one could do legislation that's designed to teach people rather than regulate them and enforce them. It's really interesting. You look at this bill and it's basically saying, you need to think about these things and learn about these things and then you go make your decision. I thought that was a really effective way of, it's a very educational way of getting people to change behavior as opposed to saying, you must do this.

Denise Pope (15:25):

I mean I have to say I was frustrated by this because the original bill had things that were actually required, Dan. And then in order to get it passed, we had to water it down. And I was a little bit bummed about it, and then Pilar really put the spin back on it and said- and made me feel so much better, that you know what, we are educating people. It's exactly what you're saying, Dan. And that's the first step to change, which we know. And as part of it, they do have to educate themselves on the research about homework. It's not required, but it's highly encouraged that before you put together a policy, you will probably do some research or look at other policies and get educated.

Dan Schwartz (16:07):

No, I think it's brilliant. No offense Denise, but I think more school administrators are going to pay attention to legislation than the papers you write.

Denise Pope (16:13):

Oh, for sure.

Dan Schwartz (16:15):

But they don't have a choice. So what a great way of dissemination. Everything I've ever discovered I'm going to try and legislate so that people have to actually learn what I've done. It's a brilliant idea. I really liked it.

Denise Pope (16:26):

I like the optimism.

Dan Schwartz (16:33):

So Denise, I know your attitude towards homework now. What was it like when you were a kid? Like, did you, couldn't wait to get home and do homework and you sat at the table and had cookies and milk? What was your homework experience?

Denise Pope (16:49):

No, no, not like that, no. Usually honestly when I would come home from school I'd be exhausted. And there are actually many pictures of me lying on the couch, falling asleep to Gilligan's Island in the middle of the day because I just... Which dates me, I know, but I just wasn't ready to start homework. And I went to a school that actually had quite a bit of homework. It was a very intense school and I did it. I would do my homework. I was pretty diligent about doing my homework. I was a nerd. We've sort of established that on this show before. Did I love it? Was I excited? Was I like, "oh my gosh, I'm so excited for homework?" No, but I will say this, I love to read. And when the homework was reading and we read a lot of fiction at my high school, I have to say I did like it, like I looked forward to it.

(17:39):

And so that wasn't a chore. I was not a math person, and we've talked about that before too. So that homework took me a long time and I did not love doing it. And sometimes I would have to call a friend and say, "Help."

Dan Schwartz (17:54):

Well, not to probe too much. Help means what?

Denise Pope (17:58):

Not like tell me the answers.

Dan Schwartz (18:00):

You do it for me?

Denise Pope (18:01):

No, because I was such a goody good right? Such a goody good. Every once in a while maybe, I don't know, maybe I would copy an answer here or there. But most of the time, no, I wanted to learn but it was hard for me. And luckily I had friends in better math classes than me and who could help me. But yeah, I was sort of a nerd, I did my homework. Are you going to tell me that you didn't do any homework when you were growing up, Dan Schwartz?

Dan Schwartz (18:26):

I can tell you what I learned from homework.

Denise Pope (18:27):

Okay

Dan Schwartz (18:29):

Procrastination. I really got good at it. I'm going to put it off, I'm doing it on the bus to school if I have to. So I did this straight through college. I just managed to do as little homework as possible. So the great irony, the heavens have punished me so that I have a job now where it's all homework. I'm like always doing homework, I can't get it done at the job.

Denise Pope (18:55):

Your procrastination skills have not served you well, is that what you're saying?

Dan Schwartz (18:58):

No, the world had revenge on me for procrastinating. And so now I have a job where basically I'm working until 11:00 PM every night doing homework.

Denise Pope (19:07):

To prepare for the next day?

Dan Schwartz (19:09):

To answer all the email that we get about School's In that say how wonderful it is. And I want to respond to everybody personally.

Denise Pope (19:17):

The fan, the fan mail, you're responding to the fan mail?

Dan Schwartz (19:20):

Yeah, I got to keep the fan base going.

Denise Pope (19:21):

Okay well, if I had fan mail as my homework growing up, it would've been a much different thing. Forget Gilligan's Island, I'd just go right to the fan mail, man.

Pilar Schiavo (19:37):

Another piece of the bill Denise started to talk about is that you have to consider impacts to mental health, to students with learning disabilities, to students with IEPs or 504s. And one of the interesting things that I heard from after-school education program director that I spoke to about it, is that parents are getting so overwhelmed. And I saw it in parents' faces when I would talk to kids and parents about it, you know, they're begging for relief in a lot of ways. They're like, when does your bill go into effect? But parents are figuring out a way around it. They're getting 504s for their kids to address homework and try to do it that way. And that was really interesting that they brought that up and they said basically more astute parents, parents who are more aware of it. But it brings up this equity issue there too, that only some people are having access.

Dan Schwartz (20:34):

What's a 504?

Denise Pope (20:35):

Yeah, I knew he needs to know what a 504 is, Pilar. Go ahead.

Dan Schwartz (20:38):

I didn't do my homework. Sorry.

Pilar Schiavo (20:41):

So a 504 is basically a plan you can come up with for student if they need help getting access to their education. So maybe they have ADHD or some other kind of learning disability. You can do it for depression, anxiety, other kind of mental health issues as well. And then an IEP is kind of a higher level mandated accommodations that are required to do to help students learn with supportive services and things like that to come along.

Denise Pope (21:13):

What was becoming crazy is kids were being so stressed about homework and falling behind, or it was becoming such a source of tension in people's homes that they would actually go and beg someone, a doctor, a therapist or whatever to allow them to get a 504 that would allow accommodations and kind of lower the pressure and maybe reduce the homework for that particular kid. And you know, the surgeon general just put out a report on the stress of being a parent of young kids. And homework is a very big source of tension. And parents, as Pilar said, they didn't want to be the homework police. Everyone's exhausted at the end of the day, the last thing you want to do is fight with your kid over what they need to do. And especially when they think it's busy work or as a parent, you don't even know how to help them.

Pilar Schiavo (22:04):

Yeah, my kid had a meltdown in fourth grade over, as you can imagine, I have had busy lives and evening events and stuff like that. And so I'm trying to get her to do homework in the back of the car while I'm driving to an event, that didn't work out. And then it definitely didn't happen at the event. And so we get home, you know, when it's time to go to bed and she needs to get sleep. And so I just said, "Just don't do your homework tonight." And she started bawling and just was like a puddle of tears and afraid her teacher was going to be disappointed in her, that she was going to get in trouble, that she was going to be kept in for a recess. And it was fourth grade. And I'm like, what is going on? Why is homework so stressful in fourth grade? It really blew me away.

Dan Schwartz (22:52):

So there's one side of this which is homework's stressful and another side of it that the homework's just not achieving any goal. So I have a great example of both simultaneously. So my son goes to high school and it's his first class, and the teacher assigns some incredible amount of homework that's due like the next day. And I look at this and later on I get a chance to talk to the teacher. I said, "Why'd you sign that? That was like 12 hours of homework." She said, "I didn't expect them to do all of it." And it was just sort of like, "Well, how are they supposed to decide what...?" So that was a stress model and a very bad pedagogical model.

Denise Pope (23:37):

Yeah, that's not okay.

Dan Schwartz (23:38):

But I bet I could come up with homework that's actually fun and useful. Like, can I do that? And if it's fun, it'll not be stressful or I can make it fun and stressful.

Denise Pope (23:49):

No, you don't want it fun and stressful. Here's the thing, here's the thing. It's always going to be when can I fit this into my life as a kid, as a parent, how does this all fit in with all the daily responsibilities and what we know kids need? They need time for exercise and outside time. They need time to spend with family, they need sleep, all of that stuff, right, how to find that balance. But we're not saying all homework is bad, we're just saying if kids think it's busy work and they have too much to do or they don't have the resources to do it, right, it is not being effective. So what is effective, right? There is such a thing as effective homework, is finding the right amount. It's showing them the purpose behind it and making it engaging and fun. There's actually really good research that if the homework is engaging to the students, they're more likely to do it and not cheat on it.

(24:42):

And whatever they're having them do, it's more likely to stick. So it doesn't mean that all homework is bad, it just means that as you're designing homework, really think about from the student's point of view, which is why I'm so excited that the bill says, "We encourage you to include students as part of this conversation." Because they'll tell you if it's boring or if I think it's busy work or whatever. And I think most kids know that not all homework is going to go away. Certainly as you get into the older years, you have to do things to prepare for class. It makes sense to read a chapter of a book in order to discuss it in school. So as we think about the takeaways from all of this, I do want to just say that Pilar's daughter played a very key role in the making of the bill.

(25:30):

And it was so hard for me because I would have to speak after her. So she would go and she would give the students view of homework and why it really affected her life and why she was an expert witness, because she was living through it right, as to why the bill should happen. And then they'd be like, "Oh my gosh, that was so amazing. Wonderful. Oh, Dr. Pope, do you have anything to say?" And it was like, who's going to follow that? She said it all. So Pilar, that was amazing, really amazing.

Pilar Schiavo (26:02):

Yeah, it was a really incredible experience to go through to have my kid and I running this through the process, and her there every time and all the education committee hearings. And it was a really memorable experience I think we'll remember forever.

Dan Schwartz (26:18):

Oh, that's awesome.

Denise Pope (26:20):

I love it, I love it. So as we think about takeaways for the listeners, Pilar, what's one thing you want them to leave with?

Pilar Schiavo (26:28):

I really hope that people will take this as a tool to their school boards and start conversations there. I'm hoping, as I said, I come out of the labor movement, I think about things as an organizer. And I really think that this can be a useful tool for parents, for students, for educators to bring to their administration, to bring to their school boards and to start this conversation. Say, "Hey, you know I think we should look at this. We should think about what is our homework policy? What kind of impact is it having on our kids? Is it really having the kind of impact on their education we want to? Is it negatively or positively impacting their mental health? You know, is it creating inequity?" All of the things that I think a conversation like this can really help to address.

(27:13):

And so I hope that people will use it as a tool. They can reach out to our office if they need help doing it. We are gonna, you know, try to do that ourselves and start some of these conversations with some of the bigger school boards in the state, and see if we can get the ball rolling on moving this policy forward.

Denise Pope (27:29):

Super exciting. Dan, you want last word on homework?

Dan Schwartz (27:34):

I think the thing I learned which may be true of education in general, is that people want homework to do too many things simultaneously. So it's not being optimized for anything in particular. And so that leads to all these, that's the way we've always done it kind of responses. If you really knew why you were doing it, you'd probably make it effective, shorter, fun, things like that. So the bill, which is intended to make people do exactly that, is a great idea.

Denise Pope (28:05):

Great. That's the part that I'm leaving with, first of all for Dan Schwartz to be an optimist about policy, you don't even know how amazing that is, Pilar. But this idea that policy is to teach and to educate is just something that I'm going to leave thinking more about. So I appreciate that from this conversation very much. So pilar, thank you so much for joining us. We know you're so busy. Thank you for all you're doing and all the legislation that you're working on these days, education related or not, because I know how much you do. And thank all of you for joining this episode of School's In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (28:45):

And I'm Dan Schwartz who learned that he should close the blinds before we start recording.

Pilar Schiavo (28:52):

Homework for next time.

Dan Schwartz (28:53):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (28:54):

Exactly.

Podcast

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Faculty and Research

�� team builds tool to keep young readers from falling through the cracks

Carrie Spector — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 19:34:00 +0000

�� team builds tool to keep young readers from falling through the cracks

Carrie Spector Thu, 02/13/2025 - 11:34

Jason Yeatman, founder of ROAR, a free, open-access reading assessment now being used in 23 states. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

K-12 | Language and Literacy | Learning Differences

Associate Professor Jason Yeatman discusses the adoption of the ��-developed Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR) as an approved dyslexia screening tool in the state of California.

February 12, 2025

By Isabel Sacks

Starting next fall, the state of California will mandate universal screening for reading difficulties in kindergarten, first, and second grades. When reading difficulties are identified early, schools can determine what support students need as they progress through their education and they are less likely to fall behind. The new policy approved four reading assessments for districts to use to screen their students: one, conceived and developed at ��.

The Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR), founded by �� Accelerator for Learning Faculty Affiliate Jason Yeatman, is an automated, fully online tool that enables schools to test their entire student body in the time it normally takes them to test one student. The tool, which has been shown to be highly predictive of gold standard reading screeners in validation studies, is free, open-access, and currently being used in hundreds of schools in 23 states. Assessment data is stored securely and separately from identifiers wherever possible, and schools receive interactive score reports in real time to support their instruction. The ROAR research team also creates professional development tools to help teachers interpret and use the test results.

The Accelerator has helped ROAR expand its reach and strengthen its infrastructure by providing engineering and technical support, facilitating and brokering school and district partnerships, and helping refine its scaling approach.

After nearly four years of research and development, and expanding its library of assessments to test a range of skills in reading and language, visual processing, and executive function, ROAR is going to scale, as schools around the state of California and the country clamor to use it. We spoke with Yeatman, who is an associate professor of education, pediatrics, and psychology at ��, about this pivotal moment for the tool.

What need was ROAR designed to fill?

We have a dual mission: there is a service and impact side and then a research side. The high-level mission that really excites me is building more bridges between research and practice, by aligning the questions that researchers are asking to real challenges faced by educators, and then creating a pipeline to bring that cutting-edge research into practice.

Our goal when it comes to schools is to lift the resource constraint for reading assessment, which is typically time consuming and resource intensive. It conventionally involves teachers administering assessments one-on-one to every student in the class, scoring those assessments, and entering those scores into a database so the data can be used for making decisions. Teachers have to spend hours training and schools have to create complex systems for how assessments are done. This means a lot of resources are being spent on professional development and data collection as opposed to what's really important: using the data to help kids. Now, schools can spend 20 minutes to deploy ROAR across the whole district and get automated scores in real time. Teachers immediately see that information and can start using it to make instructional decisions.

Can you talk about ROAR’s journey to achieving this milestone towards scale?

I see this milestone as an exciting opportunity to connect research, practice, and policy. This new policy, to test all young readers in the state, emerged from the advocacy work of the dyslexia community around California; many other states had similar legislation already. I would really like to see more connections between ongoing research, policy, and what’s making it into schools.

When the call for applications came out last summer, there was a window of about eight weeks to submit the application. During that time, that application was my personal focus, with support from the whole ROAR team, because we wanted ROAR to be on the table as an option for schools in our home state. It opened up an incredible opportunity to do the same work we’ve been doing, but at a much larger scale.

As the years go by, a larger goal of mine is to help schools go beyond just complying with existing legislation and work with them to be a part of crafting future policies. These are the partnerships that are most exciting for me, when forward-thinking districts work with researchers to build a more effective system of support – maybe we’ll look up in five years and have a new policy that is crafted by these learnings.

How have your partnerships with schools impacted the development of ROAR?

We are a team of cognitive neuroscientists that are studying the variety of interacting factors that lead to challenges with reading, and we're trying to gain a more detailed understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to reading development. Sometimes we come in with our own hypotheses and look for schools that might be interested in exploring them with us, but we also try to bring schools into the collaborative co-design of our research questions.

Our current research is the synthesis of many ideas and challenges that schools are facing, where they want better answers to their pressing challenges. As a concrete example, a big focus right now is understanding best practices for supporting multilingual learners. This is a question that teachers face and that school administrators face, depending on the educational context in the school. This has really propelled ROAR toward developing and validating assessments across multiple languages. I'm thinking with the schools about how to best combine the data from these various measures to support their teachers.

How has ROAR helped us do better research?

ROAR allows us to do research at a previously unprecedented scale and make sure that we're doing research that reflects the true diversity of learners around the United States. Now, when my lab poses a research question, we can make sure that our study is not just a convenience sample of students in Palo Alto, but really reflects the diversity of students around the country, teachers around the country, and the diversity of experiences that students are having.

ROAR is also supporting research beyond our lab. For instance, ROAR has been used by researchers at other universities that study brain development and reading, to collect assessment data before participants come into the lab. It’s also been used by international researchers that are interested in comparing reading development across languages and instructional contexts.

What do you hope ROAR’s impact will be?

It’s a dance between scale and impact, and over what timeline. For me, research is the best way to have a long-term impact. ROAR isn’t just for grades K-2, it was designed and validated for use up to grade 12 to screen for reading challenges. We want districts to not just test kids in K-2 to comply with legislation, but we want them to screen in upper elementary and middle school as well, because we know a lot of students are slipping through the cracks. That’s one way that I hope research will have an impact: making sure that a second grader who was flagged as having serious reading challenges receives extra support, and doesn't become the third grader, fourth grader, or fifth grader who hasn’t had the opportunity to achieve their full potential. While I’d like for ROAR to be on the approved screener list in every state in the country, it goes beyond getting ROAR to the largest number of people to how ROAR can bring a spotlight to this issue and impact the education system more broadly.

What comes next for ROAR?

I see California’s adoption of ROAR as ushering in a sea change in how the school system bridges research and practice, and an opportunity to improve equity and efficiency of screening for all the children of California. We’re offering a different model for districts, that’s not just purchasing a product from a company, but an opportunity to align their practices to research and be a part of steering future research, which in turn, means being a part of sculpting future products and policies. We also hope that over the next five years, ROAR will contribute to the development of new reading interventions to advance learning for all.

Jason Yeatman is an associate professor in the �� Graduate School of Education, the �� School of Humanities and Sciences, and the �� School of Medicine.

ROAR has received support from �� Impact Labs, the ��-Sequoia K-12 Research Collaborative, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF), the Klingenstein Foundation, and the Robertson Foundation.

Research Stories

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Jason Yeatman

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 20:02:46 +0000

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector Mon, 02/10/2025 - 12:02

A new report by �� and Harvard researchers provides a uniquely detailed picture of academic gains and losses in thousands of U.S. school districts. (Photo: Allison Shelley for EDUimages)

K-12 | Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity

An analysis by �� and Harvard researchers finds widening achievement gaps but also pockets of success, including high-poverty districts regaining pre-pandemic achievement levels.

February 11, 2025

By Carrie Spector

A new report by researchers at �� and Harvard finds that while the average U.S. student still lags behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading and math, students in a number of school districts across the country have regained the ground they lost in both subjects.

The analysis, which provides exclusive data on district-level changes in student achievement from 2019 to 2024, identifies 102 medium and large districts now performing above pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading, including high-poverty communities in Louisiana and Alabama.

Despite scattered bright spots, the researchers found that socioeconomic and other disparities in achievement have continued to grow. The highest-income districts nationwide were almost four times as likely to recover as the poorest districts, and districts enrolling the highest proportions of Black and Hispanic students have seen bigger declines in test scores since 2019 than predominantly white and more affluent districts.

Even within communities, Black and Hispanic students lost more ground than their white peers in the same district.

“There’s enormous variation in how test scores have changed over the last five years, and the overall decline masks a pernicious inequality,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University (EOP), who co-led the analysis. “Test scores have declined far more in middle- and low-income communities than in wealthy ones.”

The researchers also investigated the impact of federal pandemic aid on academic recovery, finding that the funds helped to prevent larger losses in the highest-poverty districts.

The findings were released on Feb. 11 as part of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration between researchers at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR) at Harvard.

GSE Professor Sean Reardon

Mapping trends in thousands of school districts

The Education Recovery Scorecard uses data from the �� Education Data Archive (SEDA), a national database built by the EOP that includes test scores and demographic information from 2009 to 2024 for students in every public school district in the United States. SEDA, which has been publicly available online since 2016, is used by researchers and policymakers to study patterns and trends across the country and by race, gender, and socioeconomic conditions.

With SEDA data, the Education Recovery Scorecard delivers a uniquely detailed picture of academic gains and losses for thousands of individual school districts across the country. The analysis builds on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), widely known as the “nation’s report card,” which measures progress at a state level and for 26 large urban school districts.

The Education Recovery Scorecard provides a higher-resolution picture, mapping trends in more than 8,000 school districts nationwide. It allows users to compare progress in one district with that of another, even if the districts are in different states and use different tests and proficiency standards.

A key challenge in comparing performance among U.S. students nationwide is that all states use different tests and standards to define proficiency, which can change even within a state from year to year. By aligning annual statewide test results with scores from the biennial NAEP, Reardon’s team at the EOP established a common metric — in the form of grade-level equivalents — to compare student performance across states and over time.

For the Education Recovery Scorecard, the researchers used SEDA data from 43 states (the remaining states were left out for various reasons, such as low participation rates on state tests or inadequate data reporting). The states included in this analysis capture roughly 35 million students in grades 3 through 8, almost 80 percent of those enrolled in U.S. public schools.

“There’s enormous variation in how test scores have changed over the last five years,
and the overall decline masks a pernicious inequality.”

Sean Reardon

Professor, �� Graduate School of Education
Faculty Director, The Educational Opportunity Project at �� University

Widening achievement gaps

As of Spring 2024, the average U.S. student remained nearly half a grade level behind 2019 scores in both math and reading, the researchers found. But “the declines were not visited equally upon all school districts,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research.

For instance, between 2019 and 2024, the difference in average scores between students in districts with the lowest and highest proportions of Black students increased by 17 percent. The gap between students in high- and low-poverty districts also increased, by about 11 percent.

“That’s a sizable growth in the disparity between districts serving different populations of kids,” Reardon said.

Also notable, he said, was a sharp change in gender gaps over the past five years. “For a decade or so before the pandemic, girls and boys in these grades had basically equal math scores on NAEP,” said Reardon. “But since 2019, girls have fallen about a third of a grade level behind.” This trend is pervasive not only throughout the United States but globally, he said.

The researchers continued their 2024 investigation into the impact of federal pandemic aid on student achievement, which indicated that these dollars were contributing to the recovery and helping to narrow achievement gaps. In the 2025 Education Recovery Scorecard, based on more recent data, they report that federal relief funds aided the recovery in the highest poverty districts, boosting achievement in both math and reading on average by one-tenth of a grade level.

How districts allocated the money made a difference, they noted. For instance, in California, which maintained comparatively detailed spending data, student achievement grew more in districts that spent greater amounts on academic interventions such as tutoring or summer school.

The researchers also studied the increase in chronic absenteeism and its possible impact on the rate of academic recovery. Districts at all socioeconomic levels have seen a rise in absenteeism since the pandemic, with larger increases in higher-poverty districts. The researchers said the data indicate that districts with high rates of absenteeism experienced slower recovery, but the full extent of the impact is still unclear.

‘The rescue phase is over’

The Education Recovery Scorecard also offers recommendations for educators, policymakers, and researchers going forward.

“The rescue phase is over. The federal relief dollars are gone,” said Thomas Kane, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of CEPR, who co-authored the report. “It is time to pivot from short-term recovery to longer-term challenges.”

First, said Kane, states and districts should dedicate their own funds or funds they control to continue “catch-up” interventions like tutoring and summer learning. Second, community leaders — including mayors and employers — should join schools in working to lower absenteeism.

“This is one of the few things that folks outside of schools can be doing to help right now,” Kane said, suggesting efforts such as organizing public awareness campaigns, supporting field trips and other extracurricular activities to draw kids to school, and addressing transportation challenges that might keep students from getting to school.

He also advised teachers to keep parents informed if their child is not achieving at grade level. “Parents aren't going to sign up for summer learning, or ask for a tutor in school, or agree to an increase in the school year if they're under the impression that everything's fine.”

Finally, the report calls for a concerted effort to study literacy interventions to determine their impact. Most states have implemented various reforms in recent years, but nationally, reading test scores on average continue to decline. The report urges research across states and districts to better assess the effectiveness of different approaches now underway.

Additional collaborators on this project include Erin Fahle, Andrew Ho, Ben Shear, Jie Min, Jim Saliba, Jiyeon Shim, Sadie Richardson, Sofia Wilson, Julia Paris, Demetra Kalogrides, Ann Owens, Ishita Panda, Amelia Bloom, Nahian Haque, and Jackson Kinsella (Educational Opportunity Project); Daniel Dewey, Victoria Carbonari, and Dean Kaplan (Center for Education Policy Research); and Douglas Staiger (Dartmouth College).

The research was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin and Griffin Catalyst, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

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Education Professor Jo Boaler and �� Women’s Basketball team up for new sports data unit

Olivia Peterkin — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:42:28 +0000

Education Professor Jo Boaler and �� Women’s Basketball team up for new sports data unit

Olivia Peterkin Thu, 01/23/2025 - 16:42

Students raise their hands in a classroom in Dublin, Calif. where middle school teacher Shelby Craig is teaching the new Basketball Data Analytics Unit.

K-12 | Science and Math Education | Teaching

The online math lessons feature a series of activities to help students in grades 4 through 10 learn about data science through sports.

January 28, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

For anyone serious about becoming a top athlete, well-known steps to success include intense conditioning, a health-conscious diet, and grueling hours of practice.

However, a unit developed by �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) Professor Jo Boaler highlights a variable often overlooked in the formula for athletic achievement: the ability to use data to identify pain points in performance and adjust accordingly.

For the new Basketball Data Analytics unit — published on youcubed, a GSE research center aimed at improving math education by creating math activities, courses and teaching resources — Boaler teamed up with ��’s Women’s Basketball team to connect love for the game with the statistics that help players improve.

“The impetus for developing this was the realization that students really need experience with data,” said Boaler, the Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education at the GSE. “Making sense of data visuals and being able to analyze data ties in very nicely with a lot of mathematics in their school curriculum, yet for most students their experience with data is very uninspiring.”

From calculating percentages for shots taken versus shots made, to evaluating players’ heights and comparing them through the use of mean, median, and mode — Boaler says lessons included in the unit help students connect math concepts to real-world applications in new and engaging ways.

“I think it’s exciting because it’s an interactive lesson plan that exposes students to learning data science in a way that incorporates math with sports, which means getting up out of your seat,” said Mahi Jariwala, a �� freshman in Boaler’s “How to Learn Math” course, who helped work on the unit.

“As someone who loves math and played high school basketball, I know I would have loved to have something like this when I was younger,” Jariwala said.

A student in Shelby Craig's middle school math class works on an assignment in the basketball data analytics unit.

A team effort

The lessons, created for students in grades 4 through 10, allow learners to explore and make decisions with data through basketball, the end result being the formation of a dream team based on stats they’ve collected throughout the unit.

“It was cool to see the different data points each group chose to look at, whether it was height, rebounds, or 3-point shots, in determining which players they would build into their team,” said Shelby Craig, a math teacher at Fallon Middle School in Dublin, Calif., who piloted the course before its official release. “They got passionate about defending their teams and using mathematical language to explain why their team was better.”

To make it accessible for students and teachers less familiar with basketball, the unit kicks off with an introduction to the game that includes what the names of positions are, how points are scored, different moves that can be made, and the general rules of the game.

A big part of the lesson plans were videos recorded by the �� Women’s Basketball team featuring players Mary Ashley Stevenson and Nunu Agara.

“I’ll be the first to say that I’d never had a particularly great relationship with math,” said Stevenson, a forward on the team who transferred to �� from Purdue University for her sophomore year.

Her main role was explaining the key facets of the game, first to the youcubed team and then to students and teachers using the unit, through the videos attached to courses.

“Despite not identifying as a math kid from a young age, I was inspired by the idea that the game I love can be used to teach it,” Stevenson said. “If I was a sixth grader and someone gave me this unit to work on, I would’ve thought this was the best thing in the world.”

Training for a data-filled future

Beyond the classroom, Boaler says she hopes the unit will broaden the scope of what students can do with math later in life.

“We want them to get from this unit that you don’t have to be an athlete to be involved in basketball,” Boaler said. “There are lots of people who are doing sports analytics for the coaches, for the competition, for the players themselves to learn — it plays a really important role.”

Last fall, at a pre-season game at �� versus the University of California, Davis, children were invited to be sports data analysts for the day by filling out data cards with graphics to record the number of 2-pointers, 3-pointers, rebounds, blocks, and assists that happened during the game.

“It was a cool opportunity for students to come out to the basketball game and be the data keepers and statisticians by taking notes on what was going on,” said Jariwala, who, along with her classmates, distributed the data cards to children at the game.

“I mostly watched the players and recorded on my card, but I learned that they make and miss a lot of shots,” said Ruthie, 10, who attended the game with her mother and grandmother as part of a family tradition.

Boaler hopes to incorporate the data cards and other tools at future �� games.

“Having that collaboration with the team was really great, and my favorite part is seeing the activities in classrooms, and how much the teachers and students enjoy the unit,” Boaler said.

Watch a video below of a sixth grade class using the unit.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Jo Boaler

Educational inequality: Post-pandemic patterns and trends

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 18:58:48 +0000

Educational inequality: Post-pandemic patterns and trends Olivia Peterkin Wed, 08/28/2024 - 11:58

Education Policy | K-12 | Poverty and Inequality

Sean Reardon talks about educational inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic, and what’s needed to chart a path forward.

August 29, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

Pandemic-related learning loss has been a hot-button issue for educators, parents, and students as researchers work to navigate its consequences. Part of the recovery process means identifying how far-reaching the effects of learning loss are, what can be done about it, and who was hardest hit.

“Declines in test scores were more than twice as big in the poorest communities in the country than they were in the most affluent,” said Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE).

“And so that means that kids in those communities are much, much further behind.”

On this episode of School’s In, Reardon joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope as they discuss educational inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic and what’s needed to chart a path forward.

Reardon’s research sheds light on key issues including the impact of poverty and inequality on educational opportunities and how parents can work with teachers to advocate for their children.

“I think we owe some gratitude to teachers and principals who I think really have helped students out a lot post-pandemic, and we've made real progress,” Reardon said.

To keep up with our research, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads.

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Sean Reardon (00:00):

Declines in test scores were more than twice as big in the poorest communities in the country than they were in the most affluent. And so that means that kids in those communities are much, much further behind. They already were further behind, and now they're even more behind. So there's sort of a widening inequality as a result of the pandemic, not just an overall decline.

Dan Schwartz (00:23):

Today we're discussing the impact of poverty and inequality on educational opportunities, specifically focusing on learning loss during the pandemic and the gains, or not, that we've made since.

Denise Pope (00:34):

It's kind of crazy that we are still talking about the impacts of the pandemic. And that's the main reason why we're tackling it in several episodes. The data is coming in and it's sobering. The pandemic impacted all learners no matter the income level, and the recovery has been uneven at best. It's more important than ever to address these gaps and find ways to support all learners. So let's dive in.

(00:59):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting edge insights in learning. Each episode, we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners.

(01:08):

I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at �� GSE and co-founder of Challenge Success. And I am here with my wonderful co-host, Dan Schwartz, dean of the �� Graduate School of Education and the faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:30):

Hi, Denise. It's good to see you again. One of our big questions today is, what happened with learning loss since COVID?

(01:36):

Now, when we talk about learning loss, we're not talking about forgetting some things over the summer; what's typically called "summer melt." What we're talking about is students not having a chance to learn, and that's what happened in COVID.

(01:49):

We're incredibly fortunate to have a leading scholar on this topic join us today. It is Professor Sean Reardon. He's a professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at ��. He looks at causes, patterns, trends, consequences of educational inequality across the nation. He has a very unique database that basically has the standardized tests of every child,, and so he's been the go-to researcher on pandemic recovery.

(02:16):

So Sean, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Denise Pope (02:19):

Sean, we would love to start by having you walk us through exactly how we measure learning loss in the first place and recovery.

Sean Reardon (02:27):

Yeah. First what we do is we look at ... For example, we look at eighth graders in 2019 before the pandemic, and we see across the country and in every school district in the country, "What was their average scores in math and reading?" And then we're able to look again at eighth graders three years later, after the pandemic, spring of 2022, and see what their average scores are in math and reading. And then we can compare where the eighth graders were in 2022; those kids were in fifth, sixth, seventh grade through the pandemic and so didn't have the opportunity often to learn all the material that one would typically learn; and we compare them to what the eighth graders three years before knew who went through fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade under normal conditions.

(03:15):

And what we find and what all the national data shows is that in 2022, students were about a half grade further behind in math and about a third of a grade further behind in reading than where their counterparts were in 2022. What that means is that over those three years of the pandemic period, kids missed out on a half year of instruction of math essentially. They just didn't get the opportunity to learn as much math as they would've without the pandemic.

Dan Schwartz (03:46):

So Denise, would that have been your prediction? That of all the disciplines that we measure, math would take the biggest hit?

Denise Pope (03:53):

I think that would have been. A half year is a lot. That's bigger than I would've guessed. A half year ... I mean, that's a half a year, right? That's a lot. I was thinking a couple months maybe, but six months?

(04:07):

Well, how do you measure a year? Is it six months? Because it's a nine-month school year.

Sean Reardon (04:12):

It's half of a nine-month school year. So think of it as four and a half months. It was really a little more than a half, so call it five months.

Denise Pope (04:19):

Okay. That's a lot. That's higher than I thought.

(04:20):

But yeah, I would've thought math because that's what empties out of my brain the quickest, so ...

Dan Schwartz (04:26):

No, no, that's not the reason.

(04:29):

Sean, do you have a good theory for why math?

Sean Reardon (04:32):

Yeah, I mean, I think the reason is likely that during the pandemic when kids weren't getting as much instruction in school, either they weren't in school or they couldn't concentrate as much, or there's a lot obviously else going on in the world, that at home kids are more likely to read, or if they're young kids, their parents might read to them, but it's much less common for kids to sort of sit down and do some algebra in their spare time at home or have their parents sit down and work through multiplication tables with them at home.

(05:04):

And so most math learning typically happens in school as a result of what happens in math classrooms, but kids learn to read both at school and at home. And so I think that's why we saw a little bit less of a hit in reading than in math, because the missing out on school hurts math more.

Dan Schwartz (05:23):

I have to describe this study, because it's sort of outrageous.

(05:28):

So there was someone who took five-year olds, English speaking five-year olds, and they had them memorize a passage in Greek from Homer.

Denise Pope (05:36):

Oh my ... These poor babies.

Dan Schwartz (05:38):

Yeah, they just memorized the Greek. You know, just meaningless symbols.

Denise Pope (05:42):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (05:42):

And 10 years later, he came back and he had two conditions, and in both of them, he tried to teach the same poem in Greek. In one condition was these kids who had learned it when they were five and probably had no memory that they ever learned it. The other condition were kids who had never been exposed to it. So the ones who had been exposed and memorized it when they were five learned it like five times faster than the ones who had never been exposed.

(06:09):

What does this have to do with learning loss? You never really lose it. It's just sort of there waiting for you to come back and get it.

Denise Pope (06:15):

So that gives me a little bit of hope. Right?

(06:18):

But I will tell you, there are some things that I still remember from high school that I have no need for whatsoever. I mean, "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote," right? Like Chaucer, the first lines of Chaucer. What is that doing in my head? I have all the kings and queens of England memorized in order. Willie, Willie, Harry, Steve, Harry, Dick, John, Harry 3, 1, 2, 3 Ned, Richard 2, Henry 4, 5, 6, then who. Why is that in my brain?

Dan Schwartz (06:43):

I don't know.

Denise Pope (06:43):

It's like that guy with the Greek. They put that in there and I can't get it out now.

Dan Schwartz (06:47):

I don't know, but just hearing you do that, I like you more. That's why.

Denise Pope (06:56):

And obviously there are other subjects that you learn in school, but you only have data for math and reading. Is that right?

Sean Reardon (07:03):

That's right. For the last 20 years, we have tested in this country every third through eighth grader every year in math and reading. So yeah, we have data going back to 2009. So we have about 500 million test scores from every kid in the country over that time period. That tells us a lot about math and reading. But we don't test how well kids are doing in the arts or in history or things like that, and so we don't know as much about what the pandemic did to kids' other sets of skills.

Denise Pope (07:37):

And we may never know.

(07:38):

Part of that is what you assess is what you care about too. So that also says something about sort of the lower level status of some of these subjects that don't get assessed.

(07:49):

Dan, you don't think that's lower level ... I'm not saying they do have lower level status.

Dan Schwartz (07:53):

They're so special that we don't bother to measure them.

Denise Pope (07:56):

Okay, you could look at it that way too, but we still won't know what got lost.

Dan Schwartz (08:00):

Okay, Sean, so your database tells me something about the regions the tests are coming from, the social status, the economic status.

Sean Reardon (08:09):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (08:10):

Before we talk about the bounce back, like how people are coming back, did the hit to math and English, was it even?

Sean Reardon (08:18):

No, that's maybe the biggest concern. I mean, obviously the kids didn't learn as much is a concern, but that fell disproportionately on kids in the lowest income communities in the country. And so the declines in test scores were more than twice as big in the poorest communities in the country than they were in the most affluent. And so that means that kids in those communities are much, much further behind. They already were further behind, and now they're even more behind. So there's sort of a widening inequality as a result of the pandemic, not just an overall decline. That's particularly concerning.

Dan Schwartz (08:54):

Sometimes people bash schools, but when I hear that, I realize how important school is as a lever of equity, and when it gets disrupted, the inequities really ... They get bigger, more rampant. Is that a fair conclusion on this, or ...

Sean Reardon (09:11):

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. We often hear that schools are unequal, that schools in poor communities don't have the same resources or don't have the ability to attract skilled or experienced teachers, they don't have as good facilities, and so schools are worse in poorer communities and better in affluent communities. And so people say, "Oh, the schooling system's really unequal." Which there's some truth to that, but schools aren't nearly as unequal as families. The difference in growing up in a poor family and in a rich family is an orders of magnitude of income difference. And the differences between schools in rich and poor communities aren't nearly that big.

(09:47):

So while schools might be somewhat unequal, they're much more equal than family environments are in terms of the kinds of resources available. So schools tend to act like an equalizing force in society even though they're not completely equal. Sort of an interesting paradox.

Denise Pope (10:05):

Sean, what did you find out when you looked post 2022, I guess that's what it was, at how kids were doing now?

Sean Reardon (10:13):

What we found was actually pretty surprising, I think, and better news than I would've expected or many would've expected. What we found was that even though there had been a half grade of lost learning in math, kids recovered a third of that loss in just one year; which might not sound like a lot, but what it means is that the average student learned about 15 to 20% more in the '22 to '23 school year than a typical student learned before the pandemic. If we could increase national productivity or GDP by 20% in a year, we'd be bouncing off the walls, right? So a 20% increase in how much kids learn in one year is big.

(10:55):

It's also really big in historical terms. If you look back over the last 30 years at the rates at which scores have improved nationally, and they have improved nationally a lot over the last 30 years, the rate at which they improved in this last year was as big or bigger than in any time in the last 30 years.

(11:14):

So the good news is, while there was a big decline, the first year after the pandemic shows real signs of a strong recovery. We're not all the way back, but we made really good progress, and I think a surprising amount.

Dan Schwartz (11:28):

Is that because people are just pedaling faster, or ...

Denise Pope (11:33):

You mean teachers are working harder?

Dan Schwartz (11:35):

And students.

Denise Pope (11:36):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (11:37):

Do we have some explanation for how this happened?

Sean Reardon (11:40):

So I think what likely accounts for it is that school systems and teachers really focused on helping kids catch up with some of the material they lost. And not just in their regular math class, but a lot of school districts invested in extra tutoring programs for kids, after school academic programs for kids, extended summer school programs. So a lot of extra resources went in to try to help kids recover.

(12:09):

Some of that was funded by funds from the federal government that were intended to help school districts recover. But in fact, the recovery was much larger than you would've guessed just based on the amount of money that the federal government put in. I think we owe some gratitude to teachers and principals who I think really have helped students out a lot post-pandemic, and we've made real progress.

Denise Pope (12:31):

No, agreed. Shout out to all the educators and teachers out there who are working their butts off. Oh my gosh. It is so great to hear that all those efforts have really affected the students so positively. Yay.

(12:44):

Okay, now I'm curious, because we've discussed learning loss in the under-resourced schools; please tell us, what about the recovery?

Sean Reardon (12:52):

Recovery hasn't been unequal. That is kids in poor districts and rich districts have recovered about as much as each other. But that's not enough to undo the inequality that was exacerbated by the pandemic. So kids in low-income districts fell behind further during the pandemic, and then everyone recovered about the same amount during the pandemic. So the kids in the low-income districts are still further behind.

(13:18):

In lots of affluent districts, test scores are back up equal to or above where they were before the pandemic. So there's been near complete recovery in the richest places, but because the poor places saw such a large decline, the recovery hasn't yet been enough to kind of get them back up to where they were before the pandemic.

Dan Schwartz (13:39):

My biggest concern on COVID was actually for the youngest kids, that this is an important window for social emotional development, for developing a taste for what schools have to offer. Are they sort of starting to show up in your database? I heard you started with third grade, but are they beginning to show up and can you get a fix on it?

Sean Reardon (14:01):

So far, we haven't seen much difference across grades and how big the lost learning was, and not much difference in the size of the recovery. But those third graders were kids who were sort of coming into kindergarten or just in kindergarten at the beginning of the pandemic. The other group of kids that I worry about are the kids even younger than that who were sort of in early childhood, in preschool during the pandemic. And we don't know a whole lot about what's happened to those kids. My team and I are starting some research, we're collecting data that's going to help us to answer what happened to those very young kids during the pandemic, but we'll have to come back and talk about that another time.

Dan Schwartz (14:40):

They're going to start showing up in your database next year, is that right?

Sean Reardon (14:44):

They're starting to come into third grade, and so we'll be able to see more of them over the next few years.

Dan Schwartz (14:50):

Do you have a prediction, Denise?

Denise Pope (14:51):

Well, I was just going to say, are you worried? Because we know there's certain windows where ... Even language learning, for instance, there's a certain window where it gets much harder as you get older to start something new. Is that why you both are holding this tight with the young kids and worried?

Sean Reardon (15:06):

I'm worried about it for a couple reasons. One is, yeah, there's sort of critical periods in early childhood, and early elementary school are key periods, but also, places that were not in-person schooling for a while, that's particularly hard for a first grader. First grade Zoom school is not super effective, both at socialization into how to be in school and also just in terms of learning. You can't do all the stuff and you can't have the one-on-one attention from the teacher. So I think it's likely that remote learning was more harmful to the very young kids than it was to the older kids who could adapt more easily to the Zoom modality.

Denise Pope (15:49):

So I'm a parent, I'm listening to this. I want to do something to help, right? This is making me very sad. What can an average person do in terms of helping, advocating? What can we do?

Sean Reardon (16:02):

I think one of the things, we looked at survey data, and we found that a lot of parents during and right after the pandemic period didn't really have a sense of how far behind their kids were. Most parents sort of said, "I think my kid's doing fine." And the reason why they say that is because imagine that you have an eighth grader in 2022; well, you don't really know what an eighth grader in 2019 knew in terms of math unless you happen to have a child three years older, right? So it's very hard for a parent to sort of know from their one child, "What does a typical eighth grader know and can do in terms of math or other subjects?" So it's very hard for a parent to assess whether their kid's on track or behind where they should be.

(16:46):

The school district is in a better position, and teachers and the data the district has is in a better position to sort of help parents do that. But I don't think there was a lot of communication always of that. And so I think one of the things parents can do is really talk to the teachers and the principals to sort of understand where is their child at and where are kids at in their community? And then think about, what resources can they bring? How can they advocate for their child? How can they advocate for another child to make sure that the kids who are behind are really getting the resources they need?

Denise Pope (17:18):

I know there's also ... You talked about the federal funding, right? ESSR, other funds like that. And I know that they're ending right now. But it sounds like even though you said it wasn't all about money, some of it was about money. So is there a way that an individual can rally their congressperson, or ... I don't know. How can we get this money back?

Sean Reardon (17:40):

Yeah. The federal government provided school districts with 190 billion dollars starting early in the pandemic, and it'll end this year. That sounds like a lot of money, but that actually is only about less than one third of the annual budget we spend on education. So spread out over four years or so, it's not a ton of money per child. And that money has mostly been spent, and the rest of it needs to be spent in the next six to nine months, and we're not going to be fully recovered in lots of these districts, particularly the low income districts, by then.

(18:15):

So I think it's important for states to step in and fill the void a little bit, carry the baton, and figure out how to provide extra targeted resources to those kids and those schools and districts that still have a long way to catch up. And parents can really help advocate for that because they can talk to their state congressperson, they can talk to their superintendent, and they can help keep the pressure on to make sure that people are paying attention to those kids who need it the most.

Dan Schwartz (18:42):

So Sean, there's probably a lot of people who want to know which state's approach to shutting schools work the best; at least for educational outcomes, maybe not for mortality rates. So do you know this?

Sean Reardon (18:57):

Well, we have data actually for every school and school district in the country. And what we generally find, and other research has shown, is that the longer a school district was in a remote or hybrid instruction mode, the further behind kids fell.

(19:13):

But really, remote schooling only explains a small part of the learning losses. I mean, you have to remember, the pandemic was an all encompassing global event. It wasn't just that kids were suddenly learning on Zoom. They were also not able to see their friends, not able to participate in extracurriculars.

Denise Pope (19:32):

Yes, exactly. These kids' lives really were disrupted in every way possible during the pandemic, and it's all playing a part in where we are today.

(19:42):

Thank you so much, Sean, for being here. We learned so much. Thank you, thank you. We learned so much about learning loss, and we're really glad to hear about the recovery underway.

Dan Schwartz (19:52):

Yes. Thank you, Sean. Your research makes it clear that the most vulnerable students are also the ones who suffered the most during this time. It's a stark reminder of how crucial it is to address inequality and educational opportunity.

Denise Pope (20:07):

Agreed, Dan. Agreed. But all hope isn't lost here. And I think there is a lot we as educators and as parents can do to help. For parents, get involved as much as you can; connect with teachers to see how your kid is doing, offer resources if you have that ability, and ultimately just continue to advocate for your child.

Dan Schwartz (20:26):

And for educators, keep showing up for the kids like you have been. I know this is a lot of extra work, it's hard work, but it makes a difference. So connect with parents, keep them informed as much as we can, have patience, and help these kids climb back.

Denise Pope (20:42):

100%, Dan. I could not agree more.

(20:44):

Thank you again to our guest, Sean Reardon for this really enlightening conversation. And thank all of you for joining us on this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in.

(20:58):

I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (20:59):

I'm Dan Schwartz.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope , sean reardon

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