The Hechinger Report

11/14/2025

Proof Points columnist Jill Barshay explains why one reading expert argues that giving students easy texts is holding back US reading achievement.

11/14/2025

Thirty states now limit or ban cellphone use in classrooms, and teachers are noticing children paying attention to their lessons again. But it’s not clear whether this policy — unpopular with students and a headache for teachers to enforce — makes an academic difference.

Indeed, it did.

Student test scores rose a bit more in high cellphone usage schools two years after the ban compared with schools that had lower cellphone usage to start. Students were also attending school more regularly.

The policy also came with a troubling side effect. The cellphone bans led to a significant increase in student suspensions in the first year, especially among Black students. But disciplinary actions declined during the second year.

“Cellphone bans are not a silver bullet,” said David Figlio, an economist at the University of Rochester and one of the study’s co-authors. “But they seem to be helping kids. They’re attending school more, and they’re performing a bit better on tests.”

If student achievement goes up after a cellphone ban, it’s tough to know if the ban was the reason. Some other change in math or reading instruction might have caused the improvement. Or maybe the state assessment became easier to pass. Imagine if politicians required all students to wear striped shirts and test scores rose. Few would really think that stripes made kids smarter.

Two researchers from the University of Rochester and RAND, a nonprofit research organization, figured out a clever way to tackle this question by taking advantage of cellphone activity data in one large school district in Florida, which in 2023 became the first state to institute school cellphone restrictions. The researchers compared schools that had high cellphone activity before the ban with those that had low cellphone usage to see if the ban made a bigger difference for schools that had high usage.

Indeed, it did.

Student test scores rose a bit more in high cellphone usage schools two years after the ban compared with schools that had lower cellphone usage to start. Students were also attending school more regularly.

The policy also came with a troubling side effect. The cellphone bans led to a significant increase in student suspensions in the first year, especially among Black students. But disciplinary actions declined during the second year.

11/13/2025

In New Orleans, a few hundred dollars could once help a family buy a “gifted” designation for their preschooler. As an education reporter for the city’s Times-Picayune newspaper several years ago, I discovered that there was a two-tiered system for determining whether 3-year-olds met that mark, which, in New Orleans, entitled them to gifted-only prekindergarten programs at a few of the city’s most highly sought-after public schools. Families could sit on a lengthy waitlist and have their children tested at the district central office for free. Or they could pay the money for the private test....

Researchers say that young children are growing and developing too quickly for tests to capture their intelligence accurate, but testing policies are still widespread.

11/10/2025

Even with the government shut down, lots of people are thinking about how to reimagine federal education research. Public comments on how to reform the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the Education Department’s research and statistics arm, were due on Oct. 15. A total of 434 suggestions were submitted, but no one can read them because the department isn’t allowed to post them publicly until the government reopens. (We know the number because the comment entry page has an automatic counter.) A complex numbers game There’s broad agreement across the political spectrum that federal education statistics are essential....

But new hires and fresh research grants hint at a quiet rebuilding effort

11/10/2025

This story was produced in partnership with Teen Vogue and reprinted with permission. Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration largely comes from family members, who have been involved in local politics and activism since long before he was born. But policies from the Trump administration and the Ohio Legislature are complicating his college experience — and his plans to become a politician. Cade is a student at Ohio State University double-majoring in public policy analysis and political science with a focus on American political theory. He recalls his maternal grandmother, Maude Hill — who had a large hand in raising him — talking to him about her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement....

This story was produced in partnership with Teen Vogue and reprinted with permission.  This story also appeared in Teen Vogue Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration largely comes from family members, who have been involved in local politics and activism since long before he...

11/10/2025

This fall, some 19 million undergraduates returned to U.S. campuses with a long-held expectation: Graduate, land an entry-level job, climb the career ladder. That formula is breaking down. Once reliable gateway jobs for college graduates in industries like finance, consulting and journalism have tightened requirements. Many entry-level job postings that previously provided initial working experience for college graduates now require two to three years of prior experience, while AI, a recent analysis concluded, “snaps up good entry-level tasks,” especially routine work like drafting memos, preparing spreadsheets and summarizing research. Without these proving grounds, new hires lose chances to build skills by doing....

Many entry-level jobs that previously provided initial workforce experience for college graduates now require two to three years of prior experience, leading to higher unemployment for college graduates. Here are five solutions.

11/07/2025

HALIFAX COUNTY, N.C. — When Ivy McFarland first traveled from her native Honduras to teach elementary Spanish in North Carolina, she spent a week in Chapel Hill for orientation. By the end of that week, McFarland realized the college town on the outskirts of Raleigh was nowhere near where she’d actually be teaching. On the car ride to her school district, the city faded into the suburbs. Those suburbs turned into farmland. The farmland stretched into more farmland, until, two hours later, she made it to her new home in rural Halifax County....

In Halifax County, North Carolina, 101 of 156 teachers are international. A new $100,000 H-1B visa fee could effectively slam the door on future hires.

11/06/2025

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As principal of Hartsfield Elementary School in the Leon County School District, John Olson is not just the lead educator, but in this era of fast-expanding school choice, also its chief salesperson. He works to drum up enrollment by speaking to parent and church groups, offering private tours and giving Hartsfield parents his cell phone number. He fields calls on nights, weekends and holidays. With the building at just 61 percent capacity, Olson is frank about the hustle required: “Customer service is key.” It’s no secret that many public schools are in a battle for students....

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As principal of Hartsfield Elementary School in the Leon County School District, John Olson is not just the lead educator, but in this era of fast-expanding school choice, also its chief salesperson. This story also appeared in Chalkbeat He works to drum up enrollment by speaki...

11/05/2025

LA JOLLA, Calif. — On a Thursday this fall, hundreds of students at the University of California, San Diego, were heading to classes that, at least on paper, seemed to have very little to do with their majors. Hannah Jenny, an economics and math major, was on their way to a class on sustainable development. Angelica Pulido, a history major who aspires to work in the museum world, was getting ready for a course on gender and climate justice. Later that evening, others would show up for a lecture on economics of the environment, where they would learn how to calculate the answer to questions such as: “How many cents extra per gallon of gas are people willing to pay to protect seals from oil spills?”...

University of California, San Diego, requires all students to learn about climate change, while other schools have added environmental sustainability requirements.

11/05/2025

After he graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Drew Wesson hopes to begin a career in strategic communication, a field with higher-than-average job growth and earnings. One year into his time at the university, Wesson became more strategic about this goal. Like nearly 1 in 3 of his classmates, he declared a second major to better stand out in an unpredictable labor market. It’s part of a trend that’s spreading nationwide, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data, as students fret about getting jobs in an economy that some fear is shifting faster than a traditional college education can keep up....

The practice of double-majoring is rising at many colleges and universities as students fret about getting jobs in an economy seemingly shifting faster than single majors can keep up.

11/04/2025

The year I co-taught world history and English language arts with two colleagues, we were tasked with telling the story of the world in 180 days to about 120 ninth graders. We invited students to consider how texts and histories speak to one another: “The Analects” as imperial governance, “Sundiata” as Mali’s political memory, “Julius Caesar” as a window into the unraveling of a republic. By winter, our students had given us nicknames. Some days, we were a triumvirate. Some days, we were Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades. It was a joke, but it held a deeper meaning....

There’s a growing push to use AI to teach faster. These tools are fast, but shallow. They fail to capture the nuance, care and complexity that deep learning demands.

11/03/2025

New York City, where I live, will elect a new mayor Tuesday, Nov. 4. The two front runners — state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent — have largely ignored the city’s biggest single budget item: education. One exception has been gifted education, which has generated a sharp debate between the two candidates. The controversy is over a tiny fraction of the student population. Only 18,000 students are in the city’s gifted and talented program out of more than 900,000 public school students....

Research evidence for two education issues that have come up in the New York City mayoral election: gifted education and small class sizes.