controversial issues on education

The 10 Education Issues Everybody Should Be Talking About

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What issues have the potential to define—or re define—education in the year ahead? Is there a next “big thing” that could shift the K-12 experience or conversation?

These were the questions Education Week set out to answer in this second annual “10 Big Ideas in Education” report.

You can read about last year’s ideas here . In 2019, though, things are different.

This year, we asked Education Week reporters to read the tea leaves and analyze what was happening in classrooms, school districts, and legislatures across the country. What insights could reporters offer practitioners for the year ahead?

Some of the ideas here are speculative. Some are warning shots, others more optimistic. But all 10 of them here have one thing in common: They share a sense of urgency.

Accompanied by compelling illustrations and outside perspectives from leading researchers, advocates, and practitioners, this year’s Big Ideas might make you uncomfortable, or seem improbable. The goal was to provoke and empower you as you consider them.

Let us know what you think, and what big ideas matter to your classroom, school, or district. Tweet your comments with #K12BigIdeas .

No. 1: Kids are right. School is boring.

Out-of-school learning is often more meaningful than anything that happens in a classroom, writes Kevin Bushweller, the Executive Editor of EdWeek Market Brief. His essay tackling the relevance gap is accompanied by a Q&A with advice on nurturing, rather than stifling students’ natural curiosity. Read more.

No. 2: Teachers have trust issues. And it’s no wonder why.

Many teachers may have lost faith in the system, says Andrew Ujifusa, but they haven’t lost hope. The Assistant Editor unpacks this year’s outbreak of teacher activism. And read an account from a disaffected educator on how he built a coalition of his own. Read more.

No. 3: Special education is broken.

Forty years since students with disabilities were legally guaranteed a public school education, many still don’t receive the education they deserve, writes Associate Editor Christina A. Samuels. Delve into her argument and hear from a disability civil rights pioneer on how to create an equitable path for students. Read more.

No. 4: Schools are embracing bilingualism, but only for some students.

Staff Writer Corey Mitchell explains the inclusion problem at the heart of bilingual education. His essay includes a perspective from a researcher on dismantling elite bilingualism. Read more.

No. 5: A world without annual testing may be closer than you think.

There’s agreement that we have a dysfunctional standardized-testing system in the United States, Associate Editor Stephen Sawchuk writes. But killing it would come with some serious tradeoffs. Sawchuk’s musing on the alternatives to annual tests is accompanied by an argument for more rigorous classroom assignments by a teacher-practice expert. Read more.

No. 6: There are lessons to be learned from the educational experiences of black students in military families.

Drawing on his personal experience growing up in an Air Force family, Staff Writer Daarel Burnette II highlights emerging research on military-connected students. Learn more about his findings and hear from two researchers on what a new ESSA mandate means for these students. Read more.

No. 7: School segregation is not an intractable American problem.

Racial and economic segregation remains deeply entrenched in American schools. Staff Writer Denisa R. Superville considers the six steps one district is taking to change that. Her analysis is accompanied by an essay from the president of the American Educational Research Association on what is perpetuating education inequality. Read more.

No. 8: Consent doesn’t just belong in sex ed. class. It needs to start a lot earlier.

Assistant Editor Sarah D. Sparks looked at the research on teaching consent and found schools and families do way too little, way too late. Her report is partnered with a researcher’s practical guide to developmentally appropriate consent education. Read more.

No. 9: Education has an innovation problem.

Are education leaders spending too much time chasing the latest tech trends to maintain what they have? Staff Writer Benjamin Herold explores the innovation trap. Two technologists offer three tips for putting maintenance front and center in school management. Read more.

No. 10: There are two powerful forces changing college admissions.

Some colleges are rewriting the admissions script for potential students. Senior Contributing Writer Catherine Gewertz surveys this changing college admissions landscape. Her insights are accompanied by one teacher’s advice for navigating underserved students through the college application process. Read more.

Wait, there’s more.

Want to know what educators really think about innovation? A new Education Week Research Center survey delves into what’s behind the common buzzword for teachers, principals, and district leaders. Take a look at the survey results.

A version of this article appeared in the January 09, 2019 edition of Education Week as What’s on the Horizon for 2019?

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

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Neuroscience should be integrated into education policies

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

2. Reversing learning losses at home and at school

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

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

3. Use of evidence to improve teaching and learning

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

4. The role of the private sector

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

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

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Consultant, Education Sector, World Bank

Senior Adviser, Education

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clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions

How politics and the pandemic put schools in the line of fire

A previous version of this story incorrectly said that 39 percent of American children were on track in math. That is the percentage performing below grade level.

Test scores are down, and violence is up . Parents are screaming at school boards , and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.

For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down. Absenteeism is up. There aren’t enough teachers, substitutes or bus drivers. Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.

Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades, and it reaches into almost everything that educators do: from teaching math, to counseling anxious children, to managing the building.

Political battles are now a central feature of education, leaving school boards, educators and students in the crosshairs of culture warriors. Schools are on the defensive about their pandemic decision-making, their curriculums, their policies regarding race and racial equity and even the contents of their libraries. Republicans — who see education as a winning political issue — are pressing their case for more “parental control,” or the right to second-guess educators’ choices. Meanwhile, an energized school choice movement has capitalized on the pandemic to promote alternatives to traditional public schools.

“The temperature is way up to a boiling point,” said Nat Malkus, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “If it isn’t a crisis now, you never get to crisis.”

Experts reach for comparisons. The best they can find is the earthquake following Brown v. Board of Education , when the Supreme Court ordered districts to desegregate and White parents fled from their cities’ schools. That was decades ago.

Today, the cascading problems are felt acutely by the administrators, teachers and students who walk the hallways of public schools across the country. Many say they feel unprecedented levels of stress in their daily lives.

Remote learning, the toll of illness and death, and disruptions to a dependable routine have left students academically behind — particularly students of color and those from poor families. Behavior problems ranging from inability to focus in class all the way to deadly gun violence have gripped campuses. Many students and teachers say they are emotionally drained, and experts predict schools will be struggling with the fallout for years to come.

Teresa Rennie, an eighth-grade math and science teacher in Philadelphia, said in 11 years of teaching, she has never referred this many children to counseling.

“So many students are needy. They have deficits academically. They have deficits socially,” she said. Rennie said that she’s drained, too. “I get 45 minutes of a prep most days, and a lot of times during that time I’m helping a student with an assignment, or a child is crying and I need to comfort them and get them the help they need. Or there’s a problem between two students that I need to work with. There’s just not enough time.”

Many wonder: How deep is the damage?

Learning lost

At the start of the pandemic, experts predicted that students forced into remote school would pay an academic price. They were right.

“The learning losses have been significant thus far and frankly I’m worried that we haven’t stopped sinking,” said Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institutes for Research.

Some of the best data come from the nationally administered assessment called i-Ready, which tests students three times a year in reading and math, allowing researchers to compare performance of millions of students against what would be expected absent the pandemic. It found significant declines, especially among the youngest students and particularly in math.

The low point was fall 2020, when all students were coming off a spring of chaotic, universal remote classes. By fall 2021 there were some improvements, but even then, academic performance remained below historic norms.

Take third grade, a pivotal year for learning and one that predicts success going forward. In fall 2021, 38 percent of third-graders were below grade level in reading, compared with 31 percent historically. In math, 39 percent of students were below grade level, vs. 29 percent historically.

Damage was most severe for students from the lowest-income families, who were already performing at lower levels.

A McKinsey & Co. study found schools with majority-Black populations were five months behind pre-pandemic levels, compared with majority-White schools, which were two months behind. Emma Dorn, a researcher at McKinsey, describes a “K-shaped” recovery, where kids from wealthier families are rebounding and those in low-income homes continue to decline.

“Some students are recovering and doing just fine. Other people are not,” she said. “I’m particularly worried there may be a whole cohort of students who are disengaged altogether from the education system.”

A hunt for teachers, and bus drivers

Schools, short-staffed on a good day, had little margin for error as the omicron variant of the coronavirus swept over the country this winter and sidelined many teachers. With a severe shortage of substitutes, teachers had to cover other classes during their planning periods, pushing prep work to the evenings. San Francisco schools were so strapped that the superintendent returned to the classroom on four days this school year to cover middle school math and science classes. Classes were sometimes left unmonitored or combined with others into large groups of unglorified study halls.

“The pandemic made an already dire reality even more devastating,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, referring to the shortages.

In 2016, there were 1.06 people hired for every job listing. That figure has steadily dropped, reaching 0.59 hires for each opening last year, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. In 2013, there were 557,320 substitute teachers, the BLS reported. In 2020, the number had fallen to 415,510. Virtually every district cites a need for more subs.

It’s led to burnout as teachers try to fill in the gaps.

“The overall feelings of teachers right now are ones of just being exhausted, beaten down and defeated, and just out of gas. Expectations have been piled on educators, even before the pandemic, but nothing is ever removed,” said Jennifer Schlicht, a high school teacher in Olathe, Kan., outside Kansas City.

Research shows the gaps in the number of available educators are most acute in areas including special education and educators who teach English language learners, as well as substitutes. And all school year, districts have been short on bus drivers , who have been doubling up routes, and forcing late school starts and sometimes cancellations for lack of transportation.

Many educators predict that fed-up teachers will probably quit, exacerbating the problem. And they say political attacks add to the burnout. Teachers are under scrutiny over lesson plans, and critics have gone after teachers unions, which for much of the pandemic demanded remote learning.

“It’s just created an environment that people don’t want to be part of anymore,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association. “People want to take care of kids, not to be accused and punished and criticized.”

Falling enrollment

Traditional public schools educate the vast majority of American children, but enrollment has fallen, a worrisome trend that could have lasting repercussions. Enrollment in traditional public schools fell to less than 49.4 million students in fall 2020 , a 2.7 percent drop from a year earlier .

National data for the current school year is not yet available. But if the trend continues, that will mean less money for public schools as federal and state funding are both contingent on the number of students enrolled. For now, schools have an infusion of federal rescue money that must be spent by 2024.

Some students have shifted to private or charter schools. A rising number , especially Black families , opted for home schooling. And many young children who should have been enrolling in kindergarten delayed school altogether. The question has been: will these students come back?

Some may not. Preliminary data for 19 states compiled by Nat Malkus, of the American Enterprise Institute, found seven states where enrollment dropped in fall 2020 and then dropped even further in 2021. His data show 12 states that saw declines in 2020 but some rebounding in 2021 — though not one of them was back to 2019 enrollment levels.

Joshua Goodman, associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, studied enrollment in Michigan schools and found high-income, White families moved to private schools to get in-person school. Far more common, though, were lower-income Black families shifting to home schooling or other remote options because they were uncomfortable with the health risks of in person.

“Schools were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t,” Goodman said.

At the same time, charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded, saw enrollment increase by 7 percent, or nearly 240,000 students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. There’s also been a surge in home schooling. Private schools saw enrollment drop slightly in 2020-21 but then rebound this academic year, for a net growth of 1.7 percent over two years, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents 1,600 U.S. schools.

Absenteeism on the rise

Even if students are enrolled, they won’t get much schooling if they don’t show up.

Last school year, the number of students who were chronically absent — meaning they have missed more than 10 percent of school days — nearly doubled from before the pandemic, according to data from a variety of states and districts studied by EveryDay Labs, a company that works with districts to improve attendance.

This school year, the numbers got even worse.

In Connecticut, for instance, the number of chronically absent students soared from 12 percent in 2019-20 to 20 percent the next year to 24 percent this year, said Emily Bailard, chief executive of the company. In Oakland, Calif., they went from 17.3 percent pre-pandemic to 19.8 percent last school year to 43 percent this year. In Pittsburgh, chronic absences stayed where they were last school year at about 25 percent, then shot up to 45 percent this year.

“We all expected that this year would look much better,” Bailard said. One explanation for the rise may be that schools did not keep careful track of remote attendance last year and the numbers understated the absences then, she said.

The numbers were the worst for the most vulnerable students. This school year in Connecticut, for instance, 24 percent of all students were chronically absent, but the figure topped 30 percent for English-learners, students with disabilities and those poor enough to qualify for free lunch. Among students experiencing homelessness, 56 percent were chronically absent.

Fights and guns

Schools are open for in-person learning almost everywhere, but students returned emotionally unsettled and unable to conform to normally accepted behavior. At its most benign, teachers are seeing kids who cannot focus in class, can’t stop looking at their phones, and can’t figure out how to interact with other students in all the normal ways. Many teachers say they seem younger than normal.

Amy Johnson, a veteran teacher in rural Randolph, Vt., said her fifth-graders had so much trouble being together that the school brought in a behavioral specialist to work with them three hours each week.

“My students are not acclimated to being in the same room together,” she said. “They don’t listen to each other. They cannot interact with each other in productive ways. When I’m teaching I might have three or five kids yelling at me all at the same time.”

That loss of interpersonal skills has also led to more fighting in hallways and after school. Teachers and principals say many incidents escalate from small disputes because students lack the habit of remaining calm. Many say the social isolation wrought during remote school left them with lower capacity to manage human conflict.

Just last week, a high-schooler in Los Angeles was accused of stabbing another student in a school hallway, police on the big island of Hawaii arrested seven students after an argument escalated into a fight, and a Baltimore County, Md., school resource officer was injured after intervening in a fight during the transition between classes.

There’s also been a steep rise in gun violence. In 2021, there were at least 42 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during regular hours, the most during any year since at least 1999, according to a Washington Post database . The most striking of 2021 incidents was the shooting in Oxford, Mich., that killed four. There have been already at least three shootings in 2022.

Back to school has brought guns, fighting and acting out

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security, which maintains its own database of K-12 school shootings using a different methodology, totaled nine active shooter incidents in schools in 2021, in addition to 240 other incidents of gunfire on school grounds. So far in 2022, it has recorded 12 incidents. The previous high, in 2019, was 119 total incidents.

David Riedman, lead researcher on the K-12 School Shooting Database, points to four shootings on Jan. 19 alone, including at Anacostia High School in D.C., where gunshots struck the front door of the school as a teen sprinted onto the campus, fleeing a gunman.

Seeing opportunity

Fueling the pressure on public schools is an ascendant school-choice movement that promotes taxpayer subsidies for students to attend private and religious schools, as well as publicly funded charter schools, which are privately run. Advocates of these programs have seen the public system’s woes as an excellent opportunity to push their priorities.

EdChoice, a group that promotes these programs, tallies seven states that created new school choice programs last year. Some are voucher-type programs where students take some of their tax dollars with them to private schools. Others offer tax credits for donating to nonprofit organizations, which give scholarships for school expenses. Another 15 states expanded existing programs, EdChoice says.

The troubles traditional schools have had managing the pandemic has been key to the lobbying, said Michael McShane, director of national research for EdChoice. “That is absolutely an argument that school choice advocates make, for sure.”

If those new programs wind up moving more students from public to private systems, that could further weaken traditional schools, even as they continue to educate the vast majority of students.

Kevin G. Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, who opposes school choice programs, sees the surge of interest as the culmination of years of work to undermine public education. He is both impressed by the organization and horrified by the results.

“I wish that organizations supporting public education had the level of funding and coordination that I’ve seen in these groups dedicated to its privatization,” he said.

A final complication: Politics

Rarely has education been such a polarizing political topic.

Republicans, fresh off Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race, have concluded that key to victory is a push for parental control and “parents rights.” That’s a nod to two separate topics.

First, they are capitalizing on parent frustrations over pandemic policies, including school closures and mandatory mask policies. The mask debate, which raged at the start of the school year, got new life this month after Youngkin ordered Virginia schools to allow students to attend without face coverings.

The notion of parental control also extends to race, and objections over how American history is taught. Many Republicans also object to school districts’ work aimed at racial equity in their systems, a basket of policies they have dubbed critical race theory. Critics have balked at changes in admissions to elite school in the name of racial diversity, as was done in Fairfax, Va. , and San Francisco ; discussion of White privilege in class ; and use of the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which suggests slavery and racism are at the core of American history.

“Everything has been politicized,” said Domenech, of AASA. “You’re beside yourself saying, ‘How did we ever get to this point?’”

Part of the challenge going forward is that the pandemic is not over. Each time it seems to be easing, it returns with a variant vengeance, forcing schools to make politically and educationally sensitive decisions about the balance between safety and normalcy all over again.

At the same time, many of the problems facing public schools feed on one another. Students who are absent will probably fall behind in learning, and those who fall behind are likely to act out.

A similar backlash exists regarding race. For years, schools have been under pressure to address racism in their systems and to teach it in their curriculums, pressure that intensified after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Many districts responded, and that opened them up to countervailing pressures from those who find schools overly focused on race.

Some high-profile boosters of public education are optimistic that schools can move past this moment. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona last week promised, “It will get better.” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “If we can rebuild community-education relations, if we can rebuild trust, public education will not only survive but has a real chance to thrive.”

But the path back is steep, and if history is a guide, the wealthiest schools will come through reasonably well, while those serving low-income communities will struggle. Steve Matthews, superintendent of the 6,900-student Novi Community School District in Michigan, just northwest of Detroit, said his district will probably face a tougher road back than wealthier nearby districts that are, for instance, able to pay teachers more.

“Resource issues. Trust issues. De-professionalization of teaching is making it harder to recruit teachers,” he said. “A big part of me believes schools are in a long-term crisis.”

Valerie Strauss contributed to this report.

The pandemic’s impact on education

The latest: Updated coronavirus booster shots are now available for children as young as 5 . To date, more than 10.5 million children have lost one or both parents or caregivers during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the classroom: Amid a teacher shortage, states desperate to fill teaching jobs have relaxed job requirements as staffing crises rise in many schools . American students’ test scores have even plummeted to levels unseen for decades. One D.C. school is using COVID relief funds to target students on the verge of failure .

Higher education: College and university enrollment is nowhere near pandemic level, experts worry. ACT and SAT testing have rebounded modestly since the massive disruptions early in the coronavirus pandemic, and many colleges are also easing mask rules .

DMV news: Most of Prince George’s students are scoring below grade level on district tests. D.C. Public School’s new reading curriculum is designed to help improve literacy among the city’s youngest readers.

You Want to Teach What?

• Posted February 2, 2022
• By Emily Boudreau
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education
• Teachers and Teaching

Many teachers worry about bringing controversy into the classroom because it could spark conflict between students or result in reproaches from administrators or parents, but addressing and thinking through divisive issues is necessary for children who are learning to live, participate, and empathize with diverse perspectives in a democracy.

University of San Francisco professor  Judy Pace , an alum of Harvard Graduate School of Education, has studied the predicaments and possibilities of tackling charged topics in class. In her recent book, Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues , she explores how preservice programs prepare teachers to include controversial issues in their teaching . 

What Is a Controversial Issue?

Importantly, Pace notes that controversial issues are not the same as controversial topics, which are polarizing subjects that some stakeholders argue should not be taught. Instead, controversial issues “have to do with open questions  that are significant in terms of society or the past on which it is important to explore different perspectives that have legitimate sources of information,” says Pace. “We’re not talking about something like, ‘Do humans contribute to climate change?’ because that’s a settled question.” For example, open questions that introduce controversial issues and promote critical thinking could range from, “Should we lower the voting age?” to “What kinds of reparations should be paid to the descendants of enslaved people?”

Preparing Teachers for Controversy in Classrooms

Of course, generating these kinds of questions and leading students through open and fair discussions requires skilled teachers. To better understand how educators learn to teach controversial issues, Pace conducted a series of interviews with and observations of four teacher educators — instructors who teach people how to be teachers — and 15 preservice teachers in three different countries including the United States, Northern Ireland, and England.  

While the preservice teachers often worried about the risks associated with teaching controversial issues, Pace noted that the teacher educators acknowledged these anxieties and taught specific strategies to help address these concerns, rather than ignoring them. “In these methods courses, [teacher educators] encouraged [preservice] teachers to explore controversial issues using a variety of pedagogical approaches” that contained the risks, says Pace. Preservice teachers, she found, were often able to adapt the strategies they learned to fit their teaching contexts and their own identities as teachers. “I think [contained risk-taking] provides a way forward in this incredibly contentious political climate we’re trying to navigate.”

Controversial issues "have to do with open questions that are significant in terms of society or the past on which it is important to explore different perspectives that have legitimate sources of information. We’re not talking about something like, ‘do humans contribute to climate change?’ because that’s a settled question.”

Here, Pace provides a few instructional resources, strategies, and practices educators can use when teaching controversial issues:

• Know your students and understand the community.  “I’d hope every teacher from day one would start developing a culture of trust and respect,” says Pace. A supportive environment provides a foundation for a classroom where students feel they can express themselves and explore ideas. Drawing on existing research , Pace recommends teachers use preliminary surveys to get to know where students stand on issues and what issues they care most about to prepare for discussions and know what voices and perspectives to bring into the conversation.
• Communicate clearly.  Teachers should be transparent about their rationale for teaching a particular issue and explain how they’re approaching it — the goal is not to get students to adopt a particular stance but to get them to think critically. Parents and administrators should also have an awareness of what’s going on. “I think when teachers are transparent about why and how they’re doing this and keep the lines of communication open, that makes people feel less threatened and less likely to jump to conclusions about what’s going on in the classroom,” says Pace.
• Be thoughtful when selecting issues.  Again, controversial issues are not the same as controversial topics. They should be related to the curriculum, draw from valid information sources, and should be framed as open questions. Additionally, teachers shouldn’t lead with the most charged discussions but gradually build up student capacity for these issues as the year progresses. Resources like Civic Online Reasoning can help.
• Structured academic controversy , where students take turns understanding different perspectives presented by sources before coming to a compromise or consensus.
• Town hall meetings , where groups of students present differing viewpoints and then answer questions before reflecting on their own position.
• Walking debates , where students physically identify whether they agree or disagree with a particular statement before discussing.
• Leave room to reflect.  Try to leave time, if not at the end of the class at the end of the week, for students to address emotions, reflect, and debrief. Use writing as a vehicle for individual reflection. This is beneficial not just for students but for teachers as well. Teachers should also find colleagues they can process and reflect with. Additionally, be aware of your own limitations, blind spots, or biases. Actively seek out professional development to provide additional support and to build facilitation skills.

More on teaching controversies from Pace's website.  

Additional Resources

• Teaching Hard Histories
• Civics in Uncivil Times
• Harvard Ed Cast: Teaching Across a Political Divide
• Teaching Controversial Issues (EdSource Podcast)
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From slavery to socialism, new legislation restricts what teachers can discuss

Terry Gross

A third-grade teacher conducts class in Rye, N.Y. Researcher Jeffrey Sachs says that since January 2021, 35 states have introduced legislation limiting topics that schools can teach. Mary Altaffer/AP hide caption

A third-grade teacher conducts class in Rye, N.Y. Researcher Jeffrey Sachs says that since January 2021, 35 states have introduced legislation limiting topics that schools can teach.

Across the U.S., educators are being censored for broaching controversial topics. Since January 2021, researcher Jeffrey Sachs says, 35 states have introduced 137 bills limiting what schools can teach with regard to race, American history, politics, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sachs has been tracking this legislation for PEN America , a writers organization dedicated to free speech. He says the recent flurry of legislation has created a "minefield" for educators trying to figure out how to teach topics such as slavery, Jim Crow laws or the Holocaust. One proposed law in South Carolina, for instance, prohibits teachers from discussing any topic that creates "discomfort, guilt or anguish" on the basis of political belief.

"That means that a teacher would have to be very, very careful about how they discuss something like, let's say, fascism or racism or antisemitism," Sachs says. "These are political beliefs, and it means that teachers are going to have to second-guess whether they can describe that political belief in as forthright and honest a way as we wish for fear of falling afoul of this bill."

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Critical race theory , an academic approach that examines how race and racism function in American institutions, has inspired a backlash in conservative circles across the United States. In one of his first acts in office, Glenn Youngkin , the Republican governor of Virginia, established a hotline to allow parents or members of the community to report critical race theory in the classroom. Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, a conservative mom's group is offering a $500 bounty to catch teachers who break a state law prohibiting certain teachings about racism and sexism.

"I think it must be a very terrifying time to be an educator at any level in higher ed or in K-12," Sachs says.

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"You have, unfortunately, the kinds of daily stressors that we've all become used to because of COVID," he says. "And now on top of that, these educators are trying to negotiate outraged parents and media pundits. ... When you listen to what educators are saying, they're burned out, and many of them, I think, will head for the exits."

Interview highlights

On how some of the proposed bills would be impossible to comply with

Some of the bills — I would say many now — include a provision that says something to the effect of: Teachers cannot be compelled to discuss a controversial contemporary issue, but if they do, they must do so evenhandedly and without any kind of favoritism. However, many of those same bills also would require teachers to denounce, in the strongest possible terms, ideas like Marxism or socialism.

For instance, a bill in Indiana that is currently under consideration would require, among other things, that in the run-up to any general election in the state, students must be taught "socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded." And it goes on to say as such, "socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States."

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The issue there, among many others, is that it's a bill requiring students to be exposed to this litany of claims about different ideologies. And it also requires that in doing so, teachers cannot show favoritism or bias in any one direction. In other words, it's a bill that can't possibly actually work. Teachers are being pulled in two different directions, and the consequence is going to be a kind of self-censorship.

Another Indiana bill ... prohibits teachers from including in their class any "anti-American ideologies." Now that term is never defined, and again, it's not that teachers can't endorse or promote anti-American ideologies — they're just simply forbidden from even discussing them.

On bills that address sexuality, gender and LGBTQ issues

It differs bill to bill. But again, many do include language prohibiting teachers from discussing concepts like gender fluidity. It prohibits them from discussing "nontraditional gender identities" and in many cases forbid[s] teachers from discussing controversial events that would presumably include, in many cases, ones like gay marriage or LGBTQ rights.

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We see as well many bills requiring teachers to report to parents if their children are asking questions about their gender identity, and in many cases as well — for instance, in a Florida bill — that prohibit teachers from "encouraging any conversation about sex and sexuality."

So it really puts teachers in an impossible situation. In a contemporary high school or middle school, even earlier in elementary school, these sorts of topics arise. And in particular, it would put LGBTQ teachers in a really difficult situation where they're forced, essentially, to disguise their identity or the status of their relationships in order to fend off running afoul of these bills.

On how these laws are similar to what's going on in authoritarian countries

It often gets dismissively described as "woke ideas," and more broadly, I think we would just describe these ideas that we're talking about as socially liberal ideas. And unfortunately, what we're seeing is in countries like Russia, China, in Turkey, in Hungary, we are seeing these regimes targeting educational institutions and other sites of cultural production like museums or the media, [as] an attempt to drive these ideas out — to signal that to be a "real" Russian or to be a "true" Hungarian, one must be straight, one must be socially conservative. These efforts underway in these regimes, that are either authoritarian or unfortunately trending in that direction, all signal the kind of political energy that leaders believe they can get by attacking these ideas.

On a new law that addresses the concept of systemic racism

There's a law currently on the books in North Dakota that was passed last November after just five days of consideration that has me up at night. This is a law that attempts to prohibit critical race theory in K-12 schools, and I just want to reemphasize here this is not a law that prohibits people from endorsing or promoting critical race theory. It's a law that forbids them from even including critical race theory in the classroom. And the way that that law defines critical race theory is what has me so concerned: ... "critical race theory, which is defined as the theory that racism is not merely the product of learned individual bias or prejudice, but that racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality." In other words, the law now is saying that whenever a teacher talks about racism, they may only describe it as a product of an individual's own biases or prejudices. They cannot describe it — even when the facts command them to — as something more endemic or embedded within American society. It's a way essentially of preventing teachers, I think, from being honest about a lot of the uglier sides of American history and contemporary society.

Whenever you discuss slavery, your teacher would have to essentially say, "These slaveholders were racist." The system that they were in, the laws that supported them, the economy that made that business profitable, you'd have to separate those institutional features and describe slavery purely as a product of individual bias, which does violence to the topic. It fails to educate students, and I think might discourage students from thinking critically about contemporary institutions and identifying whether or not they also might be guilty of systemic racism.

On how the idea for these restrictive teaching bills first came about

The origins here ... go back to that summer of 2020. There's a researcher there named Christopher Rufo, who was then with the Discovery Institute in Seattle. This is in a conservative educational institute centered around the promotion of intelligent design. And Christopher Rufo wrote a series of articles for an online website called City Journal . And in his City Journal articles, he detailed what he described as indoctrination in K-12 schools or in employee training programs in businesses or state agencies, programs that he said were training people to become critical race theorists.

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Those articles caught the attention of Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, and Rufo appeared on his program in early September of 2020. The very next day, he received a phone call from Mark Meadows, then chief of staff for the Trump administration. Apparently, Trump had watched the program that evening. He'd seen what Rufo had to say, and within a matter of days, Rufo was in conversation with the Trump administration on some sort of legislative or executive response. The product of that conversation was Trump's executive order in late September, where he prohibited any state agency from discussing certain ideas as part of employee training or [training for] a state contractor that wishes to do business with the federal government.

Amy Salit and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Lauren Migaki adapted it for the web.

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Trade Schools Home > Articles > Issues in Education

Major Issues in Education: 20 Hot Topics (From Grade School to College)

By Publisher | Last Updated August 1, 2023

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

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

This article provides detailed information on many of today's most relevant primary, secondary, and post-secondary education issues. It also outlines four emerging trends that have the potential to shake up the education sector. You'll learn about:

• 13 major issues in education at the K-12 level
• 7 big issues in higher education
• 5 emerging trends in education

13 Major Issues in Education at the K-12 Level

1. Government funding for education

School funding is a primary concern when discussing current issues in education. The American public education system, which includes both primary and secondary schools, is primarily funded by tax revenues. For the 2021 school year, state and local governments provided over 89 percent of the funding for public K-12 schools. After the Great Recession, most states reduced their school funding. This reduction makes sense, considering most state funding is sourced from sales and income taxes, which tend to decrease during economic downturns.

However, many states are still giving schools less cash now than they did before the Great Recession. A 2022 article from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) notes that K-12 education is set to receive the largest-ever one-time federal investment. However, the CBPP also predicts this historic funding might fall short due to pandemic-induced education costs. The formulas that states use to fund schools have come under fire in recent years and have even been the subjects of lawsuits. For example, in 2017, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the legislature's formula for financing schools was unconstitutional because it didn't adequately fund education.

Less funding means that smaller staff, fewer programs, and diminished resources for students are common school problems. In some cases, schools are unable to pay for essential maintenance. A 2021 report noted that close to a quarter of all U.S. public schools are in fair or poor condition and that 53 percent of schools need renovations and repairs. Plus, a 2021 survey discovered that teachers spent an average of $750 of their own money on classroom supplies.

The issue reached a tipping point in 2018, with teachers in Arizona, Colorado, and other states walking off the job to demand additional educational funding. Some of the protests resulted in modest funding increases, but many educators believe that more must be done.

2. School safety

Over the past several years, a string of high-profile mass shootings in U.S. schools have resulted in dozens of deaths and led to debates about the best ways to keep students safe. After 17 people were killed in a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida in 2018, 57 percent of teenagers said they were worried about the possibility of gun violence at their school.

Figuring out how to prevent such attacks and save students and school personnel's lives are problems faced by teachers all across America.

Former President Trump and other lawmakers suggested that allowing specially trained teachers and other school staff to carry concealed weapons would make schools safer. The idea was that adult volunteers who were already proficient with a firearm could undergo specialized training to deal with an active shooter situation until law enforcement could arrive. Proponents argued that armed staff could intervene to end the threat and save lives. Also, potential attackers might be less likely to target a school if they knew that the school's personnel were carrying weapons.

Critics argue that more guns in schools will lead to more accidents, injuries, and fear. They contend that there is scant evidence supporting the idea that armed school officials would effectively counter attacks. Some data suggests that the opposite may be true: An FBI analysis of active shooter situations between 2000 and 2013 noted that law enforcement personnel who engaged the shooter suffered casualties in 21 out of 45 incidents. And those were highly trained professionals whose primary purpose was to maintain law and order. It's highly unlikely that teachers, whose focus should be on educating children, would do any better in such situations.

According to the National Education Association (NEA), giving teachers guns is not the answer. In a March 2018 survey , 74 percent of NEA members opposed arming school personnel, and two-thirds said they would feel less safe at work if school staff were carrying guns. To counter gun violence in schools, the NEA supports measures like requiring universal background checks, preventing mentally ill people from purchasing guns, and banning assault weapons.

3. Disciplinary policies

Data from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights in 2021 suggests that black students face disproportionately high rates of suspension and expulsion from school. For instance, in K-12 schools, black male students make up only 7.7 percent of enrollees but account for over 40% percent of suspensions. Many people believe some teachers apply the rules of discipline in a discriminatory way and contribute to what has been termed the "school-to-prison pipeline." That's because research has demonstrated that students who are suspended or expelled are significantly more likely to become involved with the juvenile justice system.

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education issued guidelines for all public schools on developing disciplinary practices that reduce disparities and comply with federal civil rights laws. The guidelines urged schools to limit exclusionary disciplinary tactics such as suspension and expulsion. They also encourage the adoption of more positive interventions such as counseling and restorative justice strategies. In addition, the guidelines specified that schools could face a loss of federal funds if they carried out policies that had a disparate impact on some racial groups.

Opponents argue that banning suspensions and expulsions takes away valuable tools that teachers can use to combat student misbehavior. They maintain that as long as disciplinary policies are applied the same way to every student regardless of race, such policies are not discriminatory. One major 2014 study found that the racial disparities in school suspension rates could be explained by the students' prior behavior rather than by discriminatory tactics on the part of educators.

In 2018, the Federal Commission on School Safety (which was established in the wake of the school shootings in Parkland, Florida) was tasked with reviewing and possibly rescinding the 2014 guidelines. According to an Education Next survey taken shortly after the announced review, only 27 percent of Americans support federal policies that limit racial disparities in school discipline.

4. Technology in education

Technology in education is a powerful movement that is sweeping through schools nationwide. After all, today's students have grown up with digital technology and expect it to be part of their learning experience. But how much of a role should it play in education?

Proponents point out that educational technology offers the potential to engage students in more active learning, as evidenced in flipped classrooms . It can facilitate group collaboration and provide instant access to up-to-date resources. Teachers and instructors can integrate online surveys, interactive case studies, and relevant videos to offer content tailored to different learning styles. Indeed, students with special needs frequently rely on assistive technology to communicate and access course materials.

But there are downsides as well. For instance, technology can be a distraction. Some students tune out of lessons and spend time checking social media, playing games, or shopping online. One research study revealed that students who multitasked on laptops during class scored 11 percent lower on an exam that tested their knowledge of the lecture. Students who sat behind those multitaskers scored 17 percent lower. In the fall of 2017, University of Michigan professor Susan Dynarski cited such research as one of the main reasons she bans electronics in her classes.

More disturbingly, technology can pose a real threat to student privacy and security. The collection of sensitive student data by education technology companies can lead to serious problems. In 2017, a group called Dark Overlord hacked into school district servers in several states and obtained access to students' personal information, including counselor reports and medical records. The group used the data to threaten students and their families with physical violence.

5. Charter schools and voucher programs

School choice is definitely among the hot topics in education these days. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was a vocal supporter of various forms of parental choice, including charter schools and school vouchers.

Charter schools are funded through a combination of public and private money and operate independently of the public system. They have charters (i.e., contracts) with school districts, states, or private organizations. These charters outline the academic outcomes that the schools agree to achieve. Like mainstream public schools, charter schools cannot teach religion or charge tuition, and their students must complete standardized testing . However, charter schools are not limited to taking students in a certain geographic area. They have more autonomy to choose their teaching methods. Charter schools are also subject to less oversight and fewer regulations.

School vouchers are like coupons that allow parents to use public funds to send their child to the school of their choice, which can be private and may be either secular or religious. In many cases, vouchers are reserved for low-income students or students with disabilities.

Advocates argue that charter schools and school vouchers offer parents a greater range of educational options. Opponents say that they privatize education and siphon funding away from regular public schools that are already financially strapped. The 2018 Education Next survey found that 44 percent of the general public supports charter schools' expansion, while 35 percent oppose such a move. The same poll found that 54 percent of people support vouchers.

6. Common Core

The Common Core State Standards is a set of academic standards for math and language arts that specify what public school students are expected to learn by the end of each year from kindergarten through 12th grade. Developed in 2009, the standards were designed to promote equity among public K-12 students. All students would take standardized end-of-year tests and be held to the same internationally benchmarked standards. The idea was to institute a system that brought all schools up to the same level and allowed for comparison of student performance in different regions. Such standards would help all students with college and career readiness.

Some opponents see the standards as an unwelcome federal intrusion into state control of education. Others are critical of the way the standards were developed with little input from experienced educators. Many teachers argue that the standards result in inflexible lesson plans that allow for less creativity and fun in the learning process.

Some critics also take issue with the lack of accommodation for non-traditional learners. The Common Core prescribes standards for each grade level, but students with disabilities or language barriers often need more time to fully learn the material.

The vast majority of states adopted the Common Core State Standards when they were first introduced. Since then, more than a dozen states have either repealed the standards or revised them to align better with local needs. In many cases, the standards themselves have remained virtually the same but given a different name.

And a name can be significant. In the Education Next 2018 survey, a group of American adults was asked whether they supported common standards across states. About 61 percent replied that they did. But when another group was polled about Common Core specifically, only 45 percent said they supported it.

7. Standardized testing

During the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) years, schools—and teachers—were judged by how well students scored on such tests. Schools whose results weren't up to par faced intense scrutiny, and in some cases, state takeover or closure. Teachers' effectiveness was rated by how much improvement their students showed on standardized exams. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which took effect in 2016, removed NCLB's most punitive aspects. Still, it maintained the requirement to test students every year in Grades 3 to 8, and once in high school.

But many critics say that rampant standardized testing is one of the biggest problems in education. They argue that the pressure to produce high test scores has resulted in a teach-to-the-test approach to instruction in which other non-tested subjects (such as art, music, and physical education) have been given short shrift to devote more time to test preparation. And they contend that policymakers overemphasize the meaning of standardized test results, which don't present a clear or complete picture of overall student learning.

8. Teacher salaries

According to 2021-22 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in most states, teacher pay has decreased over the last several years. However, in some states average salaries went up. It's also important to note that public school teachers generally enjoy pensions and other benefits that make up a large share of their compensation.

But the growth in benefits has not been enough to balance out the overall low wages. An Economic Policy Institute report found that even after factoring in benefits, public-sector teachers faced a compensation penalty of 14.2 percent in 2021 relative to other college graduates.

9. The teaching of evolution

In the U.S., public school originated to spread religious ideals, but it has since become a strictly secular institution. And the debate over how to teach public school students about the origins of life has gone on for almost a century.

Today, Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection is accepted by virtually the entire scientific community. However, it is still controversial among many Americans who maintain that living things were guided into existence. A pair of surveys from 2014 revealed that 98 percent of scientists aligned with the American Association for the Advancement of Science believed that humans evolved. But it also revealed that, overall, only 52 percent of American adults agreed.

Over the years, some states have outright banned teachers from discussing evolution in the classroom. Others have mandated that students be allowed to question the scientific soundness of evolution, or that equal time be given to consideration of the Judeo-Christian notion of divine creation (i.e., creationism).

Some people argue that the theory of intelligent design—which posits that the complexities of living things cannot be explained by natural selection and can best be explained as resulting from an intelligent cause—is a legitimate scientific theory that should be allowed in public school curricula. They say it differs from creationism because it doesn't necessarily ascribe life's design to a supernatural deity or supreme being.

Opponents contend that intelligent design is creationism in disguise. They think it should not be taught in public schools because it is religiously motivated and has no credible scientific basis. And the courts have consistently held that the teaching of creationism and intelligent design promotes religious beliefs and therefore violates the Constitution's prohibition against the government establishment of religion. Still, the debate continues.

10. Teacher tenure

Having tenure means that a teacher cannot be let go unless their school district demonstrates just cause. Many states grant tenure to public school teachers who have received satisfactory evaluations for a specified period of time (which ranges from one to five years, depending on the state). A few states do not grant tenure at all. And the issue has long been mired in controversy.

Proponents argue that tenure protects teachers from being dismissed for personal or political reasons, such as disagreeing with administrators or teaching contentious subjects such as evolution. Tenured educators can advocate for students without fear of reprisal. Supporters also say that tenure gives teachers the freedom to try innovative instruction methods to deliver more engaging educational experiences. Tenure also protects more experienced (and more expensive) teachers from being arbitrarily replaced with new graduates who earn lower salaries.

Critics contend that tenure makes it difficult to dismiss ineffectual teachers because going through the legal process of doing so is extremely costly and time-consuming. They say that tenure can encourage complacency since teachers' jobs are secure whether they exceed expectations or just do the bare minimum. Plus, while the granting of tenure often hinges on teacher evaluations, 2017 research found that, in practice, more than 99 percent of teachers receive ratings of satisfactory or better. Some administrators admit to being reluctant to give low ratings because of the time and effort required to document teachers' performance and provide support for improvement.

11. Bullying

Bullying continues to be a major issue in schools all across the U.S. According to a National Center for Education Statistics study , around 22 percent of students in Grades 6 through 12 reported having been bullied at school, or on their way to or from school, in 2019. That figure was down from 28 percent in 2009, but it is still far too high.

The same study revealed that over 22 percent of students reported being bullied once a day, and 6.3 percent reported experiencing bullying two to ten times in a day. In addition, the percentage of students who reported the bullying to an adult was over 45 percent in 2019.

But that still means that almost 60 percent of students are not reporting bullying. And that means children are suffering.

Bullied students experience a range of emotional, physical, and behavioral problems. They often feel angry, anxious, lonely, and helpless. They are frequently scared to go to school, leading them to suffer academically and develop a low sense of self-worth. They are also at greater risk of engaging in violent acts or suicidal behaviors.

Every state has anti-bullying legislation in place, and schools are expected to develop policies to address the problem. However, there are differences in how each state defines bullying and what procedures it mandates when bullying is reported. And only about one-third of states call for school districts to include provisions for support services such as counseling for students who are victims of bullying (or are bullies themselves).

12. Poverty

Student poverty is a growing problem. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that as of the 2019-2020 school year, low-income students comprised a majority (52 percent) of public school students in the U.S. That represented a significant increase from 2000-2001, when only 38 percent of students were considered low-income (meaning they qualified for free or discounted school lunches).

The numbers are truly alarming: In 39 states, at least 40 percent of public school enrollees were eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunches, and 22 of those states had student poverty rates of 50 percent or more.

Low-income students tend to perform worse in school than their more affluent peers. Studies have shown that family income strongly correlates to student achievement on standardized tests. That may be partly because parents with fewer financial resources generally can't afford tutoring and other enrichment experiences to boost student achievement. In addition, low-income children are much more likely to experience food instability, family turmoil, and other stressors that can negatively affect their academic success.

All of this means that teachers face instructional challenges that go beyond students' desires to learn.

13. Class size

According to NCES data , in the 2017-2018 school year, the average class size in U.S. public schools was 26.2 students at the elementary level and 23.3 students at the secondary level.

But anecdotal reports suggest that today, classrooms commonly have more than 30 students—sometimes as many as 40.

Conventional wisdom holds that smaller classes are beneficial to student learning. Teachers often argue that the size of a class greatly influences the quality of the instruction they are able to provide. Research from the National Education Policy Center in 2016 showed smaller classes improve student outcomes, particularly for early elementary, low-income, and minority students.

Many (but not all) states have regulations in place that impose limits on class sizes. However, those limits become increasingly difficult to maintain in an era of budget constraints. Reducing class sizes requires hiring more teachers and constructing new classrooms. Arguably, allowing class sizes to expand can enable districts to absorb funding cuts without making reductions to other programs such as art and physical education.

7 Big Issues in Higher Education

1. Student loan forgiveness

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

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

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

2. Completion rates

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

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

Significant costs are associated with starting college but not completing it. Many students end up weighed down by debt, and those who do not complete their higher education are less able to repay loans. Plus, students miss out on formal credentials that could lead to higher earnings. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in 2021 students who begin college but do not complete a degree have median weekly earnings of $899. By contrast, associate degree holders have median weekly wages of $963, and bachelor's degree recipients have median weekly earnings of $1,334.

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

3. Student mental health

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

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

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

4. Sexual assault

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Trigger warnings

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

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

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

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

6. College accreditation

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

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

7. College rankings

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

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

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

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

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

5 Emerging Trends in Education

1. Maker learning

The maker movement is rapidly gaining traction in K-12 schools across America. Maker learning is based on the idea that you will engage students in learning by encouraging interest-driven problem solving and hands-on activities (i.e., learning by doing). In collaborative spaces, students identify problems, dream up inventions, make prototypes, and keep tinkering until they develop something that makes sense. It's a do-it-yourself educational approach that focuses on iterative trial and error and views failure as an opportunity to refine and improve.

Maker education focuses on learning rather than teaching. Students follow their interests and test their own solutions. For example, that might mean creating a video game, building a rocket, designing historical costumes, or 3D-printing an irrigation system for a garden. It can involve high-tech equipment, but it doesn't have to. Repurposing whatever materials are on hand is an important ideal of the maker philosophy.

There is little hard data available on the maker trend. However, researchers at Rutgers University are currently studying the cognitive basis for maker education and investigating its connection to meaningful learning.

2. Moving away from letter grades

Many education advocates believe that the traditional student assessment models place too much emphasis on standardization and testing. They feel that traditional grading models do not sufficiently measure many of the most prized skills in the 21st-century workforce, such as problem-solving, self-advocacy, and creativity. As a result, a growing number of schools around the U.S. are replacing A-F letter grades with new assessment systems.

Formed in 2017, the Mastery Transcript Consortium is a group of more than 150 private high schools that have pledged to get rid of grade-based transcripts in favor of digital ones that provide qualitative descriptions of student learning as well as samples of student work. Some of the most famous private institutions in America have signed on, including Dalton and Phillips Exeter.

The no-more-grades movement is taking hold in public schools as well. Many states have enacted policies to encourage public schools to use something other than grades to assess students' abilities. It's part of a larger shift toward what's commonly known as mastery-based or competency-based learning, which strives to ensure that students become proficient in defined areas of skill.

Instead of letter grades, report cards may feature phrases like "partially meets the standard" or "exceeds the standard." Some schools also include portfolios, capstone projects, or other demonstrations of student learning.

But what happens when it's time to apply to college? It seems that even colleges and universities are getting on board. At least 85 higher education institutions across New England (including Dartmouth and Harvard) have said that students with competency-based transcripts will not be disadvantaged during the admission process.

3. The rise of micro-credentials

Micro-credentials, also known as digital badges or nanodegrees, are mini qualifications that demonstrate a student's knowledge or skills in a given area. Unlike traditional college degrees that require studying a range of different subjects over a multi-year span, micro-credentials are earned through short, targeted education focused on specific skills in particular fields. They tend to be inexpensive (sometimes even free) and are typically taken online.

Some post-secondary schools are developing micro-credentialing partnerships with third-party learning providers, while other schools offer such solutions on their own. A 2020 Campus Technology article stated 70 percent of higher education institutions offer some type of alternative credentialing.

Micro-credentials can serve as evidence that students have mastered particular skills, but the rigor and market worth of such credentials can vary significantly. Still, they are an increasingly popular way of unbundling content and providing it on demand.

4. Flipped classrooms

A growing number of schools are embracing the notion of flipped learning. It's an instructional approach that reverses the traditional model of the teacher giving a lecture in front of the class, then sending students home to work through assignments that enhance their understanding of the concepts. In flipped learning, students watch lecture videos or read relevant course content on their own before class. Class time is devoted to expanding on the material through group discussions and collaborative learning projects (i.e., doing what was traditionally meant as homework). The instructor is there to guide students when questions or problems arise.

Provided that all students have access to the appropriate technology and are motivated to prepare for each class session, flipped learning can bring a wide range of benefits. For example, it allows students to control their own learning by watching lecture videos at their own pace; they can pause, jot down questions, or re-watch parts they find confusing. The model also encourages students to learn from each other and explore subjects more deeply.

Flipped learning is becoming widespread in all education levels, but it is especially prevalent at the college level. In a 2017 survey , 61 percent of college faculty had used the flipped model in some or all of their classes and another 24% of instructors were considering trying it.

5. Social-emotional learning

There is a growing consensus that schools are responsible for fostering students' social and emotional development and their cognitive skills. Social-emotional learning (SEL) focuses on helping students develop the abilities to identify their strengths, manage their emotions, set goals, show empathy, make responsible decisions, and build and maintain healthy relationships. Research has shown that such skills play a key role in reducing anti-social behavior, boosting academic achievement, and improving long-term health.

Every state has developed SEL competencies at the preschool level. The number of states with such competencies for higher grades is growing.

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Why controversial issues must still be taught in U.S. classrooms

Judith L. Pace

Wayne Journell

November 2, 2021.

In Texas, teachers who once taught controversial issues in history and politics are now afraid to do so . Political attacks on school board members across the country also threaten those in California . State laws banning critical race theory in schools are censoring educators and the curriculum.

Does this mean the time has passed when teachers can engage students in open discussion of controversial issues, which we know is a cornerstone of democratic education?

We think the answer is no. We’re convinced it can and should still happen here despite intense political polarization and an increasing number of state laws restricting teacher autonomy.

We’ve worked with educators in deeply divided countries, including Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and South Africa, who are committed to teaching multiple perspectives on divisive questions on national identity and legacies of conflict, so we know it can be done. We also know that teachers may face controversy in the classroom whether or not they intend to. Unquestionably, this pursuit is harder and more dangerous than ever before in the United States.

That means it must be done smarter.

Research shows that some successful teachers use an approach to teaching controversial issues characterized as “contained risk-taking.” This approach encourages inquiry and discussion of open questions related to public policy and contested history from diverse perspectives — Should college be tuition-free for all? What is a fair refugee policy? — while the teacher proceeds with caution by building a supportive environment, selecting and framing issues appropriately, and choosing resources and pedagogies wisely.

We believe that school leaders, like teachers, should act as contained risk-takers. They should support teachers wanting to do this work. At the same time, they need to ensure that teachers are prepared to teach controversial issues skillfully and responsibly.

Professional development is key There is no comprehensive professional development kit that educators can pull off the shelf. But there are abundant curricular and instructional teacher resources, organizations and experts who can help teachers be knowledgeable and thoughtful about how they build a supportive classroom atmosphere, select and frame issues, and structure inquiry and classroom discussion. The Los Angeles County Office of Education has modeled how to provide professional development in civic education to hundreds of teachers.

A supportive classroom atmosphere depends on a community of learners in which students get to know one another, build trust and feel comfortable exchanging ideas. Teachers must help students develop an appreciation for disagreement, the ability to disagree with others respectfully and strategies for dealing with emotional reactions constructively.

Today, teachers must be careful about expressing their own views. Past research shows that teachers can be transparent about their own political views in class while fostering critical examination of competing perspectives and encouraging students to formulate their own positions. But in this intensely politicized climate, teachers should think hard about the purposes behind disclosing their own views and the potential risks before doing so.

Teachers must thoughtfully select open issues appropriate for their curriculum and students and frame them as questions to encourage inquiry and discussion of diverse perspectives. The sequencing of issues should progress from cooler to hotter. For example, teachers might start off with “should the voting age be lowered to 16?” and move to “should vaccinations and masks be mandated?” Controversies that are empirically settled, such as whether the Holocaust occurred or the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, should NOT be examined as open controversial issues, even if groups of people believe otherwise.

Teachers should learn how to 1) apply frameworks such as human rights to help students evaluate different perspectives and 2) find high-quality resources that inform students, represent diverse (and often marginalized) voices and encourage student engagement.

Teachers also need to know different approaches to discussion and align their approach to the types of issues being explored. For example, emotionally charged issues, which may affect certain students deeply, should be handled differently from those that are not so charged. Determining the level of charge requires understanding the students in a given classroom.

Communication with parents and the community is essential School leaders must support teachers by communicating with stakeholders about the value of teaching controversial issues proactively as well as when troubles arise. They must know their communities extremely well.

Teaching controversial issues is a cornerstone of democratic education and, contrary to public opinion, is the antithesis of indoctrination. It is a powerful vehicle for developing civic reasoning and discourse in all subjects as well as independent thinking.

Of course, no matter how thoughtful teachers are in framing and executing lessons on controversial issues, some parents, community members or other stakeholders may react negatively. In those instances, it is important that school leaders support their teachers, assuming that they have made appropriate pedagogical choices. Defending teachers from external threats is, unfortunately, an essential aspect of supporting the civic development of students in this era of political polarization.

Does standing up to parents and other stakeholders carry a certain amount of risk? Certainly. However, for the sake of our democracy, we believe it is a risk worth taking.

Judith L. Pace is a professor of teacher education at the University of San Francisco and the author of Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues . Wayne Journell is a professor of social studies education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of Teaching Politics in Secondary Education: Engaging with Contentious Issues .

The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines  and  contact us .

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John Martin 3 years ago 3 years ago

I’ve been teaching CRT in my classrooms for over 25 plus years but I didn’t call it CRT but rather I called it “history”!

tomm 3 years ago 3 years ago

John if you are teaching kids that people with white skin are inherently racist, shame on you. This is one of the basic tenants of CRT, parents are finding out, so don't try and soft sell CRT as just history. It teaches people with dark skin are victims, and the kids with white skin across the isle are oppressors. That divides us as a country which is not what we need to … Read More

John if you are teaching kids that people with white skin are inherently racist, shame on you. This is one of the basic tenants of CRT, parents are finding out, so don’t try and soft sell CRT as just history. It teaches people with dark skin are victims, and the kids with white skin across the isle are oppressors. That divides us as a country which is not what we need to keep this country one that creates opportunity for all no matter what your skin color is. Have you not noticed all the people of color coming across the border seeking a better life?

Paul Muench 3 years ago 3 years ago

“…assuming that they have made appropriate pedagogical choices.” That seems to be the debate.

There is a range of opinion on "controversial issues" and some teachers have political agendas and just don't present a balanced viewpoint. There has been plenty of documented evidence of teacher bias. Teachers are people too so not realistic to give them all the leeway they want. Combine that with a lack of effective accountability thanks to tenure, and parents who are skeptical that teachers will make "appropriate pedagogical choices," we … Read More

There is a range of opinion on “controversial issues” and some teachers have political agendas and just don’t present a balanced viewpoint. There has been plenty of documented evidence of teacher bias. Teachers are people too so not realistic to give them all the leeway they want. Combine that with a lack of effective accountability thanks to tenure, and parents who are skeptical that teachers will make “appropriate pedagogical choices,” we see it as just safer to put some topics off limits.

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Watch for these conflicts over education in 2022

Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Data Visualization, University of Washington, Bothell

Professor of Social Work and Education, Loyola University Chicago

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Joseph J. Ferrare has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.

Kate Phillippo has received funding from the Spencer Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.

University of Washington provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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At school board meetings across the country in 2021, parents engaged in physical altercations , shouted at school board members and threatened them as well .

These disagreements entered state politics, too, such as the 2021 Virginia governor’s race , which was largely shaped by conflicts over the how issues of race and racism are taught in the K-12 curriculum , and transgender student rights .

Our September 2021 article in Educational Policy explains that the short-term conflicts that generate media attention – such as about critical race theory across the nation – are part of long-standing ideological debates about education. These conflicts are about issues such as who deserves academic opportunity, what the parameters of public education are and whether schools and universities ought to promote a positive image of the U.S. or explore its shortcomings.

As researchers who study conflicts in education , we see clashes like these continuing into 2022.

1. Virtual education

In 2022, expect conflicts over virtual school offerings to intensify, especially as the omicron variant surges and as some states push toward vaccine mandates for all students. At stake is whether parents should have control over how public funds are spent on educating their children, and the potential effects of diverting those funds away from traditional public schools.

In fall 2021, U.S. school leaders largely shifted their services back to in-person instruction after shutdowns and remote instruction dominated the initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, demand for home-schooling and virtual schooling has risen , as some parents discover that these forms of education offer greater flexibility in scheduling, control over curriculum and safety from the coronavirus. In Washington state, for example, enrollments in publicly funded virtual schools operated by for-profit companies have increased dramatically, such as Washington Virtual Academies, which expanded enrollments by an estimated 85% between the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. Similar trends happened in school districts across the country.

Enrollment data for the 2021-2022 school year are still emerging, but some school choice experts have argued that parental demand for virtual education is here to stay. However, in another research project, one of us found that students who switch to online schools experience substantial learning losses in reading and math during each of the three years after switching. That evidence has forced policymakers to consider greater regulation of online schools, even as more parents consider taking their children out of traditional public schools and putting them in virtual ones.

2. Affirmative action

Affirmative action and similar policies in college admissions have always generated controversy, and 2022 will likely be no different. This year, a case that began in 2014 will reach the U.S. Supreme Court. That case, Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard University , alleges that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies discriminate against Asian applicants.

The case has worked its way through the court system with a national roster of affluent plaintiffs . This group has filed multiple unsuccessful lawsuits across the U.S., including an October 2021 loss in a similar case over admissions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill .

Similar lawsuits have also sprung up in San Francisco and Boston over school districts’ efforts to make access to academically selective public schools more representative of student populations. These suits reflect broader ideological tensions over who deserves a well-funded, elite education and the government’s responsibility to protect that access.

3. Teachers unions

In 2022, look to teachers unions to continue to assert themselves in the face of ongoing efforts by parent and advocacy groups to limit their power.

Over the past year teachers unions effectively negotiated the implementation of health safeguards against the spread of COVID-19 in Chicago , New York City and Los Angeles . These unions secured protective measures such as virtual instruction, priority vaccine access for teachers, medical and personal leave related to COVID-19, explicit metrics to determine when schools would close, district-provided personal protective equipment for teachers and classroom air filtration systems.

While the pandemic dominates union activity at present, and many unions have not negotiated significant concessions , these wins signal unions’ strategic and legal capacity to negotiate around issues such as compensation and working conditions. Given current shortages of qualified teachers , unions’ negotiation power may intensify.

4. Gifted programs

In 2022, gifted education may become a national debate. So far it has been prominent in New York City, but that may spread.

Mayor Eric Adams said he intends to keep gifted programs in place. Gifted programs offer accelerated learning opportunities for students who score at the top of their class on standardized tests. Critics, such as the School Diversity Advisory Group commissioned by former Mayor Bill de Blasio , argue that gifted programs segregate students by race, since research has shown that students of color are underrepresented in these programs.

In California, policymakers have unveiled a plan to address this issue by grouping students of different mathematical ability in the same classrooms until their junior year. Only then will students be able to select advanced math courses, such as calculus or statistics.

This move may revive the 1980s’ so-called “ tracking wars ,” an intense debate over whether students should be offered different levels of curriculum based on their test scores. As other states and districts consider overhauling their own gifted programs , these short-term conflicts will likely add energy to the existing national fight concerning what role the education system should play in addressing inequality in the United States.

In all of these conflicts, be prepared in 2022 for policy advocates to use both conventional and unconventional strategies to advance their efforts. Further, expect those advocates to include politically and economically powerful actors as well as those who rarely have a voice in policy conversations.

In our research, which spanned the years 2010 to 2020, we saw conventional conflict actions such as teacher strikes , community protests and lawsuits . However, we also saw the successful use of less common efforts to challenge local, state and federal education policy, such as canceled business investments , classroom sit-ins , a student hunger strike , school board recall votes , teacher panhandling , pointed valedictorian speeches and even college football players’ threat to walk out on scheduled revenue-generating games .

• Online education
• US Supreme Court
• US education
• Affirmative action
• Teacher unions
• Teachers unions
• Gifted programs
• Gifted children
• Gifted students
• Racial equality
• gifted learning
• Remote learning
• Coronavirus 2021
• Gifted education
• Racial equity

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The 3 biggest higher education controversies of 2021

Higher education isn’t a stranger to scandals and controversies, and 2021 was no exception. While some scandals from previous years approached their inevitable conclusions, the COVID-19 pandemic—or ongoing pandemic, as we enter its third year—fueled a swath of lawsuits at colleges around the country. What’s more, students also took to the picket lines at some universities, demanding better treatment (and bigger paychecks).

Here is a recap of the three biggest scandals and controversies from 2021.

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The “varsity blues” fallout.

Unfortunately, the “ Varsity Blues ” scandal lacked Jon Voight, James Van Der Beek, or Scott Caan stealing a police car . But the college admissions scandal—which originally made headlines back in 2019, entangling some celebrities and other big names— effectively wrapped up in 2021 with guilty pleas, guilty verdicts, and sentences being doled out.

To recap, Operation Varsity Blues (as dubbed by federal investigators) involved a criminal conspiracy to get students placed into a number of top universities, such as the University of Southern California , the University of Texas , and Yale University , sometimes without students’ knowledge. Test scores were altered. Learning disabilities were conjured up in order to gain access to additional accommodations. Some students were even photoshopped into sports teams—showing them participating in sports that they never actually played.

It’s a long, intricate story. But as of the end of 2021, most of the dust has settled, with dozens of parents being implicated, along with college coaches and athletic administrators, and the ringleader of the whole thing, William Rick Singer.

“Money and connections are at the center of the Varsity Blues Scandal. What made this scheme different was that Rick Singer used the athletics department to be the primary vehicle of deception rather than the college’s development, alumni, or admissions office directly,” says Sara Harberson , a college admissions expert, former dean of admissions at Franklin & Marshall College, and the founder of Application Nation, a private, subscription-based Facebook group designed to help parents navigate the admissions process. “Interestingly, the parents paid Singer only a fraction of what would be expected from a college to get a weaker student admitted.” 

While the dust may be settling from the Varsity Blues scandal, Harberson says these types of schemes—those that involve lying or cheating to get a student into their desired school—remain common. And if anyone is to blame, it’s those people who work in admissions offices, to whom it would have been “blatantly obvious” that “things were not adding up in a student’s application,” she says.  

“It still feels like 1952 in college admissions. Who you know, who you pay off, and who you are remain powerful tools that the wealthy and connected families use knowingly and effectively.” 

Columbia University’s student-worker strike

At one point in 2021, the biggest strike in America was unfolding on the campus of Columbia University in New York City. Roughly 3,000 student-workers, mostly graduate students, went on strike at the beginning of November in response to what the Student Workers of Columbia (a United Auto Workers Local 2110 union) says are unfair labor practices. 

Johannah King-Slutzky, a Ph.D. student in Columbia’s department of English and comparative literature, says that she and others took to the picket line to secure higher wages, more benefits, further recognition of student union members, and changes to Columbia’s system for investigating claims of discrimination and harassment. All told, she says, the dispute has been ongoing in some form or another since 2014.

“Columbia had a record-breaking year for earnings, and they have been trying to pinch pennies,” King-Slutzky says, citing the university’s latest annual report . “Columbia is one of the wealthiest universities in the country. It charges the highest tuition in the country, and despite its incredible wealth, it’s extracting as much as it can from its students and graduate students.”

Columbia University has published a proposal in response to the strike, which would include pay increases, stipends, and the creation of health care funds for student workers and their dependents. 

However, the students feel that it’s not nearly enough. 

“We’ve been asking for a couple of years for a fair contract, and the university has stonewalled us and refused to bargain in good faith,” says Daniel Santiago Sáenz, a Ph.D. candidate and teaching fellow at Columbia, who is also an international student who was born in Colombia but grew up in Canada. “We’re just asking for what we believe to be a fair contract.”

The key issue, he says, is that the cost of living in New York City is simply too high—and student worker wages are too low—to make ends meet. As an international student, too, he’s not legally allowed to find another job off-campus, blocking one potential outlet for additional income.

In aggregate, the situation at Columbia is complicated. The striking students say they are looking for meager increases in pay and benefits in order to help offset the costs of living, studying, and working in an expensive city. And they feel pretty good about their chances, looking ahead.

“Many of us come from working-class, low-income, or underrepresented minority groups in academia. This strike is a class struggle, says Sáenz. “We’ll see what other doors this can open for a more stable and healthier academia.”

Remote-learning lawsuits resulting from campus closures

When the pandemic hit college campuses in March 2020, many students were forced to go home—and stay there. As a result, a number of students felt that they were getting shortchanged; they were paying full tuition and not really getting the on-campus experience and tutelage they expected. More than 4,200 colleges and universities nationwide closed their campuses to some degree, affecting nearly 26 million students. So it was only a matter of time before students started filing lawsuits in an effort to recoup some of that tuition.

Hundreds of lawsuits were filed around the country, and the top five collegial targets of those lawsuits were USC, the University of Miami, New York University , Cornell University , and Pennsylvania State University—although each had fewer than 10 COVID-related cases filed against them as of December 2021, according to data from Carla Rydholm, senior director of product management at Lex Machina , a legal analytics company. 

But the lingering question is, Do any of these lawsuits have a chance of being successful?

“In general, in order to have standing, plaintiffs only have to show that they have suffered some cognizable injury,” says Jonathan B. Orleans, a higher ed and employment attorney at the law firm Pullman & Comley . “In these cases, the plaintiffs contend that what they have received is less than what they paid for, so they have suffered monetary damages. I haven’t seen a decision throwing any of these cases out of court for lack of standing.” 

Orleans says that most schools are asking the courts to dismiss the cases, but whether or not any of them end up being successful remains to be seen.

“The results depend very much on the specific facts in each case, and to some extent on the particular state in which the school is located,” he says. “Keep in mind that contracts are governed by state law, not by federal law, so we won’t necessarily get nationwide uniformity in the decisions in these cases.”

Further, many of these lawsuits may be the result of legal professionals looking for a payday.

“These suits are clearly driven by lawyers, not the students who are largely thankful schools did not completely close down,” says Dwayne Robinson, a partner at the Miami-based law firm Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton , which served as counsel for Miami-Dade County College—one of many schools that was a target of lawsuits following COVID-related shutdowns.

Javier Lopez, the managing partner at Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton, adds that while these lawsuits mainly concern students and schools, the general public has an interest in keeping an eye on them, as the taxpayer, ultimately, is on the hook for damages.

“We taxpayers fund these schools even if we will never attend them,” Lopez says. “So every time a public college or university spends money because a student claims they did not get to use the student union or the basketball gym for as long as they expected, we are all footing that bill.”

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Teaching controversial issues when democracy is under attack

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, judith l. pace , judith l. pace professor of teacher education - university of san francisco eric soto-shed , and eric soto-shed lecturer on education - harvard graduate school of education elizabeth yeager washington elizabeth yeager washington professor of social studies education, college of education - university of florida.

January 31, 2022

A new poll released by the Harvard Kennedy School reports that 52% of young Americans believe our democracy is “in trouble” or “failing.” Conflicts over many issues, such as election outcomes, climate change, and police violence against people of color seem intractable.

Political divisions have erupted in education as well. Public discourse in school board meetings on critical race theory, transgender students’ rights, mask and vaccine mandates, and pandemic-related restrictions has become vitriolic. Attacks on critical race theory have driven bans on teaching about systemic racism, sexism, and other politically charged topics.

In this climate, discussion of controversial issues in classrooms seems more fraught than ever, and teachers are understandably fearful to engage. But exploring political questions from multiple perspectives is a cornerstone of democratic education. It cultivates civic reasoning and discourse , which embody the skills, understandings, and habits required of democratic citizens. Furthermore, research shows that discussion of issues in an open classroom climate generates increased political knowledge, interest, and engagement .

Classrooms are typically the only space where young people learn to exchange perspectives with peers from diverse backgrounds, identify credible sources, and weigh evidence to inform their thinking. As one of the authors (Pace) writes in her new book intended for use in teacher preparation and professional development, we know a lot about how to successfully explore controversial issues in classroom settings. In fact, a well-developed set of practices has been advocated by and for educators around the world.

We are former K-12 teachers who are now teacher educators, and we understand that teachers, especially now, are keen to avoid risks that may accompany frank discussions of volatile issues in the classroom. These risks could include loss of classroom control, recriminations from administrators, and attacks from parents and community members, among others. However, controversy often enters the classroom whether or not we plan for it. How are teachers to effectively address controversy during these intensely polarized times?

This research-based tool that Pace developed represents an approach to teaching controversial issues known as “contained risk-taking.” It encourages teaching controversy through inquiry and discussion while proactively addressing risks. This framework for reflective practice consists of eight elements:

1) Cultivate a supportive environment

Teachers first get to know their students and create a classroom culture of trust and respect. They spend time learning about their students’ identities and ideas, building group cohesion, and promoting collaborative learning. Their classes collectively establish and practice norms such as active listening, respectful dissent, sensitivity toward others, and evaluation of knowledge sources. These classroom practices are always helpful but are especially critical when charged topics are to be addressed.

2) Select authentic issues

Teachers select issues relevant to their subject matter and make judgments about which are open versus settled. Scholars explain that open issues generate critical examination of multiple perspectives underpinned by legitimate sources of knowledge. Teachers frame questions that generate inquiry and discussion on these perspectives. They start the school year with issues that are less contentious and gradually build to politically and emotionally charged issues. Empirically settled issues—for example, the reality of climate change—need to be studied but not framed as debatable questions.

3) Prepare thoroughly

Mindful lesson planning is essential. Opening up discussions on controversial issues without preparation on the part of teachers (and students) can lead to the reinforcement of uninformed opinions and potential harm. Teachers broaden and deepen their content knowledge on the issues they address to develop a robust purpose, rationale, and goals for lessons. They create developmentally appropriate curriculum based on knowing their students and school communities well.

4) Choose resources and pedagogies

Teachers select rich resources to stimulate thinking and provide entry points to discussion. They choose pedagogical approaches, such as structured discussion activities, that allow many voices to be heard and that align with the discussion issues and students’ identities. If the issue is highly charged and students from specific communities are directly implicated, then we recommend pedagogies aimed at surfacing, understanding, and analyzing different perspectives. If the issue is not highly charged and student identities are not implicated, then we recommend pedagogies such as role play or deliberation – as long as it doesn’t set up a “false equivalence” that normalizes what are plainly ill-informed or offensive viewpoints.

5) Think through teacher stance and roles

Teachers reflect on their own positions, the roles they adopt during discussion, and whether, when, and how to disclose their views. The ultimate purpose is for students to critically examine and discuss different perspectives, develop well-informed views, and understand that additional knowledge may prompt them to change their minds. Teachers take up roles to advance that purpose; for example, if students are stuck in groupthink, they may play devil’s advocate to introduce a competing perspective. Alternatively, if a student is expressing an important minority perspective, they may take up the role of ally. Scholars have deliberated on the question of teachers disclosing their own views. In the current political climate, disclosure is not advisable unless there is a clear and compelling purpose and potential consequences are considered.

6) Guide discussion

Teachers use questioning, discussion formats, and protocols to guide discussions. They facilitate exchanges among students rather than defaulting to teacher-student recitation-style interactions. Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) is a highly effective approach to deliberation. But as we note earlier, if issues are highly charged, implicate student identities, or set up false equivalences, we advise carefully facilitated, exploratory conversations instead of deliberations.

7) Communicate proactively

Teachers transparently communicate their curricular rationales to parents and administrators in advance. They make clear that the goal is not for students to take a particular stance on an issue, but rather to understand multiple perspectives and form their own views. They let students know the controversial issues they will be studying. If stakeholders understand teachers’ thinking behind their curriculum and practice, and lines of communication are open, they are far less likely to feel threatened and criticize them.

8) Addressing emotions

Teachers balance affective and intellectual engagement. They provide a space to process emotions, use de-escalation techniques when needed, and get students to think metacognitively about emotionally entrenched perspectives and social divisions. Teachers anticipate and acknowledge feelings of discomfort that may be part of the learning process, and they are careful not to demonize or alienate students.

A real-world example of teaching controversial issues

An example of the reflective practice framework comes from Pace’s cross-national research. In Northern Ireland (NI), a student-teacher she interviewed, Margaret, described her approach to the political controversy over who should quality for government compensation as a victim of violence during the Troubles —a period of violent conflict that rocked the country for decades during the 20 th century. Margaret chose this question because it was debated by the two main political parties in the NI government: the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with roots in the Protestant community and loyalty to Britain; and Sinn Fein, the left-wing party that emerged from the Catholic community and wanted to join the Republic of Ireland. She decided to conduct a deliberation (SAC) after learning it was preferable to debate because it made students take up competing perspectives instead of trying to win a competitive argument.

Margaret prepared by researching the controversy within the Northern Irish Assembly and curating a packet of sources, including proposed legislation and excerpts from a question-and-answer session in which politicians argued over how to define a victim. She gave students a class period to examine the sources and prepare arguments for the deliberation, which took place the following session. For homework, she assigned students to find additional sources that expanded or supported their arguments.

Although the issue was not as emotionally charged for young people, she understood it was difficult for students at her Catholic school to argue on behalf of the DUP. Margaret listened as students expressed their feelings, and she assured the pupils that, while they didn’t have to believe these arguments, it was important to understand them as a source of ongoing division in Northern Ireland. This is just one example of how the contained risk-taking framework can be applied to many different types of issues and topics. It can also be used for situations in which teachers face unexpected controversy in their classrooms.

Schools play a crucial role in strengthening democracy through education, and school leadership also has a role in helping to support teachers when addressing these challenging questions. The framework for teaching controversial issues and related resources offer a sorely needed pathway for educators striving to fulfill their democratic mission while coping with the risks of teaching in our politically polarized reality.

To learn more about the contained risk-taking framework and the research that underpins it, read Pace’s new book, “ Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues ,” or visit: https://teachingcontroversies.com/ .

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Top Education Officials Were Warned of FAFSA Overhaul Hurdles in 2020

Documents obtained by The Times show the department’s troubled FAFSA rollout this year came in spite of early warnings that the project required sustained attention.

By Zach Montague

Reporting from Washington

Long before the Education Department’s overhaul of the federal student aid application fell apart this year, officials who now lead the department were warned of a complex and time-consuming effort and its potential pitfalls in 2020, according to internal emails and documents obtained by The New York Times.

The documents anticipated a demanding timetable that would require the department to closely manage its priorities over several years to revamp the application form in time for students’ fall 2022 applications. The documents were prepared by the department’s staff and circulated among soon-to-be top officials after the 2020 election but before President Biden took office, including James Kvaal, the under secretary of education, and Benjamin Miller, a deputy under secretary.

The revelation that the officials were advised to prepare for an arduous process yet still failed to deliver a working form three years later is likely to add to the intense scrutiny the department has faced over the handling of the project, which threw the college application season into chaos earlier this year.

The documents were all distributed in December 2020, as Congress was about to pass a law requiring the department to overhaul the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA. The law, which mandated changes that included whittling the unwieldy 108-question form down to a more manageable 36, originally envisioned the new form being ready for students by the fall of 2022.

In the weeks before Mr. Biden was inaugurated, officials overseeing the presidential transition approached the Education Department to take stock of pending challenges as they began to sketch out the new administration’s priorities among federal agencies.

In several instances, members of the transition team were told by the staff at the department’s Federal Student Aid office that the 2022 deadline mandated by Congress was too aggressive. They also warned that overhauling the form and the system used to calculate student aid offers would be a major undertaking that required collaboration with other agencies and deft project management.

“Do you have any issues around the proposals for FAFSA reform that have been floating around the hill that you think are worth flagging in case the permanent team needs it on its radar?” the transition team asked the office in one questionnaire.

“This bill would rebuild the FAFSA and the need analysis formula from the ground up,” the office replied in its written answers, adding, “FSA believes that a more realistic implementation time frame would be the 2024-2025 cycle.”

In another instance, the office advised that even a routine launch of the form incorporating “typical, annual changes” could require at least 15 months, and that getting the form ready by the 2022 deadline would be “next to impossible.”

In light of those warnings, the department sought a one-year extension, which Congress granted in March 2022 to move the deadline to Oct. 1, 2023.

Even with the extra time, however, the Education Department repeatedly fell behind.

A string of errors and last-minute tweaks forced officials to push the release of the simplified form from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31. And even once the new form had launched, a maddening array of bugs affected both applicants and college administrators waiting to receive student aid data.

Current and former officials who worked on the FAFSA simplification once the scale of the problems became clear have said that the department’s leaders often failed to check in on the project along the way, and were overly focused on other priorities such as the Biden administration’s flagship student loan forgiveness plans.

A spokesman for the Education Department said that including the FAFSA form, the agency was forced to work through three major initiatives as mandated by Congress within six months of one another — also endeavoring to restart student loan repayments after the pandemic and approving new student loan servicing contracts. Despite the tight deadlines, the spokesman said, Congress provided the department no new funding.

The documents indicate that although top officials were alerted early on that the law would require substantial action, they were still unable to stave off the troubled rollout this year.

The Government Accountability Office documented concerns about the department’s progress in a report in June , which highlighted questions about management of contractors on the project and called on the department to stay on schedule. The office is also pursuing an investigation of the department’s overall management of the project.

After an agencywide scramble to fix the form this spring , the department has since shifted its attention to reaching out to students who may have been derailed or failed to apply for aid. Since February, the department has allocated $100 million to support students and colleges and bolster applications — nearly 30 percent of the total $336 million it spent on the simplification project.

Since problems with the form came into public view in 2023, Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona has repeatedly said that the agency’s hands were tied by the congressional deadline, and that the department has done everything in its power to meet its deadlines despite limited resources.

Mr. Cardona has said that the department expects the form to work normally for students applying to college this fall, and that the changes will benefit future applicants.

“FAFSA has been a priority since Day 1 when we got into these positions, and it will continue to be a priority until we deliver for these students,” Mr. Cardona told lawmakers in April.

Zach Montague is based in Washington. He covers breaking news and developments around the district. More about Zach Montague

Inside the Biden Administration

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War in Ukraine:  President Biden barred Ukraine from firing U.S. weapons into Russia to “avoid World War III.” After a sobering trip to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants to ease that rule .

Live Nation:  The Justice Department is suing Live Nation Entertainment , the owner of Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.

Relations With Kenya:  During the Kenyan president’s state visit , Biden will designate the East African nation as a “major non-NATO ally.”

Hidden Fees:  Biden’s effort to crack down on “junk fees”  from airlines and credit-card companies is doubling as a war against inflation.

Student Loans:  Biden announced the cancellation of another $7.7 billion in student loans , building on his strategy of chipping away at college debt by tweaking existing programs.

Embrace, Don’t Avoid, Morally Controversial Topics in Class

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I ncreasingly, success in the modern business world requires navigating tricky moral quandaries:

What happens when a company’s ethical norms don’t match its employees’ values?

How do you navigate differing visions for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)?

What are a business’s obligations to environmental sustainability?

Should a company ever take a political position?

These are not the relatively simple issues of the business ethics courses of yesteryear, such as whether to accept a bribe or whether any form of sexual harassment should be tolerated. These are morally (and sometimes politically) charged issues with no clear right answer. The rising prevalence and importance of these questions suggest that our business students must be prepared to constructively address them as they enter the business world.

However, evidence suggests that these complex moral issues are exactly the ones that both students and faculty fear to even mention in class. A recent survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that 91 percent of faculty members were at least “somewhat likely” to withhold their opinions on morally controversial topics for fear of retaliation. A student survey by the same organization found that 83 percent of university students reported self-censoring for fear of backlash. So how can we fully prepare our students to address moral challenges and become ethical business leaders if both we and our students are afraid to do so?

This question has no easy answer, but it is one I have experimented with as the instructor of a new core Business Ethics course for MBA students in the University at Buffalo School of Management. The point of this class is to teach students explicitly how to handle thorny and controversial moral issues as organizational leaders, and the only way to do so is to talk explicitly about the opinions people have on questions such as stakeholder responsibilities, politically relevant events, and what exactly that “E” in DEI represents to people.

“I believe the class has succeeded because students want to discuss these topics in an open and fear-free environment and because they saw the class as a psychologically safe environment to do so.”

In this class, I have facilitated fantastic and respectful conversations among students around these highly sensitive topics and many more, from the nature of the racial wage gap to organizational funding of abortions, conversations that many students have eagerly joined. I believe the class has succeeded because students want to discuss these topics in an open and fear-free environment and because they saw the class as a psychologically safe environment to do so.

Here are six ways I’ve tried to build this class culture.

1. Set the ground rules for class discussion on the first day

Let your students know on day one, as well as in your syllabus, that the class will occasionally cover topics that some might find morally or politically controversial. Tell students that they may hear things they don’t agree with, that challenge the way they’ve viewed the world.

Explain that this is a good thing, as one of the most important points of a college education is to expand the way one sees the world. After all, having one’s viewpoints challenged creates the possibility of new ideas and perspectives (which is one of the major benefits of all kinds of workplace diversity) and can result in those viewpoints being strengthened or refined.

Further, it is very likely that, as they begin their careers, students will frequently encounter coworkers and managers whose opinions they disagree with, and they should be prepared to talk to and work with them. Debra Mashek of the Heterodox Academy has offered some great guidelines for syllabus text that promote viewpoint diversity, such as the idea that students should “bring light, not heat,” “treat every member of the class with respect, even if you disagree with their opinion,” and remember that “no ideas are immune from scrutiny and debate.”

2. Clarify that respecting others’ opinions doesn’t mean giving up your own

On the first day of my class, I also tell my students that the point of understanding the perspectives and logic behind other people’s arguments is not that they need to give up their own beliefs. Rather, it’s to learn how to work alongside those with different moral viewpoints effectively and how to draw out the best ideas from those diverse perspectives.

“Having one’s viewpoints challenged creates the possibility of new ideas and perspectives [ . . . ] and can result in those viewpoints being strengthened or refined.”

Another benefit is realizing your own opinions might be incorrect or incomplete, which allows you to grow and become wiser. And a final benefit is that, by understanding why someone disagrees with you and framing your argument around their perspective rather than your own, you are far better equipped to persuade them that your position is the morally correct one.

Research indicates that this process of moral framing —drawing on what is important to the other person to persuade them that your own position is valid—is excellent for bringing opposing groups together and allowing people of opposite political persuasions to persuade each other. The moral foundations framework from NYU professor Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues is an excellent tool for this.

3. Use anonymous polling to get the conversation started

One simple way to introduce risk-free input into thorny ethical issues is to use anonymous polling software to get started. For instance, I use PollEverywhere in every class (but more often early in the semester) to allow students to anonymously vote on topics such as the morality of hiring ex-convicts for customer-facing roles, whether and when it’s ethical for a company to lay off employees, and their own political leanings.

Sharing the aggregate results with the class can serve as a natural stepping-stone for discussing the reasons their classmates may see the same issues in different ways. Viewing these results all together can also be useful for demonstrating the diversity of the student body’s perspectives. That is, students may feel that they are the only one with a minority opinion and seeing that others share it can embolden them to speak more freely about it.

Similarly, students with majority opinions (or any opinion, really) may assume that everyone believes in the same positions they do. Learning that their classmates—assumedly intelligent and decent people, including some of their friends—disagree with them may open their eyes to the idea that good and smart colleagues can also disagree.

4. Instill respectful disagreement

Disagreeing with authority figures respectfully is a sign of engagement and critical thought, which are essential competencies in the modern workplace. I share with my students that, when I was a corporate manager, I learned that the employees who most passionately argued against plans that I or the company envisioned were often the people who cared the most. And since their arguments came from diverse perspectives that were different from my own, they were worthy of careful consideration.

I explicitly encourage my students to play the part of the “devil’s advocate,” even for ideas that initially seem obvious. They take advantage of this often—sometimes literally, by saying to a classmate, “I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but what if someone thought X instead?” I tell them that students will never be penalized for disagreeing with me or questioning something I say, as long as it is done respectfully, which is the same standard I expect the students to hold me accountable to.

“Respectful disagreement entails engaging seemingly antagonistic viewpoints with curiosity rather than offense.”

“Respectfully” may seem vague, but it’s a word that most students seem to instinctively understand and similarly interpret in a constructive way. Respectful disagreement entails engaging seemingly antagonistic viewpoints with curiosity rather than offense; inquiring about the motivation and logic behind the opposing perspective (rather than assuming there is none); and, perhaps most importantly, preventing oneself from jumping to the conclusion that people who disagree with you must be uninformed, uncaring, or malevolent.

I explain this to students on the first day of class and provide examples both then and over the following week in which I very respectfully debate them on both mundane and controversial topics. I promise them that they will be graded less on the content of their moral stances and more on how intelligently, respectfully, and genuinely persuasively they can argue them. I believe this sets the precedent for the class, establishing our culture of psychological safety.

5. Remind them that your opinions aren’t automatically the “right” ones

Research shows that students are often afraid that professors will disagree with their opinions on controversial moral issues and subsequently shame or punish them, and this prevents students from fully engaging in class discussions.

I like to adapt Mashek’s concept of ideas, referenced earlier, as a final classroom rule: “no ideas are immune from scrutiny and debate, even those voiced by your professor .” (The italicized text is my addition.) This encourages critical thinking and communicates that I am “walking the talk,” in that I am respecting and engaging ideas that differ from my own. This is a primary point of the first day of class, prominently discussed as I introduce myself and the class material, and it’s also explicitly stated in the syllabus.

I’ve found that one of the strongest ways to convince students that they really can feel free to voice divergent moral opinions is to assure them that I am not attempting to indoctrinate them with my own. That is, I tell them that I have very strong opinions about the moral business questions we will address throughout the class, just as I have some very strong political opinions; but, if I do my job right, they will never know what my opinions are.

Our job as educators is not to convince students that our own positions are the morally correct ones; our job is to give them the tools they need to intelligently draw their own conclusions, work effectively alongside those who disagree with them, and learn to both persuade and be persuaded by others.

6. Make students think through moral arguments from both sides

Our students will be working with people with diverse opinions and viewpoints for the rest of their lives, so one of the most important points of my class is to demonstrate to students that decent and intelligent people can see moral issues in different ways.

I tell my students that they will often hear me arguing both sides of a given issue, and they should not assume that just because I argue one point means I agree with it. Rather, I am mature and secure enough in my own beliefs to acknowledge that good points can be made even for positions I disagree with. That is a competency I hope they develop, because if they can see the good even in points and people they are opposed to, they will be better equipped to effectively understand and collaborate with them.

“Our job as educators is not to convince students that our own positions are the morally correct ones; our job is to give them the tools they need to intelligently draw their own conclusions.”

One of my favorite tools for accomplishing this is encouraging, and even forcing, my students to argue points in ways they don’t personally agree with. I suggest to my students that they discuss points in class not necessarily as “Here’s what I believe,” but more often as “What if someone believed this?” That is, I encourage them to present points they can imagine someone else arguing for, even if they don’t personally buy in to those beliefs.

As a result, nobody in the class can be certain that what they are arguing is truly their own belief; instead, it is viewed as a thought exercise, which leaves less room for personal judgments or criticisms. Further, I incorporate debates into my class in which students must alternately argue both sides of a given business ethics issue, and one of my grading criteria is that if I can tell which side of the argument they’re personally on, they lose points.

These debates occur regularly throughout the semester, with a different specific business dilemma assigned for each. I share the dilemma to be deliberated with the students one week before the debate to give them time to prepare their arguments. I’ve been told by my students that being forced to think through both sides of complicated issues was at first difficult and certainly didn’t come naturally, but after they started doing it in class, they found themselves instinctively doing it outside of class with friends and family. Many of them thanked me for helping them learn how to do it.

Preparing our students to conduct ethical business

If our job as instructors is to prepare our students for success in the business world, then we must ensure our students are ready to effectively engage with, work alongside, and debate colleagues who disagree with them on ethical issues. It is therefore our responsibility to engage in difficult conversations with our students and provide them with the tools to do the same throughout their professional lives.

Our current hyper-partisan society has conditioned both faculty and students to fear these conversations. It is our duty as instructors to create more psychologically safe environments in the classroom where we can effectively prepare our students for the moral dilemmas business leaders must face.

G. James Lemoine is an associate professor of organization and human resources at the University at Buffalo School of Management, where he teaches organizational behavior, ethics, and leadership. His research focuses on leadership and motivation, ethics and morality, creativity, and research methods.

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What To Know About The Controversial 'Appeal To Heaven’ Flag Flown At Justice Samuel Alito’s Home

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A second controversial flag was spotted flying outside the New Jersey home of conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the New York Times first reported Wednesday, this time the little-known "Appeal to Heaven" flag that was carried by multiple capitol rioters in January of 2021 and has become a symbol for religious support of former president Donald Trump.

The Appeal to Heaven flag flown underneath the American flag.

The flag displays a lone pine tree against a white background underneath the line "An Appeal to Heaven" in black bold lettering, a phrase based on the writings of philosopher John Locke, who suggested people must "appeal to heaven" when there is no proper rule of law.

It was originally commissioned by a secretary of George Washington and flew on several military ships dating back to 1775, meant to signify a plea to a higher power for help saving early American colonies from the rule of the King of England, according to the book “The American Flag: An Encyclopedia of the Stars and Stripes in U.S. History, Culture, and Law."

Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it became a symbol for resistance in New England colonies and was used to rally early American settlers against perceived oppression, “The American Flag” says.

More recently, the flag was adopted as the symbol of the " An Appeal to Heaven " initiative of South Carolina preacher Dutch Sheets , which aims to ensure the government of the United States is based on Christian values and support elected officials "who will commit to live and govern based on biblical, constitutional and Federalist principles."

Today, the flag is tied closely to the "Stop the Steal" movement and is usually rooted in religious support of Donald Trump, the Times reported.

The Times confirmed the Appeal to Heaven flag was flown outside the Alito's New Jersey vacation home at least four different times from July to September of 2023, during which time Fischer v. United States arrived at the Supreme Court, a case that will ultimately decide if Capitol rioters can be charged with felony obstruction for their actions on Jan.6.

Alito declined to answer the Times’ questions about the flag, the paper reported, and the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment Thursday.

Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We’re launching text message alerts so you'll always know the biggest stories shaping the day’s headlines. Text “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here : joinsubtext.com/forbes.

Supporters of "Stop the Steal" fly the Appeal to Heaven flag on Jan. 6, 2021 n Washington, DC.

A woman holds the Appeal to Heaven flag at a Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) rally in San Antonio.

Crucial Quote

“It’s a paraphrase for trial by arms,” Princeton University historian Anthony Grafton told the Times of the Appeal to Heaven flag. “The main point is that there’s no appeal, there’s no one else you can ask for help or a judgment.”

Surprising Fact

The Appeal to Heaven flag is the second controversial flag found to have been flown outside the Alito home. The Times earlier this month reported that the American flag was flown upside down—another symbol among supporters of "Stop the Steal"— outside of the Alito home in Virginia days before the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Alito told the Times his wife raised the inverted flag during an argument with a neighbor.

What To Watch For

How the Supreme Court rules on two upcoming cases related to the "Stop the Steal" effort, which refers to attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Oral arguments were heard in the Fischer case last month and the court will also take up Trump's motion to dismiss the federal charges against him for allegedly using false claims of election fraud to obstruct vote counting.

Key Background

Alito has been on the Supreme Court for almost two decades. He was nominated to the position by President George W. Bush and was sworn in in 2006. He previously served as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He was recommended to the court by Maryanne Trump Barry, Donald Trump's sister. During his nomination process, he promised to be an impartial vote on the court, according to a statement from former U.S. Senator Edward Kenendy. Since then, he has earned a reputation as a staunch conservative. He authored the majority opinions in the cases that ended the nationwide right to abortion, made it illegal to sue a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent for damages and confirmed the right of individual citizens to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

There are rules that bar Supreme Court justices from outwardly displaying any political biases. An ethics code was introduced last year in response to controversies involving Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, including reports that Thomas' wife was involved in efforts to undermine the 2020 election and that Alito took an undisclosed luxury fishing trip with billionaire Paul Singer. The code of conduct, signed by all sitting justices in November 2023, demands they remain impartial and requires they recuse themselves from a case if their "impartiality might reasonably be questioned." The code of conduct also says the justices must refrain from political activity. Representative Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) on Tuesday introduced a resolution to censure Alito for flying the inverted flag. The resolution accuses Alito of "knowingly violating the federal recusal statute and binding ethics standards" and demands he recuse himself from any case related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

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Bill Maher on his new book reflecting on decades of comedy and commentary

Geoff Bennett Geoff Bennett

Sam Lane Sam Lane

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/bill-maher-on-his-new-book-reflecting-on-decades-of-comedy-and-commentary

Bill Maher is often a controversial figure in the world of politics and culture. He’s positioned himself as the ultimate truth-teller who takes equal pleasure in punching at the left and the right. Maher is taking stock of his decades of commentary in his new book, “What This Comedian Said Will Shock You.” Geoff Bennett sat down with Maher for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

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Geoff Bennett:

We now turn to my conversation with comedian and talk show host Bill Maher.

An often controversial figure in the world of politics and culture, Maher is taking stock of his decades of commentary in this consequential presidential election season. It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Bill Maher's unique blend of comedy and commentary sets him apart in the world of late-night television. Over three decades, first with "Politically Incorrect," and now with HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher," he's positioned himself as the ultimate truth-teller, who takes equal pleasure in punching at the left.

Bill Maher, Host, "Real Time With Bill Maher": It's not my fault the party of FDR and JFK is turning into the party of LOL and WTF.

And the right.

Bill Maher:

When did we start insisting that our presidents be smart? Like these (expletive deleted)

We're back on.

While his views have sparked controversy and criticism, Maher says he's not afraid to provoke.

I'm going to be late for work, something you protesters on the bridge seem to have the luxury of not having to worry about, which seems kind of privilege-y.

Offend or challenge the status quo.

Let me go on record and say I'm against breast cancer, but I'm trying to escape for a few hours. Can I just watch the game without thinking about cancer?

These commentaries are how he concludes every broadcast of his HBO show, and they're also the basis of his latest book, "What This Comedian Said Will Shock You."

We spoke at his Los Angeles TV studio after a recent Friday taping about what he discovered after revisiting more than 20 years of editorials for this new compilation.

When you did that deep dive, what did you find about the ways in which our politics and our culture has changed?

Well, that's what I was looking for. I wanted to answer the question in my own mind, is it mostly me who's changed, or is it the politics that has changed? Because I heard in the last five, six, seven years, people say to me more, you make fun of the left more, to which I say, yes, I do, because they got funnier.

And that's what I wanted to make sure I was right about. And I think mostly that is the case.

In what ways?

Well, I mean, I guess the general term would be wokeness that we didn't have before. I guess the term was there. And its original meaning is certainly good. Alert to injustice is certainly something everybody should be for, but it migrated to something very different.

So there's a host of really bad ideas, I think, that the left has embraced, the far left. I don't think its the normal Democratic voter. But that didn't exist in 2010. I mean, President Obama was terrible for comedy, which was great for the country. But he didn't do anything crazy. And the Democrats basically didn't.

I quote him in the introduction, where he says something like, Americans don't think we should remake the whole system. They just want to not see crazy stuff.

And I sort of present that as the dilemma that were facing. The Republicans, definitely, who no longer seem to believe in democracy, are the greater threat. But how do you balance that against the crazy doctrine theory? Lots of people see there's a lot of crazy stuff, ideas about race and gender and children and free speech, that they just think is crazy.

And so, as one guy said to me, what you don't get about Trump is, we don't like him either, but we will vote for him.

What do you think accounts for the durability of Donald Trump as a political figure? By any objective or rational standard, the challenges facing him, the scandals, the criminal trials, all of that should be disqualifying. And yet he's competitive.

Competitive? He's winning. I mean, he's…

Yes, the polls — some polls have him ahead, yes.

Most polls do, and in the states that matter. I mean, if I had to bet on this election — well, I wouldn't, but — I mean, I wouldn't. Yes, I wouldn't, because I couldn't bet against him.

Certainly, it's at least a 50/50 that he's going to beat Biden. That's a great question, if only someone would write a book about Donald Trump.

I mean, some of it is just insanity. I truly believe he's insane, in the sense that people talk about the malignant narcissism as if its some sort of quirk. It's more than a quirk. It's a real thing.

But as a friend of mine always says, insanity photographs. You can't you can't take your eyes off it. There is a certain charisma quality to that, when somebody is just nuts,. And he is. He doesn't really ever think about what he's going to say. People give him credit for plotting this. He doesn't plot.

Everything is just as it comes out of his mouth. One of the great advantages he has as a political candidate is that no one takes him seriously on policy pronouncements, because he just says anything and always has and always will. So, it's like, well, we can't really take it seriously. When he gets into office, hell probably do the right thing. We like him. He's our kind of guy.

So, that's actually kind of a great advantage when you are a politician.

Why is now the right time for a book like this?

Well, now because I wrote it now.

That's really the answer.

That's the best answer.

I don't know. People have been asking me to write it for a long time. They say — for years, they have been saying, you should collect these editorials at the end. I think it's a good — I think the timing is right, because the theme of it is kind of I'm tired of the hate.

There's a lot for both sides to like in this book. I mean, if you just want to read half of it and ignore the half that attacks your side, you can have a great time. I think most people are in the middle. I think — I call them the normies. I didn't coin that phrase, but I have heard it, and I like it, just normal people who are not part of this extremism of either side, and they don't like it.

And I don't like it. I don't want to hate half the country, and I don't hate half the country. The last chapter is — it's called "Divorce," and its just about how a lot of people talk these days about maybe America should split up, you know, civil war. Let's do this thing.

Yes, it sounds fun. I don't want to. And it's never going to work, because half the country, even if they lose an election, they're not going anywhere. They're not self-deporting. They're here and they're going to stay here, and you're going to have to learn to live with them.

We have to learn to live with, sit with, mingle with people who don't think like you. They're not raised like you. They weren't from a part of the country that you're from. And that's OK.

It's not false. It's a fact.

Maher's direct approach and willingness to tackle tough topics over the years have brought backlash. His critics view his outspokenness as intolerance, pointing to what they see as a pattern of offensive comments on a range of issues from gender to religion to race.

Clearly, racism is simply no longer everywhere. It's not in my home. And it probably isn't in yours.

Over the course of your career, your critics have said, that you are homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, sexist, fatphobic, ableist.

What do you make of all that?

Well, I tell the truth as I see it, and I don't pull punches. That's always been the bond with my audience. People are hypersensitive, and I mean, I could go down that list. I don't think we have time. And I don't think you really want to get into every one of them.

But they're all not true. I mean, I like all people. But there are things that have to be said about Islam. There are things that have to be said about health in America. There are things that have to be said about gender and what we're teaching children about it that are valid.

And I think this is what the normies appreciate in me, is that most people just shy away from even going near those issues because they're third rails. As I say in the book, one of the problems we have is, nobody ever gets canceled for being too woke.

One person who doesn't have to worry about being canceled, Maher himself. HBO has picked up two more years of "Real Time," which will take the long-running show through 2026.

I love doing what I do. I'll do it as long as I'm not hard to look at on TV. That could happen at some point. Hopefully, A.I. will fix that.

And as long as my brain is still working. I mean, I have a dead worm in there right now, but I seem to be OK.

You could run for president.

I could. Apparently, you can.

Whether it's his own plans or presidential politics, Bill Maher never loses sight of the punchline.

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Geoff Bennett serves as co-anchor of PBS NewsHour. He also serves as an NBC News and MSNBC political contributor.

Sam Lane is reporter/producer in PBS NewsHour's segment unit.

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