I have taught at Columbia University for the better part of 25 years. Last Wednesday, I held office hours, as I do every week. I met with students and we talked about their classes, their essays on Shakespeare and Milton, their progress toward their respective degrees, and their feelings about graduation.

We also spoke about their reactions to Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s recent Congressional testimony and her decision to authorize New York City police to break up the “Gaza Solidary Encampment” on campus, along with their views on the protests.

In each conversation, I was impressed with their thoughtfulness, intelligence and compassion – and with their skills as evaluators of others’ use of language. They are English majors, so they should have good close reading skills. But they took the time to evaluate the statements of others, in context, from multiple perspectives.

In some ways, Columbia students are getting two world-class educations right now: one in their classes, and another on a campus that has become a center of cultural and political forces we will spend years parsing.

Related: How to combat anti-semitism without compromising academic freedom

Everything changed on campus after our president authorized police to sweep the encampment, resulting in dozens of students being arrested. It was done without appropriate consultation with faculty and the university senate. There was no “clear and present danger,” as the administration claimed.

Columbia faculty are, for the most part, longform thinkers, researchers, experimenters and writers, considerers of evidence and engagers in dialogue, experimentation and peer review. We are not good at sound bites – or at least I am not. I am not interested in social media as a platform for speech or dialogue. But I am passionately interested in the university as a place for teaching, research and debate.

The president’s action not only degraded the mission of a great university as such a place, but it subjected our students and every single member of this community to an unnecessary escalation of turmoil both inside and outside our gates.

Many students were outraged. Many faculty were outraged. And the full media circus, along with dozens of extremists of all kinds, arrived at our gates. 

Much of our time now – the time of biologists and language teachers, of immunologists and anthropologists, teachers of literature and computer science and art – is going into handling the fallout from this grossly mismanaged crisis. It is not a good use of our time.

In some ways, Columbia is still working as it should. Students are protesting a brutal war, including in tents on a lawn, they are going to classes and to the library, writing essays, putting on the Varsity Show, and reporting, at a very high level, on the events unfolding for campus publications WKCR, BWOG and The Columbia Spectator.

Students are learning, very imperfectly, about the history of the Middle East, the history of protests on Columbia’s campus and elsewhere, and about the rights of protestors and the rights of other students.

They are also learning, again imperfectly, about the differences between their perceptions of what is happening on campus and the perceptions of others on that same campus at the same time, and about the difference between suspending a student for hate speech or harassment, and suspending them for participating in a protest.

They are learning about the power and opportunism of some members of the U.S. Congress, and about the consequences of bad decisions on the part of their university’s administration.

Our students also belatedly learned that administrators might learn from their mistakes after Columbia’s president, provost and trustee chairs took a step back Friday night, writing in a letter to the entire Columbia community that calling the police back to clear the encampment a second time “would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus, and drawing thousands to our doorstep who would threaten our community.”

On Monday, they discovered that talks with administrators and student organizers have failed to reach an agreement.

The pressures working against nuanced dialogue across vast differences and experiences are enormous. Yet, we must restart those conversations. There are established places on campus for that work to take place: in classrooms, in representative student governing bodies, in representative faculty governing bodies, in conversations among students, faculty and administration, and in the university senate – the shared governing structure for the university.

More than 550 people came to the last open senate meeting on Friday. After much debate, the majority of senators voted on a resolution demanding that Columbia address reports of administrative actions jeopardizing academic freedom and breaching privacy and due process of students and faculty, along with violating shared governance principles. 

They proposed establishing a senate task force to present findings and recommendations for further senate action. The senate is contentious and baggy, but it, along with Columbia’s rules of conduct, were put in place 50 years ago to ensure that major university decisions be made representatively rather than by fiat.

They worked for 50 years. It’s time to bring them back.

Julie Crawford is the Mark Van Doren Professor of Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Editor’s note: The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Columbia University’s Teachers College.

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The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid promised to be an easy process for all students, especially those from immigrant families. For the first time, students with undocumented parents were told, they would be able to complete this form online.

We should have known better. Students with undocumented parents are constantly getting error messages from the FAFSA portal and are struggling to create FAFSA IDs for their parents who don’t have Social Security numbers. When they contact the FAFSA helpline, they hear “It’s a glitch. Try at a different time. Try a different browser.”

As I have seen as a college adviser, the online process has only worked for a few of my qualifying students. Others were asked to send their parents’ documents for verification.

Many of these students are still waiting for approval and have been unable to complete their FAFSA forms. Delays in their FAFSA applications could mean delays in receiving financial aid packages and possibly mean getting less financial aid to cover the costs of college. Their FAFSA applications now echo the immigration policies in this country — forever in limbo, mired in legislative and bureaucratic delays.

It wouldn’t surprise me if those students’ documents were among the FAFSA program’s thousands of unread emails, indicative of its widespread failure.

Related: ‘Simpler’ FAFSA complicates college plans for students, families

This isn’t the only roadblock my students face while attempting to pursue a college education. And it just underscores their need for help from someone familiar with the system and the frustration it brings.

Sadly, there aren’t enough college advisers like me for the growing population of immigrant students in New York City. We need to earmark funds to hire more advisers because no matter how much we prepare students in high school to succeed academically at the next level, they also need someone trained in the intersection of immigration and education to get them there.

For nearly a decade, the New York State Youth Leadership Council (YLC) and Teach Dream, the council’s educator team, have pushed city officials for more support for immigrant students in schools.

Finally, in 2021, they launched the Immigrant Liaison pilot program in a collaborative project with CUNY’s Initiative on Immigration and Education. That program led to the creation of positions for school staff members with experience working with and supporting immigrant youth, undocumented students, their families and caregivers.

The pilot began with three New York City public high schools, including the one where I work; in its second year, it added two middle schools. But funds for the program ended last June, leaving many of us doing this work informally.

Two decades ago, I was an undocumented student in high school and was unable to complete the FAFSA because of my status. I did some research to try to find out if I would be eligible for academic scholarships. I made several inquiries to tri-state college admissions counselors.

Like many of my students, I wanted to be the first in my family to earn a college degree, but my research results were discouraging.

I’ll never forget one response: An admissions counselor said I would have to contact the office for “special education accommodation” — as if immigration were a disability.

Federal and state immigration policies have since changed, and options have multiplied for immigrant students. In 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, began to allow eligible immigrants like myself to obtain work permits and Social Security numbers.

In 2016, New York State changed its licensing rules, allowing DACA recipients like me to earn professional certifications in teaching, and I was able to continue my career as a math teacher in the Department of Education. And in 2019, the New York State Senate passed the José Peralta New York State DREAM Act, which gave undocumented students in New York State the ability to qualify for state aid for higher education.

Yet even with all these changes, undocumented immigrants in New York State make up less than 2 percent of the students enrolled in higher education despite the fact that undocumented immigrants comprise roughly 14 percent of the state’s overall population.

How many more could go to college if they had someone in their high school who could properly guide them through the college application process?

Related: OPINION: I’m a college access professional. I had no idea filling out the new FAFSA would be so tough

At schools across the country, at all grade levels, not enough counselors and staff are equipped to navigate the intricacies of the complex and often confusing immigration system.

We need state or city-funded immigrant liaisons at every school. Securing funding will be like working with FAFSA: We will need to be persistent and patient.

It’s worth it. This winter, I walked a student through the steps on how to create her mother’s FAFSA ID. The mother then tried multiple times for a month until she was successful in creating it.

After that, my student completed her FAFSA form in 10 minutes. Now, we are waiting to hear whether she gets financial aid to attend college.

My work as an immigrant liaison is never finished. I only wish more could join me.

Juan Carlos Pérez is a project researcher for the CUNY Initiative on Immigration & Education and a college adviser at an international high school in New York City.

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I grew up in extreme poverty. The ability to access a free, high-quality education in North Texas changed my life. I benefited greatly from the ways community colleges meet students where they are and wrap their arms around them. Classes were small, and I had a clear sense of belonging, despite being the first in my family to go to college.

I still remember having deep discussions with my English professor about author Larry McMurtry. I am a first-generation Latina from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where everyone looked and sounded like me. But this professor and I both loved McMurtry. It was the first time I connected with someone based on shared academic interests despite entirely different lived experiences.

I did not have the remediation needs or learning gaps that many of today’s pandemic students are experiencing, but I did need support and direction.  The tiny community college I attended put me on a path toward a successful and purpose-driven life, and I’m grateful.

I believe that every community college, and every higher education institution, can do the same for their students — and in doing so, help close pandemic learning gaps. It starts with effective strategies and investment of resources.

However, it won’t be easy. Although enrollment at community colleges is on the rise after steep drops during the pandemic, these schools are facing more challenges than ever before. That’s largely due to the pandemic upending education as we knew it — including at San Jacinto College, where I serve on the board of trustees. Students are showing up with serious needs across academic and nonacademic areas, and community colleges, which are often under-resourced, aren’t always equipped to address them.

Related: Many community college students never earn a degree. New approaches to advising aim to reverse that trend

The pandemic led to sweeping achievement declines in core content areas, and recovery efforts have been uneven and unfinished. Millions of students left high school with large knowledge and skill gaps that may negatively impact their futures, including their earning potential, according to forecasts by leading economists.

Students who learned virtually or in hybrid settings largely missed out on the critical thinking that develops through classroom conversations. Their teachers were focused on keeping them engaged in an online environment and on providing fundamental instruction. They missed hearing their peers and teachers reason, explain and express. This has made the transition to higher education that much more challenging.

To address such students’ needs, community colleges typically enroll them in noncredit, remedial or developmental classes so that they can gain and demonstrate proficiency in areas they didn’t master in K-12.

At the same time, community colleges are struggling to meet the growing mental health needs of today’s students. Past funding models created resource challenges in this area; during the pandemic, employee turnover rates created much higher than normal advisor-to-student ratios. Thankfully, many community colleges were able to bolster mental health support through pandemic relief funding, but we must invest in this critical area in more sustainable ways, such as by focusing on a holistic set of policies and practices that others might learn from.

Higher education also hasn’t mastered how to have important conversations with students about what’s going on in their lives. We have to know them better to effectively support them. Regular surveys and focus groups are essential, and we need to act on the information they provide.

Schools should do a basic needs assessment for each student —at least once a year. Schools that do not run a food pantry, a coat closet or a partnership with local shelters should start doing so. When students don’t have basic needs met, they are unable to focus on academics as much as other students can.

Related: OPINION: A New York model helps community college students reach their goals

We also need better academic data on incoming students. Higher education and K-12 systems typically don’t collaborate, but we should have two-way conversations to ensure that we understand who is going to need developmental support in college and in which areas.

And finally, we should adjust our teaching practices to better support students. As a former developmental education faculty member, I always did a first-day writing assessment that allowed me to learn more about my students personally and about their writing strengths and weaknesses. To help students develop their writing, I also broke essay assignments into smaller pieces so students could get quicker feedback — and I could make quicker assessments of their needs.

That approach should be extended to other courses post pandemic. Providing college students with developmental coursework means creating and delivering compact and efficient lessons to help them fill their K-12 learning gaps. It also means dealing with insecurities about reading and writing deficiencies.

We also need to recognize that many college students are also working part-time jobs and being caregivers. Taking an empathetic stance is vital.

We must get students on their desired higher education pathway as quickly as possible, and avoid holding them in high-school level, remediation courses for extended periods.

In higher education today, a lot is happening to make school leaders feel both energized and daunted. But it’s vital that we focus on the most critical tasks before us. Community colleges must get to know and understand their students so they can meet their needs. 

Michelle Cantú-Wilson is a member of the San Jacinto College Board of Trustees, where she previously served in faculty and administrative roles. She also serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card.

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Thousands of public school districts and charter schools have turned to tutoring as a popular and effective way to jumpstart lagging student performance post-pandemic.

Educators strongly endorse tutoring, when done right, and believe it can help students make real academic gains. In an effort to spur the tutoring movement, the Biden administration recently called on colleges and universities to devote at least 15 percent of their federal work-study funds to pay eligible college students to tutor.

This could be a win-win. Tapping into the $1.2 billion work-study program — launched in 1964 to make part-time employment part of college students’ financial aid awards — would boost K-12 student academic performance while providing undergraduates with valuable work experience.

Building a work-study path to tutoring would also ease the cost of college.

It is going to take more than federal encouragement to make work-study a viable funding source, however. There are significant bureaucratic and political barriers to tapping work-study’s potential to boost tutoring.

Related: PROOF POINTS: Four lessons from post-pandemic tutoring research

One obstacle stems from the way federal work-study funds flow. They go to colleges and universities rather than directly to college students, requiring potential work-study providers to win approval from every institution they work with. Even in a system like the University of California, providers must work separately with UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and the rest.

In addition, the federal government allows higher education institutions to decide what share of tutoring wages they will cover. While some pay their students’ full wages, others may cover as little as 75 percent, leaving tutoring providers to find funds to pay the rest.

The result is a daunting bureaucratic and budgetary landscape for tutoring organizations, says Sam Olivieri, chief executive of California-based nonprofit Step Up Tutoring, one of the few tutoring providers using federal work-study funding.

Olivieri estimates that less than 10 percent of the nation’s college students could provide intensive tutoring to 25 percent of all public elementary school students.

Federal work-study rules and regulations have become a barrier to bringing potentially thousands of college students into public school classrooms as tutors, says Katie Hooten, founder and director of Teach For America’s nonprofit Ignite tutoring fellowship, which recruits students from their college campuses to provide high-dosage tutoring virtually.

Hooten notes that if the 10-campus University of California system adopted one standard approach, it would enable Ignite and other tutoring providers to hire tutors from the system’s 280,000 students far faster. They would not have to negotiate and manage separate partnerships with each college.

Two federal policy moves could ease the logjams these barriers create: a national, standardized system for vetting and approving tutoring partners and incentives for universities to pay the same percentage of work-study funds toward their students’ tutoring wages.

If national tutoring organizations meet quality standards, the federal government could approve them to work as federal work-study partners with every college and university. That approval could come with a commitment by institutions to pay tutoring positions at a standard rate.

There’s yet another obstacle to this solution, though. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives want to end the federal work-study program and shift its budget to Pell Grants, which go directly to students without involving college or university administrators.

To overcome this obstacle, Congress could instead consider a pilot program that gives work-study funds to students who participate in tutoring programs like Step Up, Ignite and other nationally approved programs. They could provide students with lump-sum payments akin to Pell Grants.

Once college students completed their tutoring obligations, they would receive work-study funds directly from the federal government without institutional involvement.

In the case of Ignite tutors, for example, they would receive a $1,200 stipend after completing an Ignite tutoring block (30 minutes of virtual tutoring in small groups four days a week for 10 weeks).

Related: OPINION: Post-pandemic, our bored and disconnected teenagers need a whole lot more than high-dosage tutoring

The strong research supporting Ignite and other “high-impact” tutoring programs has generated an uncommon level of bipartisan support for extending the reach of tutoring — which has a history of serving as a mostly privately purchased aid for students who can afford to pay.

Case in point: The number of private tutoring centers in the U.S. more than tripled between 1997 and 2016, from roughly 3,000 to almost 10,000.

A work-study investment targeted at tutoring would contribute to the Biden administration’s goal of increasing both the number of tutors and the number of K-12 students getting tutored.

Members of Congress who unsuccessfully sought to pass the College Affordability Act in 2019 and are still eager to address rising college costs would also likely support a substantial work-study investment in tutoring.

And paying college students directly after they complete their tutoring commitments would address Republicans’ concerns about funding flowing through universities.

A work-study path to tutoring could help ease the cost of college while tapping a vast source of support for the nation’s schools.

That would be both a political winner and a potential game-changer for the education sector.

Liz Cohen is policy director at FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and author of “Learning Curve: Lessons from the Tutoring Revolution in Public Education.”

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There has been much talk and concern in recent months about making higher-level math more accessible to high schoolers, particularly low-income students from Black and Hispanic communities. Much of this discussion dwells on what is the best curriculum to use to teach Algebra I and other higher-level math courses.

The right curriculum is important, of course. A high-quality curriculum creates the foundation for success in math. A curriculum that values culturally responsive education enables teachers both to value the many kinds of experiences that students bring to classrooms and to push them academically while engaging them personally.

But properly implementing an Algebra I curriculum is at least as important as the curriculum itself. The core of implementation, meanwhile, is coaching each teacher for the specific challenges they will face in their classrooms. The key to success is ensuring that teachers understand the vision for how to implement the curriculum and are therefore motivated and prepared to use it to help children learn in ways that are relevant to them.

In a way, it’s like photography. The key to creating art with light and time is not the equipment. Although Hasselblad and Leica cameras and a metal case of Nikkor lenses are great in the hands of those who know how to use them, a great tool to create expressive photographic art can also be found in your purse or pocket. As with teaching algebra, the key is not the specific tool, but knowing the right approach and being trained well enough to be confident in using that approach.

Related: Kids are failing algebra. The solution? Slow down

I’ve seen a focus on implementation pay off in my own work as director of Algebra Success for the Urban Assembly. One of our coaches at the nonprofit, Latina Khalil-Hairston, encouraged teachers at Harry S Truman High School in the Bronx to tinker with their curriculum to encourage more student involvement.

They created a new lesson structure that focused more on getting students to help each other solve problems than on getting direction from teachers. While doing so, they were mindful of adopting this new structure within the challenging constraint of having only 45 minutes for each lesson. Teachers saw more participation and better results, which has been its own motivation.

Professionals in all fields need coaching and support — why would high school math be any different? We wouldn’t give a basketball playbook to a player and expect them to be LeBron James. Even LeBron James still practices and gets coaching feedback. Even the most accomplished among us need to see a vision of excellence.

Yet I have seen many schools fall into the trap of investing in a curriculum without giving teachers the most useful ways to implement it. Unsurprisingly, these schools fail to achieve the results they hoped for and then abandon one curriculum for another.

But the curriculum is just the camera. Training and coaching, personalized to each teacher, produce the art.

And that coaching should not only help teachers understand their tools, but also help them better understand the backgrounds of their students to ensure that their perspectives are part of the learning process. Knowing the nature of the student body can dramatically enhance understanding, retention and interest in math (or any subject).

Related: OPINION: Algebra matters, so let’s stop attacking it and work together to make it clearer and more accessible

I’ve seen the results. Just last year, we saw pass rates on the Algebra I Regents for schools participating in our Algebra Success program rise 13 percent over the previous year. College-readiness math results rose 14 percent.

It is time for schools and districts to abandon the search for the one perfect curriculum — it does not exist. Instead, they should focus on how to better implement the systems they have in an engaging, effective way. They should invest in the training and support of teachers to master the instruction of that curriculum. With these changes, we know students will find success in Algebra I, putting them on the path to higher-level math courses and postsecondary success.

Shantay Mobley is the director of Algebra Success for the Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that promotes social and economic mobility by innovating in public education. She previously was a math teacher, school leader and instructional consultant.

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Students gather once a month at my high school for what we call “equity lunch chats” with teachers and administrators. The students ask about many topics, including tardy policies, access to athletics and clubs, and even treatment by deans and security. Their questions give the adults like me in the room a glimpse into their world. But no matter how the conversation starts, the students — nearly half of whom are Black, Asian, Hispanic or multiracial — often come back to complaints about the lack of diversity in our school’s textbooks and educational materials.

They want to see themselves and their cultures reflected in the books we read, and they don’t want token representation. They want more diverse classroom experiences.

“I appreciate that my teachers try to offer different narratives,” a student said at one of our sessions discussing teaching materials featuring history and stories from all continents, “but they always seem to be about hardship or having to overcome an obstacle. We are never just the average main character.” Another student pointed out that he already knows about the “famous people of color, but never hears about the everyday lives of them.”

As a Colorado secondary school history teacher and former English teacher, I believe, and research shows, that student achievement improves when learners are personally engaged. Higher engagement correlates with higher productivity, work quality and satisfaction — and even improved attendance rates.

Students tell us this every day in ways big and small. I see them clamor for Zheng He, Simon Bolivar, Cesar Chavez, Mary Wollstonecraft and Haile Selassie when they choose research topics. In her research paper this year, a student named Briana who picked Cesar Chavez wrote that she had never been given so many choices before, and that “the choices have never included topics that make me feel like I am learning about my own heritage at the same time. I am so proud to be Hispanic and loved researching a personal hero of mine.”

I also see my students’ hands go up when we study world religions, and they can share a story from home. They nod along as we cover topics that connect to stories their grandparents shared with them, like tales of migration and cultural celebrations.

Related: Teaching social studies in a polarized world

It’s time we listened to our students and strengthened our curriculums to teach a balanced history that honors all cultures and narratives. Here are a few ways we can do this:

Improve instructional materials. Our long-standing curricula highlight a Eurocentric global history and white-centric American history, with only small cameos by the people who were enslaved, harmed and marginalized. Gathering a team of students and educators to advise on an inclusive curriculum would give students a voice in the process and create a starting place for teachers like me as we build our own classroom lesson plans.

Provide all students opportunities to advocate for inclusive sources. When students have voice and choice in their learning, they are more inclined to participate and succeed. Teachers can learn from those choices and adapt long-term lesson-planning to respond to the various needs and interests of all their students. High schools can build student-led spaces like those in our equity lunch chats, where students suggest texts and topics, and history classes like mine can support the mission of making our curriculum more inclusive.

Provide educators with the time and training to be culturally responsive teachers. As schools across the country welcome more diverse student populations (including 2,800 migrant children newly enrolled in Denver schools in January), the need for teachers to be culturally responsive is ever more pressing. States should offer teachers stipends and extra time to diversify their historical knowledge and then build lessons and materials to reflect it. Districts should also consider bringing in students and experts in equity studies as sounding boards and editors for these new curriculums.

Related: STUDENT VOICE: There’s something missing from my Advanced Placement classes, and that needs to change

In the meantime, I look forward to our lunch chats and to learning from our students about how we can listen better and make real gains toward their goal of a more equitable education. We must continue to be advocates for an inclusive learning experience that allows for honesty, connection and relevance for all our learners.

Emily Muellenberg is a social studies teacher at Grandview High School in Aurora, Colorado. She is a 2023-24 Teach Plus Colorado Policy Fellow.

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Imagine waking up each morning with no hope for the day ahead, navigating a minefield of potential conflicts with your body on high alert. That was my reality as a marginalized youth — misunderstood, labeled as a troublemaker and cast out without a chance to reconcile and evolve.

Growing up with anxiety in school is an all-too-common experience that perpetuates a cycle of fear and resentment. It’s time to acknowledge and address this narrative that adversely affects our youth’s learning experiences and the education system.

Negative labeling of students can severely impact their confidence and sense of self. As a former “troublemaker,” I know firsthand how difficult it can be to overcome such labeling.

Participating in a restorative justice program allowed me to take responsibility for my actions, repair relationships and gain the confidence I needed to succeed. By providing restorative justice programs, we can help students become positive and engaged members of their school communities.

Related: What does restorative justice look like?

Restorative justice is an alternative to suspension that involves having those in conflict talk through their issues with a mediator. The goal is for students who have misbehaved to understand any harm they’ve caused and work to repair it and restore relationships. It offers a beacon of hope, a transformative approach prioritizing connection over isolation and understanding over punitive discipline.

Students need to feel that those with power see their life experiences. They should not be subjected to pointless punishment that has no value other than the punishment itself.

Restorative justice empowers students to take responsibility for their actions. Providing a safe dialogue space helps students learn how to communicate effectively, build empathy and establish trust with their peers and teachers. By embracing restorative justice, schools can create a culture of accountability, healing and growth that benefits everyone involved.

But restorative justice is not just about addressing behavior problems; it’s also about addressing the underlying issues driving those behaviors, often stemming from trauma, neglect or systemic injustices. Restorative justice recognizes that everyone has unique circumstances and challenges and deserves personalized support to address their needs. Many students do not have access to the resources needed to address their mental and emotional concerns, and they do not have the proper tools to deal with everything they go through in their lives. Instead, they manifest their struggles through misbehavior. They need someone to recognize their lived experiences and help them confront the sources of their actions.

Responding to misbehavior in this supportive way is a paradigm shift from punitive measures that only serve to alienate and perpetuate cycles of violence and incarceration.

In marginalized communities, where access to mental health support is often limited and stigmatized, restorative justice can be a lifeline. Instead of funneling youth into the school-to-prison pipeline, we must invest in their potential by providing access to counseling, therapy and other resources that address the root causes of their behavior. This process starts at the ground level: Those who see students daily need to be the first ones to help them address their issues.

Restorative justice provides students the tools to go forth into the world as optimistic, encouraged and emotionally intelligent individuals — allowing them a greater chance to reach their goals.

Related: OPINION: Restorative justice isn’t a panacea, but it can promote better relationships among students

Implementing restorative justice requires a concerted effort from educators, administrators and policymakers. It starts with training in restorative practices, creating safe spaces for dialogue and conflict resolution and collaborating with mental health professionals to provide holistic support.

Challenges and resistance are inevitable. Skepticism and fear of change are formidable barriers, as are entrenched policies and funding allocations that prioritize punishment over rehabilitation. However, the success stories of restorative justice programs nationwide prove that change is possible and necessary.

Reflecting on my journey from fear to advocacy, I am reminded of the transformative power of restorative justice. It’s not just about breaking down walls; it’s about building bridges of understanding and compassion. It’s about breaking the cycle of fear and punitive discipline.

Seeing the positive impact of restorative justice on our school community motivated me to become certified in restorative justice. Now, I’m able to help others in my community find ways to resolve conflicts and build stronger, more meaningful relationships through restorative practices.

It won’t happen overnight, but with perseverance and collective effort, we can create school systems in which every student feels seen, heard and valued. It’s time to tear down the walls of injustice and build bridges to a brighter future for all.

Jully Myrthil is a high school senior in Rhode Island and a passionate advocate for fostering understanding, inclusion and justice for all. She is a co-founder of Shades of Knowledge, a nonprofit dedicated to making education and literature accessible to all youth worldwide.

Keira Boxell, fellow co-founder of Shades of Knowledge, contributed to this piece.

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Our nation’s public school population is changing, fueled by growth in the number of multilingual learners. These students made up 10.3 percent of U.S. public school enrollment in 2020, up from 8.1 percent in 2000. Spanish was the most-reported home language among English learners in 2020, followed by Arabic.

Today, there are some 5 million multilingual learners. Across the country, the need for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) educators is hard to miss.

Yet, some ESOL educators say that they are the only ones in their district, working across multiple schools and struggling to juggle the demands of the position and the needs of their students.

Related: English language teachers are scarce. One Alabama town is trying to change that

We can help address this problem by creating a highly trained, skilled and culturally competent educator workforce. We must overcome barriers to creating this bigger talent pool of educators because what we are doing now is not working.

Many multilingual students face ongoing challenges and discrimination in public school. And the schools are facing their own challenges in serving this population: Some have been sued for failing to properly educate these students.

For example, Boston Public Schools has been under a court order since 1994 to direct a more equitable share of federal funding to multilingual learners. Yet despite some efforts to document the experiences and outcomes of multilingual learners in the district, a legal monitor noted last year that Boston’s school leaders had defied requests for records showing how it spent its funds. Poor data collection practices also led to severely underserving the city’s multilingual learners — often putting them in classes that didn’t match their skill levels.

Similarly, in Newark, a recent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found that the district was failing to properly educate multilingual learners — by not providing students with access to the services or supports they need to thrive.

Unfortunately, these failings are all too common. One core underlying issue is the shortage of ESOL educators. Yet, traditional ESOL teacher certification processes are often burdensome, inflexible and financially onerous.

This is especially true in rural communities with few options to support professional learning experiences.

Traditional ESOL training and certification courses are typically based on credit accumulation, focusing on academic knowledge over real time application of learning.

As a result, educators may struggle to put their knowledge into practice in ways that benefit multilingual learners.

Related: OPINION: To solve teacher shortages, let’s open pathways for immigrants so they can become educators and role models

That’s why we should turn to self-paced and practical programs to build our talent pool of ESOL educators. Already, 26 states have some formal policy in place around microcredentials to support either licensure or professional development.

One example: A microcredential program developed by UCLA’s ExcEL Leadership Academy was recently approved for use in Rhode Island. Through a series of 12 microcredentials, educators can submit evidence of their work in and outside of their classrooms. At the close of 2023, 75 Rhode Island educators were enrolled in the new and cutting-edge program. Upon completion, they will receive digital badges that reflect the mastery of the skills they’ve demonstrated; the set of 12 badges is recognized by the state as a form of certification.

This has been a great solution for the city of Central Falls, Rhode Island. The population in Central Falls is constantly changing, as the city continues to welcome newcomers and families seeking asylum from various countries, including Guatemala, Columbia and Cape Verde.

Nearly half of the district’s 3,000 students are officially multilingual, and many more are English proficient but speak another home language. To address this diversity, the current teacher contract requires all teachers to obtain an ESOL certification.

David Upegui, a science teacher at Central Falls High School, noted that the ExcEL program allowed him flexibility to get credit for work he was already doing. By reflecting on and documenting his current practice and spending time with his students — rather than in a seat in a traditional certification program — he was able to obtain the microcredentials he needed.

Additionally, administrative staff have praised their experiences with the ExcEL program because it works for school leaders, not just classroom educators. Though not required to do so, many Central Falls administrators took it upon themselves to participate in the program, modeling the commitment to learning how to better meet the needs of multilingual learners.

Even though administrators have just started the program, they say that it has already resulted in improving their intake process for newcomers and is sparking new insights for better supporting multilingual learners.

Other districts and states should follow suit and consider alternative certification pathways for ESOL educators and expand possibilities for other specialized credentials.

There are several ways to make this happen: Our recent report outlines recommendations for states and districts to get started, and spells out how.

The future of our country depends upon fully supporting and realizing the potential that multilingual learners bring to our communities. They need educators who are properly trained to support them.

Let’s take a lesson from Rhode Island in tapping innovative approaches to grow the population of ESOL educators. Teachers may be the most important factor for in-school success and have the potential to truly change the trajectory of a student’s life.

Laurie Gagnon is a program director of the CompetencyWorks initiative at the Aurora Institute, a national nonprofit focused on education innovation.

This story about educating multilingual learners was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Much has been made of artificial intelligence’s potential to revolutionize education. AI is making it increasingly possible to break down barriers so that no student is ever left behind.

This potential is real, but only if we are ensuring that all learners benefit.

Far too many students, especially those with special needs, do not progress as well as their peers do academically. Meanwhile, digital media, heavily reliant on visuals and text, with audio often secondary, is playing an increasing role in education.

For a typical user in most cases, this is fine. But not for blind or deaf students, whose sensory limitations frequently impede their access to quality education. The stakes are much higher for these students, and digital media often underserves them.

That’s why the development of AI-powered tools that can accommodate all learners must be a priority for policymakers, districts and the education technology industry.

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

Good instruction is not a one-way street where students simply absorb information passively. For learning content to be most effective, the student must be able to interact with it. But doing so can be especially challenging for students with special needs working with traditional digital interfaces.

A mouse, trackpad, keyboard or even a touch screen may not always be appropriate for a student’s sensory or developmental capabilities. AI-driven tools can enable more students to interact in ways that are natural and accessible for them.

For blind and low-vision students

For blind and low-vision students, digital classroom materials have historically been difficult to use independently. Digital media is visual, and to broaden access, developers usually have to manually code descriptive information into every interface.

These technologies also often impose a rigid information hierarchy that the user must tab through with keys or gestures. The result is a landscape of digital experiences that blind and low-vision students either cannot access at all or experience in a form that lacks the richness of the original.

For these students, AI-powered computer vision offers a solution — it can scan documents, scenes and apps and then describe visual elements aloud through speech synthesis. Coupled with speech recognition, this allows seamless conversational navigation without rigid menus or keyboard commands.

Free tools like Ask Envision and Be My Eyes demonstrate this potential. Using just an AI-enabled camera and microphone, these apps can capture and explain anything the user points them toward, and then answer follow-up questions.

These technologies have the potential to allow blind and low-vision students to get the full benefit of the same engaging, personalized ed tech experiences that their peers have been using for years.

For deaf and hard-of-hearing students

In some ways, the visually oriented world of digital media is an ideal fit for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Audio is often a secondary consideration; particularly once users can read.

In cases in which audio is required for comprehension, like with video, the accommodation most digital developers provide is text-based captioning. Unfortunately, this means that a user must already be a proficient reader.

For younger learners, or any learner who does not read fluently or quickly, translation into sign language is a preferable solution. AI can be of service here, translating speech and text into animated signs while computer vision reads the user’s gestures and translates them into text or commands.

There are some early developments in this area, but more work is needed to create a fully sign language-enabled solution.

For the youngest learners

For young learners, even those without diagnosed disabilities, developmentally appropriate interactions with conventional desktop/mobile apps remain a challenge. A young child cannot read or write, which makes most text-based interfaces impossible for them. And their fine motor control is not fully developed, which makes using a mouse or keyboard or trackpad more difficult.

AI voice controls address these problems by enabling students to simply speak requests or responses, a more natural interaction for these pre-readers and -writers. Allowing a child to simply ask for what they want and verbally answer questions gives them a more active role in their learning.

Voice control may also enable a more reliable assessment of their knowledge, as there are fewer confounding variables when the student is not trying to translate what they understand into an input that a computer will understand.

Computer vision can smooth over text-based methods of interaction. For example, username/password login forms can be replaced with QR codes; many school-oriented systems have already done so.

Computer vision can also be used to enable interactions between the physical and digital world. A student can complete a task by writing or drawing on paper or constructing something from objects, and a computer can “see” and interpret their work.

Using physical objects can be more developmentally appropriate for teaching certain concepts. For example, having a child count with actual objects is often better than using digital representations. Traditional methods can also be more accurate in some cases, such as practicing handwriting with pencil and paper instead of a mouse or trackpad.

Even without physical objects, computer vision can enable the assessment of kinesthetic learning, like calculating on fingers or clapping to indicate syllables in a word.

Related: STUDENT VOICE: Teachers assign us work that relies on rote memorization, then tell us not to use artificial intelligence

A major hurdle in education is that although every student is unique, we have not had the tools or resources to truly tailor their learning to their individualized strengths and needs. AI technology has the potential for transformative change.

The responsibility falls on all of us — districts, policymakers and the ed tech industry — to collaborate and ensure that AI-powered accessibility becomes the norm, not the exception.

We must share knowledge and urgently advocate for policies that prioritize and fund the swift deployment of these game-changing tools to all learners. Accessibility can’t be an afterthought; it must be a top priority baked into every program, policy and initiative.

Only through concerted efforts can we bring the full potential of accessible AI to every classroom.

Diana Hughes is the vice president of Product Innovation and AI at Age of Learning.

This story about AI and special needs students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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As we made our way down one of the city streets that bisect the Yale campus, cars zooming by, my daughter Mari swept her wide-eyed gaze across the grand Gothic cathedrals that are Yale’s residential colleges.

“I didn’t expect it to be so … fancy,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. She was six, and I knew “fancy” was her word for impressive, extravagant.

She’d heard about this place where I had spent four years of my life precisely 20 years earlier; she had been eagerly looking forward to attending the “reunion,” which was a new word for her. She knew we were going to school — but in her mind, schools didn’t look like this. Fascination began to seep in.

Vivid memories of that day came flooding back to me in the fall of 2017, when we dropped Mari off for her freshman year at Yale — 11 years after her first encounter. Her fascination had bloomed into excitement, into anxiety, into elation mixed surely with some fear.

I had my own surprises in store at the drop-off and in the four years that followed. What I discovered, what nobody had warned me about, was that having your child attend your alma mater can produce a powerful cocktail of emotions.

It blindsided me. Wait, are these tears in my eyes? It was more than the customary sadness of the college drop-off.

As our children get older and transition to lives outside our homes, we fight a constant state of anxiety — What are they doing right now? Are they happy? Are they safe? That’s especially true for Black parents like me. But I knew that over the next four years, I would have solid, reliable answers to those questions, almost as if she were walking around with a body cam. I knew this place, its hidden alleyways, its social centers, its sublime pockets of solitude tucked away in unlikely places.

As I drove away from campus that September, I felt my usual parenting anxiety subside just a bit. Instead of worry, my primary emotion was excitement for her. While she would be challenged, I also knew she would be surrounded by a vast array of resources that could help her discover new things about herself. Yale is good at that — opening eager young eyes, offering exhilarating new adventures.

But there are forces who want to deny parents like me the excitement derived from a profound shared experience with their children. Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California system have dropped legacy admissions preferences. Colorado has banned them for its public universities; similar legislation has been introduced in Congress and in Virginia, New York and Connecticut. The federal Department of Education is investigating whether legacy preferences at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania constitute civil rights violations, and Yale president Peter Salovey said during a panel discussion last October that officials are deliberating the future of legacy admissions there.

After the Supreme Court’s decision last June dismantling affirmative action, this movement to end legacy admissions can be viewed as another blow to ambitious Black children — the ones whose parents were part of the first generation of nonwhites to matriculate at elite institutions in significant numbers. We finally made it in the door, and now they are seeking new ways to slam the door behind us.

Related: COLUMN: Colleges decry Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, but most have terrible track records on diversity

Yale’s legacy numbers have decreased slightly in recent years. Eleven percent of the class of 2027 are legacies; the numbers were 12 percent for the class of 2026 and 14 percent for the class of 2025. The overall acceptance rate for the class of 2027 was 4.35 percent, the lowest in recent history. Yale had 602 Black undergraduates on campus last fall, making up 8.8 percent of the 6,818 total undergraduates. By comparison, its proportion of white students was 32.3 percent; Asian students, 22.8 percent; and Hispanic students, 15.7 percent.

At the October discussion, President Salovey said that if legacy applicants were denied, they likely would be replaced by students whose parents simply went to different elite colleges. He added that the population of alumni children now applying to Yale is “far more diverse” than the populations of alumni children applying in the past.

As an alum who has been interviewing Yale applicants for more than three decades, as an interested observer, as a Yale parent, I’ve been watching this admissions system up close for decades. I know who will continue to benefit from it: the children of the wealthy and powerful — with or without legacy admissions.

I understand the desire to create a system that feels fair and inclusive. It’s a worthy goal. However, high-achieving children from low-income families rarely apply to selective schools like Yale. There’s even a term to describe their reluctance: undermatching. Studies show that low-income students are half as likely to pick a selective college as high-income students with similar grades and test scores. One major factor is the sticker shock of elite colleges’ tuition prices — though the overall cost to attend may be lower thanks to more generous financial aid packages.

And Black applicants are similarly rare at the most selective schools. In 36 years of interviewing applicants for Yale, seeing about four applicants per year, I can count the number of Black applicants I’ve interviewed on two hands — with a couple of fingers left over.

So, banning legacies will not transform the demographics of the applicant pool.

This feels like another case in which polite society wakes up and decides fairness should now be a priority and the system should be changed — just when my people have started benefiting from the system. In sheer numbers, if legacy admissions are banned along with affirmative action, I believe that Black people will suffer the most.

The onus will fall heavily on Black applicants to play a game of cat and mouse with the admissions officers — give them just enough info so they know your race; offer up just enough detail so they know a parent attended the school. And then hope for the best.

Related: College advisers vow to ‘kick the door open’ for Black and Hispanic students despite affirmative action ruling

What deeply concerns me is the way elite schools will prove they are now complying with the new law of the land: They will need to show that their number of Black students has decreased. Ugh. In future years, an applicant like my daughter — a Black legacy — will represent a flashing red warning light to the admissions office, like the “check engine” light on a car dashboard:

Tread carefully; danger ahead.

Trying to root out preferences for the wealthy in a society specifically designed for the advancement of the wealthy is disingenuous and unrealistic. We pay lip service to the goal of equity and fairness, but we know that the college admissions process will continue to send the wealthy and powerful to schools created to educate the wealthy and powerful so that they will continue to be wealthy and powerful. Ending legacies might make some folks feel better, but it’s unlikely to change this equation.

Nick Chiles, a New York Times bestselling author, is a writer in residence and professor at the University of Georgia. He is a member of the journalism advisory board of The Hechinger Report, which produced this essay.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, a photo caption mistakenly stated that Yale had decided to cease preferences for legacy applicants. Captions on photos of Mari Chiles also incorrectly stated the year the photos were taken; it was 2017.

This story about legacy admissions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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