News

Karen Weaver wrote about how the merging of six of Pennsylvania’s state colleges will affect student athletes.

Richard Ingersoll spoke about the pandemic’s impact on the teaching workforce and suggested that the economy’s recovery could increase teacher turnover and retirements.

Ryan Baker is quoted on how the pandemic has necessitated innovation in remote learning, noting that, “There’s been a move to using high-quality interactive online learning environments.”

"It’s going to be a sort of an identifier for folks who lived through this, and we don’t really know what the mental health impacts are on us,” Ariane Thomas said.

Laura Perna pointed to equity gaps in labor market returns for people who hold the same type of college credential, noting that the risk of taking out a loan to attend college isn’t distributed equally in society.

"For so many Black families who experience this, the hardest part is about getting people to believe it happened and care." — Howard Stevenson

In the Conversation, Laura Perna, Jeremy Wright-Kim, and Elaine Leigh examine the design of free college programs and how the design influences their effectiveness.

Karen Weaver spoke about gender inequity in the NCAA. “There’s a number of inequitable decisions that have been made in addition to the ones we talked about this year that just haven't drawn the same amount of attention,” she said.

Richard Ingersoll spoke about how schools and school boards are working to meet demands from parents and lawmakers. “All these demands by parents are very understandable, such as lower class size,” said Ingersoll. “Who wouldn’t want their child to be in a class of 18? And, yes, let’s teach Mandarin and, yes, let’s bring back Latin. There are so many demands but very little recognition of the costs.”

In University World News, Laura Perna and William Tierney write “Academic life, as we have lived it, and as we envision it for you, is about challenging norms and creating a society that foments democracy.”

Nelson Flores said that instead of debating whether or not an institution should use the word “Latinx,” people should try to understand why the word is used.

Pam Grossman proposes rethinking schooling to give students more time to learn. “Let’s use the pandemic to rethink how we expand and enrich learning time for children, especially those most impacted by COVID-19-related disruption.”

Laura Perna talks about her research, issues of college access, affordability and success for first-generation, under-resourced students and why she has dedicated her life to this specific research.

Jonathan Zimmerman talks about his latest book and the state of education in the U.S. In addition to failing to teach people how to distinguish information from disinformation, the education system hasn’t taught them to engage across differences, Zimmerman says. “The only institution that has even a chance of intervening in that,” he says, “is a school.”

Richard Ingersoll said that admission standards for elementary teaching programs are already low, certainly compared to other professions such as medicine and law. The solution presented to address shortages in the national teacher workforce has been to “widen the gate and lower the bar,” but lowering academic standards “any further doesn’t make much sense,” Ingersoll said.

Ameena Ghaffar Kucher interviewed Pakistani American students in New York and observed that they transformed “the negative experience of being ostracized into a positive experience of solidarity and group membership with other Muslims, both in their immediate community and globally.”

Yasmin Kafai and professors across several departments at Utah State University have partnered to create an imaginary virus, allowing students to virtually explore many aspects of living in a pandemic. Children can play in this risk-free environment with more control than they often have in the real world.

Jonathan Zimmerman discusses a trend across higher education, where we’re relying on draconian penalties — especially suspensions — to discipline our students instead of working with them to help them get better.

Jonathan Zimmerman told The 74 that the sometimes vituperative arguments about American ideals and history held a vital place in K-12 classrooms.

Sigal Ben-Porath describes, “It was a very disturbing and significant moment in American history, so most students will be needing a place to consider it outside their families, and they don't have peer groups right now for the most part because of the pandemic.”

Sigal Ben-Porath joins host Jay Shapiro to explore what protections universities owe their students.

Richard Ingersoll said cultural misunderstandings about what it takes to be a good teacher have contributed to low wages for educators. “There was this idea that you don’t have to be that smart. It’s not as complex,” he said. “Or as difficult as being an accountant, working with numbers. Or being a dentist, working with teeth.”

Michael Gottfried said it’s difficult to quantify how school is going for students amid the pandemic. “We’re sort of building the plane as we fly it,” he said. “Everything’s up in the air now. Everything’s been disrupted just from the measurement side.”

Jonathan Zimmerman writes about the declining availability of tenure-track positions and a movement toward preparing doctoral students for jobs outside the academy, but suspects the change will come from outside of the academy, not from within it.

Peter Eckel and Aida Sagintayeva virtually brought together higher ed leaders from across 15 time zones to talk about a way forward.

Jonathan Supovitz explains, “The principals are doing all these amazing things, which are serving urgent needs of kids and families. That’s not taken into account in what we think of as a good school. There is an imbalance between our metrics for assessing quality and the actual role of schools in society.” The Consortium for Policy Research in Education, housed at Penn GSE, has published five briefs about how U.S. school districts and principals have dealt with the pandemic.

In this interview, Jenny Zapf highlights the importance of innovative and long-term, sustainable ideas that have impact.

Jonathan Zimmerman’s The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America is a richly researched, eye-opening history of college teaching in the United States over a span of more than a century and a half, mining personal papers and institutional records and reports from over 50 archives.

Sharon Wolf and an Imperial College London colleague co-authored an article about the effects of food shortages on early childhood development. “We found that children from households that were food insecure even only once during the three-year study period had lower literacy and numeracy abilities and short-term memory performance later on,” they wrote.

Sigal Ben-Porath discusses how our understanding of open expression and some of the boundaries of free speech that we find ourselves negotiating in this polarized time affects our ability to find common ground as a society, and what are some of the ways that higher education institutions and society more broadly can overcome polarization and mistrust and create a more engaged democratic community.

Sigal Ben-Porath wrote a piece about how teachers can approach the many issues that will arise around the general election in 2020, after the polls close and votes are counted, which could take days or weeks.

Sigal Ben-Porath spoke with host Jonathan Friedman, along with guest Vicka Bell-Robinson, director of residence life at Miami University, about how campuses can facilitate respectful and productive dialogue across political differences during this tense time

Sigal Ben-Porath participated as part of a panel discussion, along with Greg Lukianoff and Dr. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, about the current state of free expression on college campuses.

Nelson Flores said shifts in language often start with a small group of marginalized people, rather than with majority rule. “I think the relevant question for me isn’t whether people should be using the term. It’s how people who use the term Latinx are trying to differentiate themselves from people who use the term Hispanic and people who use the term Latino,” he said. “Why do they feel like those terms don’t really reflect the political identities they’re trying to articulate through the term Latinx?”

Richard Ingersoll explained how it was decided that women would teach in public schools 150 years ago. “The argument was, ‘Look, women will learn to be better mothers by practicing on other people’s children,’” he said. “Proponents made the case it was a win-win.”

Richard Ingersoll said it’s too early to know if the pandemic will worsen teacher shortages. “Traditionally, employees in general across industries and occupations quit at higher rates in good economic times and at lower rates in bad economic times," he said. "The reason is simple—even if someone dislikes their job, they are loath to quit if there is financial uncertainty, or if there are not other jobs available.”

“Even if you don’t like your job, if there aren’t other options out there, you’re going to be loath to leave. There aren’t a lot of options out there,” said Richard Ingersoll.

Howard Stevenson and Frances Jensen spoke about how young people view the threat of COVID-19 and the effects of police violence on their mental health.

Steve Piltch said private school enrollment has declined during the last decade. “Whatever the classes were there to begin with, they were smaller than most of the public schools are,” he said.

“The more we consider this new reality and the new rules it brings into our curriculum and pedagogy, the more grounded, humanizing, and transformational our teaching and courses will become,” Ravitch said.

Alan Ruby commented on India’s plans to overhaul its higher education system. “The big story is the commitment to growing the total size of the sector by adding 35 million places, effectively doubling the current infrastructure,” he said.

Jonathan Zimmerman advocated for a program that would enlist college students and other young adults to support school-aged children with online learning and extracurricular activities in exchange for a small stipend during the pandemic.

Ryan Baker led a team that analyzed the results of a survey about the challenges of remote learning. “School districts’ IT were never prepared for this to happen,” Baker said.

Howard Stevenson said Black students often are denied a sense of belonging in private school environments. When combined with experiences of racism, this can affect these students’ long-term mental health.

Ed Brockenbrough said Pride organizers’ efforts to promote the Black Lives Matter movement don’t go far enough to address racism in the LGBTQ community. "Activism in Black and brown queer communities has been happening for a long time without full buy-in from white gatekeepers of queer resources," he said.

Peter Eckel said the pandemic has given colleges a chance to reevaluate their summer offerings and other scheduling matters. “The pandemic has raised a lot of questions about long-held traditions about how to deliver higher education,” he said. “The academic calendar is one of them.”

Vice Provost for Student Engagement Valarie Swain-Cade McCollum was interviewed about Penn’s summer program for rising high school seniors.

Karen Weaver discussed how enrollment totals may impact sports budgets for colleges and universities.

Sharon Ravitch joined a filmmaker and a pediatrician as guest speakers on the Reinventing School podcast in which they explored the many aspects of hope in the midst of challenging times.

Karen Weaver discussed the college sports landscape and the big questions universities and athletics programs are tackling during the coronavirus pandemic.