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About Struggling in School: My Expirience

  • Categories: High School Personal Experience Struggle

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Words: 727 |

Published: May 19, 2020

Words: 727 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Works Cited

  • Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books.
  • Duckworth, A. L. (2016). Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Scribner.
  • Sood, A. (2018). The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living. Da Capo Lifelong Books.
  • Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
  • Covey, S. R. (2013). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Touchstone.
  • Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Riverhead Books.
  • Goleman, D. (2006). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Bantam.
  • Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), 1087-1101.
  • Duckworth, A. L., & Gross, J. J. (2014). Self-control and grit: Related but separable determinants of success. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 319-325.
  • Yeager, D. S., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., Brzustoski, P., Master, A., ... & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Breaking the cycle of mistrust: Wise interventions to provide critical feedback across the racial divide. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 804-824.

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essay about problems in school

19 Most Common Student Problems And Easiest Ways To Deal With Them

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19 Most Common Student Problems And How To Deal With Them

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The journey through university is exciting, but it's not always smooth sailing. It involves tight deadlines, late nights fuelled by coffee, and the ongoing quest for Wi-Fi. As you step into the world of college academia, you'll encounter a maze of student problems that no brochure prepares you for. From battling homesickness to deciphering lecturer accents, we've all been there. Here is a list of some common problems in school and solutions, compassing through the tumultuous seas of studenthood. 

19 Common Problems Faced by Students

Juggling textbooks, part-time jobs, and the infamous laundry mountain—life as a university student isn't always a picturesque journey. From lonely nights to budgeting problems, we're about to dive into the raw reality. Here are 19 student problems, untangling the daily struggles that make this academic rollercoaster both challenging and relatable.

1. Time Management

In the whirlwind of university life, students often grapple with the challenge of time management, a predicament as common as the morning coffee routine. Managing lectures, assignments, and a semblance of social life or best time to study can feel like an unattainable feat. 

Amidst this chaos, a practical solution emerges - crafting a personalised schedule. By prioritising tasks, setting realistic goals, and incorporating breaks, students can navigate the labyrinth of academic demands. If you are grappling with time student problems, here are 10 time management tips for students that offer a beacon of guidance.

2. Experiencing Low Motivation

Struggling with low motivation is one of the all-too-real common student problems. Trying to balance multiple assignments, looming deadlines, and the weight of expectations is one of the top student problems. The relentless grind can easily sap motivation, leading to burnout.

However, there's a beacon of hope. Establishing a support system, like study groups or seeking guidance from mentors, can be a game-changer. Sharing experiences and learning from others not only provides fresh perspectives but also acts as a motivational boost. 

3. Lack of Concentration

One of the major student problems is getting buried under piles of assignments, toggling between social media distractions and impending deadlines. The struggle is palpable, and the lack of concentration becomes a formidable foe. Managing coursework, part-time jobs, and social commitments, students find themselves overwhelmed. 

However, a practical solution emerges for these student problems - establishing a dedicated study routine. By setting realistic goals and embracing mindfulness techniques, students can combat this common hurdle. 

4. Too Many Distractions

In the daily hustle, students often grapple with the pervasive issue of too many distractions. Imagine preparing for a crucial exam while notifications flood your phone, social media beckons, and the allure of streaming services proves irresistible. These distractions not only impede concentration but also jeopardise academic success- one of the major student problems! 

In navigating this challenge, establishing a dedicated study space, adopting time-management techniques, and employing focus-enhancing tools can prove instrumental. By acknowledging the real-life struggle of excessive diversion, you can overcome the pervasive challenges faced by university students.

5. Not Finding the Right Accommodation

Struggling to secure suitable accommodation is one of the prevalent international student struggles. What if a student is excited about their new academic journey, only to face the daunting challenge of not finding the right place to stay? It's more than just housing student problems; it's a disruption to their focus and well-being.

The practical solution lies in universities collaborating with local housing services or finding a platform that provides student accommodation, ensuring a streamlined process for students. If you are a student seeking hassle-free accommodation solutions, look no further! Amber is your go-to for the finest student accommodations. With a user-friendly interface, we offer a wide range of fully furnished options as per your preferences.

Student problems come and go, but you won't have a problem booking your accommodation with Amber!

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6. Dealing with Homesickness

While dealing with the sea of university life, homesickness is one of the top student problems. Imagine missing Sunday dinners or hometown hangouts; it hits hard. Late-night study sessions turn into quiet moments of longing. The solution? Embrace connections. Join clubs, attend events, and build a university family. Share stories with roommates and make the unfamiliar a bit more like home. Challenge those feelings of isolation by creating bonds. The warmth of new friendships can overshadow the chill of homesickness. Here are a few ways to deal with homesickness at university.

7. Depression

One of the most common struggles of students is struggling with personal and social pressures. During this, many students, in their pursuit of success, grapple with a silent adversary—depression.  It's not uncommon for students to feel isolated and burdened. In such moments, seeking support from friends, family, or university counselling services becomes crucial. Establishing a balance between academic and personal life, along with fostering open conversations about mental health, and seeking mental health support for students can create a supportive environment. can create a supportive environment. Since depression is one of the top student problems, you will face mental health issues. Our comprehensive guide on mental health will definitely help you tackle those tough times!

8. Choosing a Major

Facing the labyrinth of choosing a major, university students face trouble with real-life dilemmas. One of the most common student problems is getting torn between their passion and the pressure to pursue a ‘practical’ degree. The challenge is real; do you follow your heart or the pragmatic path to secure a stable job?However, amidst these student problems lies a practical solution. Engaging in internships, seeking mentorship, and exploring diverse courses can illuminate the right academic route.

9. Financial Problems

Life at university is an exhilarating journey, but the financial tightrope often adds major student problems. You might be working part-time to cover tuition but constantly struggling to pay those bills and necessities. The rising cost of tuition, textbooks, and the daily grind leaves you sleepless.In the face of this, part-time jobs or freelancing can be a lifeline, offering not only financial relief but also valuable skills. Wondering how to easily apply for scholarships? Well, worry not because amber provides an amazing scholarship opportunity crafted only for you. Register yourself now to know more.

10. Lack of Right Resources

Facing the daunting reality, one of the major student problems is the pressing issue — the lack of the right resources. Take, for instance, the struggle of a student relying on outdated textbooks or limited library access. A practical solution lies in universities fostering digital resources, accessible databases, and affordable textbook initiatives. Research and find out the tools that you need beforehand to be safe from last-minute tensions. This would enhance the overall learning experience, mitigating the student problems in their academic journey. You can use study apps which might help you to plan and organise your study material better.

11. Lack of Sleep

While completing assignments, attending lectures, and maintaining a social life, university students often find themselves on the brink of burnout due to chronic sleep deprivation. The relentless demands of academia contribute to stress and anxiety, exacerbating the struggle to get a good night's sleep. However, implementing simple sleep practices, like establishing a consistent bedtime routine and creating a conducive sleep environment, can significantly alleviate these student problems. It is important to recognise the importance of adequate sleep, as it is not just a remedy for exhaustion but a cornerstone for academic success and holistic health if you are wondering how, here are the top reasons why sleep is important.

12. Too Much Partying

The challenge of too much partying is one of the real student problems. Late-night festivities can lead to exhaustion, affecting academic performance and mental health. Room for personal growth is hindered when the balance tips towards excess. A practical solution involves creating a realistic schedule that allows for both social engagement and focused study periods. Even if you are a party animal, remember that doing it too much is just going to hamper your mental and physical health.

13. Procrastination

Struggling through piles of assignments, university students often find themselves grappling with the notorious foe - procrastination. The looming deadlines and heavy workloads cause an overwhelming atmosphere, making it one of the top student problems.Yet, a practical remedy exists: implementing a structured schedule, breaking tasks into manageable chunks, and setting realistic goals can help students overcome procrastination's clutches.

14. Remembering Facts

While you manage to ace multiple courses and deadlines, the struggle to retain information is real. Late-night study sessions blend into a blur of facts that seem to evaporate when needed most. A practical solution? Transform those tedious notes into flashcards, engage in group discussions, and teach the material to someone else. Overcoming the student problems requires adopting strategies that align with individual learning styles, making the academic journey a bit less overwhelming.

15. Lack of Interest

While being in a constant loop of university life, a real concern emerges—lack of interest. Many students find themselves entangled in the monotony of lectures and assignments. Such student problems lead to a disconnection from their academic journey.In such scenarios, a practical solution lies in fostering a sense of purpose. Encourage yourself to align your studies with your passions; incorporating interactive learning methods and taking a break can reignite your interest.

16. Organising your Stuff

University students, the infamous all-nighters, often find themselves in a chaotic battle with disorganisation. Lost notes, missing textbooks, and a desk buried under a mountain of papers! The struggle is real, and the stress can be overwhelming. Yet, amidst the chaos, there's a beacon of hope—organising. Investing a little time in creating a systematic study space and using tools like planners or apps can transform the clutter into a haven of productivity. Overcoming such major student problems begins with conquering the disarray and embracing the calm of a well-organised academic life.

17. Test Anxiety

Test anxiety emerges as a silent adversary for many students. The palpable stress before tests, sleepless nights fueled by worry, and the fear of underperforming paint a vivid picture of this shared struggle. The overwhelming student problems can intensify this anxiety.However, a practical solution lies in fostering a supportive environment, encouraging open conversations about mental health, and promoting effective study habits. Through this, not only will you be able to cope with the anxiety, but you also will be able to study and concentrate more during your studies and on paper.

18. Technology Related Problems

In the fast-paced world of academia, imagine you are burning the midnight oil, only to have your laptop succumb to a sudden malfunction, risking lost assignments and sleepless nights. The constant need for online resources and virtual classes amplifies these student problems. Yet, there's a silver lining! By cultivating proactive tech habits, such as regular backups and software updates, and investing in reliable devices, you can safeguard against these disruptions.

19. Loneliness

University life, bustling with academic challenges, often conceals a silent struggle: loneliness. Imagine studying far from home, navigating a sea of unfamiliar faces. Loneliness becomes a constant companion, impacting mental well-being. However, students can break this isolation by joining clubs, attending events, and fostering connections. A simple "hello" can forge lasting friendships! In case you are facing a huge problem of loneliness, leading to mental and physical health issues, you can reach out to someone or participate in peer mentoring programs that provide a lifeline to those drowning in isolation. Also, here’s an ultimate guide for you to beat loneliness when living abroad. Between demanding coursework, part-time jobs, and planning for post-grad life, students must adeptly balance packed schedules. Even basic tasks like setting up wifi or paying phone bills can prove challenging during busy weeks filled with deadlines. To overcome loneliness and give that additional boost to your study routine, you can opt for group studies .

How problems at school can impact your mental health?

School is a place of learning, growth, and, hopefully, joy. But for some, it can also be a source of immense stress and anxiety, casting a long shadow over their mental health. Academic pressure can feel like a vice, squeezing the joy out of learning. The constant worry about grades, tests, and college applications can trigger feelings of inadequacy and failure. This, in turn, can fuel anxiety and depression, making it difficult to focus, sleep, or even enjoy hobbies. Social struggles can further exacerbate the problem. Bullying, feeling isolated, or struggling to fit in can leave students feeling lonely and ostracised. This lack of social connection is essential for mental well-being, and its absence can lead to feelings of loneliness, worthlessness, and even despair. Go through this article to learn some of the best tips to take care of your mental health.

From the perennial battle against procrastination to the perpetual juggling act of social and academic responsibilities, the journey through studenthood is far from a serene stroll. As we reflect on the 19 student problems, it becomes evident that these aren't mere abstractions but real-life hurdles. Yet, within these challenges experienced by students like you lies resilience, growth, and the unwavering spirit to conquer the demanding terrain of academia.

Frequently Asked Questions

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essay about problems in school

School Issues That Negatively Impact Student Learning

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  • M.Ed., Educational Administration, Northeastern State University
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Schools face several issues daily that negatively impact student learning. Administrators and teachers work hard to overcome these challenges, but it is often difficult. Regardless of the strategies schools implement, there are some factors that will likely never be eliminated. However, schools must do their best to minimize the impact these issues have while maximizing student learning. Educating students is a difficult challenge because there are so many natural obstacles that hinder learning. 

Not every school will face all of the challenges discussed, though the majority of schools across the country face more than one of these issues. The overall makeup of the community surrounding a school has a significant impact on the school itself. Schools facing a large portion of these issues will not see significant internal changes until external issues are addressed and changed within the community. However, many of these issues can be deemed societal issues, which can be nearly impossible for schools to overcome.

Bad Teachers

The vast majority of teachers are effective at their jobs , sandwiched in between the great teachers and the bad teachers . While bad teachers represent a small percentage of educators, they are often the ones who generate the most publicity. For the majority of teachers, this is frustrating because most work hard every day to ensure that their students receive a high-quality education with little fanfare.

A bad teacher can set a student or group of students back considerably. They can create significant learning gaps, making the next teacher’s job that much harder. A bad teacher can foster an atmosphere full of discipline issues and chaos, establishing a pattern that is extremely difficult to break. Finally and perhaps most devastatingly, they can shatter a student’s confidence and overall morale . The effects can be disastrous and nearly impossible to reverse.

This is the reason that administrators must ensure that they make smart hiring decisions . These decisions must not be taken lightly. Of equal importance is the teacher evaluation process . Administrators must use the evaluation system to make informed decisions when retaining teachers year after year. They cannot be afraid to put in the necessary work required to dismiss a bad teacher who will damage students in the district.

Discipline Issues

Discipline issues cause distractions, and distractions add up and limit learning time. Every time a teacher has to handle a discipline issue, they lose valuable instructional time. In addition, each time a student is sent to the office on a discipline referral , that student loses valuable instructional time. Any discipline issue will result in the loss of instructional time, which limits a student’s learning potential.

Teachers and administrators must be able to minimize these disruptions. Teachers can do this by providing a structured learning environment and engaging students in exciting, dynamic lessons that captivate them and keep them from being bored. Administrators must create well-written policies that hold students accountable. They should educate parents and students on these policies. Administrators must be firm, fair, and consistent when dealing with any student discipline issue.

Lack of Funding

Funding has a significant impact on student performance. A lack of funding typically leads to larger class sizes as well as less technology and curriculum materials, and the more students a teacher has, the less attention they can pay to individual students. This can become significant when you have a class full of 30 to 40 students at varying academic levels.

Teachers must be equipped with engaging tools covering the standards they are required to teach. Technology is a tremendous academic tool, but it is also pricey to purchase, maintain, and upgrade. The curriculum in general continuously changes and needs to be updated, but most states' curriculum adoption runs in five-year cycles. At the end of each cycle, the curriculum is totally outdated and physically worn out.

Lack of Student Motivation

Many students simply do not care about attending school or putting in the effort necessary to maintain their grades. It is extremely frustrating to have a pool of students who are only there because they have to be. An unmotivated student may initially be on grade level, but they will fall behind only to wake up one day and realize it is too late to catch up.

A teacher or administrator can only do so much to motivate a student: Ultimately, it is up to the student to decide whether to change. Unfortunately, there are many students in schools nationally with tremendous potential who choose not to live up to that standard.

Over Mandating

Federal and state mandates are taking their tolls on school districts across the country. There are so many new requirements each year that schools do not have the time or resources to implement and maintain them all successfully. Most of the mandates are passed with good intentions, but the spacing of these mandates puts schools in a bind. They are often underfunded or unfunded and require a lot of extra time that could be spent in other critical areas. Schools do not have enough time and resources to fulfill many of these new mandates.

Poor Attendance

Students can't learn if they aren't at school. Missing just 10 days of school each year from kindergarten to 12th grade adds up to missing almost an entire school year by the time they graduate. Some students have the ability to overcome poor attendance, but many who have a chronic attendance problem fall behind and stay behind.

Schools must hold students and parents accountable for consistent excessive absences and should have a solid attendance policy in place that specifically addresses excessive absences. Teachers cannot do their jobs if students are not required to show up every day.

Poor Parental Support

Parents are typically the most influential people in every aspect of a child’s life. This is especially true when it comes to education. Typically, if the parents value education, their children will be academically successful. Parental involvement is essential to educational success. Parents who provide their children with a solid foundation before school begins and stay involved throughout the school year will reap the benefits as their children become successful.

By contrast, parents who are minimally involved with their child’s education have a significant negative impact. This can be extremely frustrating for teachers and makes for a continuous uphill battle. Many times, these students are behind when they start school due to a lack of exposure, and it is extremely difficult for them to catch up. These parents believe it is the school’s job to educate and not theirs when, in actuality, there needs to be a dual partnership for the child to be successful

Poverty has a significant impact on student learning; there has been much research to support this premise.   Students living in affluent, well-educated homes and communities are far more academically successful, while those living in poverty are typically behind academically.

Poverty is a difficult obstacle to overcome. It follows generation after generation and becomes the accepted norm, which makes it almost impossible to break. Though education is a significant part of breaking the grip of poverty, most of these students are so far behind academically that they will never get that opportunity.

Shift in Instructional Focus

When schools fail, administrators and teachers almost always take the brunt of the blame. This is somewhat understandable, but the responsibility of educating should not fall solely on the school. This deferred shift in educational responsibility is one of the greatest reasons for a perceived decline in public schools across the United States.

Teachers are doing a far superior job of educating their students today than they ever have been. However, the time spent teaching the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic has been significantly decreased due to increased demands and responsibilities to teach many things that used to be taught at home.

Any time you add new instructional requirements, you take away time spent on something else. The time spent in school has rarely increased, yet the burden has fallen to schools to add courses such as sex education and personal financial literacy into their daily schedule without an increase in time to do so. As a result, schools have been forced to sacrifice critical time in core subjects to ensure that their students are being exposed to these other life skills.

Greever, Sadie. "Poverty in Education." Missouri State University, Apr. 2014.

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essay about problems in school

How to Write the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay + Examples

What’s covered:.

  • What is the Overcoming Challenges Essay?
  • Real Overcoming Challenges Essay Prompts
  • How to Choose a Topic
  • Writing Tips

Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

  • Where to Get Your Essay Edited

While any college essay can be intimidating, the Overcoming Challenges prompt often worries students the most. Those students who’ve been lucky enough not to experience trauma tend to assume they have nothing worth saying. On the other hand, students who’ve overcome larger obstacles may be hesitant to talk about them.

Regardless of your particular circumstances, there are steps you can take to make the essay writing process simpler. Here are our top tips for writing the overcoming challenges essay successfully.

What is the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay?

The overcoming challenges prompt shows up frequently in both main application essays (like the Common App) and supplemental essays. Because supplemental essays allow students to provide schools with additional information, applicants should be sure that the subject matter they choose to write about differs from what’s in their main essay.

Students often assume the overcoming challenges essay requires them to detail past traumas. While you can certainly write about an experience that’s had a profound effect on your life, it’s important to remember that colleges aren’t evaluating students based on the seriousness of the obstacle they overcame.

On the contrary, the goal of this essay is to show admissions officers that you have the intelligence and fortitude to handle any challenges that come your way. After all, college serves as an introduction to adult life, and schools want to know that the students they admit are up to the task. 

Real “Overcoming Challenges” Essay Prompts

To help you understand what the “Overcoming Challenges” essay looks like, here are a couple sample prompts.

Currently, the Common Application asks students to answer the following prompt in 650 words or less:

“The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

For the past several years, MIT has prompted students to write 200 to 250 words on the following:

“Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?”

In both cases, the prompts explicitly ask for your response to the challenge. The event itself isn’t as important as how it pushed you to grow.

How to Choose a Topic for an Essay on Overcoming Challenges

When it comes to finding the best topic for your overcoming challenges essays, there’s no right answer. The word “challenge” is ambiguous and could be used to reference a wide range of situations from prevailing over a bully to getting over your lifelong stage fright to appear in a school musical. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind when selecting an essay subject.

1. Avoid trivial or common topics

While there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules for choosing an essay topic, students should avoid overdone topics.

These include:

  • Working hard in a challenging class
  • Overcoming a sports injury
  • Moving schools or immigrating to the US
  • Tragedy (divorce, death, abuse)

Admissions officers have read numerous essays on the subject, so it’s harder for you to stand out (see our full list of cliché college essay topics to avoid ). If events like these were truly formative to you, you can still choose to write about them, but you’ll need to be as personal as possible. 

It’s also ideal if you have a less traditional storyline for a cliché topic; for example, if your sports injury led you to discover a new passion, that would be a more unique story than detailing how you overcame your injury and got back in the game.

Similarly, students may not want to write about an obstacle that admissions committees could perceive as low stakes, such as getting a B on a test, or getting into a small fight with a friend. The goal of this essay is to illustrate how you respond to adversity, so the topic you pick should’ve been at least impactful on your personal growth.

2. Pick challenges that demonstrate qualities you want to highlight

Students often mistakenly assume they need to have experienced exceptional circumstances like poverty, an abusive parent, or cancer to write a good essay. The truth is that the best topics will allow you to highlight specific personal qualities and share more about who you are. The essay should be less about the challenge itself, and more about how you responded to it.

Ask yourself what personality traits you want to emphasize, and see what’s missing in your application. Maybe you want to highlight your adaptability, for example, but that isn’t clearly expressed in your application. In this case, you might write about a challenge that put your adaptability to the test, or shaped you to become more adaptable.

Here are some examples of good topics we’ve seen over the years:

  • Not having a coach for a sports team and becoming one yourself
  • Helping a parent through a serious health issue
  • Trying to get the school track dedicated to a coach
  • Having to switch your Model UN position last-minute

Tips for Writing an Essay About Overcoming Challenges

Once you’ve selected a topic for your essays, it’s time to sit down and write. For best results, make sure your essay focuses on your efforts to tackle an obstacle rather than the problem itself. Additionally, you could avoid essay writing pitfalls by doing the following:

1. Choose an original essay structure

If you want your overcoming challenges essay to attract attention, aim to break away from more traditional structures. Most of these essays start by describing an unsuccessful attempt at a goal and then explain the steps the writer took to master the challenge. 

You can stand out by choosing a challenge you’re still working on overcoming, or focus on a mental or emotional challenge that spans multiple activities or events. For example, you might discuss your fear of public speaking and how that impacted your ability to coach your brother’s Little League team and run for Student Council. 

You can also choose a challenge that can be narrated in the moment, such as being put on the spot to teach a yoga class. These challenges can make particularly engaging essays, as you get to experience the writer’s thoughts and emotions as they unfold.

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have succeeded in your goal for this essay. Maybe you ran for an election and lost, or maybe you proposed a measure to the school board that wasn’t passed. It’s still possible to write a strong essay about topics like these as long as you focus on your personal growth. In fact, these may make for even stronger essays since they are more unconventional topics.

2. Focus on the internal

When writing about past experiences, you may be tempted to spend too much time describing specific people and events. With an Overcoming Challenges essay though, the goal is to focus on your thoughts and feelings.

For example, rather than detail all the steps you took to become a better public speaker, use the majority of your essay to describe your mental state as you embarked on the journey to achieving your goals. Were you excited, scared, anxious, or hopeful? Don’t be afraid to let the reader in on your innermost emotions and thoughts during this process.

3. Share what you learned 

An Overcoming Challenges essay should leave the reader with a clear understanding of what you learned on your journey, be it physical, mental, or emotional. There’s no need to explicitly say “this experience taught me X,” but your essay should at least implicitly share any lessons you learned. This can be done through your actions and in-the-moment reflections. Remember that the goal is to show admissions committees why your experiences make you a great candidate for admission. 

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the g arb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

This essay is an excellent example because the writer turns an everyday challenge—starting a fire—into an exploration of her identity. The writer was once “a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes,” but has since traded her love of the outdoors for a love of music, writing, and reading. 

The story begins in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. One of the essay’s biggest strengths is its use of imagery. We can easily visualize the writer’s childhood and the present day. For instance, she states that she “rubbed and rubbed [the twigs] until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers.”

The writing has an extremely literary quality, particularly with its wordplay. The writer reappropriates words and meanings, and even appeals to the senses: “My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame.” She later uses a parallelism to cleverly juxtapose her changed interests: “instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano.”

One of the essay’s main areas of improvement is its overemphasis on the “story” and lack of emphasis on the reflection. The second to last paragraph about changing perspective is crucial to the essay, as it ties the anecdote to larger lessons in the writer’s life. She states that she hasn’t changed, but has only shifted perspective. Yet, we don’t get a good sense of where this realization comes from and how it impacts her life going forward. 

The end of the essay offers a satisfying return to the fire imagery, and highlights the writer’s passion—the one thing that has remained constant in her life.

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

While the writer didn’t succeed in getting the track dedicated to Coach Stark, their essay is certainly successful in showing their willingness to push themselves and take initiative.

The essay opens with a quote from Coach Stark that later comes full circle at the end of the essay. We learn about Stark’s impact and the motivation for trying to get the track dedicated to him.

One of the biggest areas of improvement in the intro, however, is how the essay tells us Stark’s impact rather than showing us: His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The writer could’ve helped us feel a stronger emotional connection to Stark if they had included examples of Stark’s qualities, rather than explicitly stating them. For example, they could’ve written something like: Stark was the kind of person who would give you gas money if you told him your parents couldn’t afford to pick you up from practice. And he actually did that—several times. At track meets, alumni regularly would come talk to him and tell him how he’d changed their lives. Before Stark, I was ambivalent about running and was on the JV team, but his encouragement motivated me to run longer and harder and eventually make varsity. Because of him, I approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The essay goes on to explain how the writer overcame their apprehension of public speaking, and likens the process of submitting an appeal to the school board to running a race. This metaphor makes the writing more engaging and allows us to feel the student’s emotions.

While the student didn’t ultimately succeed in getting the track dedicated, we learn about their resilience and initiative: I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Overall, this essay is well-done. It demonstrates growth despite failing to meet a goal, which is a unique essay structure. The running metaphor and full-circle intro/ending also elevate the writing in this essay.

Where to Get Your Overcoming Challenges Essay Edited

The Overcoming Challenges essay is one of the trickier supplemental prompts, so it’s important to get feedback on your drafts. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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The Mental Health Crisis In Our Schools

Mental health in schools: a hidden crisis affecting millions of students.

Meg Anderson

Kavitha Cardoza

Mental health as a giant ocean wave

Part One in an NPR Ed series on mental health in schools.

You might call it a silent epidemic.

Up to one in five kids living in the U.S. shows signs or symptoms of a mental health disorder in a given year.

So in a school classroom of 25 students, five of them may be struggling with the same issues many adults deal with: depression, anxiety, substance abuse.

And yet most children — nearly 80 percent — who need mental health services won't get them.

Whether treated or not, the children do go to school. And the problems they face can tie into major problems found in schools: chronic absence, low achievement, disruptive behavior and dropping out.

Experts say schools could play a role in identifying students with problems and helping them succeed. Yet it's a role many schools are not prepared for.

Educators face the simple fact that, often because of a lack of resources, there just aren't enough people to tackle the job. And the ones who are working on it are often drowning in huge caseloads. Kids in need can fall through the cracks.

Grief In The Classroom: 'Saying Nothing Says A Lot'

Grief In The Classroom: 'Saying Nothing Says A Lot'

"No one ever asked me"

Katie is one of those kids.

She's 18 now. Back when she was 8, she had to transfer to a different school in Prince George's County, Md., in the middle of the year.

"At recess, I didn't have friends to play with," she recalls. "I would make an excuse to stay inside with the teachers and finish extra work or do extra credit."

We're not using Katie's last name to protect her privacy. She's been diagnosed with bulimia and depression.

She says that in the span of a few months, she went from honor roll to failing. She put on weight; other kids called her "fat." She began cutting herself with a razor every day. And she missed a ton of school.

"I felt like every single day was a bad day," she says. "I felt like nobody wanted to help me."

Katie says teachers acted like she didn't care about her schoolwork. "I was so invisible to them."

Every year of high school, she says, was "horrible." She told her therapist she wanted to die and was admitted into the hospital.

During all this time, she says, not a single principal or teacher or counselor ever asked her one simple question: "What's wrong?"

3 Things People Can Do In The Classroom That Robots Can't

3 Things People Can Do In The Classroom That Robots Can't

If someone had asked, she says, she would have told them.

Who should have asked?

We talked to educators, advocates, teachers and parents across the country. Here's what they say a comprehensive approach to mental health and education would look like.

The role: The first place to spot trouble is in the home, whether that trouble is substance abuse, slipping grades or a child who sleeps too much. Adults at home — parents, siblings, other relatives — are often the first to notice something going on.

The reality: Many families do not know what to look for. Sometimes a serious problem can be overlooked as "just a phase." But it's those sudden changes — angry outbursts, declining grades, changes in sleeping or eating — that can signal problems. When something unusual crops up, families can keep in close touch with the school.

Why Emotional Learning May Be As Important As The ABCs

Why Emotional Learning May Be As Important As The ABCs

The teacher

The role: During the week, many students see their teachers even more than their own families. Teachers are in a prime spot to notice changes in behavior. They read essays, see how students relate with other kids and notice when they aren't paying attention.

The reality: Teachers already have a ton on their plates. They're pressured to get test scores up, on top of preparing lessons and grading assignments. Plus, many teachers receive minimal training in mental health issues. But when they do see something concerning, they can raise a flag.

The social worker

The role: Social workers act like a bridge. If teachers come to them with a concern — maybe a child is acting withdrawn — one of the first things they'll do is call home. They see each child through the lens of their family, school and community. They might learn that a family is going through a divorce or homelessness.

The reality: There aren't enough of them. According to one model, every school should have one social worker for every 250 students . The reality is that in some schools, social workers are responsible for many more .

The counselor

The role: In some schools, counselors focus solely on academics: helping students pick classes and apply to college. But in others, they also act a lot like social workers, serving as a link to families and working with students who need support.

The reality: Like school social workers, there just aren't enough counselors. On average nationwide, each counselor is responsible for nearly 500 students. The American School Counselor Association recommends a caseload nearly half that size.

The special education teacher

The Role: Special education teachers may start working with students when a mental health problem affects the ability to do school work. They are primarily responsible for working on academic skills.

The reality: Again, there aren't enough of them. Nearly every state has reported a shortage of special education teachers. Half of all school districts say they have trouble recruiting highly qualified candidates.

The school psychologist

The Role: Here's one job that, on paper, is truly dedicated to student mental health. School psychologists are key players when it comes to crisis intervention and can refer students to outside help, such as a psychiatrist.

The reality: If you sense a pattern here, you're right. In the U.S., there is just one school psychologist for every 1,400 students, according to the most recent data available from the National Association of School Psychologists.

The school nurse

The role: Most any school nurse will tell you, physical and mental health are tough to separate. That puts nurses in a prime spot to catch problems early. For example: A kid who comes into the nurse's office a lot, complaining of headaches or stomach problems? That could be a sign of anxiety, a strategy to avoid a bully, or a sign of troubles at home.

The reality: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends at least one nurse for every 750 students, but the actual ratio across the country can be much higher.

The principal

The role: As the top dogs in schools, principals make the big decisions about priorities. They can bring in social-emotional, anti-bullying and suicide-prevention programs.

The reality: Principals also have a lot on their plates: the day-to-day management of student behavior, school culture and teacher support.

Getting help, and "excited for life"

Katie says things started to turn around for her when she met a nurse at the Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C., who finally showed interest in what was wrong.

Now, she's begun college and wants to be a pediatric nurse.

"I'm doing a lot better now" she says. " Obviously, I mean, I'm a lot happier. I'm excited for school. I'm excited to graduate. I'm excited for life."

Under Pressure: An essay on school stress and mental health

Immense pressure built into school isn’t consistent with supporting students’ mental health.

essay about problems in school

I was in my Psychology class taking notes on anxiety when I felt like I had just read my life story. Mid-assignment, I started shaking and had difficulty continuing my work. My thoughts began to spiral: If I didn't write my notes, I would fail the test. If I failed the test I wouldn’t graduate. If I didn’t graduate I wouldn’t go to college, wouldn’t be accomplished, and soon enough, would have failed at life.

This account from a Kentucky student is just a fraction of the plethora of tales that the subject of mental health in schools is incomplete without. Unfortunately, I can relate, because education is one of the most powerful tools we need to change the world. We all want to be accomplished–but now, the biggest milestone we have is surviving it. 

Throughout America, schools give awards for best attendance, but they come with no recognition of the mental toll it takes to be present in the classroom. Academic accomplishment is presented as the Holy Grail–yet for students, the pursuit of schools' measures of success often feels like pushing ourselves to the breaking point. That leads to losing sight of the connections that make school meaningful. In the United States, almost 1 in 7 kids and teens have a mental health condition, and nearly half go untreated. According to recent studies, in Kentucky alone, at least 16% of children ages 3 to 17 have depression or anxiety. Schools aren't meeting the mental health needs of students, but this problem–as well as the students experiencing it firsthand–isn’t being understood or approached correctly. The immense pressure built into school isn’t consistent with supporting students' mental health.  

Somewhere a student is sitting in detention for interrupting class with excessive fidgeting, talking, and physical movements. For this student, having ADHD becomes a punishable offense; they are seen as unruly and wayward. 

In another school, a student is barred from attending Prom or after-school activities—a common punishment for students with too many unexcused absences. Is this fair for students with depression, who can face challenges gathering up the strength just to get out of bed, much less to have the capacity to attend a school that doesn't accommodate their needs? 

Elsewhere, a student not participating in class or activities because of a sense of hopelessness and lack of energy is written off as lazy, rather than having their specific needs met as a student with Bipolar Disorder. 

And when common conditions such as anxiety and depression remain stigmatized and punished in schools, what about students with experiences that remain deeply misunderstood by the general public? Students with such diagnoses often struggle to find understanding and support within the structure of school. 

More in school support and friendly environments are both pertinent needs for students with diagnosable and treatable mental health conditions, as well as ways of tending to overall student mental well-being. We can start now by enhancing awareness among our peers, the staff, and ourselves. Some research shows that academic-related stress negatively impacts mental health, physical health, and school performance. The pressure doesn’t help.

Today, it is a normalized and regular occurrence for  students to be forced to stand in front of their class, despite being petrified, often unable to utter a full sentence. Anxiety is seen as "stage fright,” to be casually confronted and overcome; the complexities of mental health are continuously overlooked in the school building. Little do they know how that simple act reinforces the idea of feeling worthless and not good enough in that student's mind by subjecting them to all that anxiety and worry. Then, that can spiral into the affirmations from classmates who feel pity for you, the blank stares and whispers, the cackles, and then, their own self-pity. Even after numerous presentations, it never gets better. It's always the same ambiance, the same fear, and the same high expectations that seem improbable to meet. Having encountered this countless times, I can assert that the way we approach mental health in school needs to change.  

I hope that one day in America every student will see school as a place to be heard, and won't look at school as a place where dreams are deferred, where we are destined to be misunderstood. What we need is understanding as the basic foundation of awareness. Knowledge of the existence of mental health conditions, without the ability to discern whether school stress worsens it, makes it powerless. It is only when we have sufficient understanding of a problem that we can begin to acknowledge and fix it. The understanding of whether stress from school exacerbates a student’s mental health challenges isn’t easy to acquire, but it’s where we have to start. 

Introduction

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10 Ways to Tackle Education’s Urgent Challenges

essay about problems in school

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To America’s resilient educators:

Take a moment to reflect on your many accomplishments during the pandemic, as well as the challenges you have faced.

You’ve supported your teams, your students, your school families and communities, all while balancing your own lives. In spite of every obstacle, you pushed through because that’s what you do. Every day.

And then, this spring, the sun seemed to shine a bit brighter. The safe and reliable vaccines that were slowing the spread of the virus forecasted a return to a normal-ish school year ahead. But COVID-19 had another plan, and its name was the Delta variant.

So here we are. And it’s complicated.

Conceptual Image of schools preparing for the pandemic

The cover of this year’s Big Ideas report from Education Week and the 10 essays inside reflect this moment and the constellation of emotions we know you’re experiencing: hope, excitement, grief, urgency, trepidation, and a deep sense of purpose.

In the report, we ask hard questions about education’s big challenges and offer some solutions. Keep scrolling for a roundup of these challenges and some new ways to think about them.

The report also includes results from an exclusive survey on educator stress, what you did well during the pandemic, and more .

Please connect with us on social media by using #K12BigIdeas or by emailing [email protected] . May the year ahead be a safe and fruitful one for you.

1. Schools are doing too much

Conceptual Illustration

We’re asking schools to accomplish more than what their funding allows and we’re asking their employees to do far more than they’ve been trained to do. Read more.

2. Student homelessness

Conceptual illustration

The pandemic has only made student homelessness situation more volatile. Schools don’t have to go it alone. Read more.

3. Racism in schools

Conceptual Illustration

Born and raised in India, reporter Eesha Pendharkar isn’t convinced that America’s anti-racist efforts are enough to make students of color feel like they belong. Read more.

4. Teacher mental health

Conceptual Illustration

The pandemic has put teachers through the wringer. Administrators must think about their educators’ well-being differently. Read more.

5. Educator grief

Conceptual Illustration

Faced with so many loses stemming from the pandemic, what can be done to help teachers manage their own grief? Read more.

6. The well-being of school leaders

Conceptual Illustration

By overlooking the well-being of their school leaders, districts could limit how much their schools can flourish. Read more.

7. Remote learning

Conceptual Illustration

Educators in schools who were technologically prepared for the pandemic say the remote-learning emergency has provided new opportunities to explore better ways to connect with students and adapt instruction. Read more.

8. Setting students up for success

Conceptual Illustration

Educators know a lot more about students’ home learning environments than before the pandemic. How might schools build on that awareness and use it to improve their future work? Read more.

9. Parent engagement

Conceptual Illustration

When school went remote, families got a better sense of what their children were learning. It’s something schools can build on, if they can make key cultural shifts. Read more.

10. Knowing your purpose

Conceptual illustration

We can’t build resilient schools until we agree on what education’s core role should be. And right now, we don’t agree. Read more.

A version of this article appeared in the September 15, 2021 edition of Education Week as Editor’s Note

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The Education Crisis: Being in School Is Not the Same as Learning

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First grade students in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province are learning the alphabet through child-friendly flash cards. Their learning materials help educators teach through interactive and engaging activities and are provided free of charge through a student’s first learning backpack. © World Bank 

THE NAME OF THE DOG IS PUPPY. This seems like a simple sentence. But did you know that in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, three out of four third grade students do not understand it? The world is facing a learning crisis . Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children reach young adulthood without even the most basic skills like calculating the correct change from a transaction, reading a doctor’s instructions, or understanding a bus schedule—let alone building a fulfilling career or educating their children. Education is at the center of building human capital. The latest World Bank research shows that the productivity of 56 percent of the world’s children will be less than half of what it could be if they enjoyed complete education and full health. For individuals, education raises self-esteem and furthers opportunities for employment and earnings. And for a country, it helps strengthen institutions within societies, drives long-term economic growth, reduces poverty, and spurs innovation.

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One of the most interesting, large scale educational technology efforts is being led by EkStep , a philanthropic effort in India. EkStep created an open digital infrastructure which provides access to learning opportunities for 200 million children, as well as professional development opportunities for 12 million teachers and 4.5 million school leaders. Both teachers and children are accessing content which ranges from teaching materials, explanatory videos, interactive content, stories, practice worksheets, and formative assessments. By monitoring which content is used most frequently—and most beneficially—informed decisions can be made around future content.

In the Dominican Republic, a World Bank supported pilot study shows how adaptive technologies can generate great interest among 21st century students and present a path to supporting the learning and teaching of future generations. Yudeisy, a sixth grader participating in the study, says that what she likes doing the most during the day is watching videos and tutorials on her computer and cell phone. Taking childhood curiosity as a starting point, the study aimed to channel it towards math learning in a way that interests Yudeisy and her classmates.

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Yudeisy, along with her classmates in a public elementary school in Santo Domingo, is part of a four-month pilot to reinforce mathematics using software that adapts to the math level of each student. © World Bank

Adaptive technology was used to evaluate students’ initial learning level to then walk them through math exercises in a dynamic, personalized way, based on artificial intelligence and what the student is ready to learn. After three months, students with the lowest initial performance achieved substantial improvements. This shows the potential of technology to increase learning outcomes, especially among students lagging behind their peers. In a field that is developing at dizzying speeds, innovative solutions to educational challenges are springing up everywhere. Our challenge is to make technology a driver of equity and inclusion and not a source of greater inequality of opportunity. We are working with partners worldwide to support the effective and appropriate use of educational technologies to strengthen learning.

When schools and educations systems are managed well, learning happens

Successful education reforms require good policy design, strong political commitment, and effective implementation capacity . Of course, this is extremely challenging. Many countries struggle to make efficient use of resources and very often increased education spending does not translate into more learning and improved human capital. Overcoming such challenges involves working at all levels of the system.

At the central level, ministries of education need to attract the best experts to design and implement evidence-based and country-specific programs. District or regional offices need the capacity and the tools to monitor learning and support schools. At the school level, principals need to be trained and prepared to manage and lead schools, from planning the use of resources to supervising and nurturing their teachers. However difficult, change is possible. Supported by the World Bank, public schools across Punjab in Pakistan have been part of major reforms over the past few years to address these challenges. Through improved school-level accountability by monitoring and limiting teacher and student absenteeism, and the introduction of a merit-based teacher recruitment system, where only the most talented and motivated teachers were selected, they were able to increase enrollment and retention of students and significantly improve the quality of education. "The government schools have become very good now, even better than private ones," said Mr. Ahmed, a local villager.

The World Bank, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UK’s Department for International Development, is developing the Global Education Policy Dashboard . This new initiative will provide governments with a system for monitoring how their education systems are functioning, from learning data to policy plans, so they are better able to make timely and evidence-based decisions.

Education reform: The long game is worth it

In fact, it will take a generation to realize the full benefits of high-quality teachers, the effective use of technology, improved management of education systems, and engaged and prepared learners. However, global experience shows us that countries that have rapidly accelerated development and prosperity all share the common characteristic of taking education seriously and investing appropriately. As we mark the first-ever International Day of Education on January 24, we must do all we can to equip our youth with the skills to keep learning, adapt to changing realities, and thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy and a rapidly changing world of work.

The schools of the future are being built today. These are schools where all teachers have the right competencies and motivation, where technology empowers them to deliver quality learning, and where all students learn fundamental skills, including socio-emotional, and digital skills. These schools are safe and affordable to everyone and are places where children and young people learn with joy, rigor, and purpose. Governments, teachers, parents, and the international community must do their homework to realize the promise of education for all students, in every village, in every city, and in every country. 

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Educational Problems in Primary Schools

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English Language , Primary Education

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Educational problems in primary schools

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The problems of teaching and learning english.

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Problem Cases at School Essay

First case of physical bullying, second case of drug abuse, problems and issues behind physical bullying, problems and issues behind drug abuse, handling of the physical bullying case, handling of drug abuse case, reference list.

This essay paper will be analyzing two cases that have happened in my school. The first case is physical bullying and the other one is drug problems. In most schools, the cases of bullying and the use of drugs are very common. These are among other factors that prevent students from achieving their goals and objectives in schools.

Just like many schools, in my school there is that culture of bullying the new and the junior students. In the last few months, there is young man who joined the school as a new student. As usual other students who are expert bullies, made some physical harassment to the young man. Unfortunately, one of the bullies used a hard object to hurt the young man and landed on the victim’s leg.

The young man was seriously hurt to the extent that he could not walk by his own. The school rushed him to a healthy facility, while some staff concentrated on looking for those bullies for a questioning session. The healthy facility decided to amputate the leg as it had some serious injuries. After the administration proved that the bullies were behind those serious injuries, the three of them received a strict punishment of expulsion.

The second case is about drug problems in our school. This has been a major problem in several schools. In our school, there were incidences drug abusers caused severally. However, there was a time when some students who later proved to have taken some drugs, caused chaotic disturbances that disrupted the whole learning in the school.

These students were shouting, to an extent that the learning process was stopped to allow for investigations. These two students claimed to be doing some refreshments but they were shouting at the top of their voices. At first, the management thought that, these two students were insane and the first actions were to take them to a healthy facility.

However, everyone was questioning him or herself of how two fellows could suddenly become insane at the same time. At the healthy facility, several tests were done, and proved that the shouting were as an impact of drug abuse. The healthy facility workers tried to reduce the effects of the drugs by giving them some prescriptions, as they awaited some counseling.

After few months of counseling, the school and the security personnel interrogated the two young men to reveal the sellers and the sources of the drugs. The school managed to determine the sellers and to put some restrictions to avoid more entry of these drugs.

Physical bullying is the worst form of bullying in schools. It is considered as the most threatening as it may lead to death for the victim. There are several cases where some physical injuries have cost the victims life. Most of the cases, victims try to assume the first attempt of the bullies, while the continued attempts scares the victim and he or she tries to take some actions (Nofziger, 2001).

If the victim becomes reluctant to enduring any other attack from the bullies, there becomes a likelihood of some actions against the bullies. If the victim decides to endure it becomes a routine for the bullies to be attacking him or her daily, and may lead to some serious injuries.

The victims, who have become victim severally, suffer both physically and mentally. The mental aspect occurs because of the fact that the victim was unable to defend himself or herself, and the feeling of being powerless affects the victim mentally.

Physical bullying in schools starts as something very mild, such that it may become hard for the victim to differentiate it from a normal conflict. For a student to determine the physical bullying, he or she should watch the behaviors of the bullies and see whether they are exceeding the bounds.

For instance, doing something to hurt the victim or to annoy him or her, and the bully does the same behavior regularly for a significant long time (Kevorkian & DAntona, 2008).

For the bullies they even to take control over the lives of their victims, after hurting them they tend to have the power and authority on the next step to take. Bullies can also be determined through their rough actions and they do not apologize, after harming their victims. Physical bullying involves, hitting, slapping, kicking, and even pinching among others.

Parents and teachers have been wondering where the causes of these bullying behaviors could be. There are possible reasons that may lead to a child becoming a bully in future, and the parents and the teachers should be very keen on them. To begin with, the home atmosphere where the child comes from may be a great factor, if it is unfavorable and uncomfortable for him.

For instance, in cases where the parent abuse and fight with one another while the children are watching. As the children are growing, they tend to copy the habits of their parents or that of their guardians. Such violent actions are a bad show to the growing children.

The school is another factor, especially where the bullies’ acts are not punished according to their bad behaviors. Schools should take strict actions against bullies as they distract the learning atmosphere (Espelage & Swearer, 2004). Lack of strict punishment of bullies may lead to the behaviors increasing within the school.

The peer group effects may be another factor, where a child learns some violent behaviors from her or his peer groups. It is the duty of the parent to interrogate the friends of their children and advise them accordingly. If parents discover that their children are getting involved with bad groups, they should take a quick step of talking with their children.

Moreover, availability of weapons is another factor that may lead to a child becoming a violent bully. When weapons readily available to a child, he or she finds it easy to acquire them and make use of them. Children acquire these weapons illegally and use them to hurt or even kill their victims (Omoore & Minton, 2004).

The school guards have also a duty in preventing bullies in school. Regular supervision of the students’ lockers and bags is a very essential exercise that security guards would act on, and if they happen to find anything wrong, the school authority is supposed to take the right step.

As the children grow, proper support and advice is necessary to them especially when they are undergoing some stressing moments. Constant stress may result to a violent child in future if not handled carefully. The best time a parent can remove the violent attitude from the child is when they are about to join the school.

If parent fail at this stage, it can be a challenge later in life when trying to control the behavior of such a kid. Tender love and care can help greatly the parent to control such an attitude from the children.

The issue of drugs has become so common in schools, especially the middle and the high schools. Drugs should not have a place in the society. The students who are drug users show some signs like weak performances in school, because of their irresponsible behaviors of failing to attend classes and not doing their assignments. The statistics show that the percentage of the students who are drug users is increasing day by day.

In schools, it becomes hard for the parents or teachers to determine the students who are taking drugs. Sometimes, the drug users show some signs that are unusual like having blood shot eyes or bearing some marks on their necks (Sussman & Ames, 2008).

A child may keep on complaining on experiencing some serious headaches, and most of the time feeling disoriented. The behavior of tying belts or scarves on furniture in form of a knot is also associated with drug users.

Students give reasons of taking drugs but they forget the long-term consequences of taking those drugs. They take to solve the short-term problems but there are left to bear the long-term major problems.

There is a study that showed that 90% of the teenagers confessed that they have taken alcohol, 50% confessed to have used marijuana, and the rest to use cocaine and other hallucinogen drugs. In the United States, more than 100000 deaths are because of drug uses, through suicides, road accidents, violent offences, and industrial deaths (Karch, 2007).

Some students have been giving reasons why they take drugs such as peer pressure where everyone is taking as the coolest thing to do. Some students think that taking drugs will solve their school related stress.

Students face the challenge of feeling shy or having a low self-esteem, and some think that taking drugs would help to compensate these feelings. If a student fails to accomplish his or her goals in school, fail in a relationship, or fails to satisfy himself or herself, he or she will turn to drugs to act as substitute for all those shortcomings.

Drugs are poisonous depending on the amount the user is taking. A student may take a small amount of drug to act as a stimulant, but this may become as a daily routine. Daily drug abuse makes the student to become addicted and starts taking it in greater amounts hence suppressing his or her activities.

Some even forget the repercussions and start taking it in very large amounts due to addiction, and they end up dying or behaving like insane people in school. Some students have dropped out school due to health problems caused by use of drugs.

Drugs affect the normal functioning of the brain, and affects important body organs like the liver. When such body organs are affected and cannot function properly it can be hard for any person to undertake his or her normal life activities.

Apart from the several reasons that students give as the reasons why they take drugs, it is also a duty of the parents to monitor the behavior of their children. Some children learn this behavior of taking drugs and alcohol from their parents, and hence the parents should be a role model to their children (Richard, 2010). Some children turn to drugs and alcohol as away of solving challenges they face in life.

Parents and teachers should intervene and help them to solve these challenges. If these children may receive some help to solve, their challenges through counseling, showing them love and care, it would be hard for them to turn to drugs.

Parents should as well watch the peer groups of their children, if the children are involved with bad groups that are abusing drugs, parent should take a step of advising their children. If a teacher or a parent discovers that a child is abusing some drugs, it can never be late for that child to start receiving counseling and quit from that habit. Severally, drug addicts have been contracting serious diseases by sharing the needles.

Due to constant use of drugs, their minds do not function properly, to an extent of not realizing the dangers of sharing the needles.

In the first case, the three bullies who were concerned in the case received a punishment of expulsion from the school, but that was not an equal punishment depending on what they did to their victim. Having these three, bullies caught did not imply that the rest of the students in school were innocent. There were also some other bullies, the only difference being that they were not caught.

Some better actions of even involving the school security team to handle the case was better, considering the other student was in hospital after sustaining serious injuries. To the rest of the students some measures were supposed to be taken to avoid such a serious case to occur again in the future.

The school could have involved some trained volunteers to ensure that the school is under keen supervision by adults. These trained personnel would specialize with the high-risk areas where bullies like hiding as they attack their victims, and this would have greatly reduced the effects of physical bullying (Carpenter & Ferguson, 2009).

In cafeterias and other social places, they should be designed in such a way that the children of the same age share the seats without letting the seniors mix with the juniors. Seniors and juniors should only interact with the presence of an adult supervisor.

Other ways of reducing physical bullying in schools is engaging the students in several activities that will involve everyone when they are about to go for recess, as this is the time most of the bullies take advantage. When the students are travelling in the same bus, some seating arrangements should be done such that, the high school students, the elementary students, and those of the middle school seats separately.

The school should also make an extra effort of specifying the behaviors that are expected, and the rues and regulations to be adhered to especially the high-risk areas. With all these measures taken into actions, all the bullies in the school would start changing and respecting the juniors.

Bullying whether physical or emotional should not exist any where in the society. The bullied children, who have become victims severally, lack appropriate time to recover from the previous attacks, and this affects their performance greatly. The victims sometimes find themselves making destructive choices, which lead them to more problems. Sometimes they decide not to go to school again, and pretend to be always sick.

For those who will try to attend the school, mostly they will skip some lessons and hide somewhere, which is a risk of some other problems (Rigby, 2002). The way the school decides to deal with the bullies should be a lesson to the rest, such that any student would fear to be involved in such a case. No such a case should go unpunished, as this would increase such cases in schools.

In the second case, there was application of justice by involving the guiding and counseling team, and the security team to take actions. However, some issues also needed regular attention to make the habit die completely in the school. The places that can help in solving these drug-abusing problems include homes, in youth social meeting, and in learning institutions (Karch, 2007).

Starting with the parents at home, children should be enlightened with the dangers involved by taking drugs. Seminars and literature to enlighten these children should be encouraged by parents and ensure that their children attend.

Youth are very fond of watching movies, and the parent should take this opportunity of buying movies that are discouraging use of drugs for their children to watch. Schools should also invest in training some special people to be handling such cases, as they teach the students the dangers of getting involved in drugs.

Recovering from drug addiction counseling should be a continuous process, but not a matter of months; patience and the commitment of the victim and the counselor are expected. A lifetime process requires the victim’s commitment and patience (Abadinsky, 2007).

The students were supposed to go through the counseling process together with others who would also be addicted for a long period to ensure that the habit is forgotten.

The two students who were abusing the drugs were a good sign of many more that were also making use of harmful drugs. Relying on catching the students who are abusing drugs may not solve the problem fully, as some will never be caught until they die of excessive use of drugs.

It was the responsibility of the school to take some steps of introducing some sources of discouraging the use of drugs through some trained personnel. Thorough check up of the students’ bags and lockers should be a regular exercise in effort of trying to determine the type of drugs that the students were using.

There are people who also act as suppliers of these drugs to students, either inside or outside the school compound. The strictest punishment should be obvious to the sellers of these drugs, as they are the ones who encourage these students to buy the drugs.

All in all the young students who commit the criminal offences of bullying or abusing drugs should be taken to the juvenile detention centers for their behaviors to be rectified at the right time. A child may continue committing more and more serious crimes until he or she start committing series of them.

Through the juvenile Delinquency Rehabilitation, there are programs that help these young people to stop committing crimes. These programs involve mostly discouraging the use of drugs or create a therapeutic assistance for families to use.

At times, a child may be suffering from psychological problems that may be causing him or her to commit some crimes, and this type of a problem can be detected through these programs (Richard, 2010). Many young people have reformed through the juvenile delinquency programs because of dealing with experts who have experiences in such cases.

For any form of a crime committed by the young people, it becomes the responsibility of the parents, teachers, and the guardian to act. If they observe any queer behavior from these youngsters, they should take the right steps of trying to rectify those behaviors.

To some extent, a child may give a deaf ear to the seniors and continue misbehaving. Such parents should try to seek for assistance from Juvenile Delinquency programs as soon as possible before the child start causing harm to others.

Abadinsky, H. (2007). Drug Abuse: an introduction. Oxford: University of Michigan.

Carpenter, D., & Ferguson, C. (2009). The everything parents guide to dealing with bullies: from playgroung teasing to cyber bullying. Oxford: Everything Books.

Espelage, D., & Swearer, S. (2004). Bullying in American schools: a training manual for teachers, parents and other professionals. New York: SAGE.

Karch, S. (2007). Drug abuse handbook. London: CRC Press.

Kevorkian, M., & DAntona, R. (2008). 101 facts about bullying: What everyone should know. London: R&L Education.

Nofziger, S. (2001). Bullies, fights, and guns: testing self- control theory with juveniles. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing.

Omoore, M., & Minton, S. (2004). Dealing with bullying in schools: a training manual for teachers, parents and other professionals. New York: SAGE.

Richard, W. (2010). Drug Abuse prevention: A school and community partnership. New York: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Rigby, K. (2002). New perspectives on bullying. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Sussman, S., & Ames, S. (2008). Drug abuse: concepts, prevention, and cessation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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The Loss of Things I Took for Granted

Ten years into my college teaching career, students stopped being able to read effectively..

Recent years have seen successive waves of book bans in Republican-controlled states, aimed at pulling any text with “woke” themes from classrooms and library shelves. Though the results sometimes seem farcical, as with the banning of Art Spiegelman’s Maus due to its inclusion of “cuss words” and explicit rodent nudity, the book-banning agenda is no laughing matter. Motivated by bigotry, it has already done demonstrable harm and promises to do more. But at the same time, the appropriate response is, in principle, simple. Named individuals have advanced explicit policies with clear goals and outcomes, and we can replace those individuals with people who want to reverse those policies. That is already beginning to happen in many places, and I hope those successes will continue until every banned book is restored.

If and when that happens, however, we will not be able to declare victory quite yet. Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place. As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. Considerable class time is taken up simply establishing what happened in a story or the basic steps of an argument—skills I used to be able to take for granted.

Since this development very directly affects my ability to do my job as I understand it, I talk about it a lot. And when I talk about it with nonacademics, certain predictable responses inevitably arise, all questioning the reality of the trend I describe. Hasn’t every generation felt that the younger cohort is going to hell in a handbasket? Haven’t professors always complained that educators at earlier levels are not adequately equipping their students? And haven’t students from time immemorial skipped the readings?

The response of my fellow academics, however, reassures me that I’m not simply indulging in intergenerational grousing. Anecdotally, I have literally never met a professor who did not share my experience. Professors are also discussing the issue in academic trade publications , from a variety of perspectives. What we almost all seem to agree on is that we are facing new obstacles in structuring and delivering our courses, requiring us to ratchet down expectations in the face of a ratcheting down of preparation. Yes, there were always students who skipped the readings, but we are in new territory when even highly motivated honors students struggle to grasp the basic argument of a 20-page article. Yes, professors never feel satisfied that high school teachers have done enough, but not every generation of professors has had to deal with the fallout of No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Finally, yes, every generation thinks the younger generation is failing to make the grade— except for the current cohort of professors, who are by and large more invested in their students’ success and mental health and more responsive to student needs than any group of educators in human history. We are not complaining about our students. We are complaining about what has been taken from them.

If we ask what has caused this change, there are some obvious culprits. The first is the same thing that has taken away almost everyone’s ability to focus—the ubiquitous smartphone. Even as a career academic who studies the Quran in Arabic for fun, I have noticed my reading endurance flagging. I once found myself boasting at a faculty meeting that I had read through my entire hourlong train ride without looking at my phone. My colleagues agreed this was a major feat, one they had not achieved recently. Even if I rarely attain that high level of focus, though, I am able to “turn it on” when demanded, for instance to plow through a big novel during a holiday break. That’s because I was able to develop and practice those skills of extended concentration and attentive reading before the intervention of the smartphone. For children who were raised with smartphones, by contrast, that foundation is missing. It is probably no coincidence that the iPhone itself, originally released in 2007, is approaching college age, meaning that professors are increasingly dealing with students who would have become addicted to the dopamine hit of the omnipresent screen long before they were introduced to the more subtle pleasures of the page.

The second go-to explanation is the massive disruption of school closures during COVID-19. There is still some debate about the necessity of those measures, but what is not up for debate any longer is the very real learning loss that students suffered at every level. The impact will inevitably continue to be felt for the next decade or more, until the last cohort affected by the mass “pivot to online” finally graduates. I doubt that the pandemic closures were the decisive factor in themselves, however. Not only did the marked decline in reading resilience start before the pandemic, but the students I am seeing would have already been in high school during the school closures. Hence they would be better equipped to get something out of the online format and, more importantly, their basic reading competence would have already been established.

Less discussed than these broader cultural trends over which educators have little control are the major changes in reading pedagogy that have occurred in recent decades—some motivated by the ever-increasing demand to “teach to the test” and some by fads coming out of schools of education. In the latter category is the widely discussed decline in phonics education in favor of the “balanced literacy” approach advocated by education expert Lucy Calkins (who has more recently come to accept the need for more phonics instruction). I started to see the results of this ill-advised change several years ago, when students abruptly stopped attempting to sound out unfamiliar words and instead paused until they recognized the whole word as a unit. (In a recent class session, a smart, capable student was caught short by the word circumstances when reading a text out loud.) The result of this vibes-based literacy is that students never attain genuine fluency in reading. Even aside from the impact of smartphones, their experience of reading is constantly interrupted by their intentionally cultivated inability to process unfamiliar words.

For all the flaws of the balanced literacy method, it was presumably implemented by people who thought it would help. It is hard to see a similar motivation in the growing trend toward assigning students only the kind of short passages that can be included in a standardized test. Due in part to changes driven by the infamous Common Core standards , teachers now have to fight to assign their students longer readings, much less entire books, because those activities won’t feed directly into students getting higher test scores, which leads to schools getting more funding. The emphasis on standardized tests was always a distraction at best, but we have reached the point where it is actively cannibalizing students’ educational experience—an outcome no one intended or planned, and for which there is no possible justification.

We can’t go back in time and do the pandemic differently at this point, nor is there any realistic path to putting the smartphone genie back in the bottle. (Though I will note that we as a society do at least attempt to keep other addictive products out of the hands of children.) But I have to think that we can, at the very least, stop actively preventing young people from developing the ability to follow extended narratives and arguments in the classroom. Regardless of their profession or ultimate educational level, they will need those skills. The world is a complicated place. People—their histories and identities, their institutions and work processes, their fears and desires—are simply too complex to be captured in a worksheet with a paragraph and some reading comprehension questions. Large-scale prose writing is the best medium we have for capturing that complexity, and the education system should not be in the business of keeping students from learning how to engage effectively with it.

This is a matter not of snobbery, but of basic justice. I recognize that not everyone centers their lives on books as much as a humanities professor does. I think they’re missing out, but they’re adults and they can choose how to spend their time. What’s happening with the current generation is not that they are simply choosing TikTok over Jane Austen. They are being deprived of the ability to choose—for no real reason or benefit. We can and must stop perpetrating this crime on our young people.

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10 Major Challenges Facing Public Schools

Few would argue that the state of our education system has plenty of room for improvement. However, developing a plan to take schools in the right direction is easier said than done. The first challenge lies in identifying underlying problems keeping students from learning today. This challenge, in part, is due to the fact that the problems may change considerably depending on who is labeling them, whether it is students, parents, educators or lawmakers. Consider this list of 10 major challenges currently facing public schools, based on the perspective of many involved in the world of education today.

Classroom Size

Many areas of the country are facing classrooms that are literally busting out at the seams. A report at NEA Today two years ago discussed how schools in Georgia, in the midst of major funding cuts for schools, had no choice but to lift all class size limits to accommodate students with the faculty the school system could still afford to keep. More recently, Fairfax County in Virginia has been looking into a proposal to increase classroom sizes in the face of significant budget cuts. The Board of Education in South Carolina is also weighing their options in this area.

When money gets tight, classroom numbers are often impacted. Yet, most teachers agree that they cannot effectively teach every student in a classroom, if the class size exceeds about 30. Their statements are backed up by research. Class Size Matters cites a study performed by the Tennessee Star that found classes of 15-17 students in grades K-3 provided both long and short-term benefits to both the students and the teachers in those classrooms. Minority students, those living in poverty and male students appeared to benefit from smaller classroom sizes the most.

Technorati reported last fall that 22 percent of the children in the U.S. live at or below poverty level. American Graduate defines poverty as a family of four with an annual income level of $23,050 or lower. American Graduate also cites a report from the Southern Education Foundation, which shows in 17 states across the U.S., low-income students now comprise the majority of public school students in those states. Some estimates put poverty levels for public school students at 25% in the not-so-distant future.

Students living at or below poverty level tend to have the highest dropout rates. Studies show that students who do not get enough food or sleep are less likely to perform at their full academic potential. Schools know these truths first-hand, and despite efforts to provide students with basic essentials, teachers, administrators and lawmakers know there is simply not enough to go around.

Family Factors

Family factors also play a role in a teacher’s ability to teach students. Principals and teachers agree that what is going on at home will impact a student’s propensity to learn. Divorce , single parents, poverty, violence and many other issues are all challenges a student brings to school every day. While some teachers and administrators try to work with children in less than ideal family environments, they can only do so much – especially when parents are often not willing to partner with the schools to provide for the children.

Kids Health Guide reports that students are more technologically advanced than many teachers today, putting instructors at a decided disadvantage in the classroom. However, a student’s love of technology also tends to distract him from his schoolwork, according to NEA Today. When teachers don’t have the techno-savvy to compete with those devices, by bringing education and technology together , it can be difficult to keep students’ interest and attention to properly teach new concepts.

Technology needs to come into the classroom to keep up with the learning demands of the 21 st century. Schools that are already cash-strapped may find an unsurmountable challenge in coming up with the funding to bring computers and other forms of technology into their classes. Scholastic offers some tips for school districts that want to fit the bill for technology, including everything from asking individuals in the district for “big gifts” to going to Uncle Sam for the funding. The website also suggests negotiating prices on technology when possible and allowing student to bring their own from home.

Photo By Intel Free Press CC-BY-SA-2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

By Intel Free Press [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bullying is not a new problem, but it is one that has a profound impact on the learning aptitude of many students today. Technology has given bullies even more avenues to torment their victims – through social networking, texting and other virtual interactions. Cyberbullying has become a major issue for schools, as evidenced by the number of suicides that can be directly traced to bullying events . The fact that laws are still fuzzy regarding cyberbullying adds to the challenge – since parents, teachers and administrators are unsure of how to legally handle such issues.

Student Attitudes and Behaviors

Many public school teachers also cite student attitudes, such as apathy and disrespect for teachers, as a major problem facing schools today. A poll from the National Center for Education Statistics cited that problems like apathy, tardiness, disrespect and absenteeism posed significant challenges for teachers. These issues were seen more frequently at the secondary school level, rather than the primary grades.

No Child Left Behind

Many students, parents and teachers see No Child Left Behind as a detriment to the public education environment today. Although the current Obama Administration is working to reform NCLB policies, the focus in education on both the national and state level continues to be on the testing process. Student test scores are now being used by a number of states as a way to evaluate teacher performance, putting even more pressure on faculty in schools to “teach to the tests.”

NEA Today quotes Kansas special educator Shelly Dunham as saying, “Testing, testing, testing, what is the point of testing? Do we use the data to remediate those who do not measure up? No!” Many teachers believe they are forced to teach to the annual standardized tests, and activities like recess and lunch have been cut way down to make more time for academics in light of the new testing procedures.

Parent Involvement

Often teachers find there is no happy medium when it comes to parental involvement , according to the Kids Health Guide. Some parents won’t be seen for the entire school year, no matter what sort of issues might arise. Others never seem to go away, hovering over the child and teacher and interfering with the education process. There are ways parents can become involved and support their child’s education at the same time, but teachers don’t always get that level from parents.

Student Health

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S., and the same poor eating habits that led to the obesity problem may also be contributing to lower student achievement. Obesity also increases a student’s risk for other conditions, like diabetes and high blood pressure, which could result in higher absenteeism and more academic issues.

Photo By English: Lance Cpl. Ryan M. Joyner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

essay about problems in school

The national school lunch movement Let’s Move! has been working to bring healthier options into school lunchrooms across the country. According to the website , the U.S. Department of Agriculture released new guidelines in 2012 to boost the nutritional quality of the meals students get at school. Exercise programs are also coming to schools across the country to promote more physical activity among students of all ages. However, it seems the country as a whole still has a long way to go to get on the road to better health on a large scale.

Budget cuts have created huge problems for most public schools in recent years. Less funding means smaller staffs, fewer resources and a lower number of services for students. While some argue that throwing more money at the education problems won’t make them go away, others assert that lack of funding caused many of the problems in the first place.

There are many problems in public schools today, but identifying those issues is half the battle. With a laundry list of challenges to face, now is the time for educators, parents and lawmakers to come together and begin to find solutions – for the benefit of all students in public schools today. Questions? Contact us on Twitter. @publicschoolreview

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Discipline Is An Ever Increasing Problem In Modern Schools | Band 8 IELTS Essay Sample

by Manjusha Nambiar · March 6, 2019

Discipline is an ever increasing problem in modern schools. Some people think that discipline should be the responsibility of teachers, while others think that this is the role of parents. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

Here is a band 8 IELTS essay on this topic submitted by one of our students. Need help with writing? Get your writing samples corrected by me.

Band 8 IELTS essay sample

Discipline is important for the all round development of children; however, nowadays many students seem to lack it. According to some people parents are responsible for inculcating the value of discipline in their children; others insist that it is the duty of teachers. I agree with the former view.

Different schools have different subjects depending on the child’s age and each subject is taught by a specific teacher. It is highly unlikely that each teacher teaches the same standards of discipline to all pupils across all grades. Each child is different and has to be molded depending on the child’s behavior. To illustrate further, the school near my house has 40 students in one class. The teacher often finds it very difficult to control the class and teach the lesson within the allotted time. The teacher is more concerned about explaining the lesson and completing the course and gives less attention to those who misbehave in their class. 

On the contrary, parents observe their kid very closely since their birth. They tend to spend a lot of time with their children during their free time at home. Since they interact more with their child, they have an opportunity to teach them discipline and mend their behavior. Children often try to imitate their parents and learn behavioral skills from them. For example, my son wakes up early in the morning and gets ready for school as we all get ready for our offices. This behavior was not taught by any of us; rather it was something he learned from his own observation.

To conclude this essay, teachers in this modern era find it extremely difficult to discipline all the children and mend their ways within the allotted time. It is the responsibility of the parents to discipline their child and show them what is right and wrong.

Do you have an essay on this topic? Submit it below in the comments for a free band score estimate.

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essay about problems in school

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essay about problems in school

It is true that now a day’s obedience is a rising dilemma in modern schools and few believes that teachers are accountable for this and at the same time others deem that it is the responsibility of parents. In this essay, I will talk about both sides and will present my opinion. To begin with I believe that teachers play a major role in helping students’ in a program of study rather than formatting discipline in their character. For instance, it is not possible for a teacher to concentrate or provide equal consideration to each and every child in the class. For example, starting from LKG class a teacher can spend more or less 5 to 6 hours in different classes, obviously, it proves the fact that teachers can’t provide much to the discipline formation in schools. On the other hand, I sturdily believe that parents contribute a lot in forming their Childs discipline as the child has been influenced by their parent’s daily routines from home. For instance, the early age of a child is like a form of liquid and it is you as a parent who decides in which shape of mold you should pour that liquid into. For example, my daughter copies us in all aspects starting with waking up early in the morning to completing the given tasks in a stipulated time without any compulsion; I strongly believe that this character formation in her is purely because of our routine and attitude. Considering the above-given facts I conclude the essay by saying it is the parents who are accountable for discipline in schools rather than teachers.

essay about problems in school

This is in the band 6 to 6.5 range.

essay about problems in school

Despite the fact that both educators and parents play an interwoven role in behaviors of children, discipline is a more different field for adults who are responsible for children. As it is widely considered whether the duty for discipline should be prone to teachers or parents, in this essay, it will be elucidated which sentiment is more justified. On the one hand, education is an integral part of our life. It is a good tool to develop pupils as desired individuals with the help of teachers. Educators merely carry the obligation to teach the respective subjects, but the major difficulty can be regarded to uncontrollable discipline. Commonly, each classroom might have one naughty student at least, which triggers the disorder of the regulation in the lessons. In these cases, some instructors are more inclined to impose punishments, such as cutting marks, which is what some of students don’t pay attention to. A case in point, online lessons are regularly kept at most schools and students can easily lose their concentration on lectures even if educators try to hinder it. Because of these, the duty of teachers is only to teach the subjects they are specialists in. On the other hand, we all are knowledgeable about the fact that children are naturally open to learning something new. Everything related to their personalities depends on their observations which they can behold from their parents. That explains why parents have to be more responsible for raising children within right deportments. One way or another, in any cases which something is wrong with children’s educators, parents can be informed straightaway to take precautions. As a result of these views, parents are the best friend between whom children can find in society and I believe only way to bring a solution to indiscipline in lessons is the commitments of them. To briefly bring a conclusion, unquestionably both characters are inseparable part of children’s life, but when it comes to the regulation of classes, the best way to liberate from this predicament depends on how parents are responsible for them.

This seems band 6.5 to me.

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How to Structure an Essay | Tips & Templates

Published on September 18, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The basic structure of an essay always consists of an introduction , a body , and a conclusion . But for many students, the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how to organize information within the body.

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Table of contents

The basics of essay structure, chronological structure, compare-and-contrast structure, problems-methods-solutions structure, signposting to clarify your structure, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about essay structure.

There are two main things to keep in mind when working on your essay structure: making sure to include the right information in each part, and deciding how you’ll organize the information within the body.

Parts of an essay

The three parts that make up all essays are described in the table below.

Order of information

You’ll also have to consider how to present information within the body. There are a few general principles that can guide you here.

The first is that your argument should move from the simplest claim to the most complex . The body of a good argumentative essay often begins with simple and widely accepted claims, and then moves towards more complex and contentious ones.

For example, you might begin by describing a generally accepted philosophical concept, and then apply it to a new topic. The grounding in the general concept will allow the reader to understand your unique application of it.

The second principle is that background information should appear towards the beginning of your essay . General background is presented in the introduction. If you have additional background to present, this information will usually come at the start of the body.

The third principle is that everything in your essay should be relevant to the thesis . Ask yourself whether each piece of information advances your argument or provides necessary background. And make sure that the text clearly expresses each piece of information’s relevance.

The sections below present several organizational templates for essays: the chronological approach, the compare-and-contrast approach, and the problems-methods-solutions approach.

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essay about problems in school

The chronological approach (sometimes called the cause-and-effect approach) is probably the simplest way to structure an essay. It just means discussing events in the order in which they occurred, discussing how they are related (i.e. the cause and effect involved) as you go.

A chronological approach can be useful when your essay is about a series of events. Don’t rule out other approaches, though—even when the chronological approach is the obvious one, you might be able to bring out more with a different structure.

Explore the tabs below to see a general template and a specific example outline from an essay on the invention of the printing press.

  • Thesis statement
  • Discussion of event/period
  • Consequences
  • Importance of topic
  • Strong closing statement
  • Claim that the printing press marks the end of the Middle Ages
  • Background on the low levels of literacy before the printing press
  • Thesis statement: The invention of the printing press increased circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation
  • High levels of illiteracy in medieval Europe
  • Literacy and thus knowledge and education were mainly the domain of religious and political elites
  • Consequence: this discouraged political and religious change
  • Invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg
  • Implications of the new technology for book production
  • Consequence: Rapid spread of the technology and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible
  • Trend for translating the Bible into vernacular languages during the years following the printing press’s invention
  • Luther’s own translation of the Bible during the Reformation
  • Consequence: The large-scale effects the Reformation would have on religion and politics
  • Summarize the history described
  • Stress the significance of the printing press to the events of this period

Essays with two or more main subjects are often structured around comparing and contrasting . For example, a literary analysis essay might compare two different texts, and an argumentative essay might compare the strengths of different arguments.

There are two main ways of structuring a compare-and-contrast essay: the alternating method, and the block method.

Alternating

In the alternating method, each paragraph compares your subjects in terms of a specific point of comparison. These points of comparison are therefore what defines each paragraph.

The tabs below show a general template for this structure, and a specific example for an essay comparing and contrasting distance learning with traditional classroom learning.

  • Synthesis of arguments
  • Topical relevance of distance learning in lockdown
  • Increasing prevalence of distance learning over the last decade
  • Thesis statement: While distance learning has certain advantages, it introduces multiple new accessibility issues that must be addressed for it to be as effective as classroom learning
  • Classroom learning: Ease of identifying difficulties and privately discussing them
  • Distance learning: Difficulty of noticing and unobtrusively helping
  • Classroom learning: Difficulties accessing the classroom (disability, distance travelled from home)
  • Distance learning: Difficulties with online work (lack of tech literacy, unreliable connection, distractions)
  • Classroom learning: Tends to encourage personal engagement among students and with teacher, more relaxed social environment
  • Distance learning: Greater ability to reach out to teacher privately
  • Sum up, emphasize that distance learning introduces more difficulties than it solves
  • Stress the importance of addressing issues with distance learning as it becomes increasingly common
  • Distance learning may prove to be the future, but it still has a long way to go

In the block method, each subject is covered all in one go, potentially across multiple paragraphs. For example, you might write two paragraphs about your first subject and then two about your second subject, making comparisons back to the first.

The tabs again show a general template, followed by another essay on distance learning, this time with the body structured in blocks.

  • Point 1 (compare)
  • Point 2 (compare)
  • Point 3 (compare)
  • Point 4 (compare)
  • Advantages: Flexibility, accessibility
  • Disadvantages: Discomfort, challenges for those with poor internet or tech literacy
  • Advantages: Potential for teacher to discuss issues with a student in a separate private call
  • Disadvantages: Difficulty of identifying struggling students and aiding them unobtrusively, lack of personal interaction among students
  • Advantages: More accessible to those with low tech literacy, equality of all sharing one learning environment
  • Disadvantages: Students must live close enough to attend, commutes may vary, classrooms not always accessible for disabled students
  • Advantages: Ease of picking up on signs a student is struggling, more personal interaction among students
  • Disadvantages: May be harder for students to approach teacher privately in person to raise issues

An essay that concerns a specific problem (practical or theoretical) may be structured according to the problems-methods-solutions approach.

This is just what it sounds like: You define the problem, characterize a method or theory that may solve it, and finally analyze the problem, using this method or theory to arrive at a solution. If the problem is theoretical, the solution might be the analysis you present in the essay itself; otherwise, you might just present a proposed solution.

The tabs below show a template for this structure and an example outline for an essay about the problem of fake news.

  • Introduce the problem
  • Provide background
  • Describe your approach to solving it
  • Define the problem precisely
  • Describe why it’s important
  • Indicate previous approaches to the problem
  • Present your new approach, and why it’s better
  • Apply the new method or theory to the problem
  • Indicate the solution you arrive at by doing so
  • Assess (potential or actual) effectiveness of solution
  • Describe the implications
  • Problem: The growth of “fake news” online
  • Prevalence of polarized/conspiracy-focused news sources online
  • Thesis statement: Rather than attempting to stamp out online fake news through social media moderation, an effective approach to combating it must work with educational institutions to improve media literacy
  • Definition: Deliberate disinformation designed to spread virally online
  • Popularization of the term, growth of the phenomenon
  • Previous approaches: Labeling and moderation on social media platforms
  • Critique: This approach feeds conspiracies; the real solution is to improve media literacy so users can better identify fake news
  • Greater emphasis should be placed on media literacy education in schools
  • This allows people to assess news sources independently, rather than just being told which ones to trust
  • This is a long-term solution but could be highly effective
  • It would require significant organization and investment, but would equip people to judge news sources more effectively
  • Rather than trying to contain the spread of fake news, we must teach the next generation not to fall for it

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Signposting means guiding the reader through your essay with language that describes or hints at the structure of what follows.  It can help you clarify your structure for yourself as well as helping your reader follow your ideas.

The essay overview

In longer essays whose body is split into multiple named sections, the introduction often ends with an overview of the rest of the essay. This gives a brief description of the main idea or argument of each section.

The overview allows the reader to immediately understand what will be covered in the essay and in what order. Though it describes what  comes later in the text, it is generally written in the present tense . The following example is from a literary analysis essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

Transitions

Transition words and phrases are used throughout all good essays to link together different ideas. They help guide the reader through your text, and an essay that uses them effectively will be much easier to follow.

Various different relationships can be expressed by transition words, as shown in this example.

Because Hitler failed to respond to the British ultimatum, France and the UK declared war on Germany. Although it was an outcome the Allies had hoped to avoid, they were prepared to back up their ultimatum in order to combat the existential threat posed by the Third Reich.

Transition sentences may be included to transition between different paragraphs or sections of an essay. A good transition sentence moves the reader on to the next topic while indicating how it relates to the previous one.

… Distance learning, then, seems to improve accessibility in some ways while representing a step backwards in others.

However , considering the issue of personal interaction among students presents a different picture.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

  • Ad hominem fallacy
  • Post hoc fallacy
  • Appeal to authority fallacy
  • False cause fallacy
  • Sunk cost fallacy

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The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

An essay isn’t just a loose collection of facts and ideas. Instead, it should be centered on an overarching argument (summarized in your thesis statement ) that every part of the essay relates to.

The way you structure your essay is crucial to presenting your argument coherently. A well-structured essay helps your reader follow the logic of your ideas and understand your overall point.

Comparisons in essays are generally structured in one of two ways:

  • The alternating method, where you compare your subjects side by side according to one specific aspect at a time.
  • The block method, where you cover each subject separately in its entirety.

It’s also possible to combine both methods, for example by writing a full paragraph on each of your topics and then a final paragraph contrasting the two according to a specific metric.

You should try to follow your outline as you write your essay . However, if your ideas change or it becomes clear that your structure could be better, it’s okay to depart from your essay outline . Just make sure you know why you’re doing so.

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Bans may help protect classroom focus, but districts need to stay mindful of students’ sense of connection, experts say

Students around the world are being separated from their phones.

In 2020, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that 77 percent of U.S. schools had moved to prohibit cellphones for nonacademic purposes. In September 2018, French lawmakers outlawed cellphone use for schoolchildren under the age of 15. In China, phones were banned country-wide for schoolchildren last year.

Supporters of these initiatives have cited links between smartphone use and bullying and social isolation and the need to keep students focused on schoolwork.

77% Of U.S. schools moved to ban cellphones for nonacademic purposes as of 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics

But some Harvard experts say instructors and administrators should consider learning how to teach with tech instead of against it, in part because so many students are still coping with academic and social disruptions caused by the pandemic. At home, many young people were free to choose how and when to use their phones during learning hours. Now, they face a school environment seeking to take away their main source of connection.

“Returning back to in-person, I think it was hard to break the habit,” said Victor Pereira, a lecturer on education and co-chair of the Teaching and Teaching Leadership Program at the Graduate School of Education.

Through their students, he and others with experience both in the classroom and in clinical settings have seen interactions with technology blossom into important social connections that defy a one-size-fits-all mindset. “Schools have been coming back, trying to figure out, how do we readjust our expectations?” Pereira added.

It’s a hard question, especially in the face of research suggesting that the mere presence of a smartphone can undercut learning .

Michael Rich , an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says that phones and school don’t mix: Students can’t meaningfully absorb information while also texting, scrolling, or watching YouTube videos.

“The human brain is incapable of thinking more than one thing at a time,” he said. “And so what we think of as multitasking is actually rapid-switch-tasking. And the problem with that is that switch-tasking may cover a lot of ground in terms of different subjects, but it doesn’t go deeply into any of them.”

Pereira’s approach is to step back — and to ask whether a student who can’t resist the phone is a signal that the teacher needs to work harder on making a connection. “Two things I try to share with my new teachers are, one, why is that student on the phone? What’s triggering getting on your cell phone versus jumping into our class discussion, or whatever it may be? And then that leads to the second part, which is essentially classroom management.

“Design better learning activities, design learning activities where you consider how all of your students might want to engage and what their interests are,” he said. He added that allowing phones to be accessible can enrich lessons and provide opportunities to use technology for school-related purposes.

Mesfin Awoke Bekalu, a research scientist in the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Chan School, argues that more flexible classroom policies can create opportunities for teaching tech-literacy and self-regulation.

“There is a huge, growing body of literature showing that social media platforms are particularly helpful for people who need resources or who need support of some kind, beyond their proximate environment,” he said. A study he co-authored by Rachel McCloud and Vish Viswanath for the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness shows that this is especially true for marginalized groups such as students of color and LGBTQ students. But the findings do not support a free-rein policy, Bekalu stressed.

In the end, Rich, who noted the particular challenges faced by his patients with attention-deficit disorders and other neurological conditions, favors a classroom-by-classroom strategy. “It can be managed in a very local way,” he said, adding: “It’s important for parents, teachers, and the kids to remember what they are doing at any point in time and focus on that. It’s really only in mono-tasking that we do very well at things.”

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Opinion Columnist

A Florida school district, facing pressure about “nudity” in schools, removed from shelves a picture book that showed an illustration of a goblin’s bare bottom. Some students were saved from debauchery when school officials colored in a pair of pants on the goblin.

That’s a particularly nutty example, from the newsletter “ Popular Information ” (the school district didn’t want to discuss the issue), of a right-wing puritan drive in education that appalls liberals: Conservatives are banning materials that mention gay people, racism or sexuality, skewing the teaching of history and students’ understanding of society. “The freedom to read is under assault in the United States — particularly in public schools,” PEN America warned in a report last year.

Listen to conservatives, and they argue that the crisis in American schools is the opposite: It’s about leftist teachers propagandizing on critical race theory and giving kids new pronouns while denying them safe bathrooms.

Donald Trump has promised to defund “any school that’s pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity and any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children.” He added: “This is what must be done to save our country from destruction.”

My sympathies in the censorship battles are with the liberal watchdogs, but to me both left and right are missing the point.

The peril for America’s children is not bare goblin buttocks, nor is it goblins being clothed. The central problem is simply that too many kids aren’t getting the education they need.

We get distracted by these culture wars, but what we should focus on is that only 32 percent of America’s fourth graders are proficient at reading, according to a national test referred to as “the nation’s report card.”

Likewise, American children’s math skills are dismal by global standards. In the PISA international math test for 15-year-olds, American students rank far behind the leaders (Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea) and also well behind peer countries like Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and Poland.

If education is one of the best metrics to forecast where countries will be in 25 or 50 years, as I believe, then we are hurting our children.

“Any nation that out-educates us will outcompete us,” the first lady, Jill Biden, has noted .

My fellow liberals like to fulminate at conservatives for neglecting children and provoking culture wars for show, but the left also gets in the way of education. Especially on the West Coast, Democrats significantly harmed children with prolonged school closures during the pandemic.

Excessive school closures caused a huge educational setback . American children still have not nearly caught up in either reading or math, and children in poor districts suffered the most.

San Francisco is a window into progressivism that doesn’t actually result in educational progress. In 2021, instead of focusing on reopening schools, the city’s school board undertook an effort to rename 44 schools that carried the names of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and others who were considered tainted. The school board eventually backed off after widespread mockery.

In 2014, the San Francisco school board also barred the teaching of algebra in eighth grade. Officials worried that white and Asian students were disproportionately getting on the higher math track, so the school district decided to hold everyone back.

This policy made things worse . Affluent parents hired tutors for their kids, so the Black-white and Hispanic-white education gaps actually widened . After the policy was instituted, Black 11th graders performed on math tests roughly the same as typical fifth graders, according to the Harvard journal Education Next . That’s shameful — not for those kids, but for the San Francisco school district. (Just this week, voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding measure encouraging the school district to return algebra to the eighth grade.)

But Republicans shouldn’t gloat. The G.O.P. pretends to protect children from threats (like “woke” teachers), yet it is the party of child poverty. Republicans blocked the extension of refundable child tax credits, thus sending millions of children into poverty in 2022. If you want to understand why America has scandalously high child poverty rates, today’s Republican Party is one reason.

The states that seem to do the best job teaching kids, based on test results, aren’t just liberal or just conservative ones. They include blue states like Massachusetts and New Jersey and red states like Florida and Utah.

The bipartisan education reform movement to try to help left-behind students galvanized presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama and inspired tech executives and documentary makers, but it has faded . The paradox is that even as the resolve has fizzled, the evidence has grown for how to help.

Dallas, for example, took a far smarter approach than San Francisco to boost kids in math: Instead of canceling eighth grade algebra, it made it opt out instead of opt in. The upshot was that the share of children taking algebra in eighth grade tripled, with particularly large gains for Black and Latino students.

I’ve written about the remarkable progress that Mississippi schools have made in reading and math alike. If Mississippi, which still hasn’t come close to fixing poverty or racism, manages to get kids reading , there’s no excuse for the rest of the country.

Some of the solutions to weak education are complicated, but some are simple. Tutoring makes a big difference for lagging kids. Many children need eyeglasses but don’t get them, or they have hearing difficulties that aren’t diagnosed.

Here’s a scandal that I wish got half as much attention as culture war battles: The graduation rate for Bureau of Indian Education high schools is only 53 percent . Fixing that would be a big step toward breaking cycles of poverty in Native communities.

We are setting up too many of our kids for failure — and instead of focusing on that crisis, we adults are screaming at one another over whether to ban books that, at this rate, far too many kids won’t even be able to read.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. @ NickKristof

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March 12, 2024

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Innovative approaches for addressing difficult topics in K-12 schools

by Pennsylvania State University

Innovative approaches for addressing difficult topics in K-12 schools

Three journals have recently published research papers by Penn State's Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative. The papers illustrate how the initiative's programs help K-12 educators address difficult issues such as racism.

The three journals that published the initiative papers are School-University Partnerships , Journal of Practitioner Research and Journal of Teacher Education . Some of the scholars who independently reviewed the papers described the initiative's research-based, nonpartisan approach, which combines practitioner inquiry with trauma-informed and asset-based practices, as novel, innovative and widely needed.

"We spend a great deal of energy and time conducting rigorous research into our work for several reasons," said Boaz Dvir, the initiative's director and an associate professor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. "These include improving our programs, strengthening our approach, collaborating with partners and participants, and sharing our findings with the world so others can challenge and/or adopt our approach."

The initiative partners with educational entities such as school districts to offer customized professional learning opportunities to K-12 educators in Pennsylvania and around the country. Program participants identify difficult issues in their curriculum or setting, come up with compelling questions about these issues, seek credible sources, collect and analyze data, investigate their findings with colleagues and initiative facilitators, and design and implement classroom- or school-application plans.

The initiative offers year- and semester-long programs, workshops and asynchronous, self-paced online modules .

To examine the initiative's yearlong program, the researchers interviewed participating teachers, generated field notes, collected program artifacts, reviewed teachers' lesson plans and conducted classroom observations.

The core research team included Dvir; initiative affiliate faculty member Logan Rutten, a University of North Dakota assistant professor; and Danielle Butville, the initiative's assistant director. The team collaborated with educators from Pennsylvania's Red Lion Area School District—Wendy Smith, a veteran fifth-grade teacher, and Eric Wilson, who at the time served as the district's chief instructional officer—to co-author two of the publications.

All three journals provide open access , so readers can download the papers for free. As much as possible, the initiative aims to publish its research in such accessible spaces.

"These papers carve a distinctive niche in the research on teachers' professional learning," Rutten said. "At a time when many teachers are seeking support to address the difficult topics they face in their curriculum and school communities, our research clearly illustrates how inquiry-based approaches can offer a hopeful path forward."

The initiative team continues to examine various key aspects of its work.

"In our ongoing and future research, we are studying the impact of our programs on collective K-12 teachers' efficacy and students' learning experiences, as well as our learning as facilitators and teacher educators," Butville said.

Based in Penn State's Bellisario College, the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative and the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative offer intensive professional learning programs throughout Pennsylvania and around the country to support educators in their instruction of a variety of difficult issues.

Logan Rutten et al, Practitioner Inquiry for Turbulent Times: Learning to Take an Inquiry Stance Toward Teaching Difficult Topics Through a Teacher Inquiry Community, Journal of Practitioner Research (2023). DOI: 10.5038/2379-9951.8.2.1251

Logan Rutten et al, Leaning Into Difficult Topics: Inquiry Communities as Teacher Professional Learning for Turbulent Times, Journal of Teacher Education (2024). DOI: 10.1177/00224871241231543

Provided by Pennsylvania State University

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Should you use college rankings to pick a good school? Here's a critical factor they miss.

Universities aiming to improve their ranking will often shift emphasis and funding away from teaching toward other reputation-building factors such as marketing..

It's a joyful and stressful time of year for students and their families as they make decisions about where to attend college. Families often turn to rankings systems to help make a decision, but the rankings ignore a critical factor: the quality of college teaching. 

As a scholar of higher education, when I talk to families, they are often surprised that teaching excellence is not counted in rankings . They’re even more surprised to learn how teaching quality is undervalued by universities.  

Emerging research suggests that courses in lower-ranked universities, on average, scored higher on student-centered teaching than courses in higher-ranked universities. In fact, universities aiming to improve their ranking will often shift emphasis and funding away from teaching toward other reputation-building factors such as marketing.

Ivy League isn't everything: Here's what we get wrong about getting a good education.

A shooting happened next to my classroom: How do you teach after violence like that?

Good teaching and student success are closely linked

The absence of teaching excellence from the rankings is surprising given the link between high-quality teaching and student success . Quality teaching is one of the most important predictors of a wide range of college outcomes, including academic skills, leadership, civic engagement, moral development, degree attainment and employment. 

In short, quality teaching is crucial in shaping the individual and societal benefits of college .

Rankings, however, are only one reason why a low value is placed on teaching in higher education. Administrators often don't view teaching excellence as a way to increase enrollment or funding, so it's not highly valued in hiring, tenure or promotion. 

And the kicker, research shows that the more time faculty spend on teaching, the lower their salary . Instructors who care the most about teaching often have less job stability and are in universities with fewer resources.  

The real March Madness: Why don't NCAA schools pay college athletes who make them billions?

Should US ban TikTok?  Here's why blocking it isn't a good idea

What is the result? Many instructors continue to teach using traditional lectures, which yield lower and less equitable success rates . 

Although efforts to improve teaching at the university level have recently emerged, not much will change until schools that value high-quality teaching are rewarded with more resources, higher rankings and increased enrollments.

Questions families should ask about colleges

What should families do? They should give strong consideration to universities where high-quality teaching is valued, even though the schools may be ranked lower.

As a parent of three children, I know the kinds of questions I'll ask when we visit college campuses: How much does teaching count in the tenure process here? Can I sit in on a class in both general education and my child’s anticipated major? Can I visit the center for teaching and learning? How much of a role does that center play on campus?

While on campus, I would ask faculty members in my child’s anticipated major questions such as: Do you feel the university supports teaching? How?

I would ask students (not our tour guide): Does it seem like the faculty here care about teaching? Have you experienced great teaching here and what was that like? Do you feel a sense of belonging in your courses?

I want my kids to attend a university that not only has a great reputation, but one that also lives up to it in the way the university educates its students.  

Families invest significantly in universities and deserve the benefits for their students that come from high-quality teaching. Perhaps more important, if teaching excellence is not the norm, then higher education is not fulfilling its potential as an engine of learning for our democracy.  

In the long term, universities, organizations that rank schools, and others should work to make teaching a valued, core part of the mission. 

After all, education should matter in higher education. 

Corbin M. Campbell is associate dean and an associate professor in American University’s School of Education. She is the author of "Great College Teaching: Where It Happens and How to Foster It Everywhere."

The Associated Press

Counselor recalls morning of Michigan school attack when parents declined to take shooter home

P ONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — The parents of a Michigan school shooter declined to take their son home hours before the attack, leaving instead with a list of mental health providers after being presented with his violent drawing and disturbing messages, a counselor testified Monday.

A security camera image of James Crumbley with papers in his hand at Oxford High School was displayed for the jury.

“My hope was that they were going to take him," Shawn Hopkins testified, "either take him to get help or even just, 'Let's have a good day. Let’s have a day where we just spend time with you.'”

“I didn't want him left alone,” the counselor added.

James Crumbley, 47, is on trial for involuntary manslaughter. He is accused of failing to secure a gun at home and ignoring signs of Ethan Crumbley's mental distress.

No one opened the 15-year-old's backpack, and he later pulled out the handgun and shot up the school, killing four students and wounding more on Nov. 30, 2021.

On the trial's third day, prosecutors focused on the morning of the shooting before shifting to the teen's proficiency with a firearm.

The Crumbleys had met with school staff who gave them a drawing on Ethan's math assignment showing a gun, blood, and a wounded person, along with anguished phrases: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. My life is useless.”

Hopkins said he arranged for the Crumbleys to come to the school and met with Ethan before they arrived, trying to understand his mindset. The boy told him: “I can see why this looks bad. I’m not going to do” anything.

“I wanted him to get help as soon as possible, today if possible," Hopkins said. “I was told it wasn’t possible.”

Hopkins testified that he told the parents that he “wanted movement within 48 hours,” and thought to himself that he would call Michigan’s child welfare agency if they didn’t take action.

Just a day earlier, Jennifer Crumbley had been called when a teacher saw Ethan looking up bullets on his phone, the counselor said.

Hopkins said Ethan wanted to stay in school. The counselor believed it was a better place for him, especially if he might be alone even if the Crumbleys took him home but left for work.

“I made the decision I made based on the information I had. I had 90 minutes of information,” Hopkins said.

Hopkins said James Crumbley never objected when his wife said they couldn't take Ethan home. And he said no one disclosed that a new gun had been purchased just four days earlier — one described by Ethan on social media as “my beauty.”

Hopkins said the father seemed interested in his son's welfare when they discussed the drawing.

“He was talking to his son and mentioned, ‘You have people you can talk to. You can talk to your counselor, you have your journal. We talk,'" Hopkins recalled. “It felt appropriate at that time, but my concern at that point was there wasn't any action.”

Jurors heard how, in hindsight, a simple step could have prevented the shooting. Nick Ejak, who was in charge of student discipline, said he joked to a teacher about the heavy weight of the shooter's backpack when he retrieved it from a classroom. If he had opened the bag, he would have discovered the gun and ammunition.

Ejak said Ethan's mental health was a concern — not discipline issues — and he believed he had no grounds to unzip the bag.

“That's a fair statement,” Ejak replied when defense attorney Mariell Lehman asked if he believed the boy was not a threat to others.

Ethan had made multiple visits to shooting ranges with a parent in 2021, including one just three days before the school massacre. A security camera at the range recorded him instructing his mother when she appeared to struggle with the newly purchased Sig Sauer 9 mm, according to video played for the jury.

“His new Xmas present,” she wrote on social media.

Federal agent Brett Brandon said a cable to lock the Sig Sauer gun case was unused and still sealed in plastic when authorities searched the Crumbley home.

When the boy surrendered at school, “he took the magazine out of the firearm and placed it on top of a trash bin, which I found unique,” Brandon testified. “Not something someone would do if they committed a mass shooting.”

The Crumbleys are the first U.S. parents to be charged with having criminal responsibility for a mass school shooting committed by a child. Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of the same involuntary manslaughter charges last month.

Ethan, now 17, is serving a life prison sentence for murder and terrorism.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald takes the gun, described as the murder weapon, from Special Agent Brett Brandon during the James Crumbley trial, in the Oakland County Courtroom on Monday, March 11, 2024, in Pontiac, Mich. He is accused of failing to secure a gun at home and ignoring signs of his son Ethan Crumbley's mental distress. (Daniel Mears/Detroit News via AP, Pool)

3 children and 2 adults die after school bus collides with semi in Illinois, authorities say

Authorities say a bus carrying students and teachers crossed into oncoming lanes monday morning and struck a semitruck carrying sand. all four people on the bus and the truck driver were killed..

Bus Crash Illinois

Illinois State Police Capt. Jody Huffman, at podium, speaks during a news conference about the five people, including three children, who were killed Monday in a crash involving a school bus and semitruck on a highway in western Illinois.

Associated Press

RUSHVILLE, Ill. — Five people, including three children, were killed in western Illinois when a school bus and semitruck collided on a highway Monday, authorities said.

The bus was traveling eastbound when it crossed the center line on U.S. Route 24 into the westbound lanes “for an unknown reason” and into the path of a semitruck carrying sand, Illinois State Police Troop 6 Capt. Jody Huffman said at a news conference. Both vehicles caught on fire in the crash. The crash happened around 11:30 a.m. in Rushville, a Schuyler County community of about 3,000 roughly 60 miles west of Springfield.

All four people aboard the bus from Schuyler-Industry Schools — three children and the driver — as well as the driver of the semitruck were killed.

“There’s not really words at this time that can be said,” Schuyler County Sheriff Bill Redshaw told reporters. “When you have a loss of life like this, it’s devastating.”

He said the tragedy hit the small, close-knit community particularly hard.

Schuyler-Industry Schools canceled classes Tuesday and Wednesday because of the crash.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce our school community has lost both staff and students in the traffic incident involving one of our school buses this morning,” the school district said in a statement. “Out of respect for everyone involved, no names or further information will be released at this time.”

The cause of the crash remained under investigation Monday afternoon. The names of the victims have not yet been released.

The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to conduct a safety investigation with state police, the agency said late Monday on X.

Schuyler County Coroner Terry Millslagle said the victims' bodies were being transported to Springfield for autopsies.

essay about problems in school

In states with laws targeting LGBTQ issues, school hate crimes quadrupled

School hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ people have sharply risen in recent years, climbing fastest in states that have passed laws restricting LGBTQ student rights and education, a Washington Post analysis of FBI data finds.

In states with restrictive laws, the number of hate crimes on K-12 campuses has more than quadrupled since the onset of a divisive culture war that has often centered on the rights of LGBTQ+ youth.

At the same time, calls to LGBTQ+ youth crisis hotlines have exploded, with some advocates drawing a connection between the spike in bullying and hate crimes, and the political climate.

Tell The Post: Do you have experience with anti-LGBTQ+ bullying at school?

LGBTQ+ students have long dealt with bullying and harassment at school, but some students are feeling particularly vulnerable due to the wave of legislation. They are also on edge following the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager who died after a fight in their Oklahoma public school bathroom.

That’s the case for Carden, a transgender 17-year-old. He argues that politicians’ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has shaped the views of adults in the conservative Virginia county where he lives.

“Kids parrot these ideas in their head, it’s like, ‘Oh, my parents think …,’” said Carden, whose parents asked that his last name be withheld for fear of further bullying. “Then it translates to being mean to other people their age.”

Twice this fall, a group of freshmen boys at Carden’s school harassed him for his gender identity — once calling him “queer” in a nasty tone, he said. The second time, after telling him a Pride flag he had tucked into his backpack was “pitiful,” one of the boys suggested Carden should “just go die already.”

Since his election in 2021, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has encouraged schools to require that students use facilities matching their biological sex and has signed a law requiring schools to alert parents of “sexually explicit” lessons, alarming LGBTQ+ advocacy groups who predicted it would be used to limit education on sexual orientation and gender identity. Other GOP governors have advanced similar policies through executive action and legislation.

The Post analysis found that the number of anti-LGBTQ+ school hate crimes serious enough to be reported to local police more than doubled nationwide between 2015-2019 and 2021-2022. The rise is steeper in the 28 states that have passed laws curbing the rights of transgender students at school and restricting how teachers can talk about issues of gender and sexuality.

In more-liberal states that have not enacted restrictive school LGBTQ+ laws, The Post found that the rise in FBI hate crimes was lower — though the absolute number of crimes was higher. Analysts said that may be because people in those states are more likely to report incidents.

Advocacy groups have also seen a rising number of young people in distress.

Calls have spiked to the Trevor Project, which provides support to LGBTQ+ youth aimed at suicide prevention and crisis intervention. In the fiscal year ending in July 2022, the group fielded about 230,000 crisis contacts, including phone calls, texts and online chats. The following year, it was more than 500,000.

Similarly, the Rainbow Youth Project , a nonprofit that offers crisis response and counseling to at-risk LGBTQ+ youth, saw calls to its hotline rise from an average of about 1,000 per month in 2022 to just over 1,400 per month last year. The top reason cited by callers in 2023 was anti-LGBTQ+ “political rhetoric,” such as debate over laws and policies limiting rights at school.

Young people will say, “`My government hates me,’ ‘My school hates me,’ `They don’t want me to exist,'” said Lance Preston, the group’s founder and executive director. “That ... is absolutely unacceptable. That is shocking.”

How The Post reported on anti-LGBTQ hate at school

In the weeks after Nex’s death, the Rainbow Youth Project saw a crush of calls from Oklahoma, rising from 321 in January to nearly 1,100 in February, though the surge may have been driven at least in part by news coverage of the group’s work.

Nex, who used they/them pronouns, died on Feb. 8, a day after a confrontation in the bathroom of their school in a Tulsa suburb. School officials sent the students home, but Nex’s grandmother took Nex to the hospital later that day and called police.

In a statement to an officer, Nex and their grandmother said three girls had been bullying Nex and a friend because of how they dress. In the bathroom that day, these girls were making comments Nex found offensive, and Nex poured water on them. Then “all three of them came at me,” Nex said. A fight ensued.

Nex was discharged from the hospital but rushed back the next day, when they died. A final autopsy report has not been released, and police are still investigating. But the case has drawn national attention as LGBTQ+ advocates argue that Nex was bullied and that their death is a hate crime related to their gender identity. The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education this month opened an investigation into the school’s actions.

Since 2020, Oklahoma has adopted several laws restricting transgender rights. The state prohibits students from using bathrooms that do not align with the sex assigned at their birth and bars minors from receiving transition-related care. The legislature is considering additional measures this year, including a ban on changing one’s gender on birth certificates and requiring that schools teach that “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait” that cannot be changed.

Many of these bills have been championed by the state’s schools superintendent, Ryan Walters, who said in an interview that Nex’s death was a heartbreaking tragedy, but that those who are connecting it to bullying or gender identity are pushing a “left-wing agenda” and “politicizing the death of a student.”

Va. killed bills aimed at trans youths. Here’s where the debate moves next.

Walters said he will continue to push for legislation to counter what he called “radical gender theory,” which he defines as the notion that one’s gender can differ from biological sex.

“There’s two genders. That’s the way God created us,” Walters said. Some young people are confused, he said, but, “your job as an adult is to help kids, not lie to them.”

He added that he opposes bullying but wholly rejects the idea that the political environment is encouraging it.

“Because you share a belief or an opinion does not mean it’s connected to violence,” he said.

Hate crimes on the rise

The FBI data show serious incidents against LGBTQ+ people are on the rise, particularly in the more than two dozen states that have passed laws targeting LGBTQ+ students or education. Some of these laws, like those enacted in Oklahoma, bar students from competing on sports teams or using school bathrooms that do not conform with their sex assigned at birth. Others circumscribe what teachers can teach about gender identity or sexual orientation or bar instruction on these subjects entirely.

Overall, there were an average of 108 anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes at schools reported to the FBI per year from 2015 to 2019 on both college and K-12 campuses. In 2021 and 2022, the most recent for which data were available, the average more than doubled to 232. (The number of reported hate crimes overall dropped in 2020, when the covid-19 pandemic shut down many school campuses, forcing learning online.)

The rise was even steeper in states that have enacted laws or policies which restrict LGBTQ+ students’ education or rights at school — tripling from an average of about 28 per year from 2015-2019 to an average of about 90 per year in 2021-22. There was also an upsurge in the states without these laws, from about 79 reported hate crimes per year to 140.

When the data is limited to K-12 campuses, the increase is even more marked. In states that have enacted restrictive laws, there were more than four times the number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes on average, per year, in 2021-22 compared with the years 2015-2019 across elementary, middle and high schools.

“Policy sets the tone for real-world experiences [and] discriminatory policy just creates a hostile environment,” said Amy McGehee, a doctoral student at Oklahoma State University who researches LGBTQ health and well-being.

FBI data indicate the most common crimes associated with reported hate crimes at schools include simple assault, intimidation and vandalism.

McGehee added that LGBTQ students were reporting feeling unsafe on both college and K-12 campuses even before states began passing waves of policies restricting their rights at school. A sweeping Washington Post-KFF poll last year found that school is among the greatest stressors for transgender children in particular. Forty-five percent of trans adults said they felt generally unsafe at school as a child or teenager, compared to 10 percent of cisgender adults.

Trans kids crave acceptance at school in a nation that often resists it

The Post’s analysis of FBI data found that the per capita hate crime rates on K-12 and college campuses were higher in the more liberal states that have not enacted laws limiting transgender rights. Although the finding may seem counterintuitive, it actually makes sense, said Stephen Russell, a University of Texas at Austin professor who studies LGBTQ youth. He said LGBTQ youth and families living in those 22 states were probably more likely to report violence and harassment in the first place.

Many of these states have adopted laws and school policies specifically prohibiting bullying of or discrimination against LGBTQ students, he said. In some places, he said, that includes required annual notifications alerting students and parents to their rights and spelling out how they can and should report bad behavior.

“It creates a context where they see themselves, they stand up for themselves, they believe there is a place for them in their schools,” Russell said of LGBTQ children.

In addition, it’s possible more kids are public about their identities in more liberal states, creating more targets for bullies, said Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, who studies social policy and politics.

Both Erickson and Russell were unsurprised to learn that the number of hate crimes had risen faster in states with conservative laws.

“The data you have is the thing I’ve been worrying about, and here it is,” said Russell.

‘They don’t want us to exist’

The upsurge in restrictive laws and in school bullying has left some LGBTQ+ students feeling under attack.

Last year, classmates regularly harassed a transgender teenager in Mississippi for his short hair and for wearing boy’s clothing and chest binders, his mother said in an interview. Throughout that year, her son often woke up in the middle of the night vomiting due to stress. He wound up missing about three weeks of school due to bullying-induced breakdowns, recalled the mother, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from family members who do not support her son’s gender identity.

She said her son has been suicidal at times, at one point keeping a journal in which he detailed plans to kill himself. She said he also cut himself. “He feels shamed,” she said. “It’s hard for him to find friends.”

In 2021, Mississippi enacted a law barring transgender students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Partly citing that state policy, the mother said she feels like everything is just getting worse.

“I’m really worried that my child is getting irreparable mental damage from all of this,” she said. “I also just get worried that, what if he gets suicidal again? I don’t want to lose my son.”

Studies show that LGBTQ+ youth are at particular risk for bullying and mental health problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior survey, for instance, found that more than 1 in 3 gay, lesbian and bisexual students were bullied either on school property or online in the previous year. For about 1 in 4 the bullying was at school. Among straight students, those rates were about half as high.

When Max Ibarra was a sophomore in high school in the Chino Valley, Calif., east of Los Angeles, they endured what Max thinks of as everyday bullying from other students.

Max, who identifies as trans and nonbinary, recalled hearing snickering behind their back. In one class, they said, another student regularly threw erasers and wads of paper thrown at them in class. In the hallway once, someone purposefully stuck out a shoulder to shove Max into the brick wall.

But what really bothers Max, now 17, is what the Chino Valley Unified School District school board did. In July 2023, the board approved a policy requiring the school to notify parents if a student asked to use a name that differed from official records, or if they asked to use pronouns or school facilities that do not align with sex listed on the student’s birth certificate.

At the school board meeting where the policy was approved, 4-1, Max shouted objections into the microphone during the public comment period. They said that many trans students feel safe at school but not at home, and that the policy “shoves them in the closet.”

“I am tired of the idea that all parents love and support their children unconditionally. That is not true,” they yelled into the microphone. “There are evil people in this world, and some of them have children. Shocking, I know! Some prefer a dead child to a trans child.”

A spokesperson for the district declined to respond directly to Max’s assertions but said the schools have systems in place to report and respond to bullying and to address the needs of LGBTQ+ students. The district, she said, is “committed to upholding an educational setting that encourages, emboldens, and motivates scholars to become the global citizens they are meant to be.”

The policy was later put on hold by a court, and Thursday, the school board rolled back most of it. Still, Max said in an interview that the tone set by the school board remains.

“This culture of hostility and division has been festering, especially for the last three years, and its ramped up more and more each year,” Max said. “The school board has made it very clear we’re not welcome here. It’s very clear they don’t want us to exist.”

Emily Guskin and Scott Clement contributed to this report.

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