Jill Barshay

When the Spanish flu upended universities, students paid the price Higher education leader Arthur Levine analyzes the history of a lost generation

Fascinating anecdotes... sobering lessons. Similar (perhaps worse) upheaval and trauma compared w/Covid. But colleges were unable to help students recover academically or psychologically. Instead they "aged out of it" and waited for replacement students. (2/2) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

History buffs: @brandeisuniversity.bsky.social U president Arthur Levine did a deep dive into how universities weathered the Spanish Flu a century ago in his forthcoming book, “From Upheaval to Action: What Works in Changing Higher Ed." 🧵(1/2)

Trump's admissions data collection strains college administrators Universities must report student demographics, grades and test scores by March 18

Bottom line: This is a high stakes data collection that could trigger investigations and law suits and the early going is very messy. (10/10) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

One tiny indication that this was a rush job is in the Federal Register notice. Both enforce and admissions are misspelled in a proposal that’s all about admissions enforcement. Those words are spelled “admssions” and “enforece.” (9/10)

Federal education data collections typically take years to design, with multiple rounds of analysis, technical review panels, and revisions. This one moved from announcement to launch in a matter of months. (8/10)

6. College need to submit 7 years worth of data, going back to 2019. But prudent data retention policy is sometimes to purge unneeded sensitive student data. Some colleges delete data for students who never enrolled after 1-3 years and so years of data may not exist. (7/10)

5. Even tiny, not very selective colleges must do this OMB estimates the admistrative burden will be 200 hours per college -- and 2,200 colleges must comply. That adds up to 440,000 hours -- or 50 years worth of additional federal regulatory compliance. (6/10)

4. Male or female are the only choices for sex. Colleges, however, may collect sex or gender information using additional categories, such as nonbinary. But there's no "unknown" or "other" option on the spreadsheet they need to upload. (5/10)

3. Family income is missing for students who don't complete financial aid forms -- about 45 percent of all students. (4/10)

2. Many students don't report test scores with test optional admissions. That's more missing data. (3/10)

1. They have to "unweight" inflated GPAs onto a 4.0 scale, which is difficult or impossible. So they'll have to type in "unknown" for many, if not most students. (2/10)

The Trump administration is demanding colleges hand over their admissions data to enforce the ban on affirmative action. Due date: March 18. Just a few problems that colleges are dealing with as they dig through the numbers and try to comply. (1/10) 🧵

Trump's admissions data collection strains college administrators Universities must report student demographics, grades and test scores by March 18

Over 2,000 universities, incl those that have never practiced affirmative action, are scrambling to meet a March deadline to submit data on admissions to the Trump administration. Everything from sex and race to GPA and SAT is problematic to answer. Details here: hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Conservatives see married parents as a solution to low student achievement. It's not that simple NAEP data suggests that family structure affects student performance mostly in wealthier households

“Two-parent households do not confer … academic advantage [for low-income kids]…. Those who live w/ both parents scored a 199. Those who live w/ just mom scored 200.” Money matters far more than family structure. @jillbarshay.bsky.social for @hechingerreport.org hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Thank you. I didn't know about this book.

I expected low-income children to be most affected by having only one parent at home. But the data show the opposite. High-income children suffer the largest academic penalty for living in a single-parent household. Not much difference in test scores for low-income kids. (2/2)

Conservatives see married parents as a solution to low student achievement. It's not that simple NAEP data suggests that family structure affects student performance mostly in wealthier households

Project 2025 claimed that data on achievement by student family structure isn't publicly available. That’s not true, though you need expertise to extract it. I did. And the results surprised me. (1/2) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

The lesson here isn't that teachers should use more math terms in their lessons. But that if you're a principal and you want a leading indicator or a sort of biomarker of a good math teacher, you should pick one who regularly uses math words and understands them. (4/4)

If a teacher with weak conceptual understanding of mathematics suddenly started using more math terms, or handed out worksheets of math vocab, I wouldn't expect her (or his) students to improve on the annual math assessments. (3/4)

The researchers were unable to prove that mathematical vocabulary is causing student achievement to rise. It may be all the other good things that math-talking teachers are doing that's the active ingredient. (2/4)

Talk nerdy to me: Teachers who use math vocabulary help students do better in math Using words like ‘factors,’ ‘denominators’ and ‘multiples’ may be part of a constellation of good math teaching practices

I'd like to address an important misunderstanding about my piece hechingerreport.org/proof-points... that I'm seeing on social media. (1/4)

Chilling. I used to work on Portland Ave, where this reported ICE shooting took place.

Many public schools are losing students, but some are gaining. Great data crunching from Burbio showing "winners" and "losers". My hot take: several unrelated trends happening at once. Declining birthrates. Shifting migration within US. Some exodus from public schools.

Talk nerdy to me: Teachers who use math vocabulary help students do better in math Using words like ‘factors,’ ‘denominators’ and ‘multiples’ may be part of a constellation of good math teaching practices

My story today, "Talk nerdy to me," explains why. (4/4)
hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

That’s why I was eager to dig into a new study by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and UMD on math vocab and student math achievement. Some skepticism was confirmed. But more fundamentally, I was wrong. (3/4)

I questioned the time spent on math vocab. Students memorized terms like “domain” and “range,” divorced from real problems. Do you really need to define “addend” to add? (2/4)

When I tried teaching high school math more than a decade ago, I was struck by the importance of math vocabulary in the algebra curriculum I was following. There were so many more words and definitions than when I had studied math. 🧵(1/4)

Which college degrees are worth it?
@mitzkow.bsky.social crunched the numbers from the latest
@usdeptofed.bsky.social data dump. Fascinating. in 14% of all programs, or 4,441 of them, graduates earned least $50,000 more than typical high school graduates within 4 years. That's 435,722 students.

In a year that shook the foundations of education research, these 10 stories resonated in 2025 Special education, reading instruction, cellphones and… AI

Careful newsletter readers this morning may notice that my counting skills aren't what they once were. If you're hunting for the missing #5 it's in today's story on our website. Click below: hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Jessica Brown also found that NYC UPK "reduced the capacity for children younger than 2 years old at private child care centers by 2,700 seats, and this decline was not offset by an increase in provision in the home day care market. The entire decrease in capacity occurs in areas with high poverty"