Teachers report spending an increasing amount of time needing to support students’ and families’ mental health, per a new RAND study, and it’s seriously burning them out. In large part, this problem is unintentionally self-induced by the education system, which has increasingly taken on more the responsibilities of the mental health system. Schools and educators have been misled to think mental health programs would improve education outcomes at scale, and that “good mental health” is necessary for students to learn (even though students had been learning at schools for forever before the rise of mental health). The mental health programs that are marketed to schools as good for education are are explicitly teaching students and teachers alike to think about mental health more, talk about mental health more, and encourage seeking support for mental health. That explicitly takes time away from education: it’s a mechanical, unavoidable effect. Doing all this has not improved education outcomes or mental outcome. Growing evidence shows it can be harmful and make kids feel worse. It’s often NOT the best thing to think or talk about how one feels, and instead get past the momentary/transitory feelings of stress, anxiety, discomfort, etc. EdWeek writes that “in most schools, counselors and psychologists juggle up to twice the recommended ratio of students—leaving teachers to pick up the slack for students waiting for additional help.” That gives the impression that what’s necessary is more counselors and school psychologists. This is another way the education system has been misled. Recommended ratios come from professional associations that have an incentive to say there’s a need more of their members—they’re not based on empirical evidence. And more school mental health staff would perpetuate the cycle: more responsibility for mental health taken on by the education system, leads to more time spent on it, leads to more investment, leads to more time spent, etc. edweek.org/leadership/dealin… edweek.org/leadership/dealin…

Teacher educators mock scripted instruction. But when the federal government tested competing approaches to teaching disadvantaged children, Direct Instruction came out on top.

The research showed that Direct Instruction was the most effective method of teaching children. Some people with a lot of power didn’t like who directed the research and what it showed, so it was dismissed. Millions of children were deprived of the education they deserved because of adult egos and agendas. I struggle to understand how this is possible, but it is.

"Only in Louisiana have both math and reading scores exceeded their 2019 levels." ⤵️

⏰SCOTUS grants cert in another school case: In Assoc. for ED. Fairness v. Montgomery Bd. of Ed., the Court will determine whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact. Since the Court's ruling in Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. (1977), circuits have split over disparate-impact liability in school admissions, and the Court will tackle that split head-on this term. This is a timely grant, coming on the heels of the DOJ's final rule eliminating disparate-impact liability from its Title VI regulations. Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard was anything but the last word on using race in education.