International Education News

What does it take to create more sustainable school facilities? In the third part to this series, Carter Hyde and Hannah Nguyen discuss some of the new developments in facilities and facilities management that schools across the country have implemented to conserve energy, cut costs, and support students’ learning and wellbeing. The first post explored the negative impact that climate change and related disruptions have on students, and the second post focused on how schools are making busing and other aspects of school transportation more sustainable.

This series is a part of IEN’s ongoing coverage of what is and is not changing in schools and education following the pandemic school closures. For more on the series, see “What can change in schools after the pandemic?”  For examples of micro-innovations in other areas, see Access to food and school meals in the US and around the world; Innovations in providing children with food and nutrition; Building Student Relationships Post-Pandemic in School and Beyond; Scanning the Post-COVID Challenges and Possibilities for Access to Colleges and Careers in the US ; New Pathways into Higher Education and the Working World? (Part 2);  Tutoring takes off and Predictable challenges and possibilities for effective tutoring at scale.

+++++++++++++

Environmental changes are contributing to disasters, crises, and day-to-day conditions that disrupt schooling, increase costs, and undermine students’ health and learning. Combatting these problems is profoundly complex, often requiring difficult trade-offs. Efforts to improve student health and learning environments may conflict with long-term sustainability goals and cost-effectiveness. These tradeoffs force school administrators to weigh the benefits of expensive structural upgrades against smaller, more affordable interventions. Despite the challenges, schools in the US and around the world are taking innovative steps that range from major infrastructure upgrades to homegrown, creative adjustments made by teachers in their classrooms.

Major Infrastructure Upgrades and Renewable Energy 

After salaries, energy represents a critical area for both reducing costs and addressing sustainability. In the US, energy bills make up the second highest cost for school districts, amounting to roughly 8 billion dollars per year. To address these significant expenses, many institutions are moving beyond reactive budgeting and toward strategic roadmaps that help schools set sustainability goals that are aligned with national sustainability targets. Schools can use these roadmaps to help reduce the schools’ energy and water consumption, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions. 

In the US, energy bills make up the second highest cost for school districts, amounting to roughly 8 billion dollars per year. 

In addition to strategic budgeting, some schools are turning to high-impact technology to reduce energy costs and to promote sustainable practices. For instance, some schools are now putting in place geothermal wells because they offer a particularly sustainable way to heat and cool schools without burning fossil fuels. At the same time, some schools are turning to solar energy so that they can develop their own sources of energy. Though a costly up-front investment, solar panels can help reduce the electrification gap by providing a sustainable way to power schools that reduces costs over time and contributes to better air quality. 

Improving HVAC Systems and the Building “Envelope” 

Beyond energy sources, improvements to the school’s physical “envelope”—the walls, windows, and climate systems—can support student performance. Upgrading old HVAC systems, in particular, provides a way to cool classrooms and create better learning conditions at the some time. As one review of survey data from New York State schools showed, improving HVAC systems contributed to a 2% increase in attendance and a 3% increase in math scores over multiple years. Among other benefits, HVAC improvements can produce better air flow, which reduces the spread of disease and helps students focus. Improving air filtration through the use of air purifiers and portable air cleaners, can also help improve cognition and mitigate illness-related absences. 

At the same time, air conditioning alone is not always a sustainable solution, as these systems can expel hot air outdoors and contribute to global warming. As architect Francis Kere explains, “energy-intensive air conditioning, which expels hot air outdoors, contribute to global warming, which then fuels demand for more air conditioning.” Instead, Kere recommends using passive cooling techniques, such as overhanging roofs to improve air circulation and generate cross-ventilation.

Schools can also make improvements in the outdoor environment to address sustainability. For instance, planting trees on asphalt playgrounds can reduce temperatures through shading, and painting roofs white, adding vegetation of false ceilings, and creating more green spaces can reduce the “heat island” effect.

Balancing Lighting and Temperature

Lighting represents another area where schools need to consider potentially conflicting benefits. In a 2020 review of 130 studies, lighting was found to be one of the environmental factors that had the biggest impact on students’ learning and wellbeing. Maximizing the amount of natural light in classrooms, in particular, has been shown to have a number of benefits including reducing eye strain, boosting mood, and improving cognition. Although artificial lighting may lead to lower motivation and eye strain, research reviews highlight that students in classrooms with more natural light showed higher productivity, engagement, and attention level. Despite these benefits, some classrooms may still suffer from poor lighting or rely too heavily on  artificial sources. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, in an effort to reduce energy consumption and costs, many schools have implemented LED lighting in classrooms. 

Maximizing the amount of natural light in classrooms, in particular, has been shown to have a number of benefits, including reducing eye strain, boosting mood, and improving cognition.

In addition to finding a balance that maximizes the benefits of natural lighting with the costs, schools have to take into account the fact that both too much direct sunlight and too little light can negatively impact student engagement and impair test scores. Furthermore, schools have to take into account mitigating factors, including structural limitations that prevent some classrooms from relying on daylight, as well as the increases in classroom temperature and energy costs that come with larger windows. One way to deal with these challenges is to use temperature-treated or double-paned glass to provide light while keeping the heat out. The use of window shades may also be useful in eliminating glare. 

Teachers’ Role in Sustainability

Whether or not schools have the resources for major structural changes or sustainability upgrades, teachers play a key role in striking the right balance between lighting and temperature and supporting both sustainability and an optimal learning environment. For instance, teachers have demonstrated a host of creative ways to combat heat and to improve the environment including using fans, creating window art to reduce glare, and turning off heat-generating electronics. In some cases, the simplest solutions may be the best solutions, as teachers in schools located in temperate regions with good air quality can open windows to allow for natural air flow.

Improving Facilities in “Old” Buildings

Along with so many natural disasters and rising temperatures, many communities face a long-standing demand to improve aging or inadequate school buildings. One of the most recent assessments of school infrastructure in the US shows that it would cost almost 200 billion dollars to bring all K-12 school buildings into good overall condition and the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the condition of America’s 100,000 public school buildings an overall grade of D+. Estimates suggest it would take as much as 85 billion dollars a year to make the needed improvements. On top of that, the costs of deferred maintenance continue to compound with every one million dollars worth of needed improvements deferred in one year leading to  $1.08 – 1.12 million in costs the following year.

In the US, the burden and responsibility for addressing this problem falls on individual school districts and communities, but many lack the resources to pay for the significant upfront costs of building new facilities. Some districts have tried to mitigate these costs – and the sustainability problems that new construction often produces – by repurposing older buildings. For instance, struggling malls have opened the doors to charter schools as tenants to use the empty spaces. One charter school in South Carolina opened up in a former JC Penny Store. In Massachusetts, instead of building a new high school, one district opted to co-locate a school in the community’s senior center. center down the road. 

For more information regarding infrastructure and sustainability, see:  

Officials promised all NYC classrooms would get air conditioning. 1 in 5 still lack it. (ChalkBeat) 

Is your NYC school using the air purifiers that were distributed during COVID? (ChalkBeat) Why improving air quality in schools would minimize the threat of bird flu spread (ChalkBeat) California’s K-12 schools often lack sufficient shade and natural surfaces (UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs)

Measuring schoolyard heat one step at a time (UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences)

Alabama is Bringing Forests Into Schoolyards (Governing)

What Works and For Whom? Effectiveness and Efficiency of School CApital Investments Across the U.S. (Biasi, Lafortune, & Schonholzer)

‘A place for kids to play and a place to store water’: the stormwater capture zone that is also a playground (The Guardian)

NYC to install solar panels at 72 public schools by year’s end, helping kids learn about clean energy (Daily News)

What Will Districts Do With All Those Empty School Buildings? Some Look to Fill Them With Younger Kids (EdSurge)

Can new developments in busing and transportation help schools to cut costs and become more sustainable? That’s the question that Carter Hyde and Hannah Nguyen tackle in the second part of this three-part review of recent news and research related to schools and sustainability. Part 1 explored how climate change and related disruptions can have a negative impact on student learning. Part 3 will explore what schools can do to make their facilities and other aspects of school operations more sustainable. 

These posts are part of IEN’s ongoing coverage of what is and is not changing in schools and education following the pandemic school closures. For more on the series, see “What can change in schools after the pandemic?”  For examples of micro-innovations in other areas, see Access to food and school meals in the US and around the world; Innovations in providing children with food and nutrition; Building Student Relationships Post-Pandemic in School and Beyond; Scanning the Post-COVID Challenges and Possibilities for Access to Colleges and Careers in the US ; New Pathways into Higher Education and the Working World? (Part 2);  Tutoring takes off and Predictable challenges and possibilities for effective tutoring at scale.

++++++++++++++

What kinds of innovations might enable schools to cut costs and become more sustainable? New developments in school transportation and busing may be at the top of the list. Swapping diesel-fueled buses for electric vehicles, using technology to create more efficient routes, and encouraging biking and other transportation alternatives are among the most notable innovations that can make school transportation more sustainable.

Electric buses

The development of electric school buses has been one of the most important innovations in sustainable schooling, helping both to save money and, in some cases, supporting student attendance and learning. Potential cost savings are one key factor that has encouraged a number of communities in Rhode Island, Southern California, and New York to make the switch to electric school buses. Although electric buses can cost between $150,000 to $300,000 more than a conventional diesel-powered bus initially, replacing a diesel bus can ultimately help reduce operational costs by 60%.  

The invention of the vehicle grid has helped to drive those cost savings because bus batteries can be plugged into the grid, where they can be charged or where they can send energy back to the grid if the electrical utility needs more power. In addition to the direct cost-savings, electric buses can help to reduce air pollution with related health benefits. As one report put it, for electric buses, “the up-front investment, along with delivering students to school and home again, is delivering greater value; in better health for students and neighborhood residents as well as climate-saving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” That’s because gas-powered vehicles significantly increase health risks and switching to electric buses can yield “up to $247,600 in health and climate benefits for each bus, including reduced rates of adult mortality and childhood asthma.”

“[T]he up-front investment, along with delivering students to school and home again, is delivering greater value; in better health for students and neighborhood residents as well as climate-saving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Route mapping 

Securing funding for electric buses is only one step, but new technologies and AI  are also creating opportunities to increase efficiency through innovations in route mapping. One district in Colorado Springs teamed up with HopSkipDrive to test the company’s “RouteWise AI” program which aims to address bus driver shortages and reduce student absenteeism. The program has cut the number of bus routes in half and increased on-time arrival rates to 99%, saving the district $8 million over a decade. 

Alternative modes of school transportation

Even the most efficient bus routes cannot solve every logistical problem, particularly in areas where buses are inaccessible or unavailable due to proximity limitations or driver shortages. In response to these limitations, many districts are shifting their focus toward encouraging safe alternative modes of transport to school. For instance, Hawai’i schools received an $8 million boost for school travel through the Safe Routes to Schools fund. The goal of the fund is to “get more kids out of cars and onto safe and comfortable pedestrian and bike paths within walking distance of their schools.” A lack of funds and limited availability of buses also led to an initiative at Detroit’s Davis Aerospace Technical High School to give students free bicycles for their commute to school. Donations from the community helped pay for the bikes, which helped to reduce chronic absenteeism and reduced the amount of time students had to spend walking to school or waiting for buses. 

 “Bike buses,” consisting of groups of people who ride to or from  school together, serve as another transportation related micro-innovation that can have multiple benefits. Michael Cohen, in a Washington Post article suggested the popularity of bike buses spread virally on social media when people in Barcelona posted videos of a “bicibus.” According to Cohen, numerous other communities have developed their own form of bike buses, and a variety of websites including Montclair (NJ) Bike Bus and Bike Bus World provide information and news for those in their local communities and offer specific guidelines to help others start their own versions. In addition to safety, switching from buses to bikes can also help to build relationships and social connections among students and parents, eliminating congestion, and reducing pollution. 

Policy “roadmaps” 

Beyond the buses and related technologies, policymakers are creating new policy “roadmaps” and “guidebooks” that provide a broader strategic framework that helps schools, districts, and municipalities to deal with their transportation needs. In 2023, New York became the first state to pass a school bus electrification mandate. To make the transition more tangible for schools, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) released a bus roadmap and guidebook that details the key challenges, costs, funding and policies involved in the switch to electric buses. According to New York Governor Hochul, “our roadmap and guidebook will provide school districts and bus operators with the latest information to enhance their fleets with zero-emission buses through proper planning, purchasing, and financing.”

“[O]ur roadmap and guidebook will provide school districts and bus operators with the latest information to enhance their fleets with zero-emission buses through proper planning, purchasing, and financing.”

New York’s roadmap provides a blueprint for reaching sustainability targets and is a part of a much larger ongoing movement. In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency posted updated emission standards that include guidelines for school buses. Under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the EPA launched the Clean School Bus Program, a $5 billion, five-year grand program, to give schools the funding to purchase low- and zero-emission school buses. Although the Trump Administration has not provided additional funding, during the Biden Administration, nearly $2.7 billion was distributed, with 90% of the funds going directly to electric school buses.

Next week — How innovations in school facilities can address climate change and support learning: Sustainability, students and schooling (Part 3)

For more information regarding transportation and sustainability, see:  

Schools lined up for help getting cleaner school buses. Then came the EPA freeze (AP News 2025)

How one school district is turning to AI to solve its bus driver shortage (CBS News 2024)

Electric school buses give students a healthier ride. The break from pollution could also help their grades (Chalkbeat 2025) 

Why 98% of districts are modernizing transportation (District Administration 2025) 

Funding for electric school buses hits bump in smaller districts (ECO RI 2024)

The school bus driver shortage has improved slightly but continues to stress K-12 public education (Economic Policy Institute 2025) 

Why some districts are shifting teens from school buses to public transit (Edweek 2025)

NY schools have to electrify buses by 2035. Here’s how one district is making the switch (North Country Public Radio 2024)

Riding the yellow school bus: Equity in bus transportation across districts, schools, and students (Sage Journals 2022)

Electric school buses and waterfront parks get Environmental Bond Act Boost (The City 2025)

School bus driver shortage: Durham parents must drive students to school 1 day per week in December (WRAL News 2024)

Educators and education programs around the world are both developing new ways to make schooling more sustainable and creating new educational opportunities for students to learn about the world around them. To help take stock of these developments, in the first part of this 3-part series, Carter Hyde  and Hannah Nguyen review some of the latest news and research that discusses how climate change affects student learning. Future posts will outline some of the new developments – or “micro-innovations” – in transportation and facilities that educators around the world are pursuing to support a more sustainable planet, cut costs and foster student learning and wellbeing.

These posts are part of IEN’s ongoing coverage of what is and is not changing in schools and education following the pandemic school closures. For more on the series, see “What can change in schools after the pandemic?”  For examples of micro-innovations in other areas, see Access to food and school meals in the US and around the world; Innovations in providing children with food and nutrition; Building Student Relationships Post-Pandemic in School and Beyond; Scanning the Post-COVID Challenges and Possibilities for Access to Colleges and Careers in the US ; New Pathways into Higher Education and the Working World? (Part 2);  Tutoring takes off and Predictable challenges and possibilities for effective tutoring at scale.

+++++++++++++

How climate change can undermine student’s health and learning

Each year, schools face a host of climate-related risks that can have a wide range of effects on the health and learning of students. As the authors of a UNICEF report put it, many “schools and education systems are ill-equipped to protect students from the impacts of climate change, particularly in fragile contexts, and climate finance investments in education remain strikingly low.” Just as one example, worsening pollution levels can impact respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, affecting children’s overall health and contributing to absences from school. Illustrating the significant impact that reducing could have on children’s health, in the US, estimates suggest that replacing old buses through a federal rebate program increased attendance between 2012-2017 by 350,000 days and that replacing all buses produced before 2000 would add another 1.3 million school days.

“Schools and education systems are ill-equipped to protect students from the impacts of climate change, particularly in fragile contexts, and climate finance investments in education remain strikingly low.” 

Of course, natural disasters can have devastating and direct effects, causing injury, illness, or death, and the impact of severe weather alone has a drastic effect on school operations, leading to eroding school finances and disrupted learning. In just one year, in 2024, nearly 10% of the school year was lost to climate related disruptions in low income countries, and extreme heat affected nearly 1 in 3 children. Exposure to heat waves has also been linked to a loss of almost 1.5 years of schooling for some children. In the US, rising temperatures are associated with declines in student math performance, especially for students in high-poverty schools. And it’s only getting worse. The World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year to date, and a record-breaking one-third of the global population experienced a heatwave. “By 2050, nearly every child will face more frequent heatwaves – threatening their health, disrupting their education ,and putting their future at risk.”  Given these challenges, it’s not surprising that concerns about climate change are also having a negative effect on the mental health of children, adolescents, and young adults. As a 2021 survey reported, 59% of 16- to 25- year-olds were very or extremely worried about climate change.

Can schools become more climate resilient?

The costs of school disruptions have sparked a movement toward making schools climate resilient, particularly by improving transportation and infrastructure. More sustainable approaches to schooling can benefit not only students’ health but also help reduce costs that free up funds for other educational purposes. An analysis from the Boston Consulting Group illustrated how government actions on climate  can save considerable money over time.  As the report put it, “By investing a relatively small portion of GDP—less than 1%—into climate adaptation measures, it is possible to avoid much larger economic losses of up to 4% of GDP. Then, the remaining economic impact in a less-than-2°C scenario ranges from 4% to 6% of GDP.” Economically, even modest investments in climate adaptation can prevent much larger long-term losses. 

Despite the available evidence, a focus on sustainability remains controversial in some countries. Countries, like Iran, Libya, and Yemen have also refused to sign onto global accords—such as the Paris Agreement or United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—designed to support sustainability expressing concerns about sustainable practices negatively affecting their economies. In the US, in particular, the current administration has explicitly worked to remove policies and limit initiatives that aim to combat climate change or support more sustainable practices. The U.S. Department of Education’s recent decision to terminate the Green Ribbon Schools program is a prime example of the reduced funding. The 15-year-old program honored schools across the country for their implementation of environmental practices. The program’s termination came soon after the DOE concluded the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program, in which schools were honored for academic excellence. 

Nontheless, concerns about addressing the climate emergency have continued to grow, with increasing numbers of individuals and organizations joining a broad social movement to create a more sustainable planet. Many teachers and youth have been engaged in this movement for years, as demonstrated by the efforts of Greta Thunberg and others who helped lead the Global Climate Strike in 2019. Since that time, a number of efforts focus specifically on addressing an “understanding gap” as nearly half of teens cannot identify the causes of climate change. As the efforts to address that gap proceed, the impact could be substantial. Research even suggests that if 16% of high school students in high- and middle-income countries received climate change education, carbon dioxide could be reduced by almost19 gigtatons by 2050. To support climate change education, more and more resources are becoming available, including documents like “Climate Literacy: Essential Principles for Understanding and Addressing Climate Change” and collections of Climate Change Resources. These efforts may benefit as well from plans by the OECD to include a measure of climate literacy as part of the PISA assessments in 2029.

Next week – How schools are making busing and transportation more sustainable: Sustainability, students and schooling (Part 2)

The current narrative of education stagnancy or decline is misleading. That’s the key argument in this excerpt from a recent paper from Micheal Kirst and Victor Eliot Hau Hong Chan. To make that argument, Kirst and Chan draw on a variety of data from students from ages 15-25 that shows a pattern of growth and progress in Advanced Placement, dual enrollment (i.e., combining high school and college), four-year colleges/universities growth and completion, apprenticeships, certificates, and credentials. The full paper was published in April 2026 as part of the Research and Occasional Papers Series from the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. Kirst is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University and the longest serving President of the California State Board of Education. Chan has an MA from Stanford University. Some images in this post are drawn from the Mike Kirst Biography project produced by Richard K. Jung. For previous posts from IEN on the work of Michael Kirst see “Big Infrastructure, Big Capacity Building, and State-Wide Scale-Up…”: Mike Kirst on the Need to Revitalize Standards-Based Reform and Making public policy work for education: Reflections on the career of Mike Kirst

+++++++++

For decades, the performance of the American education system has been largely judged by one narrow set of indicators: K–12 standardized test scores that encompass both national and international units of analysis (Hatch, 2021). Proponents of such assessments argue that test scores matter for many things, including national economic prosperity and growth (Hanushek, 2015). The predominant narrative about such data argues that over a long period of time, U.S. scores have either declined or remained stagnant (National Assessment of Educational Progress, n.d.). A resulting sense of alarm about the state of American education has only been intensified by recent test score declines, both before and after the pandemic.

However, K–12 test benchmarks are insufficient proxies for measuring the long-term educational and economic value generated by American educational institutions and programs. While K–12 schools prepare students for education beyond high school, the prominent tests are limited to outcomes in high school alone (OECD, 2023). As Nicholas Eberstadt (2025) has found, there is a “robust and remarkably stable correspondence between a country’s mean years of schooling and its per capita productivity,” meaning that test scores “are less powerful predictors of economic performance than … sheer years of schooling for a national population.” Simply put, students are in school for far longer than K–12 data alone would suggest, putting pressure on the continued reliance on test scores for assessing the state of national education. In order to obtain a fuller and more accurate picture of education attainment, it is important to look beyond K–12 test scores and, indeed, beyond high school graduation itself.

Public opinion has turned sharply negative concerning colleges and universities in the past decade. The slogan “college for all” that guided the Obama Administration has been attacked as putting too little policy attention on vocational and career education. Moreover, a considerable public focuses on the tiny segment of highly selective postsecondary institutions. Yet those critiques have not included an understanding or trend analysis of the vast array of postsecondary education that already exists, including high schools (AP), job sites, military bases, and prisons. Perhaps if the public better understood the entire array of postsecondary education available to Americans, and its contributions to national educational attainment, their opinion might become more favorable.

Focusing on youth 15 to 25, our goal is to reframe the current conversation around U.S. education attainment and performance by systematically examining how different forms of postsecondary education and training have grown, evolved, and contributed to workforce development over several decades. Based on our review of the literature, we estimate that at least 73% of high school students proceed on to some form of postsecondary education (Irwin et al., 2023).

Our research demonstrates that stagnancy or decline is not the dominant trend if postsecondary and K–12 education are combined. We find a pattern of growth and progress in Advanced Placement, dual enrollment (i.e., combining high school and college), four-year colleges/universities, apprenticeships, certificates, and credentials. Together, these elements significantly increase the number of years U.S. students spend in educational environments.

Just as importantly, however, our analysis identifies where current research and data infrastructure fall short and thus prevent a full accounting of progress or performance. While there are promising developments in sectors such as career and technical education, college transfer, and remedial education, the data gaps in these three sectors do not permit overall conclusions. Some sectors — like on-the-job training, military education, and credentials — lack sufficient data to determine trends. For this reason, our assessment offers not only a longitudinal scan of institutional and programmatic attainment growth, but also a guide to the questions policymakers and researchers must now prioritize and the places where further data must be gathered. This paper thereby contributes to an extensive literature integrating the K–12 perspective with postsecondary education, a literature that argues that this complex array of secondary and postsecondary entities should not be treated as separate domains, and that policies should span the entire spectrum (Hoffman et al., 2007).

Scope of Analysis

This project evaluates 11 distinct categories of educational pathways beyond the traditional higher education framework: 1) Early College Credit (AP); 2) Dual Enrollment in High School and College;  3) Career and Technical Education (CTE); 4) Apprenticeships; 5) Completion of 4-Year and 2-Year College Degrees; 6) Transfers; 7) Remedial Education; 8) Non-Degree Credentials (NDCs); 9) On-the-Job Training; 10) Military Education; 11) Correctional Education. For most categories, we analyze historical enrollment data, changes in completion rates, and evidence of long-term outcomes such as employment and earnings. Sources include federal and state datasets, institutional reports, and national surveys.

Where data is robust — such as with AP or community colleges — trends can be clearly interpreted. But in many domains analysis is hindered by significant gaps: outdated or irregular data collection, lack of standardized definitions, or the near-total absence of national tracking systems. Identifying these weaknesses, while limiting what can be said with confidence, helps to highlight critical blind spots in our understanding of how education and training systems function across the country, and lays a foundation for future research.

Final Comments and Overall Observations

Contrary to the dominant narrative of decline in U.S. education, the analysis presented here reveals a system that has evolved substantially, and often successfully, over the last four decades. At least 73 percent of high school graduates proceed on to some form of postsecondary education soon after they graduate. The broader landscape of American education includes a combination of secondary and postsecondary education that tells a story of student growth and progress despite data gaps across multiple sectors.

Measurements of Success, Current and Future

Across the domains analyzed, several positive stories stand out:

• Advanced Placement (AP) has seen massive expansion, rising to 23,000 schools and over 5 million exams annually while maintaining or improving pass rates. This signals genuine academic rigor amid democratized access.
• Dual Enrollment has rapidly scaled, especially in community colleges, bringing college coursework to nearly 1 in 5 high school students nationwide. Lagging states are catching up fast, signaling sustained future growth. More data is needed concerning program quality and student outcomes.
• Apprenticeships have surged by 73 percent in the last decade, expanding beyond construction into healthcare, IT, and utilities. Completion rates have returned to historical norms, suggesting the system is advancing, not just growing.
• College and university 4-year graduation rates are at all-time highs, with significant gains since 2007. Degrees and certificates have increased at 2-year public colleges. A combination of policies has helped to cause this positive outcome.
• Credentials and Certifications continue to grow rapidly and expand in scope. Licensed individuals are more than twice as likely to be employed full-time compared to their non-licensed peers.
• Correctional Education reduces recidivism by 43 percent and increases employment rates post-release by 13 percent. These are among the strongest outcomes of any education or training program in the country, yet the programs remain underfunded and with fewer participants than in the past.

These positive trends are not isolated. Rather they are systemic. They reveal that American education, far from failing outright, has quietly adapted to serve millions of learners through flexible, applied, and workforce-linked pathways. However, these gains have not been matched by investment in measurement, trend data or evaluation:

• High school Career and Technical Education has developed better career pathways and more linkages to postsecondary education. However, longitudinal data systems are underdeveloped to evaluate effectiveness.
• Remedial education has changed dramatically in its concepts and approach, but benefits are unknown within existing data systems. • Transfer pathways, although central to the community college mission, remain inefficient. Most students transfer without earning a credential, and articulation failures cause widespread credit loss.
• Credential programs have diversified and expanded, but tracking systems have not. Policymakers cannot yet distinguish between high-quality, market-aligned certificates and low-value credentials.
• Military education remains opaque. Despite billions in funding, there is limited visibility into enrollment, skill conversion, or post-service outcomes due to data silos and security-driven limitations.
• On-the-job training, though effective in isolated state evaluations, lacks any national data infrastructure-leaving the largest form of workforce training in the country virtually invisible. OJT is one of the best ways to provide applied and active learning.

The Policy Challenge Ahead

The takeaway is not that the U.S. education system is not broken. It is that it is incompletely understood. Key parts of the system—those with proven returns—are operating in the relative darkness or are misunderstood. Ifthe U.S. is serious about preparing citizens for economic resilience, civic participation, and lifelong learning, then we see three imperatives:

1. Elevate what works. Scale programs with clear returns on investment such as AP, dual enrollment, apprenticeships, and correctional education into broader federal and state strategies, with targeted funding and accountability.
2. Fix the data infrastructure. Build cross-agency systems that track participation, progression, and outcomes across all postsecondary pathways, not just for transfer to four-year degree programs. Statistics should be presented with separate categories for youth 15–25 years of age.
3. Develop policies for a major overhaul of the existing systems. For example, Jobs for the Future (2021) proposes merging grades 11-14 into a single, integrated, and free system. It seeks to eliminate the rigid divide between high school and college, creating a new, equitable educational model that combines academic instruction with workplace learning for 16-to-20-year-olds, directly aligning with modern economic needs.

The U.S. education system is in transformation. In many sectors, postsecondary education is quietly succeeding. The challenge now is to bring success and weakness into full view, build the systems to support attainment, and close the distance between potential and performance.

Learning materials, language support, and cultural mediators, these are a few of the elements of Iceland’s efforts to create a more welcoming and inclusive education that Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir discusses in the second part of this interview. In the first part of this conversation with Thomas Hatch, Jónsdóttir outlined some of the first steps Iceland has taken to establish their national approach. Jónsdóttir works as a specialist at the Ministry of Education and Children coordinating the MEMM project an abbreviation for education, welcoming and culture. The project  is being developed in close collaboration with the Centre for Language and Literacy in Reykjavík and the newly established national Directorate of Education and School Services. Previously Jónsdóttir was the head of the Center for Innovation at Reykjavík’s Department of Education and Youth and before that served as a coordinator for multicultural education in preschools. For earlier coverage of developments in Iceland’s education system see part 1 and part 2 of a conversation with Jón Torfi Jónasson “On the inertia of education systems and hope for the future” and “Relish the freedom you have and find the balance.”

++++++++++++++++++++++

Thomas Hatch: You’ve talked about some of the major initiatives you’re pursuing now including the collaboration around the data system, the production of resources and curriculum for inclusive education, and the development of a group of cultural mediators who can help educators and schools address the needs of immigrant families. But what about the challenges? What are some of the issues you need to deal with in order for your work to be successful? 

Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir: One of the issues is that Icelandic is a really tiny language. It doesn’t have much global value. As a result, you might have parents who’ve been living in Iceland for years and years without learning Icelandic. They could be working in the tourist industry, for example, but the company owners don’t care whether their staff speak Icelandic or not. There is a policy to support the learning of Icelandic as a second language, but it’s not acted on, and everyone needs to take responsibility for that. 

We need to provide an Icelandic learning community to support learning the language, and one way we are trying to do that is through continuous education. In almost every corner of Iceland, you have a center where you can go and you can learn all sorts of things, including instruction in Icelandic. But there’s no standardized syllabus, and we don’t have standardized learning material. 

TH: So that’s part of the reason you are trying to create the resources and materials for more effective instruction for Icelandic as a second language? 

FBJ: Yes, we’re doing that for the pre-primary, primary and secondary levels, but ideally it would happen for continuing education as well. It should happen at all levels. Just to give you an example, I was in a municipality where almost 70% of the children in the schools have an immigrant background. I told them, “Okay, you want us to do something about the schools and the education of the children, but what is the welcoming plan of the municipality? How do you welcome newcomers into your municipality?” This can’t be just about the schools.  There has to be a plan for how the community welcomes newcomers that includes both the municipality and the schools. 

“How do you welcome newcomers into your municipality?” This can’t be just about the schools.  There has to be a plan for how the community welcomes newcomers that includes both the municipality and the schools.”

Reykjavik has that kind of plan. The idea for their welcoming plan actually started in the Reykjavik Youth Council. That Council includes kids who are 14 to 18, and they can create proposals and appeals for the City Council to consider. They participate in one meeting with the City Council to put their ideas forward, and the City Council accepts some of the appeals.  The ideas that are accepted are sent to the relevant department, like the city’s Department of Education and Youth or the Department of Welfare. 

Back in 2015, I was leading the multicultural team at the Department of Education in Reykjavik, and the Youth Council introduced this idea about how the neighborhood could welcome newcomers. I thought it was so interesting that the youth council was bringing this up, so I called them all in and said “I want to hear the story behind your idea.” This guy who was already in upper secondary school, I think he was 17 at the time, said he was Icelandic, and he was living in a neighborhood in Reykjavik, where you have the most immigrants. “I’ve been in the same school for 10 years,” he told me, “and I’ve been having kids coming in my class every year that don’t speak Icelandic. For many, many years, I was with the same boy from Poland, and no one taught me how to talk to him. I feel so guilty about that, and I wanted to do something about it.” That was the beginning. Now there is a collaboration between the schools and a service center in the four districts of the city. This approach has been implemented in all the districts in Reykjavik, but it’s not something that’s happened nationally. One service center situated in the most diverse district has  “ambassadors” that have been appointed from about 9 or 10 immigrant groups. The ambassadors act as consultants to the service center to help them improve their services, and they serve as a link to the immigrant groups in the district. There are some municipalities, like, the municipality closest to the airport where they have been doing wonderful work, that we can all learn from, but it’s not exactly the same in each place. 

I also remember this wonderful welcoming plan that was in the East fjords some years ago where they had a welcoming person who met all new families. It didn’t matter where they came from, she met all the new families a few days after they moved to the town; gave them a card for the library, visited the pool, showed them where the social services were, and took them to the schools.  Now, when I visit other places, I point out to them that you cannot do this in isolation, and you can build on these examples from Reykjavik and these other municipalities.  

TH: You’ve talked here about welcoming immigrants, but in many cases, with refugees in particular, you’re welcoming people who’ve experienced trauma. How have you addressed that?

FBJ: This is something that we are learning little by little. I know in the US you have had trauma sensitive education and other initiatives that we have not had here, but it’s coming. We have a project we are working on now, Heillaspor that’s nationwide for Icelandic schools. It’s based on a Scottish project called Nurture. That’s an inclusive trauma sensitive project based on attachment theory: How do you build relationships and connections between adults and children? Between the children themselves? Between children and families? Between families and schools? And how can you support teachers in protecting themselves, their emotions and feelings so that they become less fragile in difficult situations? 

“How do you build relationships and connections between adults and children? Between the children themselves? Between children and families? Between families and schools? And how can you support teachers in protecting themselves, their emotions and feelings so that they become less fragile in difficult situations?”

But we also have some local projects. One that I have visited is developing micro-initiatives to support children and families who having huge challenges, in terms of finances, parents with drug addiction, children not going to school and all that. One of the initiatives that they are implementing, is called SPARE (It stands for supporting parents among refugees in Europe). They provide a 12-week program for parents with a refugee background and provide clinical therapies. 

TH: Are there any other major challenges that you’re facing? 

FBJ: There are so many challenges! The dominance of English is another challenge for teaching Icelandic as a second language. English is almost the lingua franca in Iceland so there’s a fight to keep the Icelandic language alive. My background is in multicultural, multilingual pedagogy, so when I’m working with multilingual children and families, I build on the strengths and resources that they bring to the school. For example, I will try to activate their languages while teaching them Icelandic. I will try to learn about our similarities and our differences. But that’s becoming a challenge because English is the language that everyone is using, so, for many teachers, it’s easier to speak English to newcomers. Teachers who are responsible for teaching Icelandic as a second language only work with a child for a few hours a week outside the regular classroom, and there is not a focus on building relationships through Icelandic with the classmates. As a result, there is a danger that the  child goes back into the regular class and never practices Icelandic. That’s why we are also trying to change attitudes and beliefs and make it clear that learning Icelandic as a second language is a joint responsibility of the whole school not only the appointed second language teacher. 

But this work has to deal with the increased racism, hate speech, extremism, and polarization that you are seeing in the US and Europe as well. This certainly makes it difficult when you want to work in an inclusive way with cultures and languages. As one example, I gave a course for all the head teachers of preschools in one of the neighborhoods in Reykjavik. I talked about attitudes and beliefs and what inclusion means. What does it mean to be culturally sensitive? They did all sorts of projects and discussions about this, because you can provide all sorts of material and support, but if people don’t work with themselves and their own beliefs and attitudes, things hardly change. We see this as a huge, huge, huge challenge. This is an issue everywhere, but at least the policy here is in favor of multilingualism and multiculturalism. 

The education of teachers is another huge challenge. Icelandic society has changed very, very fast, and teacher education is struggling to keep up with the pace of societal changes. We don’t have a good knowledge of how to teach Icelandic as a second language, for example. We have to build up that knowledge, and we also have to build up the knowledge of culturally and linguistically sensitive practices and our projects are trying to contribute to that. 

TH: Is there anything that’s been successful in working on teacher education? Any area where progress is being made? 

FBJ: There are some good initiatives at our universities for teacher education, and you have teachers that really want to change things. We are working with many different groups, including representatives from the universities, the teachers’ union, the Association of Municipalities, and we are having meetings about teacher education. You could say, we have “opened the mic.” There is also a recent book about teacher education in the Nordic countries when it comes to multilingual children, and there are two chapters about teacher education in Iceland (Teacher education for working in linguistically diverse classrooms: Nordic perspectives). 

TH: All this gives us a great sense of the initiatives you’ve gotten started. Is there anything else that you see coming down the line or that you’re hoping to get going as next steps? 

FBJ: We have less than year to go with this project, and it’s supposed to finish with a draft for the parliament that describes what we want support for school services and support to the municipalities to look like. At the same time, I hope we would get some kind of a consensus between the state and the municipalities:  What is the responsibility of the state? What are the responsibilities of the municipalities? And how are we going to divide the cost? This work has been going on for a while. I think that now we know the challenges. We know what we have to do. We have a lot of resources, but we need this collaboration, and we need a systemic approach so we can work on this together. 

Part of what I’m trying to do during these two years is influence attitudes and change how people view working with culturally and linguistically diverse groups of children so everyone sees that it’s not a matter of fixing someone; it’s not a matter of a single teacher being responsible. We as a society are responsible for building on the resources that people bring and providing them the education they need to live here. That’s where I would like to see us.

“it’s not a matter of a single teacher being responsible. We as a society are responsible for building on the resources that people bring and providing them the education they need to live here.”

What does it take to create a safe and welcoming environment for all learners? Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir discusses Iceland’s efforts to create a more inclusive and systemic approach to supporting immigrants and multilingual learners in the first part of this interview with Thomas Hatch. Part two of the interview will discuss some of the key challenges these initiatives have to address in order to be successful. Jónsdóttir works as a specialist at the Ministry of Education and Children coordinating the MEMM project — an abbreviation for education, welcoming and culture. The project is being developed in close collaboration with the Centre for Language and Literacy in Reykjavík and the newly established national Directorate of Education and School Services. Previously Jónsdóttir was the head of the Center for Innovation at Reykjavík’s Department of Education and Youth and before that served as a coordinator for multicultural education in preschools.  

The MEMM project was created to support inclusive education and the education of multilingual learners, a need that has been growing with substantial increases in immigration since about 2014. Among other things, immigration to Iceland has been driven by economic opportunities, particularly in the tourist industry. With a total population of less than 400,000 and almost 2.3 million visitors in 2024, immigrants fill about 40% of the jobs in the tourist industry, with many of those immigrants coming from Poland, Ukraine, and the Philippines. For earlier coverage of developments in Iceland’s education system see part 1 and part 2 of a conversation with Jón Torfi Jónasson “On the inertia of education systems and hope for the future” and “Relish the freedom you have and find the balance.” 

+++++++++++++++++

Thomas Hatch: Can you tell me about some of the problems that led to the development of the Directorate of Education and School services  and to your efforts to build national support services for inclusive education and multilingual learners? 

Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir: In Iceland, we face the problem that we have very, very tiny municipalities that have very minor support services for their schools, and there is no national support system for children with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Although Reykjavik and some larger cities have developed these support services, the smaller municipalities don’t have this capacity. As a result, the government has changed the law and expanded the responsibilities of the Directorate of Education and School Services.  The MEMM project is part of this expansion and aims to respond to this challenge by learning from municipalities that have developed their school services and building the infrastructure of materials, tools, and services needed to support the education of multilingual and immigrant children across the country. 

I’m here at the Ministry of Education and Children now for two years to coordinate this project. Before this I had participated in developing a team for the Centre for Language and Literacy in the city of Reykjavik that had a similar goal. One of the first things that we did through the MEMM project was to move that team from Reykjavik to this new national Directorate for Education and School Services. That way, the new people we are hiring can build on that earlier work. 

The Directorate of Education and School Services is also developing a new database that will provide schools with a completely new system for tracking children’s progress along with a toolbox for supporting teachers’ development. But it’s important to note that providing these kinds of services for schools is a total shift in the way that the Directorate works. Before this, the Directorate was primarily responsible for standardized testing and for publishing learning material for primary and middle school (for compulsory or “basic” education). Now, the Directorate has been tasked with creating the first database that provides real time information about which children are in each school. The teacher can see it; the headmaster can see it; the municipality can see it. We are collaborating with the team that is designing the database to make sure it includes information about children’s linguistic background. With the new database, we will be able to see, for example, how many children with each kind of linguistic background are in a particular school and how they are progressing. We can use that information to think about how we can improve our services to each school, and so that they can improve their support for each child, particularly if the child is not progressing. That effort is a part of making sure that children with linguistic and cultural background have a place in all the education initiatives that are being planned. We are also developing curriculum materials for teaching Icelandic as a second language. Up to now, it has been the responsibility of the teacher who teaches Icelandic as a second language to find their own materials. 

We’re also working on issues like how do you welcome refugee children, refugee parents, refugee families that don’t understand the Icelandic school system? And what kinds of early interventions, inclusive approaches, and culturally sensitive approaches are needed when working with immigrant children and families? As part of our project, we are developing a framework and collecting good examples of welcoming plans from Reykjavik and municipalities that have been working on these issues for some time. Additionally, we will have videos for parents about the Icelandic preschool and compulsory school system, and we have “cultural mediators” that can invite parents for discussions about what’s the difference between, say, the Polish school system and the Icelandic school system. 

“How do you welcome refugee children, refugee parents, refugee families that don’t understand the Icelandic school system? And what kinds of early interventions, inclusive approaches, and culturally sensitive approaches are needed when working with immigrant children and families?”

TH: Could you say a little bit more about the cultural mediators? 

FBJ: That’s one of the innovative projects we started in Reykjavik thirteen years ago. I had a grant to develop this one position with a Polish speaking mediator for preschools, and now Reykjavik has four of those positions for immigrants who speak Polish, Filipino, Arabic, Spanish, English and Ukrainian. We call these cultural mediators Brúarsmiðir, which means bridge builders, because we’re building bridges from one culture to the other. In our current project, we have hired four more people to serve as cultural mediators, and they are collaborating with the team from Reykjavik. There’s a slightly different role with those working in Reykjavik and those we hired to work in the Directorate, because by law, the municipality has different responsibilities for their schools and families than the state. In the municipalities, you can work with individual families, but when you are coming from the Directorate, you hardly work with individual families. Instead, you help the school and the teachers to become more culturally sensitive.  

TH: And do you have an example or a story of a successful mediator? 

FBJ: There are many stories! For example, it’s a very common misunderstanding that if a child speaks another language at home and the child is not making progress in Icelandic, the teacher assumes that the child is very good in their mother tongue, so the Icelandic doesn’t matter as much. But when you have the cultural mediator sitting down with the teacher and the parent, the cultural mediator realizes that the parent thinks that the child is perfect in Icelandic but is not very good in their home language. The cultural mediator can help the school and the parents to work together developing a shared understanding of the child’s strengths and the possibilities for improvement

When the Ukranian war broke out and also when we had a large group of refugees coming from Palestine, Reykjavík created what we’re calling family and school-based centers  that can provide a “soft welcoming” into the system. The cultural mediators can work there and talk to the parents and help clear up any misunderstandings. It’s not like we can take prejudices away, but when you have someone who can understand both sides, it’s easier to build cultural sensitivity into the system.  

“It’s not like we can take prejudices away, but when you have someone who can understand both sides, it’s easier to build cultural sensitivity into the system.” 

TH: I’ve talked to people in Poland who’ve taken a similar approach to welcome Ukrainian refugees into their system (see Jacek Pyżalski on the Refugee Crisis and the Polish Education System’s Response to the War on Ukraine). Obviously, you can’t cover every language or every background, so how do you handle that? What happens if there’s no cultural mediator that fits your background or your language?

FBJ: We can’t cover all of them, but we try to collect information about as many school systems as possible. The cultural mediators also host webinars and courses for Icelandic teachers to learn about the school system in Poland, the school system in Ukraine, and other places. This can help teachers to understand what to do if there is a parent who is not willing to put their child in afterschool activities for example. Informal education is very, very highly regarded in Iceland, and it’s an important part of the whole system. But some immigrant parents may think afterschool activities are a waste of time because the child is “not learning.” The cultural mediators can sit down and help the teacher explain why it’s important for the students, how it can support their social development, and how it can help build trust among a group of children. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having the mediators in our system, but we cannot put the sole responsibility on their shoulders.  We need cultural sensitivity and inclusive thinking from all our teachers, head teachers, headmasters. We cannot take that responsibility away from the school just because we have a mediator.  

“I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having the mediators in our system, but we cannot put the sole responsibility on their shoulders. We need cultural sensitivity and inclusive thinking from all our teachers, head teachers, headmasters.”

Next week: Fostering collective responsibility for inclusive education: Developing national support for immigrants and multilingual learners in Iceland (Part 2)