Report on the Development of New Childcare Facilities in Grand Traverse Region

Introduction

Northwest Education Services in Traverse City has initiated the construction of the Joseph C. Fisher Early Childhood and Family Center, aiming to address the critical shortage of childcare services in the Grand Traverse Region. This development aligns with several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

Context and Need for Childcare Expansion

• There is a significant shortage of childcare providers relative to the population, creating a high demand for childcare spots.
• Michigan State University’s Licensed Child Care Deserts Data indicates that in Grand Traverse County, more than three children compete for a single daycare spot.
• Families often join waitlists for childcare well before pregnancy, highlighting the urgency of accessible childcare services.
• Childcare scarcity affects employment opportunities, as families sometimes cannot accept jobs due to lack of childcare.

Project Details and Objectives

1. Facility Capacity: The new center will provide childcare for 8 children, including toddlers and newborns.
2. Community Support: The center will feature indoor and outdoor spaces designed to foster community among families and provide access to professional support.
3. Educational Opportunities: Students at Northwest Education Services will gain hands-on experience in early childhood development by working at the center.

Alignment with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• SDG 4 – Quality Education: The center offers practical learning opportunities for students interested in early childhood education, enhancing skills and career readiness.
• SDG 5 – Gender Equality: By improving access to childcare, the project supports working parents, particularly women, enabling greater participation in the workforce.
• SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth: Addressing childcare shortages helps families accept employment opportunities, contributing to economic stability and growth.
• SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities: The center promotes inclusive community spaces where families can connect and support each other.

Stakeholder Perspectives

• Lauren Dake, Family Liaison: Emphasized the difficulty families face in finding childcare and the impact on employment decisions.
• Robin Hornkohl, Collaborative Coordinator: Highlighted the gap in childcare services and the dedication of local providers, as well as the importance of quality hands-on learning for students.

Project Timeline

The Joseph C. Fisher Early Childhood and Family Center is scheduled to open in January 2026, marking a significant step toward improving childcare accessibility and supporting sustainable community development in the Grand Traverse Region.

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

1. SDG 4: Quality Education – The article discusses providing students with opportunities to learn about early childhood development and hands-on learning experiences in infant and toddler care.
2. SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being – By increasing access to childcare, the article indirectly supports the well-being of children and families.
3. SDG 5: Gender Equality – Access to childcare enables parents, especially women, to participate more fully in the workforce and education.
4. SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities – The creation of community spaces for families to connect supports inclusive and sustainable community development.

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

1. SDG 4 – Target 4.2: Ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care, and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.
2. SDG 3 – Target 3.4: Promote mental health and well-being, which can be supported by providing safe and supportive childcare environments.
3. SDG 5 – Target 5.4: Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure, and social protection policies.
4. SDG 11 – Target 11.7: Provide universal access to safe, inclusive, and accessible green and public spaces, particularly for vulnerable groups.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

1. Indicator for SDG 4.2: Proportion of children under 5 years of age who are developmentally on track in health, learning, and psychosocial well-being, as well as the availability of licensed childcare spots relative to demand (implied by the “three-plus kids trying to get into one spot” data).
2. Indicator for SDG 3.4: Access to quality childcare services that support mental health and well-being of children and families (implied by the creation of supportive childcare environments).
3. Indicator for SDG 5.4: Number of childcare facilities available to support working parents, particularly women (implied by the new childcare center increasing capacity by 8 children).
4. Indicator for SDG 11.7: Availability of community spaces for families to meet and connect (implied by the indoor and outdoor spaces for families at the center).

4. Table: SDGs, Targets and Indicators

Source: 9and10news.com

Report on Adult Literacy Challenges and Sustainable Development Goals in Richmond

Introduction

This report highlights the critical issue of adult literacy in Richmond, as presented by Mary Graham, CEO of READ RVA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to adult literacy. The discussion emphasizes the intersection of literacy challenges with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).

Context and Challenges of Adult Literacy in Richmond

1. Prevalence of Low Literacy: Approximately 100,000 adults in the greater Richmond area lack functional reading skills, impacting their daily lives and economic participation.
2. Misconceptions about Literacy: Literacy is often assumed to be a childhood-acquired skill, yet many adults face literacy challenges due to economic instability, underfunded education systems, incarceration, immigration, and trauma.
3. Invisible Struggles: Adults with low literacy frequently develop coping mechanisms to hide their difficulties, which include avoiding medical appointments, feigning tiredness to avoid homework help, and relying on others for tasks requiring reading.

Impact on Sustainable Development Goals

• SDG 4 – Quality Education: Adult literacy programs like READ RVA contribute directly to inclusive and equitable quality education by providing learning opportunities beyond traditional schooling.
• SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-being: Literacy affects health outcomes as adults with low literacy may avoid healthcare due to complex paperwork, leading to untreated illnesses.
• SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities: Addressing adult literacy reduces social and economic inequalities by empowering marginalized populations to participate fully in society.

Personal Narratives Illustrating Literacy Challenges

• A man on Broad Street who silently sought help reading directions, illustrating the hidden nature of literacy struggles.
• Parents knowledgeable about city bus routes but unable to read school notices, highlighting barriers to parental engagement in education.
• Adults avoiding healthcare due to fear of paperwork, demonstrating the intersection of literacy and health.

Broader Social Implications

Adult literacy is not merely an educational issue but a matter of dignity and inclusion. The stigma and shame associated with low literacy perpetuate silence and exclusion, undermining community cohesion and economic development. Richmond’s resilience is notable, yet it masks the endurance required by adults navigating systems not designed for them.

Recommendations for Sustainable Development

1. Integrate Adult Literacy into Core Community Planning: Recognize adult literacy as essential to belonging and participation in Richmond, not as a peripheral charity effort.
2. Design Inclusive Systems: Develop services and communications that accommodate varying literacy levels to reduce barriers in healthcare, housing, and employment.
3. Support Adult Learners with Respect and Resources: Provide accessible learning opportunities that acknowledge the courage and complexity of adult education journeys.
4. Raise Awareness and Reduce Stigma: Promote community understanding of adult literacy challenges to foster empathy and support.

Conclusion

Addressing adult literacy in Richmond aligns with achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals by promoting quality education, health, and reduced inequalities. The efforts of organizations like READ RVA demonstrate the importance of viewing literacy as a lifelong right and necessity. To build an inclusive city, stakeholders must recognize and support the silent struggles of adult learners, ensuring no one is left to navigate alone.

1. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Addressed

1. SDG 4: Quality Education – The article focuses on adult literacy, highlighting challenges adults face in reading and the importance of education beyond childhood.
2. SDG 1: No Poverty – Literacy is linked to economic stability, job opportunities, and overcoming poverty-related barriers.
3. SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being – The article mentions adults avoiding medical care due to literacy challenges, connecting literacy to health outcomes.
4. SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities – The discussion on systemic barriers, including economic instability, incarceration, and immigration, relates to reducing inequalities.
5. SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities – The article emphasizes designing cities that are inclusive and navigable for all residents, including those with literacy challenges.

2. Specific Targets Under the Identified SDGs

1. SDG 4: Quality Education
   • Target 4.6: Ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.
2. SDG 1: No Poverty
   • Target 1.4: Ensure that all men and women have equal rights to economic resources, including access to basic services.
3. SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
   • Target 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including access to quality essential health-care services.
4. SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
   • Target 10.2: Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.
5. SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
   • Target 11.3: Enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management.

3. Indicators Mentioned or Implied to Measure Progress

1. Indicator for Target 4.6 (SDG 4): Proportion of population in a given age group achieving at least a fixed level of proficiency in functional literacy and numeracy skills.
2. Indicator for Target 1.4 (SDG 1): Proportion of population living below the national poverty line, disaggregated by literacy level or educational attainment.
3. Indicator for Target 3.8 (SDG 3): Coverage of essential health services, potentially linked to literacy levels affecting access and utilization.
4. Indicator for Target 10.2 (SDG 10): Measures of social and economic inclusion, such as access to services and participation in community life, which literacy impacts.
5. Indicator for Target 11.3 (SDG 11): Proportion of urban population living in slums or informal settlements, and measures of urban inclusivity, which can be affected by literacy and accessibility.

4. Summary Table of SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: rvamag.com

Obituary Report: Sally June Kirk Adkins

Introduction

Sally June Kirk Adkins, aged 84, passed away on February 28, 2026, at St. Mary’s Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia, the same hospital where she was born on September 1, 1941. Her life journey reflects a strong commitment to education, community service, and sustainable development, aligning with several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Early Life and Education

• Born to Reva Ann Hamilton Kirk and Harry Lee Kirk Jr.
• Raised in the East End/Highlawn area of Huntington
• Attended Emmons and Enslow/Highlawn Elementary, Enslow Junior High School, and Huntington East High School (Class of 1959)
• Developed lifelong friendships through Camp Fire Girls, fostering social inclusion and community (SDG 4: Quality Education; SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities)

Family and Personal Life

• Married Fred Adkins on August 5, 1961
• Supported husband’s military career, living in various locations including Germany
• Raised three children and nurtured a strong family bond (SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being; SDG 5: Gender Equality)

Professional Career and Community Service

Sally’s dedication to education and literacy significantly contributed to community development and lifelong learning:

1. Earned a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from West Virginia University (1965)
2. Completed a Master’s degree in Childhood Education at Marshall University (1975)
3. Worked as a preschool, kindergarten, resource, and elementary school teacher, including support for hearing-impaired children (SDG 4: Quality Education)
4. Volunteered extensively in adult literacy programs and served as chair of the West Virginia State Reading Council Literacy Committee
5. Held leadership and volunteer roles in numerous organizations promoting education, health, and community welfare, such as:

• Contact of Huntington
• Tri-River Council Camp Fire Girls
• Tri-State Literacy Council
• Y-Huntington Swim Club
• Cabell County Bar Auxiliary
• Developmental Therapy Center
• Veterans Memorial Field House Authority
• West Virginia State Reading Council
• Appalachian Regional Commission Workforce Literacy Project
• Junior League
• Huntington East Highlander Booster Club

Environmental Stewardship and Lifestyle

• Built and maintained a cabin and estate home in Randolph County, West Virginia, fostering sustainable living and connection with nature (SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities; SDG 15: Life on Land)
• Engaged in outdoor activities such as skiing, hiking, cattle raising, and wildlife observation
• Participated actively in local community initiatives, including playground development and library volunteering
• Served on boards of Valley Health System and Snowshoe Foundation, promoting health and well-being (SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being)

Legacy and Survivors

Sally is remembered as a beloved family member and community leader who inspired others through her compassion and dedication. She is survived by:

• Husband: Fred Adkins
• Children: Allison Camara (Ken), Kirk Adkins (Susan), Ann Enthoven (Nick)
• Nine grandchildren: Katherine, Isabel (Julien), Lindsey Camara; Dylan and River Adkins; Meg, Luke, Sydney, and Reece Enthoven

Memorial Service and Donations

• Celebration of life scheduled for 1 p.m., Thursday, March 26, 2026, at Johnson Memorial United Methodist Church
• Family will receive friends from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. prior to the service
• In lieu of flowers, donations are encouraged to the Tri-State Literacy Council via the Cabell County Public Library website, supporting literacy and education (SDG 4: Quality Education)
• Checks may be mailed to: Cabell County Public Library, 455 9th Street, Huntington, WV 25701
• Online condolences can be left at www.beardmortuary.com

1. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Addressed or Connected to the Issues Highlighted in the Article

1. SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
   • The article mentions Sally’s long life and her passing at a hospital, highlighting the importance of healthcare services and well-being in the community.
   • Her involvement in community health-related boards such as Valley Health System.
2. SDG 4: Quality Education
   • Sally’s passion for education, her degrees in elementary and childhood education, and her career as a teacher.
   • Her volunteer work in adult literacy tutoring and leadership in literacy councils.
3. SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
   • Her work as a resource teacher for hearing-impaired children and involvement in literacy programs aimed at adult education suggests efforts to reduce educational inequalities.
4. SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
   • Her community involvement in improving local amenities such as playgrounds and libraries.
   • Participation in local organizations and boards that support community development.
5. SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
   • Her work with multiple organizations and councils indicates collaboration and partnerships to achieve community development and literacy goals.

2. Specific Targets Under Those SDGs Identified Based on the Article’s Content

1. SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
   • Target 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including access to quality essential health-care services.
   • Target 3.4: Reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases and promote mental health and well-being.
2. SDG 4: Quality Education
   • Target 4.1: Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education.
   • Target 4.6: Ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults achieve literacy and numeracy.
   • Target 4.7: Ensure that all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.
3. SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
   • Target 10.2: Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of disability.
4. SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
   • Target 11.7: Provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces.
5. SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
   • Target 17.17: Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships.

3. Indicators Mentioned or Implied in the Article to Measure Progress Towards the Identified Targets

1. SDG 3 Indicators
   • Proportion of population with access to essential health services (implied by hospital care and community health involvement).
   • Life expectancy at birth (implied by Sally’s age and health history).
2. SDG 4 Indicators
   • Literacy rate of youth and adults (implied by Sally’s work in adult literacy tutoring and literacy councils).
   • Participation rate in organized learning (implied by Sally’s educational background and teaching career).
3. SDG 10 Indicators
   • Proportion of people with disabilities who participate in education and community programs (implied by her work with hearing-impaired children).
4. SDG 11 Indicators
   • Proportion of urban population living in slums or informal settlements (implied by community development efforts such as playgrounds and libraries).
   • Access to public spaces and community facilities (implied by playground and library volunteering).
5. SDG 17 Indicators
   • Number of partnerships and collaborations between public, private, and civil society organizations (implied by Sally’s involvement in multiple organizations and councils).

4. Table of SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: theintermountain.com

Southwestern Oregon Community College Offers Free GED® and Adult Basic Education Classes for Spring 2026

Program Overview

Southwestern Oregon Community College is providing free GED® and Adult Basic Education classes during the spring term of 2026. These classes are designed to prepare individuals for the GED® exam and to enhance their skills for enrollment in college or career training programs. This initiative supports Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education, by promoting inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Objectives and Benefits

• Prepare students to successfully take the GED® exam.
• Update and improve basic educational skills.
• Create pathways for students to enter college, training programs, and employment in high-demand career sectors.
• Support workforce development aligned with SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, by enhancing employability and skills for sustainable economic growth.

Class Options for Spring Term 2026

The college offers three options for GED® and Adult Basic Education classes next term, providing flexible learning opportunities to accommodate diverse student needs and schedules.

Alignment with Sustainable Development Goals

1. SDG 4 – Quality Education: The program ensures access to inclusive and equitable quality education, fostering lifelong learning.
2. SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth: By equipping students with skills for high-demand careers, the program promotes sustained, inclusive economic growth and productive employment.
3. SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities: Offering free education helps reduce inequalities by providing opportunities for disadvantaged populations.

1. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Addressed or Connected

1. SDG 4: Quality Education
   • The article discusses free GED® and Adult Basic Education classes, which directly relate to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.
2. SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
   • The preparation for GED® exams and career training programs supports employment and economic growth by helping individuals gain skills for high-demand career areas.

2. Specific Targets Under Those SDGs Identified

1. Under SDG 4: Quality Education
   • Target 4.3: Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university.
   • Target 4.4: Increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.
2. Under SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
   • Target 8.6: By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training.

3. Indicators Mentioned or Implied to Measure Progress

1. For SDG 4 Targets:
   • Indicator 4.3.1: Participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex.
   • Indicator 4.4.1: Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill.
2. For SDG 8 Target:
   • Indicator 8.6.1: Proportion of youth (aged 15-24 years) not in education, employment or training.

These indicators are implied as the article focuses on enrollment in education programs, skill development, and pathways to employment.

4. Table of SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: currypilot.com

Report on Adult Literacy Initiatives in India with Emphasis on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Introduction

India faces a significant challenge with adult illiteracy, impacting approximately 287 million adults. Mission India is actively addressing this issue by providing education that fosters hope, independence, and dignity. This initiative aligns closely with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).

Challenges of Adult Illiteracy in India

1. Prevalence and Impact
   • Nearly one in four adults were illiterate according to the 2011 census, with improvements projected but many still lacking basic literacy skills.
   • Illiteracy affects daily activities such as reading street signs, managing finances, and accessing healthcare.
   • Parents face difficulties in understanding medical instructions, impacting family health and wellbeing.
2. Social and Economic Disparities
   • Women are disproportionately affected due to societal expectations and limited educational opportunities, highlighting the need for gender equality (SDG 5).
   • Lower caste and economically disadvantaged groups experience higher rates of illiteracy, underscoring the importance of reducing inequalities (SDG 10).
   • Mission India promotes dignity and respect for all learners, fostering inclusive education environments.

Mission India’s Educational Approach

• Bible-Based Curriculum
  • Teaching literacy at a fifth-grade level to equip learners with practical skills for employment.
  • Incorporation of health, hygiene, and entrepreneurship training to support holistic development.
  • Use of Scripture to enhance literacy and spiritual growth, with approximately 40% of graduates embracing Christianity.
• Alignment with SDGs
  • Supports SDG 4 by ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education.
  • Promotes SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) through health education.
  • Encourages economic empowerment aligned with SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

Impact and Outcomes

• Improved literacy enables adults to navigate daily life confidently and independently.
• Empowerment of women and marginalized communities contributes to social equity.
• Spiritual and personal growth enhances overall quality of life.

Call to Action and Support

Mission India invites support for adult literacy classes, which cost $40 per participant. A matching challenge is currently active, doubling the impact of donations up to $300,000. Contributions directly advance SDG targets by expanding educational access and fostering sustainable community development.

• Prayer and moral support are requested to help students recognize the role of faith in their progress.
• Financial donations can be made via MissionIndia.org/read.

Conclusion

Mission India’s adult literacy program is a vital initiative contributing to multiple Sustainable Development Goals by addressing educational disparities, promoting gender equality, and empowering marginalized populations. Continued support and engagement are essential to sustain and expand this transformative work.

1. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Addressed or Connected

1. SDG 4: Quality Education – The article focuses on adult literacy and education, highlighting efforts to help illiterate adults in India gain reading and writing skills.
2. SDG 5: Gender Equality – The article discusses the disparity in literacy rates between men and women, emphasizing the challenges women face in accessing education.
3. SDG 1: No Poverty – Literacy enables adults to manage finances better, open bank accounts, and avoid being shortchanged, which contributes to poverty reduction.
4. SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being – The article mentions health and hygiene training and challenges illiterate parents face in managing medication and healthcare for their children.
5. SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth – The literacy level targeted (fifth grade) is significant for finding work, and entrepreneurship classes are offered.

2. Specific Targets Under Those SDGs Identified

1. SDG 4: Quality Education
   • Target 4.6: Ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.
   • Target 4.4: Increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment.
2. SDG 5: Gender Equality
   • Target 5.5: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in education and other sectors.
3. SDG 1: No Poverty
   • Target 1.4: Ensure that all men and women have equal rights to economic resources, including access to financial services.
4. SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
   • Target 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including access to quality essential health-care services and medicines.
5. SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
   • Target 8.6: Reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training.
   • Target 8.3: Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

3. Indicators Mentioned or Implied to Measure Progress

1. Adult Literacy Rate – The article references the census data on adult literacy rates, which is a key indicator for Target 4.6.
2. Gender Disparity in Literacy – The difference in literacy rates between men and women, as noted in the article, can be tracked to measure progress on Target 5.5.
3. Enrollment and Completion Rates of Adult Literacy Classes – The number of adults attending and graduating from literacy classes, as mentioned with Mission India’s programs, can serve as indicators for Targets 4.4 and 4.6.
4. Access to Financial Services – The ability of adults to open bank accounts and manage finances implies tracking access to financial services (Target 1.4).
5. Health Literacy and Access to Health Services – The article’s mention of health and hygiene training and challenges in healthcare navigation suggests indicators related to health literacy and access (Target 3.8).
6. Employment and Entrepreneurship Outcomes – The impact of literacy and entrepreneurship classes on employment status and income generation relates to Targets 8.3 and 8.6.

4. Table: SDGs, Targets and Indicators

Source: mnnonline.org

University of Cincinnati Clermont College Advances Affordable Education through Open Educational Resources

Introduction

In response to the rising costs of higher education, the University of Cincinnati Clermont College (UC Clermont) is actively promoting the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) to reduce financial barriers for students. These initiatives align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education), aiming to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Open Education Week and OER Implementation

During Open Education Week, March 2–6, UC Clermont highlighted its commitment to affordability through the adoption of open textbooks and low-cost course materials. Open textbooks, often licensed under Creative Commons, allow faculty and students to freely use and adapt content without copyright restrictions. Their digital availability enhances flexibility and accessibility, directly supporting SDG 4 by making education more inclusive and affordable.

Role of the Frederick A. Marcotte Library

The UC Clermont Frederick A. Marcotte Library serves as a pivotal resource in advancing OER adoption. It supports faculty engagement with open textbooks through access to extensive online repositories developed nationwide over the past decade.

Alternative Textbook Incentive Program (ATIP)

UC Clermont encourages faculty participation in OER through the Alternative Textbook Incentive Program (ATIP), which provides:

• A $500 stipend
• A course release to redesign courses using open textbooks

The program accepts a limited cohort annually, with the third cohort recently selected, fostering continuous innovation in course affordability.

Impact on Students and Faculty

1. Student Savings: In a biology lab course enrolling 100–150 students annually, replacing a $120 traditional lab manual with an open textbook has saved thousands of dollars collectively each year, contributing to SDG 1 (No Poverty) by reducing financial strain on students.
2. Statewide Affordability Initiatives: Faculty members participate in OhioLINK programs offering stipends for developing affordable course materials, further expanding access to quality education.
3. Affordability Advocates: During Open Education Week, faculty using course materials costing less than $40 were featured, showcasing strategies such as:

• Reusing textbooks across semesters
• Assigning e-books and online articles
• Placing physical textbooks on course reserve

Case Study: Supply Chain Management Technology Program

Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator Seth Powless has twice participated in ATIP, redesigning his fully online courses to eliminate traditional textbooks. His approach includes:

• Utilizing academic articles, industry publications, and current online resources
• Allowing students to select articles aligned with their interests
• Assessing learning through written, audio, or video assignments

This method has enhanced student engagement and improved academic performance while eliminating textbook costs, supporting SDG 4 and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) by integrating up-to-date industry knowledge.

Faculty Collaboration and Commitment

The library hosted an affordability workshop in the fall, facilitating the exchange of experiences and strategies among faculty to reduce educational costs. These collective efforts underscore UC Clermont’s dedication to accessible education, directly contributing to SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) by making higher education more equitable.

Conclusion

Kathy Ladell, librarian at UC Clermont, emphasized the institution’s ongoing pursuit of creative solutions to enhance affordability: “Accessible education — in all forms — is a core part of our mission at UC Clermont.” Through these initiatives, UC Clermont exemplifies a commitment to sustainable development by promoting inclusive, affordable, and quality education.

Top featured image: Students in the UC Clermont Frederick A. Marcotte Library. photo/Danny Kidd

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

1. SDG 4: Quality Education – The article focuses on improving access to affordable education through the use of open educational resources (OER), which directly supports inclusive and equitable quality education.
2. SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities – By lowering the financial barriers to education, the initiatives at University of Cincinnati Clermont College contribute to reducing inequalities among students from different economic backgrounds.
3. SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure – The adoption of digital open textbooks and innovative teaching methods reflects progress in building resilient infrastructure and fostering innovation in education.

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

1. SDG 4 Targets:
   • 4.3: Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university.
   • 4.7: Ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including through education for sustainable lifestyles and human rights.
2. SDG 10 Targets:
   • 10.2: Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.
3. SDG 9 Targets:
   • 9.c: Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

1. Indicators related to SDG 4:
   • Number or percentage of courses using open educational resources (OER) instead of traditional textbooks.
   • Cost savings per student resulting from the adoption of OER materials (e.g., reduction from $120 lab manual to free or low-cost materials).
   • Student enrollment numbers in courses adopting affordable materials (e.g., 100–150 students in biology lab course).
   • Faculty participation rates in programs like the Alternative Textbook Incentive Program (ATIP) and OhioLINK affordability initiatives.
2. Indicators related to SDG 10:
   • Reduction in financial barriers for students from lower-income backgrounds, measured by affordability of course materials.
   • Number of students benefiting from affordability initiatives.
3. Indicators related to SDG 9:
   • Extent of digital resource adoption (e.g., use of digital open textbooks, online articles, and multimedia assignments).
   • Faculty and student engagement with innovative educational technologies and resources.

4. Table: SDGs, Targets and Indicators

Source: uc.edu

Thankfully, there are various strategies and initiatives that can be implemented to enhance the quality of education and ensure that students are receiving the best possible learning experiences. This is where charities for education play a pivotal role. They often provide resources, funding, and programs specifically designed to tackle these educational challenges, making a significant difference in communities where government support may be lacking. In this blog, we will explore nine such strategies that can be implemented to improve education quality. From teacher training and professional development to personalized learning experiences and incorporating technology in the classroom, we will discuss the various ways in which education can be made more effective and accessible for all students.

Improving education quality is not just about academic success, but it is also about shaping future generations of responsible and informed individuals who can contribute positively to society. With that in mind, let's dive into the nine strategies for improving education quality and explore how we can work together to build a brighter future for students around the world.

The importance of teacher training and professional development

Teachers play a vital role in shaping the minds of the next generation. They are responsible for not only imparting knowledge but also for guiding and inspiring students to become lifelong learners. Therefore, it is crucial that teachers receive the necessary training and professional development to enhance their teaching skills and knowledge.

Teacher training and professional development programs can provide educators with the skills and knowledge needed to create engaging, effective, and personalized learning experiences for students. These programs can include workshops, seminars, and training sessions on subjects such as classroom management, assessment and evaluation, pedagogy, and technology integration.

One of the primary benefits of teacher training and professional development is that it can help teachers stay up-to-date with the latest educational trends and best practices. As technology continues to evolve and new research emerges, teachers need to adapt and 

incorporate these advancements into their teaching methods. Professional development programs can provide teachers with the tools and resources needed to stay current and improve their teaching techniques.

Moreover, teacher training and professional development can also improve teacher morale and job satisfaction. By providing teachers with opportunities to learn and grow professionally, they feel valued and supported, which can have a positive impact on their overall job performance and motivation.

It is also important to note that teacher training and professional development should not be limited to new teachers. Even experienced teachers can benefit from ongoing training and development opportunities to enhance their skills and stay up-to-date with the latest educational trends.

Investing in teacher training and professional development can have a significant impact on the quality of education that students receive. By providing teachers with the necessary tools and resources, they can create engaging and effective learning experiences that inspire students to become lifelong learners. Additionally, professional development can boost teacher morale and job satisfaction, ultimately leading to a positive impact on the entire education system.

Providing access to high-quality teaching materials and resources

Access to high-quality teaching materials and resources is essential for improving the quality of education. Teachers require access to resources that align with the curriculum, are relevant, engaging, and provide opportunities for learning beyond the classroom.

High-quality teaching materials and resources can come in various forms, such as textbooks, online resources, multimedia resources, and teaching aids. Access to these resources is particularly crucial in underprivileged communities where students may not have access to quality educational materials at home.

One effective strategy for providing access to high-quality teaching materials and resources is to encourage collaboration between teachers and curriculum specialists. This collaboration can ensure that teaching materials and resources are aligned with the curriculum and are tailored to meet the needs of the students.

Moreover, providing access to digital resources can help to level the playing field and provide equal access to education. Digital resources such as online textbooks, videos, and interactive learning activities can provide students with engaging and personalized learning experiences. They can also help to bridge the gap between students who have access to technology and those who do not.

Another strategy for providing access to high-quality teaching materials and resources is to encourage partnerships with businesses and organizations that specialize in educational resources. These partnerships can provide teachers with access to the latest educational technology, equipment, and resources that they may not otherwise have access to.

It is also essential to ensure that teachers have the necessary training and support to effectively use the teaching materials and resources. Teachers need to understand how to integrate the resources into their lessons and how to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students.

Creating a positive and inclusive learning environment

Creating a positive and inclusive learning environment is essential to improving education quality. When students feel valued and respected, they are more likely to engage in learning, feel motivated, and achieve their academic goals. Therefore, it is crucial for educators and school administrators to establish a supportive and welcoming atmosphere in the classroom.

One way to create a positive and inclusive learning environment is to promote diversity and inclusivity in the classroom. Educators can celebrate and recognize the different cultures and backgrounds of their students and encourage them to learn from each other's experiences. Additionally, teachers can modify their lesson plans to be culturally responsive and provide opportunities for students to share their perspectives.

Another way to foster a positive learning environment is to establish clear expectations and routines in the classroom. This includes setting expectations for behavior, participation, and academic performance. By establishing a clear set of guidelines, students understand what is expected of them and feel more comfortable in their learning environment.

Additionally, teachers can create a safe space for students to express their thoughts and emotions without fear of judgment or ridicule. This can be accomplished by using positive language, promoting empathy and kindness, and encouraging students to respect each other's opinions.

It is also important to provide access to resources and support for students who may need additional assistance. This includes providing academic support, counseling services, and accommodations for students with disabilities or special needs. By offering these resources, students can receive the support they need to succeed academically and emotionally.

Overall, creating a positive and inclusive learning environment requires effort and commitment from educators and administrators. However, the benefits of such an environment are invaluable, as students are more likely to feel engaged, motivated, and successful in their academic pursuits.

Personalizing learning experiences to meet individual student needs

Personalizing learning experiences to meet individual student needs is a critical strategy for improving education quality. Every student has unique learning styles, strengths, and challenges, and providing tailored learning experiences can help them reach their full potential.

One way to personalize learning is through differentiated instruction. This approach involves creating different lesson plans and activities based on each student's learning style, ability level, and interests. By providing a variety of activities, teachers can help students engage in the learning process and build skills at their own pace.

Another way to personalize learning is through technology. Educational technology, such as adaptive learning software, can provide students with individualized instruction and feedback based on their performance. This technology can help identify areas where students need additional support and adjust the difficulty level of activities to match their abilities.

Project-based learning is another effective way to personalize learning. This approach involves giving students the opportunity to work on projects that align with their interests and passions. This can increase engagement and motivation and help students develop real-world skills that are relevant to their future careers.

Teachers can also use formative assessments to personalize learning. These assessments provide ongoing feedback on student progress and can help teachers identify areas where students need additional support. By using this feedback, teachers can adjust their instruction to meet individual student needs and provide targeted support.

Finally, student-centered learning approaches can also help personalize learning experiences. This approach involves giving students more control over their learning, allowing them to explore topics that interest them, and providing opportunities for student-led discussions and activities. By focusing on the student's needs and interests, teachers can create a more engaging and effective learning experience.

Implementing technology in the classroom to enhance learning

In today's digital age, technology has become an integral part of our daily lives. From smartphones to laptops, technology has transformed the way we communicate, work, and even learn. In education, technology has the potential to enhance the learning experience of students and provide new opportunities for teachers to engage their students.

Implementing technology in the classroom can offer several benefits. For example, digital textbooks and online resources can provide students with access to a wealth of information and knowledge from anywhere and at any time. Online platforms and apps can offer interactive activities, games, and quizzes that can engage students and promote active learning. Additionally, video conferencing tools can enable teachers to connect with experts and other classrooms around the world, giving students a broader perspective on different topics and cultures.

However, implementing technology in the classroom requires careful planning and consideration. Teachers need to ensure that the technology they choose aligns with their teaching goals and objectives. They also need to be trained in the use of the technology and provided with ongoing support and professional development opportunities.

Moreover, it is essential to ensure that technology does not replace traditional teaching methods entirely. Instead, technology should be used to complement and enhance teaching, making it more engaging and effective. Teachers must also ensure that the technology they use is accessible and inclusive, taking into account the different learning styles and abilities of their students.

Encouraging parental involvement and engagement

Encouraging parental involvement and engagement is crucial for improving education quality. Parents play a vital role in their child's education and can greatly contribute to their success. When parents are involved in their child's education, it not only benefits the student but also the school and community as a whole. Here are some strategies for encouraging parental involvement:

1. Open communication channels: Schools should establish open communication channels with parents, making it easy for them to get in touch with teachers, counselors, and administrators. Regular communication through email, newsletters, or parent-teacher conferences can help keep parents informed about their child's progress and any issues that may arise.
2. Provide opportunities for involvement: Schools can offer a variety of opportunities for parents to get involved, such as volunteering in the classroom, chaperoning field trips, or participating in school events. This can help parents feel more connected to the school and invested in their child's education.
3. Offer resources and support: Many parents may not know how to get involved or may feel intimidated by the school environment. Schools can offer resources and support to help parents feel more comfortable, such as workshops on how to help their child with homework or navigating the school system.
4. Recognize and appreciate parents: Schools should recognize and appreciate the contributions of parents, whether it's through a thank-you note, a public acknowledgment, or a volunteer appreciation event. This can help build positive relationships and encourage continued involvement.
5. Emphasize the importance of education: Schools can work with parents to emphasize the importance of education and encourage them to support their child's learning outside of school. This can include setting aside time for homework, reading together, or engaging in educational activities as a family.

By encouraging parental involvement and engagement, schools can create a collaborative and supportive learning environment that benefits students, parents, and the community as a whole.

Incorporating project-based learning and hands-on activities

Project-based learning and hands-on activities are effective ways to improve education quality. These approaches promote active learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills among students.

In project-based learning, students work on long-term projects that address real-world problems or challenges. This approach requires students to use their creativity, research, and analytical skills to develop innovative solutions to complex problems. Project-based learning also provides students with opportunities to collaborate, communicate, and present their ideas to an audience, which builds their confidence and communication skills.

Hands-on activities, on the other hand, involve active engagement and manipulation of materials or tools to learn new concepts or skills. Examples of hands-on activities include experiments, simulations, role-playing, and field trips. These activities provide students with opportunities to explore, experiment, and discover new ideas in a safe and supportive environment.

Incorporating project-based learning and hands-on activities in the classroom requires teachers to create a student-centered learning environment. Teachers need to act as facilitators, guiding and supporting students in their learning journey. This approach also requires teachers to design relevant and engaging projects and activities that align with the curriculum and learning objectives. Additionally, education through technology is becoming an increasingly important tool. It allows for a more engaging and interactive learning experience, and can greatly facilitate individualized learning and access to a broader range of information.

The benefits of project-based learning and hands-on activities are numerous. These approaches promote deeper learning, enhance retention, and improve student engagement and motivation. Furthermore, project-based learning and hands-on activities prepare students for the 21st century workforce, which requires individuals to be innovative, creative, and problem-solvers.

Therefore, educators should consider incorporating project-based learning and hands-on activities in their teaching practice to improve education quality and prepare students for the future.

Developing strong assessment and evaluation processes

Assessment and evaluation processes are critical to the improvement of education quality. It allows educators to identify areas where students are excelling and where they need improvement. However, developing strong assessment and evaluation processes can be a challenging task. Here are some strategies for improving assessment and evaluation processes to enhance education quality:

1. Clearly define learning objectives: The first step in creating a strong assessment and evaluation process is to define clear learning objectives. Teachers need to know what students are expected to learn, and students need to know what they are expected to achieve. Objectives should be measurable and aligned with the curriculum.
2. Use a variety of assessment methods: There is no one-size-fits-all approach to assessment. Teachers should use a variety of assessment methods, such as tests, quizzes, projects, and portfolios. This helps to ensure that students are being evaluated in different ways and that their strengths and weaknesses are being accurately measured.
3. Use formative assessments: Formative assessments are ongoing assessments that are used to monitor student learning throughout a unit or lesson. They provide feedback to both the teacher and the student, allowing them to adjust their approach as needed.
4. Align assessments with learning objectives: Assessments should be aligned with the learning objectives. This ensures that students are being evaluated on the skills and knowledge they are expected to learn.
5. Provide timely and actionable feedback: Feedback is critical to student learning. Teachers should provide timely and actionable feedback to students to help them improve. Feedback should be specific, highlighting areas where the student needs to improve and offering suggestions for improvement.
6. Involve students in the evaluation process: Students should be involved in the evaluation process. They should be given the opportunity to self-assess and reflect on their learning. This helps students take ownership of their learning and develop metacognitive skills.
7. Use data to inform instruction: Assessment data should be used to inform instruction. Teachers can use the data to identify areas where students are struggling and adjust their instruction to better meet the needs of their students.

Prioritizing mental health and well-being in education

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of prioritizing mental health and well-being in education. This is not only important for the individual well-being of students but also for the quality of education that they receive. Schools and education systems that prioritize mental health and well-being are likely to have happier, healthier, and more engaged students who are better equipped to succeed academically and in life.

There are several strategies that schools and educators can implement to prioritize mental health and well-being in education. Firstly, it is important to create a supportive and inclusive school environment that promotes positive relationships, provides social-emotional support, and encourages open communication. This can be achieved through programs such as peer support, counseling services, and social-emotional learning programs.

Secondly, schools should provide opportunities for students to engage in physical activity and exercise. Physical activity has been shown to be a powerful tool in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, and can also improve cognitive function and academic performance. Schools can incorporate physical activity into their curriculum through physical education classes, after-school sports programs, and active transportation initiatives. Moreover, integrating lessons on education and economic development within the curriculum can provide students with a deeper understanding of the role of education in driving economic growth and social progress.

Thirdly, educators can prioritize mental health and well-being by incorporating mindfulness and relaxation techniques into their teaching. Mindfulness practices, such as meditation and breathing exercises, can help students develop skills to manage stress and anxiety, improve focus and attention, and promote emotional regulation.

Fourthly, schools can support mental health and well-being by providing access to mental health resources and services. This can include on-site counseling services, mental health awareness campaigns, and partnerships with local mental health organizations.

Finally, schools can prioritize mental health and well-being by addressing and reducing sources of stress and pressure in the education system. This can include reducing excessive testing and homework assignments, promoting a healthy work-life balance for educators, and fostering a culture of support and collaboration among students and staff. In addition to these measures, understanding how to achieve quality education is fundamental in structuring policies and practices that support student learning and wellbeing.

Conclusion

Improving education quality requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses various aspects of the learning process. From teacher training and professional development to prioritizing mental health and well-being, each strategy plays a vital role in providing students with the best possible education. 

Education is a fundamental human right, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure that all learners have access to high-quality education that prepares them for success in a rapidly changing world. By implementing these strategies and continuing to innovate and improve our education systems, we can build a brighter future for all.

Linda Klaassen

UNESCO

Everywhere, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the most vulnerable and marginalized the hardest – affecting 1.6 billion learners at its peak, when the majority of the world’s schools were temporarily closed. It has widened inequalities and could erode decades of hard-won progress. About 24 million children and youth – from pre-primary to tertiary education – are at risk of dropping out because of the pandemic’s economic impact alone, according to UNESCO’s estimates.

Girls and women constitute a particularly vulnerable group regarding the right to education. They account for 131.7 million out-of-school children and for two-thirds of the 773 million illiterate adults. The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated already existing inequalities – it is estimated that 11 million girls may not return to school. Girls aged 12 to 17 are especially at risk of dropping out in low and lower-income countries.

This is particularly alarming as education is one of the most powerful tools by which marginalized children and adults can lift themselves out of poverty and fully integrate into society. 

Source: Guidelines to strengthen the right to education in national frameworks, UNESCO, 2021. #HerEducationOurFuture: Keeping girls in the picture during and after the Covid-19 crisis, 2021.

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1. Ding, W. and Marchionini, G. 1997 A Study on Video Browsing Strategies. Technical Report. University of Maryland at College Park.
2. Tavel, P. 2007 Modeling and Simulation Design. AK Peters Ltd.
3. Sannella, M. J. 1994 Constraint Satisfaction and Debugging for Interactive User Interfaces. Doctoral Thesis. UMI Order Number: UMI Order No. GAX95-09398., University of Washington.
4. Brown, L. D., Hua, H., and Gao, C. 2003. A widget framework for augmented interaction in SCAPE.
5. Y.T. Yu, M.F. Lau, “A comparison of MC/DC, MUMCUT and several other coverage criteria for logical decisions”, Journal of Systems and Software, 2005, in press.
6. Spector, A. Z. 1989. Achieving application requirements. In Distributed Systems, S. Mullende
7. Forman, G. 2003. An extensive empirical study of feature selection metrics for text classification. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 3 (Mar. 2003), 1289-1305.
8. Fröhlich, B. and Plate, J. 2000. The cubic mouse: a new device for three-dimensional input. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
9. Bowman, M., Debray, S. K., and Peterson, L. L. 1993. Reasoning about naming systems.

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Jake Bryant, Felipe Child, Ezgi Demirdag, Emma Dorn, Stephen Hall, Kartik Jayaram, Charag Krishnan, Cheryl Lim, Emmy Liss, Kemi Onabanjo, Frédéric Panier, Juan Rebolledo, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, Doug Scott, Roman Tschupp, Seckin Ungur, Pierre Vigin29-37 minutes 2/8/2024

It is more important today than ever before to improve the quality and equity of education systems around the world. Automation is expected to increase demand for highly educated workers, creating a greater need for technological, socioemotional, and cognitive skills. The rise of generative AI is accelerating these workforce transitions. In addition to preparing students for the workforce, education systems are increasingly being asked to participate in resolving broader societal issues, from rising mental health challenges among young people¹ to political polarization² to combating climate change.³

Student learning improvements are not keeping up with these demands. More children than ever are in school, but many are not mastering basic skills. The World Bank estimates that seven in ten students in low- and middle-income countries are living in “learning poverty,” unable to read a simple text by the end of elementary school. The same is true for nearly nine in ten students in sub-Saharan Africa. This means that the majority of the world’s children are born into education systems where they will not learn to read by the end of elementary school.⁴

More children than ever are in school, but many are not mastering basic skills.

Much of the global discussion about educational performance revolves around a small subset of mostly high-income countries that get relatively high scores on the three major assessments: the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). In our schema below, we classify those countries as having “good” or “great” performance.

However, more than 90 percent of children live in countries where average educational outcomes are below poor, poor, or fair.⁵ Historically, many of these countries have not taken international assessments, but more recently, the introduction of regional assessments⁶ and the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) has enabled a broader global comparison of learning outcomes. The OECD suggests that approximately 20 PISA points are equivalent to a year of learning. By that measure, high school students in many sub-Saharan African countries may be ten or more years behind their peers in Europe, North America, or East Asia (Exhibit 1).⁷

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In the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, student performance in most school systems globally stagnated—or declined. Of the 73 countries with longitudinal data over the past decade, only 23 managed to achieve significant, sustained, and consistent improvements in student outcomes. In 17 systems, student performance declined by half a year of learning or more.⁸ Systems that historically performed at the highest levels were most likely to experience declines (Exhibit 2). Even in high-performing countries, overall system performance may mask significant inequities; every system that participates in PISA shows gaps in performance correlated with socioeconomic status.

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In the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, student performance in most school systems globally stagnated—or declined.

The pandemic only exacerbated these challenges. Lost learning time widened equity gaps within and between countries, with students ending up, on average, eight months behind where they would have been absent the pandemic. Meanwhile, the pandemic’s shift to remote work and e-commerce accelerated changes in the workforce. This is creating a scissor effect: learning losses are colliding with an increasing need for higher-order skills.

The stakes are high: if historical trends continue, more than 700 million children will remain in learning poverty in 2050. The pandemic wiped out decades of educational improvements, and we cannot wait decades to make up these losses. The world’s population is growing fastest in the places where learning is the furthest behind.⁹ If we do nothing, the implications for economic growth and political stability worldwide will be tremendous. However, this grim future is not inevitable. If all systems could improve student outcomes at the rate of the top improvers, an additional 350 million students could be lifted out of learning poverty in the next 30 years (Exhibit 3). This report considers what it would take to make that happen.

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Systems beating the odds

At first glance, the lack of progress may seem puzzling. Over the past decades, the education community has researched, developed, and codified strong evidence on what students need to master foundational skills such as reading, writing, and critical thinking. We know what interventions work to move most students to proficiency. Over the past decade, per-capita education spending has increased in countries of all income levels.¹⁰ And yet our global survey of 400 education leaders globally found that only 20 percent of education improvement efforts meet their stated goals (Exhibit 4).

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To understand how school systems globally can reignite growth and recover from the learning losses of the pandemic, McKinsey examined the decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted research across both improving and declining school systems; analyzed global data; and spoke with more than 200 system leaders, donors and philanthropists, not-for-profit leaders, academics, and educational consultants.

Our interviews all pointed to the complexity of the implementation challenge. Most school systems struggle to turn improvements into action at scale. Our research demonstrates that to make changes stick, it is not enough for leaders to know “what” interventions to use. It also requires understanding “how” to implement them well at scale. In many systems, well-intentioned changes fizzle out. Stagnating school systems tend to get stuck in a few “failure modes”:

• Conflicting directions. Education is not seen as a priority, resulting in an inability to raise the donor or domestic funds needed to deliver. Goals are too numerous, too far out in the future, and hard to measure, and there is a lack of coherence across the individual elements of reform.
• Leadership discontinuity. Educational change requires more time than politics often allows. Rapid electoral cycles and short tenures for ministers of education can lead to a whipsaw of priorities, which can in turn confuse and disillusion educators and families. This is exacerbated when reform efforts are tied to political structures, rather than more deeply embedded within institutions.
• Organ rejection of reform. Improvements may falter in the face of pushback from communities and educators who feel they were not consulted. Top-down policies may not actually work once they reach the classroom.
• Insufficient coordination and pace of change. Too much time is spent on developing strategy and not enough on creating an implementation road map with aligned budgets, timelines, and accountability.
• Limited implementation capacity. A lack of program management and analytical capacity within government undermines reform efforts—great educators do not always make great managers. Donor technical assistance ends up overly dependent on international consultants, who leave, rather than local players.
• Flying blind. Leaders at all levels operate without sufficient data, missing key opportunities to create transparency and to intervene.
• Standing still. Systems try to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. Leaders may pilot new ideas but without a plan for how to measure impact and take them to scale.

Yet failure is not inevitable. The good news is that some systems are beating the odds and producing meaningful gains in student learning year after year. These outlier school systems exist on every continent and at every level of national development. The global education community can chart a new path by learning from these systems.

To identify improving systems, we looked at national systems that had achieved sustained, consistent, and significant improvements in student outcomes as measured by international assessments,¹¹ as well as at lower-income systems with emerging evidence of improvement on regional assessments.¹² We also identified relevant subnational improvers using national assessment data.¹³ None of the 14 systems that we profiled is perfect, and in some, the absolute level of achievement is still low, but each has meaningful lessons to impart at different stages of the educational improvement journey from below poor to poor to fair to good to great (Exhibit 5).¹⁴

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Some systems are beating the odds and producing meaningful gains in student learning year after year.

Our analysis suggests that successful systems, at every level of spending and national development, use reinforcing strategies to create a virtuous cycle, enabling significant, long-term gains in student learning (Exhibit 6):

• Anchor in the evidence. Based on clear research into what improves outcomes, successful school systems ground changes in the classroom, focusing first and foremost on teachers and the content they deliver. They choose evidence-backed strategies relevant to their starting place and prioritize foundational learning, particularly in systems with limited resources. They use technology as a tool to enhance learning, not as an end in itself.
• Build a durable coalition for change. Successful school systems focus on a few coherent priorities, rallying stakeholders around them to ensure that everyone—from system leadership to principals to teachers—is on board. They invest in authentic, two-way communication with families, educators, and communities to design better policies and build deeper buy-in.
• Create delivery capacity to scale. Successful systems move quickly from strategy to implementation, pacing reforms to show early traction while building stamina for the long road to impact. They build dedicated delivery teams with the organizational structures and individual skills to execute on plans over time.
• Drive and adapt with data. Successful systems rigorously measure what matters—student learning outcomes—and use transparent data to improve their interventions. As they roll out tried-and-true methods, they also create space for innovation and measure what they innovate, which feeds back into the evidence base of what works.

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Individually, these strategies may seem obvious or incremental. Together, they are transformative. Our survey suggests that systems that used all seven of the “how” levers above were six times more likely to be successful in meeting their goals for student outcomes and system transformation than those that used four or fewer (Exhibit 7).

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Anchor in the evidence

Ground system strategy in better classroom instruction. The global education community knows what strategies drive learning outcomes. Successful systems focus on interventions closest to students and work outward, starting with the classroom (what is taught, how it is taught), then the school (what supports exist for students and teachers), and finally aligning the system supports (performance management, infrastructure, funding) to what is needed in the classroom (Exhibit 8).

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For example, Singapore invests heavily in its instructional core throughout the curriculum and across teacher recruitment, development, and retention. Teacher candidates are drawn from the top 30 percent of their graduating class and must demonstrate core content knowledge. Once in the system, teachers complete 100 hours of professional development annually and receive coaching and weekly collaborative sessions with master and senior teachers. Professional development is practical and tailored, offered in digestible modules, and delivered in classrooms.¹⁵

In Poland, reforms in the early 2000s focused on redesigning the national curriculum—first in elementary grades and later in secondary schools—and on investments at the teacher, principal, and school level to reinforce adoption. Based on research about learning and comprehension, the curriculum was redesigned to prioritize critical thinking and reasoning where there had previously been a content overload. Teachers were engaged in the redesign to inform what strategies might lead to the best uptake; expert coaches worked with teachers to build their skills around the new curriculum.¹⁶

Start the journey where you are. To select the best interventions, school systems need to consider their starting student performance, their financial resources, and the capabilities of their teachers and school leaders. One of the biggest mistakes that school systems can make is to “lift and shift” best practices from a system that operates in a vastly different context. In our methodology, we group school systems into five performance bands, based on student learning levels: below poor, poor, fair, good, and great. While the elements of school system excellence remain the same, the interventions differ.

As school systems progress toward good and great performance (for example, Poland and Singapore), increasing levels of school and teacher autonomy are possible, paired with effective accountability, capability building, and peer learning. Systems in the poor or below-poor performance bands (for example, Malawi and South Africa), by contrast, may be best advised to focus on foundational literacy and numeracy, ensure that instructional materials are available on a one-to-one basis, scaffold teachers through structured (or even scripted) lesson plans and in-situ coaching, and put effective assessment for instruction in place to account for greatly varying student achievement levels—a package of interventions sometimes referred to as structured pedagogy. Systems in the fair category (for example, Kenya) need to ensure the basics are in place, but they then can begin to expand selective earned autonomy, broader competency-based curricula tied to economic pathways, and incentives for teachers and school leaders to develop top talent (Exhibit 9). These imperatives to “start in the classroom” and “tailor to journey” apply equally to technology use (see sidebar, “Education technology—great potential but mixed results”).

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For example, Ceará in Brazil, where performance was poor, prioritized Portuguese literacy and math in the curriculum, with a focus on elementary school, and invested heavily in supporting teachers to deliver quality content. All teachers received regular practical professional development, including classroom observations. The state government also led a long and sustainable journey to improve the quality of municipal education leaders, empowering them to provide better support for teachers and schools. From 2009 to 2019, Ceará registered an increase of nearly 12 percentage points on the National Assessment of Basic Education (Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Básica), moving from poor to fair. Ceará also saw the highest increase of any Brazilian state on the national index of educational quality in elementary education (Index of Development of Basic Education) between 2005 and 2017.¹⁷

In Punjab, India, where performance was below poor, leaders used Teaching at the Right Level to group students by level rather than age to reduce targeted learning gaps in primary school. Leaders used simple, quick one-on-one assessments to group students into levels at the start of the intervention, administered assessments throughout to track progress and adapt instruction based on students’ results, and reviewed aggregate data to make programmatic decisions.¹⁸ Teachers received training and support to change behaviors. While the share of students in India who could read a grade two text as measured by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) declined from 2006 to 2014, the share in Punjab surpassed the national average and grew by 13.2 percentage points.¹⁹ Punjab moved from below poor to poor in the decade prior to the pandemic.

The journey is not perfectly linear for any system, and there are multiple paths to system improvement. In addition, in many systems, overall performance may mask inequities within the nation or region. In a single system, there can be schools ranging from below poor to great. This may require system leaders to consider a range of approaches to drive improvement based on schools’ starting points.

Build a durable coalition for change

Set fewer priorities to get more done. Education leaders are regularly pulled in too many directions. To counteract this, leaders of successful school systems define a North Star vision and choose a limited set of coherent, sustained, and evidence-based priorities (typically no more than three to six). They define these nonnegotiables based on the evidence of what works and ensure that donors and partners support this short list, channeling money and energy to what matters most.

For example, Mississippi reorganized its state education department and board to align their work against six core goals, started every meeting with a recap of these goals, and interrogated every new initiative against these priorities.²⁰ From 2010 to 2014, Kenya introduced 25 different interventions to address literacy rates and saw limited impact.²¹ Starting in 2014, leaders pivoted and prioritized a singular evidence-based approach: Tusome. By relentlessly targeting the country’s low literacy rates through a proven approach, the initiative nearly doubled the share of students who met the government’s literacy benchmarks from 2014 to 2021.²²

If everything is a priority, nothing is.

Carey Wright, Former State Superintendent of Mississippi

Cultivate leadership beyond a single leader. True transformation can take a decade, but few leaders have that much time. Successful systems invest in civil servants who outlast political leaders and build a deep bench of talent at the central office (especially at the n-2 level²³), at the middle layer, and across schools. Leaders foster institutions beyond the ministry, insulating education from politics by distancing the work from political structures and enabling a greater ecosystem of experts who can support policy development and implementation. Longevity also comes from embedding educational change into policies and procedures that are harder to reverse.

In Norway, for example, policy continuation was facilitated by the stability of senior civil servants from the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and Directorate for Education and Training. These trusted institutions provided a common set of evidence-based research that both parties relied on as the fact base for policy. When the 2012 PISA results were released, leaders in both political parties called the same senior civil servant to understand the data and implications for policy.²⁴ In Morocco, ministry leaders enshrined reforms in a framework law with bipartisan support and created binding mechanisms for new leadership to manage implementation.

My initiative is now being fulfilled by a conservative government. This kind of continuity gives me hope for the future.

Kristin Halvorsen, Former Minister of Education of Norway

Engage educators and families authentically. Authentic engagement is hard to do well, but successful school systems treat it as nonnegotiable. Successful systems actively collect diverse stakeholder input at the outset and throughout implementation to design and refine policies that will resonate and work in the classroom. In practice, this includes engaging teacher, principal, and student advisory boards; conducting regular surveys of parents, students, and educators to keep a pulse; and ensuring that every member of the executive cabinet visits a diverse range of schools at least twice a month. Successful systems then create compelling change stories and use a broad tool kit to influence changes at the school and classroom level.

For example, during Kaya Henderson’s tenure as school chancellor in Washington, DC, the public school system worked closely with communities to communicate how school closures would lead to more resources in remaining schools, and it sought community input on how to transform school communities. When the district made subsequent closure decisions, there was less pushback from the community than otherwise expected. Overall, public school enrollment grew during this time period for the first time in decades, pointing to strengthened public confidence in the system.²⁵ Cecilia María Vélez White, former minister of education in Colombia, held monthly meetings with principals, convened more than 1,500 teachers, shared information with unions, and went on a listening tour to a different region every week.²⁶

We asked people, ‘Ten years from now, what should DCPS look like? What are your hopes and your dreams for the district and for your students?’

Kaya Henderson, Former Chancellor of DC Public Schools

Create delivery capacity to scale

Create coordination and a cadence for change. Successful systems move quickly to turn their plans into action. They create a concrete road map, pressure-test their implementation plans, and ensure the budget is oriented around priorities. They pace their changes to show quick wins in the first six months to demonstrate momentum. At the same time, they design for scale to ensure that changes have their intended impact.

For example, as part of the London Challenge initiative, London appointed dedicated advisers who were deployed to the schools that were struggling the most. The advisers provided on-the-ground coaching and brought immediate recommendations back to the central department so resources could be deployed rapidly.²⁷ South Africa created free literacy workbooks, adapted them to native languages, and distributed copies to 6.5 million students across 20,000 schools. A dedicated delivery team oversaw the entire process, from development to printing and delivery of the workbooks, and 40,000 trained teachers provided support for adoption.²⁸ From 2011 to 2015, more than 150 million workbooks were delivered to schools.²⁹

You can be nimble and agile. The fact that you can work at a ridiculously higher speed than government normally works makes people believe in you in a completely different way.

Sir Jon Coles, Former Director of the London Challenge

Build implementation structures and skills. Many school systems struggle to access the in-house talent to implement major changes. In addition to great educators, school systems need great project managers and implementors to translate strategy at the ministry into implementation in every classroom across the system. Successful systems ensure dedicated implementation capacity within the central team, at the middle layer, and across schools. This involves establishing clear roles and responsibilities for making decisions and approving investments, as well as creating an army of changemakers in the field to bring changes to fruition. Systems can then assess their delivery capacity across this structure and hire or build missing capabilities.

For example, under Jaime Saavedra’s leadership in Peru, the ministry brought in experienced managers from within and outside of government, with a specific goal of improving management and the pace of change. At the same time, Peru also reformed the process for selecting its 15,000 school principals to ensure high-caliber management talent in schools.³⁰ In Ceará, Brazil, the 150 highest-performing schools adopted the 150 lowest-performing schools. If the lower-performing school improved, both schools in the pair were financially rewarded. This pairing of successful and struggling schools has also worked in London and in Shanghai. In Shanghai, deputy school leaders of successful schools can only be promoted to principal or school leader if they first lead the turnaround of a struggling school.³¹

I ended up changing most of the top 60 positions in the ministry to ensure the right managerial skills and implementation capacity, including attracting people from the Ministry of Finance.

Jaime Saavedra, Former Minister of Education of Peru

Drive and adapt with data

Measure student outcomes and make them transparent. Successful school leaders build robust data systems, identify trends, and use the data to build a shared culture of continuous improvement. They make important information public to build momentum, segment schools for accountability and support, and use data to drive improvement at every level, from system strategy to instruction in schools.

For example, in Estonia, student outcome data is linked with broader social data. The government maintains a centralized data system for all public services with a unique ID for each citizen. Families can look at their own child’s achievement data within this broader context. The ministry makes school-level data transparent to the public and regularly uses this data to support policy making. Data is sufficiently protected, and there is a high degree of trust among citizens.³² In Sierra Leone, the ministry has built data systems from the ground up, digitalizing the school census and linking it to student performance data, enabling data to become the reference point for all interventions. Data on gender inequities in access has informed new policies, which have helped increase enrollment among girls.³³

I made sure that we had data to inform everything we did. From day one, all policies had to be grounded in data and evidence.

David Moinina Sengeh, Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education and Chief Innovation Officer for Sierra Leone

Roll out what works, but create space for innovation. Successful systems create space for innovation and, critically, measure what they innovate to add to the existing evidence base of what works. Most innovation in education systems will likely be oriented toward continuous improvement and sustaining practices. However, there is also a need for more-disruptive innovation, especially in systems where performance is poor or below poor and where exponential growth in achievement is needed. Innovation is needed both to improve the effectiveness of existing interventions and to create more-scalable models.

For example, structured pedagogy approaches currently provide the best evidence base for improving literacy and numeracy across low-income countries—but financial and human capital constraints mean that systems will not be able to roll out and scale such approaches rapidly enough to reach this generation of students. In Malawi, education leaders are scaling up a foundational literacy and numeracy program that uses robust, solar-powered, offline tablets in primary-school education. The intervention was first tested as a pilot with external partners, and the government has built a team strictly focused on the rollout. A big part of the innovation is in the streamlined implementation—schools and teachers can be set up to run the program within weeks. The program is being measured and tested as it scales.³⁴

Singapore has demonstrated that even the most successful school systems need to keep innovating, particularly as the needs of students change. This has led to new experiments and investments in social-emotional learning and 21st century skills to complement the already-strong approach to math and literacy instruction, based on emerging research on the importance of student mindsets on educational outcomes.³⁵ Singapore’s system is unique among top PISA scorers in that it continues to grow while others have stagnated.

When we talk about professional learning, we can never say we have arrived. . . . The moment we say we have arrived, that will cause our downfall.

Yen Ching Chua-Lim, Deputy Director-General of Education (Professional Development), Singapore

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Individually, these strategies may seem obvious or incremental. Together, they are transformative. The slow and steady work of implementation sets improving school systems apart from the rest. This is not really a story about beating the odds. It is a story about the systems that were able to change the odds. Education leaders can—and must—learn from them.

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Both the pandemic and heat times are waving the academic performance of the students resulting in learning loss. These major crises exacerbate the social and educational aspect of our nation and widening the gap that the children should learn. 

The Philippines, an archipelagic country located in Southeast Asia, and sits at the pacific ring of fire, is characterized as a tropical maritime climate, and vulnerable to disasters like earthquake and typhoons. Philippines experiences two primary seasons: a wet season from June to November, when the island faces the brunt of typhoons and heavy rains, and dry season from December to May (PAGASA, 2024), which is divided into cool dry season and the hot dry season. The hot dry season, particularly from March to May  (PAGASA, 2024), is when heat waves are most likely to be experienced. However, with the advent of global climate change, the country is experiencing an increase in temperature extremes. Although heatwaves are not traditionally common in the country, human activities are able to shift the planet's warming and the urban heat island effect, where urban areas become significantly warmer than the rural counterparts (PAGASA, 2024).

Heatwaves bring a cascade of challenges to educational settings, particularly affecting physical classrooms, the health of students, and staff. As temperatures rise significantly, classrooms can get too hot, particularly in regions lacking sufficient cooling equipment. In addition to making it harder for students to focus and interact, the high temperature makes the learning environment less safe and poses serious health risks. Students, teachers, and staff  may get dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heatstroke, and high temperatures and humidity can make these situations worse. Due to these health problems and the chance that students will not be able to think as clearly, school officials have to stop classes to make sure everyone is safe. 

To switch to online learning tools, we need to get past some technical, educational, and logistical problems. Schools have to make sure that both teachers and students have the right hardware and internet connection, which can be hard to do in places where digital technology isn't readily available. When it comes to technology, schools need strong platforms that can handle all of their dynamic and different needs. However, making or buying these platforms can be expensive and difficult. Teachers have to change the way they teach in order to keep students interested in a virtual setting, which can be very different from interacting with students in person. Concerns have also been raised about keeping educational standards high and accurately judging student success during this change. 

Opportunities and Benefits

Even with these problems, there are some good things about online learning. It gives students more scheduling options, lets them learn at their own pace, and works with all kinds of learning styles. Another big benefit is that students from remote or underserved areas can now get high-quality learning materials that they couldn't get before. Online learning is also digital, which makes it easier to include climate education in the lessons. For example, real-time data and virtual simulations can be used to help students learn more about climate problems and how to care for the environment. 

Long-term Educational Strategies

To create a strong school system that can handle disruptions caused by climate change, it is necessary to have a broad plan that includes improving facilities, changing policies, and involving the community. As part of improving infrastructure, green buildings and renewable energy sources could be bought to make learning spaces that are more relaxed and last longer. Policy changes could include climate resilience in plans for education, making sure that schools are ready for how climate change will affect them. To do this, teachers might need to make their lessons more adaptable so they can be changed quickly, like switching to online learning during bad weather. Parents, teachers, and students should all be involved in the planning process to make sure that the solutions fit the wants and abilities of the community. This will help build support for the changes. Participating in local communities can also help people feel like they own and are responsible for the world and the school system. 

Mollick tells his students at the University of Pennsylvania to expect to feel insecure about their own capabilities once they understand what artificial intelligence can do.

“You haven’t used AI until you’ve had an existential crisis,” he said. “You need three sleepless nights.”

Top business schools are pushing M.B.A. candidates and undergraduates to use artificial intelligence as a second brain. Students are eager for the instruction as employers increasingly hire talent with AI skills. 

American University’s Kogod School of Business is putting an unusually high emphasis on AI, threading teaching on the technology through 20 new or adapted classes, from forensic accounting to marketing, which will roll out next school year. Professors this week started training on how to use and teach AI tools.

Understanding and using AI is now a foundational concept, much like learning to write or reason, said David Marchick, dean of Kogod.

“Every young person needs to know how to use AI in whatever they do,” he said of the decision to embed AI instruction into every part of the business school’s undergraduate core curriculum. 

Marchick, who uses ChatGPT to prep presentations to alumni and professors, ordered a review of Kogod’s coursework in December after Brett Wilson, a venture capitalist with Swift Ventures, visited campus and told students that they wouldn’t lose jobs to AI, but rather to professionals who are more skilled in deploying it.

American’s new AI classwork will include text mining, predictive analytics and using ChatGPT to prepare for negotiations, whether navigating workplace conflict or advocating for a promotion. New courses include one on AI in human-resource management and a new business and entertainment class focused on AI, a core issue of last year’s Hollywood writers strike. 

Officials and faculty at Columbia Business School and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business say fluency in AI will be key to graduates’ success in the corporate world, allowing them to climb the ranks of management. Forty percent of prospective business-school students surveyed by the Graduate Management Admission Council said learning AI is essential to a graduate business degree—a jump from 29% in 2022. 

Many of them are also anxious that their jobs could be replaced by generative AI. Much of entry-level work could be automated, the management-consulting group Oliver Wyman projected in a recent report. That means that future early-career jobs might require a more muscular skillset and more closely resemble first-level management roles. 

Faster thinking

Business-school professors are now encouraging students to use generative AI as a tool, akin to a calculator for doing math. 

M.B.A.s should be using AI to generate ideas quickly and comprehensively, according to Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia Business School professor who wrote “Think Bigger,” a book on innovation. But it’s still up to people to make good decisions and ask the technology the right questions. 

“You still have to direct it, otherwise it will give you crap,” she said. “You cannot eliminate human judgment.”

Blake Bergeron, an M.B.A. student at Columbia, used generative AI to brainstorm new business ideas for a project. PHOTO: BLAKE BERGERON

One exercise that Iyengar walks her students through is using AI to generate business idea pitches from the automated perspectives of Tom Brady, Martha Stewart and Barack Obama. The assignment illustrates how ideas can be reframed for different audiences and based on different points of view.

Blake Bergeron, a 27-year-old M.B.A. student at Columbia, used generative AI to brainstorm new business ideas for a project last fall. One it returned was a travel service that recommends destinations based on a person’s social networks, pulling data from their friends’ posts. Bergeron’s team asked the AI to pressure-test the idea, coming up with pros and cons, and for potential business models.

Bergeron said he noticed pitfalls as he experimented. When his team asked the generative AI tool for ways to market the travel service, it spit out a group of very similar ideas. From there, Bergeron said, the students had to coax the tool to get creative, asking for one out-of-the-box idea at a time.  

Professors say that through this instruction, they hope students learn where AI is currently weak. Mathematics and citations are two areas where mistakes abound. At Kogod this week, executives who were training professors in AI stressed that adopters of the technology needed to do a human review and edit all AI-generated content, including analysis, before sharing the materials.

Faster doing

When Robert Bray, who teaches operations management at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, realized that ChatGPT could answer nearly every question in the textbook he uses for his data analytics course, he updated the syllabus. Last year, he started to focus on teaching coding using large-language models, which are trained on vast amounts of data to generate text and code. Enrollment jumped to 55 from 21 M.B.A. students, he said.

Robert Bray at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management encourages his students to treat AI like ‘a really proficient intern.’ PHOTO: SANIYA TILLIS

Before, engineers had an edge against business graduates because of their technical expertise, but now M.B.A.s can use AI to compete in that zone, Bray said.

He encourages his students to offload as much work as possible to AI, treating it like “a really proficient intern.”

Ben Morton, one of Bray’s students, is bullish on AI but knows he needs to be able to work without it. He did some coding with ChatGPT for class and wondered: If ChatGPT were down for a week, could he still get work done?

Learning to code with the help of generative AI sped up his development.

“I know so much more about programming than I did six months ago,” said Morton, 27. “Everyone’s capabilities are exponentially increasing.”

Several professors said they can teach more material with AI’s assistance. One said that because AI could solve his lab assignments, he no longer needed much of the class time for those activities. With the extra hours he has students present to their peers on AI innovations. Campus is where students should think through how to use AI responsibly, said Bill Boulding, dean of Duke’s Fuqua School.

“How do we embrace it? That is the right way to approach this—we can’t stop this,” he said. “It has eaten our world. It will eat everyone else’s world.”

Author: Lindsay Ellis lindsay.ellis@wsj.com

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How should future business leaders prepare for using generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the workplace? 

The media gateway market is experiencing significant growth as the demand for seamless connectivity and efficient media communication rises. In this article, we will explore the market scope, dominant key players, unique selling propositions (USPs), segmentation, regional analysis, and competitive landscape of the media gateway market.

Market Scope:

The Media Gateway market industry is projected to grow from USD 2.96 Billion in 2023 to USD 3.55 Billion by 2032, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.30% during the forecast period (2023 - 2032). This growth is driven by the increasing adoption of media gateways in various industries, including telecommunications, broadcasting, healthcare, and government.

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Dominant Key Players:

The media gateway market is dominated by key players who have established themselves as industry leaders. Some of the prominent players in the market include

• Cisco Systems, Inc.
• Nokia Corporation
• Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
• Ribbon Communications
• Dialogic Corporation

These companies provide advanced media gateway solutions that enable seamless communication and connectivity across different networks.

Market USP Exclusively Encompassed:

The unique selling proposition of the media gateway market lies in its ability to bridge the gap between different communication networks and protocols. Media gateways act as a central hub, enabling the conversion of voice, video, and data signals between diverse networks, facilitating interoperability and smooth communication. With features like protocol conversion, media transcoding, and signaling translation, media gateways enhance connectivity and streamline communication processes.

Segmentation of Market Covered in the Research:

The media gateway market can be segmented based on type, technology, application, and region. Types include analog and digital media gateways. Technologies encompass time-division multiplexing (TDM) and internet protocol (IP) media gateways. Applications include telecommunications, broadcasting, healthcare, government, and others. This segmentation allows for a comprehensive analysis of specific market segments and caters to the diverse requirements of different industries.

Regional Analysis:

Geographically, the media gateway market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the rest of the world. North America holds the largest market share, driven by the presence of major technology providers and the high adoption of media gateway solutions in the telecommunications sector. Europe follows closely, with significant growth attributed to the increasing demand for efficient media communication in broadcasting and healthcare. The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing rapid growth, fueled by the expanding telecommunications infrastructure and rising digitalization efforts.

Competitive Analysis:

The competitive landscape of the media gateway market is intense, with key players focusing on product innovation, strategic partnerships, and acquisitions to gain a competitive edge. Companies are investing in research and development to enhance their media gateway solutions with advanced features such as cloud integration, artificial intelligence, and network virtualization. The market is characterized by the continuous evolution of media gateway technologies to meet the changing needs of industries in the digital era.

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The media gateway market is witnessing significant growth as businesses across industries recognize the importance of seamless communication and connectivity. With dominant key players leading the market and offering advanced media gateway solutions, the market's unique selling proposition lies in its ability to bridge the gap between diverse networks and protocols. As the market continues to evolve, segmentation based on type, technology, application, and region will play a crucial role in meeting the diverse needs of businesses. With a strong presence in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, the media gateway market is poised for further growth and innovation in the coming years.

Maybe to some, it seems like a breeze, but let me tell you, the decisions I made during those years weren’t easy. Doubts crept in: could I still do this? Did I still inspire others? Was I even happy? Was it all worth the fight?… Does it sound familiar? Well, it’s okay. We all face challenges in life, and sometimes, they push us to propel forward.

This is not to convince you on the idea that life isn’t a bed of roses or a path riddled with thorns. In fact, it’s a patchwork of events, both easy and difficult, successes and defeats, bitter and sweet. And along these countless times, there’s something incredibly lovely about the resiliency of the human spirit, the unquenchable flame that lives within each of us.

I have seen this unwavering spirit both within and outside of the classroom. I’ve witnessed young brains struggle with social pressures and their own inner demons in spite of the difficulties of their subjects. However, what keeps me believing in the never-say-die mentality is their unflinching resolve, the joy in their eyes when they grasp a challenging idea, or their beaming smiles when they achieve beyond their own expectations.

Hence, before you say that you’re depleted, keep in mind that every difficulty you encounter and every barrier you get past not only demonstrates your strength but also serves as motivation for someone who is observing you. You may not be aware of it, but someone else is subtly inspired by your path, your hardships, and your successes to keep going, to keep trying, and to keep believing that they, too, can overcome their circumstances.

Your story is a crucial thread in this complex patchwork of life, giving the overall image power and color. Thus, weave your piece with bravery and optimism, understanding that you are not only creating your legacy but also illuminating the path for future generations. We are all connected in the end, and your light has the power to be the spark that guides someone else out of the shadows. Continue inspiring and moving, and never forget that, even before you declare yourself tired you are a living example of perseverance, an anchor of hope, and a testament to the ability to overcome adversity.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are at the forefront of government initiatives across the world. The SDGs are primarily concerned with promoting sustainable growth via ensuring wellbeing, economic growth, environmental legislation, and academic advancement. One of the most prominent goals of the SDG is to provide learners with high-quality education (SDG 4). This paper aims to look at the perspectives of the Sustainable Development Goals improvised to provide quality education. We also analyze the existing state of multiple initiatives implemented by the Indian government in the pathway to achieving objectives of quality education (SDG 4). Additionally, a case study is considered for understanding the association among the observed indicators of SDG4. For this purpose, exploratory data analysis, and numerical association rule mining in combination with QuantMiner genetic algorithm approaches have been applied. The outcomes reveal the presence of a significant degree of association among these parameters pointing out the fact that understanding the impact of one (or more) indicator on other related indicators is critical for achieving SDG 4 goals (or factors). These findings will assist governing bodies in taking preventive measures while modifying existing policies and ensuring the effective enactment of SDG 4 goals, which also will subsequently aid in the resolution of issues related to other SDGs.

Saini, M., Sengupta, E., Singh, M. et al. Sustainable Development Goal for Quality Education (SDG 4): A study on SDG 4 to extract the pattern of association among the indicators of SDG 4 employing a genetic algorithm. Educ Inf Technol 28, 2031–2069 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11265-4

Beyond providing a service to the parents, child care also provides a benefit to the child. They learn to get along with peers, eat nutritious snacks, participate in crafts and games, and even receive some educational instruction. All of this helps set a child up for success in elementary school and beyond.

The problem is that to keep child care affordable for families, companies must pay their employees very small amounts. The average annual salary of a child care worker in the US is just below $29,000. An elementary school teacher, on the other hand, makes an average of $61,000. Elementary school teachers are also allotted benefits such as home or loan discounts that child care workers are not. As rents and other living expenses have skyrocketed in recent years, many child care workers are running out of options. Despite providing a service crucial to society, this profession--dominated by single mothers and Black women--suffers an overall low quality of life that makes it difficult for them or their children to survive, much less thrive.

To keep prices to families low while also providing a better quality of life to their employees, Friend's Center for Children, a child care center in New Haven, Connecticut is piloting a project that offers free housing to the company's child care workers. Designed by Yale architecture students, the homes each have two units and are walkable from the child care center. Though the program is only in its early phases, current recipients express profound gratitude for the situtation as well as hope for their futures. The director of the Friend's Center says she plans on continuing the pilot, and she hopes it serves as a model and as an inspiration to cities around the country who are facing a child care worker shortage that jeapordizes both the wider economy and the children who participate in child care programs each and every day.

The attorney won. In the end, the board voted to require that eighth grade science students “describe the carbon cycle” instead.

Over the past two years school board meetings around the country have erupted into shout fests over face masks, reading lists and whether to ban education about structural racism in classrooms. In Texas, a quieter political agenda played out during the lightly attended process to set science education standards—guidelines for what students should learn in each subject and grade level. For the first time, the state board considered requiring that students learn something about human-caused climate change. That requirement came under tense dispute between industry representatives interested in encouraging positive goodwill about fossil fuels and education advocates who think students should learn the science underlying the climate crisis unfolding around them.

Standards adoptions are an exercise in bureaucracy, but the results wield great power over what is taught in classrooms. Publishers consult them as they write textbooks. State education officials use them as the basis of standardized tests. School districts call on them as they shape curricula. Teachers refer to them as they devise lesson plans. Every state adopts its own standards, but Texas adoptions have long had influence far beyond the state’s borders.

In 2020 two major education advocacy groups—the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network—hired experts to grade the science standards of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., based on how they covered the climate crisis. Thirty states and D.C. made As or Bs. Texas was one of six states that made an F. But because Texas is one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation—and because its elected 15-member State Board of Education has a history of applying a conservative political lens to those textbooks—publishers pay close attention to Texas standards as they create materials they then sell to schools across America. As a former science textbook editor once told me, “I never heard anyone explicitly say, ‘We can’t talk about environmentalism because of Texas.’ But we all kind of knew. Everybody kind of knows.” In this way, the proceedings in an Austin boardroom influence what millions of children nationwide are taught.

Most Americans favor teaching kids about the climate crisis. A 2019 nationwide poll by NPR/Ipsos found that nearly four in five respondents—including two of three Republicans—thought schoolchildren should be taught about climate change. When the Texas Education Agency surveyed science educators across the state about what should be added to the standards, one in four wrote in asking for climate change or something adjacent, such as alternative energy. No one asked for more content on fossil fuels.

After hours of testimony, Robert Unger appeared to represent the Texas Energy Council, and he had some suggestions.

And yet, as I learned when I watched 40 hours of live and archived board hearings, reviewed scores of public records and interviewed 15 people involved in the standard-setting process, members of the fossil-fuel industry participated in each stage of the Texas science standards adoption process, working to influence what children learn in the industry’s favor. Texas education officials convened teams of volunteers to rewrite the existing standards, and industry members volunteered for those writing teams and shaped the language around energy and climate. Industry members rallied to testify each time proposals to revise standards got a public hearing. When the board considered the rewritten standards for final approval, the industry appealed to members to advance their favored amendments, ensuring that the seemingly local drama in Austin will have outsized consequences.

For at least a decade the fossil-fuel industry has tried to green its public image. The Texas proceedings show that its actions do not always reflect that image. In little-watched venues, the industry continues to downplay the crisis it has wrought, impeding efforts to provide clear science about that crisis to a young generation whose world will be defined by it.

The last time the board overhauled the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for Science, in 2009, it was chaired by Don McLeroy, a dentist from east-central Texas. McLeroy made his views on science education clear when he declared at one meeting, “Somebody’s got to stand up to experts!” The board spent much of that adoption cycle clashing over evolution, but it also required that high school environmental science students debate something scientists hadn’t debated for a long time: whether global warming is happening. McLeroy told a reporter he was pleased because “conservatives like me think the evidence is a bunch of hooey.”

At the end of 2019, when it was time to begin another overhaul, McLeroy was gone. The board made it clear to the 85 volunteers recruited by the Texas Education Agency to draft the new standards that it hoped there would not be a fight over evolution again. It soon became clear the group would fight about climate science instead.

To start the process, board members carved the standards into three tranches that they would consider one at a time: first, high school core sciences, then high school elective sciences and finally grades K–8 sciences. The board would give each tranche to writing teams composed of volunteers. Professional content advisers, most nominated by board members, would provide feedback to the board on proposed changes.

Over the summer of 2020 one team took on the first tranche, the high school core subjects: biology, chemistry, physics, and an integrated chemistry and physics class. The core science standards were important for two reasons. The classes had sky-high enrollment; every year nearly half a million students took biology alone. And what happened with these classes would set the tone for the high school electives and for K–8. To the climate education advocates’ dismay, when the Texas Education Agency posted the writing groups’ results on its website in July 2020, the draft standards didn’t contain a single reference to modern-day climate change. But there was still a chance to fix that omission. The state board would present the draft standards for public testimony, hearings and amendments.

The first major hearing took place in September 2020, held in person and virtually on Zoom because of the COVID pandemic. More than 30 teachers, parents and other education advocates showed up to testify that the climate crisis has biological, chemical and physical aspects that make it relevant to all the core classes. Three and a half hours into that meeting, however, someone with a different message appeared on the Zoom screen: Robert Unger, a silver-haired engineer from Dallas who had worked for the oil and gas industry for more than 45 years. He was representing the Texas Energy Council, and he had some suggestions.

The Texas Energy Council is a coalition of about 35 industry organizations, predominantly from the oil and gas sector, collectively made up of more than 5,000 members. Some months earlier the council had begun recruiting volunteers to participate in the standards adoption process. “The earth sciences and the oil/gas industry in particular have suffered significant degradation in the K–12 curriculum over time,” a page on the council’s website said. In hopes of reversing that trend, the council enlisted 17 people—geoscientists, petroleum engineers, professors, attorneys and other fossil-fuel careerists—who, the site said, “shared its vision of ensuring that oil/gas is portrayed in a balanced fashion as a critical contribution to the Texas, U.S. and worldwide energy mix.” Unger had helped organize the volunteers. (Several members of the organization, including Unger, declined to be interviewed for this story. In an e-mail exchange, Michael Cooper, president of the council, took issue with some of this article’s findings but said he would be unable to provide a comprehensive response without reviewing a complete draft.)

“Inactivism” doesn’t deny human-caused climate change but downplays it, deflects blame for it and seeks to delay action on it.

Unger asked the board to remove a line in the introductory material for each of the high school core classes that discussed social justice and ethics, terms he said “do not belong in the course material.” Instead, he said, the standards should include the concept of cost-benefit analysis.

Most board members had expressed little reaction to the many people testifying in favor of climate education, but Unger’s testimony got their attention. Longtime Republican member Barbara Cargill, a former biology teacher from north of Houston serving her last few months on the board, asked Unger how cost-benefit analysis might be incorporated into the science TEKS. He gave an example: The main benefit of fossil fuels is the energy they produce, and the costs are “environmental issues that our industry is already regulating.” But oil and gas aren’t the only fuels with a cost, Unger said. Take solar: “It seems like the benefits are wonderful, but the costs, in fact, are the mining of rare minerals to create batteries,” he said. “Wind equally has cost and benefit to it.” A science teacher could weigh these things with students, he noted, “and not get into the ambiguities of social injustice and social ethics.” Cargill promised to consider Unger’s proposal.

All sources of energy come with costs. But a fixation on “cost-benefit analysis” is a plank in a raft of arguments supporting what climate scientist Michael Mann has called “inactivism”—a tactic that doesn’t deny human-caused climate change but downplays it, deflects blame for it and seeks to delay action on it. Sure, this brand of thinking goes, fossil fuels have their ills. But what form of energy doesn’t? Mann and others have criticized such arguments for their false equivalencies: the environmental and health costs of rare earth minerals for certain renewable energy sources are small compared with those of fossil fuels.

The next day, when the board met to consider amendments to the standards, Cargill delivered. She proposed removing social justice from the standards and adding cost-benefit analysis. Fellow Republican Pat Hardy, a retired history teacher and curriculum developer representing suburbs near Dallas–Fort Worth, eagerly supported the addition. “People talk about electric cars like they’re saving the universe,” Hardy said, captured on a video of the meeting. “And the answer is no, they are not.” The board voted to accept the changes. It was the Texas Energy Council’s first major victory.

The climate education advocates did get a win on the final day of the hearings. Marisa Pérez-Díaz, a Democratic board member from San Antonio and the youngest Latina to ever be elected to any state’s education board, had heard their pleas. She proposed adding the words “and global climate change” to the end of a standard that asked students to examine a variety of human impacts on the environment. Remarkably, the board approved the motion. It wasn’t a big win; the wording applied to just one standard, for the integrated physics and chemistry course, which is taken by a fifth of the students who take biology. But for the advocates it was a hopeful sign—certainly a step up from “a bunch of hooey.”

In the following months, as the board considered the next two tranches—the high school electives and the K–8 standards—Texas Energy Council volunteers showed up at meeting after meeting. Sometimes they pursued changes that the climate education advocates found reasonable, such as requiring that students learn the laws of geology and encouraging the use of resources such as museums and mentors. But they kept a relentless focus on adding cost-benefit analysis to the standards, and they added new petitions. They insisted on removing the terms “renewable” and “nonrenewable” to describe different energy sources; they preferred to describe all the options as “natural resources.” And they frequently brought up energy poverty—the lack of access to affordable electricity. “Energy poverty is one of the gravest but least talked-about dangers facing humanity,” testified Jason Isaac, director of an energy initiative for a conservative think tank, at one meeting. He suggested just one solution: “Right here in Texas the key to ending global energy poverty lies under our feet.”

The climate education advocates on the board expected to lose some of these battles. But they hoped the Texas Energy Council volunteers would stand down when it came to including clear information about the science of the climate crisis. During the next set of deliberations, it became evident that would not be the case.

In January 2021 the board held the first hearings for high school electives: environmental science, aquatic science, earth science and astronomy. Far fewer students take the electives than take biology, chemistry or physics, but the earth science and environmental science course standards were the only ones that already mentioned climate change.

In the months leading up to the hearings, the 23 people on the electives writing teams had met about every two weeks to draft the new standards. The old standards for the earth science course had asked students to “analyze the empirical relationship between the emissions of carbon dioxide, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and the average global temperature trends over the past 150 years,” a reference to the period since industrialization, during which atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have soared. That language didn’t sit well with William J. Moulton, a longtime geophysicist for the petroleum industry. Encouraged by the Texas Energy Council, he and several other industry representatives had applied to the Texas Education Agency for a seat on a writing group and had been placed. Moulton was on the team rewriting the earth science and astronomy courses.

Moulton agreed that climate change should be mentioned in some way because students would hear about it anyway. But he felt students should not be led to believe the science is settled. He argued that the phrase “the past 150 years” should be removed. The group agreed to that change and to several of Moulton’s other language tweaks. When those already diluted standards came before the board in January, four other Texas Energy Council volunteers appeared on Zoom, all recommending amendments. One person said the standards should focus on the dangers of rare earth minerals. Another said it was important for children to learn that the inception of the fossil-fuel industry stopped the practice of whaling for blubber that could be turned into fuel. “Oil and gas literally saved the whales,” she said.

The industry also had a new champion on the board: Will Hickman, who had just been elected in November 2020 for a district outside of Houston. Hickman’s experience in education included serving on parent groups at his kids’ schools, coaching community sports and teaching Sunday school. He’d held the same day job since 2004: senior legal counsel at Shell Oil.

“Let’s call this what it is,” Aicha Davis said. “At this point we’re only making votes based on what oil and gas wants us to do.”

In the January hearing, Hickman’s first, his opening question was where in the proposed standards he could find the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of energy. The next day he offered an example that might be raised in class: “Everyone thinks renewable power’s a great idea, and Germany adopted it on a large scale,” he said. “But the cost-benefit—it ended up raising their power prices to about 2.5 times our power prices.”

The writing committees had already included a reference to cost-benefit analysis in the “scientific and engineering practices” section of each of the elective courses, and the standard for the environmental science course had a second mention. But at the next board hearings, in April, Hickman pressed for more. Another member, Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a professor of English and film at Texas State University, who had just been elected to represent Austin, pressed back: “The very phrase ‘costs and benefits’ places the primary emphasis on money, not on society or well-being or human health.” The board nonetheless approved a motion by Hickman to add another mention of costs and benefits, to aquatic sciences.

Moulton began showing up at the board hearings with additional proposed changes. His colleagues on the writing group had accepted some of his suggestions but not all of them, so he wanted the board to consider adding them as amendments. In the final hearing in June, board member Hardy asked Moulton if he’d heard the “newest stuff that’s been coming out on climate,” which, she said, was that the climate crisis was not unfolding as scientists had predicted. Moulton suggested that the consensus about warming had been exaggerated by scientists in pursuit of grant money.

Hardy began proposing amendments word for word from Moulton’s suggestions. This elicited an outcry from Bell-Metereau. “Do you not think that if someone’s area of work is in fossil fuels that they might have some bias on this issue?” she asked Hardy. “It might be that I have a bias for the fossil-fuel industry,” Hardy answered.

Bell-Metereau and others on the board threatened to delay the entire adoption if Hardy insisted on moving the changes forward. Ultimately Hardy dropped the proposals. But Moulton and the council had already succeeded in important ways: The new electives standards had multiple references to cost-benefit analysis. The terms “renewable energy” and “nonrenewable energy” were removed in several places. The single mention of the effects of burning fossil fuels in the old standards was gone, and the strongest description of climate change had been weakened.

The climate education advocates had failed to install a robust presentation of the science surrounding the climate crisis in any of the high school core or elective classes, as they had watched the Texas Energy Council volunteers achieve one goal after another. But they held out hope for the K–8 standards. Nearly every middle schooler takes the same sciences, and the classes cover weather and climate systems, an obvious and effective place to discuss the crisis for a generation of students that would have to live with its consequences.

On a 96-degree day at the end of August 2021, the board held a public hearing on the K–8 standards, in person and virtually. The writing groups had labored over the drafts, adding a single passage mentioning climate change. Eighth grade science students, the draft declared, would be expected to “use scientific evidence to describe how human activities can influence climate, such as the release of greenhouse gases.” One writing group, which included the executive director of a natural gas foundation, had also appended a note stating it had not been able to reach consensus on a proposal to add another line: “Research and describe the costs and benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions versus global energy poverty.”

At the hearing, two of the professional content advisers who had reviewed the standards gave the board radically different opinions. Ron Wetherington, a retired anthropology professor from Southern Methodist University nominated by Pérez-Díaz, argued that the climate standards needed significant strengthening. Among other things, he advocated that the word “can” be dropped from the phrase “describe how human activities can influence climate.” “Can” implies that something is a possibility, but an abundance of evidence shows that the influence is already taking place. He also asked the board to add an expectation that students explore efforts to mitigate the crisis. Because students would learn that it’s happening, he posited, they should learn what people are doing to fix it.

Gloria Chatelain, a longtime educator and CEO of her own consulting firm called Simple Science Solutions, who had been nominated by Hardy and Cargill, stood in absolute opposition. She began her testimony by praising the “absolutely amazing job” the Texas Energy Council had already done in improving the standards. She also said human-caused climate change should be treated very lightly in middle school, if at all. “Our goal is not to produce angry children but children who love science. We’re challenging them to go solve some of these exciting problems but not turn them into Gretas,” she said, referring to the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg of Sweden. Instead, she contended, the board should add an expectation that students “research and describe the role of energy in improving the quality of life in reducing malnutrition and global poverty,” language the council had suggested. “I think it needs to go in, guys. It’s very, very important that we address it,” Chatelain said.

For three days that week the board considered the K–8 language. Over the protests of Democrats, Hardy moved to add “cost-effectiveness” to each middle school class. She and Hickman persuaded the conservative board majority to change multiple references to renewable and nonrenewable energy to “natural resources” in the elementary standards.

On the second day climate education advocates landed two unexpected victories. Pérez-Díaz proposed rewording the climate standard to “describe how human activities over the past 150 years, including the release of greenhouse gases, influence climate.” Then she proposed adding a separate line: “Describe efforts to mitigate climate change, including a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.” The amendments both carried. But on the third day the board axed the reference to the past 150 years and added the word “can” back in. The details of recent climate change, Hardy argued, would simply be too hard for eighth graders to grasp.

Aicha Davis, a board member from Dallas who spent 11 years teaching science before pursuing her Ph.D. in education leadership and policy, spoke up. “With all respect to my colleague, you’ve never taught eighth grade science,” she said, her voice tinged with forbearance. “We absolutely can’t let the oil and gas industry dictate what our kids need to learn when it comes to science. It shouldn’t be about the Texas Energy Council. It should be about what’s best for our students.” Neither scientists nor educators had voiced concern about teaching climate change to eighth graders, she noted. “So let’s call this what it is. At this point we’re only making votes based on what oil and gas wants us to do.”

Hickman, the Shell attorney, turned on his microphone. “A few thoughts and reactions,” he said. “One is I think our permanent school fund is generally funded by oil and gas,” referring to a major source of education funding maintained in part by proceeds from fossil fuels reaped from public lands. “All of us are probably going to get home using oil and gas…. If all of this is true—greenhouse gases are evil—what do we do? Do we ban gasoline and stop using gasoline-powered cars? Do we ban diesel for trucks? How do we get our Amazon and Walmart purchases?” The board chair suggested they table the issue until the final round of hearings, scheduled for November 2021.

As they waited for the last round, the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network organized. They recruited 67 Texan climate scientists to join a letter asking, among other things, that the word “can” be dropped from the climate passage and that the mitigation language stay put not only because it consisted of “basic knowledge” that every citizen should have but because it would provide students with a sense of hope.

Nevertheless, the final round of deliberations in November was a slaughter. Climate change had been added in a limited way to the standards, and the conservative majority supported that. But it rejected a motion to strike the word “can.” It blocked a motion to remove cost-benefit analysis from the middle school sciences. It approved new language about “the critical role of energy resources” to modern life. It inserted a reference to rare earth elements. It introduced the concept of global energy poverty.

Last, Hickman moved to drop the climate mitigation standard that Pérez-Díaz had managed to add in September, arguing that the subject was more appropriate for social studies than for science and that it “just seems above and beyond for an eighth grade student and teacher.” The board Democrats fought the change, but they were outnumbered. The board replaced the mitigation standard with the line “Describe the carbon cycle.”

The Texas Energy Council and two allied organizations issued a press release praising the State Board of Education for adopting standards that “emphasize the critical role of energy in modern life.” The Texas Freedom Network hit a more ambivalent note in its year-end report. “The State Board of Education could have—and should have—done much better. But our campaign resulted in new science standards that for the first time make clear to Texas public school students that climate change is real and that human activity is the cause.”

The fossil-fuel industry, like some others, has worked for decades to get its messages in front of schoolchildren. I have found examples across the U.S. Petroleum companies regularly fund teacher trainings incentivized by free classroom supplies. Industry organizations have spent millions of dollars producing and distributing energy lesson plans. I witnessed an oil and gas industry employee give a PowerPoint presentation radically downplaying the climate crisis to a class of seventh graders.

Even with abundant online educational materials, just 9 percent of high school science teachers say they never use a textbook. The nation’s most popular middle school science textbooks are replete with language that conveys doubt about climate change, subtly or otherwise. In one textbook that, as of 2018, was in a quarter of the nation’s middle schools, students read that “some scientists propose that global warming is due to natural climate cycles.” In fact, the number of climate scientists who support that idea is effectively zero.

Texas isn’t the only major buyer of textbooks. Other large states such as California have adopted standards that embrace the science of climate change, leading to a divide. Textbook publishers create one set of products to sell in Texas and states that lean the same way and a second set of products for states aligned with California. This poses an equity problem: the education a child receives on an issue central to the modern world depends on what state they happen to live in.

In April 2022 the Texas Education Agency issued a call for textbooks based on the new standards. Publishers were given a year to submit materials to the agency. Review panels, made up of educators, will search the textbooks for errors and rate how closely they follow the standards. Then the materials go before the state board for approval or rejection. Texas school districts have the option of establishing their own textbook adoption process but still must choose books that comply with the standards. Most just defer to the board’s choices. The new science textbooks should be on classroom shelves starting in the fall of 2024.

The Texas Energy Council’s Moulton told me he found the standards adoption process energizing, and he hopes to stay involved. As soon as he gets the chance, he said, he’ll start reviewing the new textbooks and will head back to the board to give them his thoughts.

https://climateactionproject.org/profile/MichaelWanjuzimakongo28681

That statement can be found in McGraw Hill’s seventh-grade textbook Texas Science, one of dozens of books up for adoption in the state’s first major consideration of new science instructional materials since 2013. The Texas State Board of Education held its initial public hearing about the proposed materials on August 29 and is expected to make a final decision about them after a second hearing in November. Textbooks that the board adopts will sit on classroom shelves in Texas beginning next fall, and they are likely to influence textbooks across the country.

The books have already engendered controversy. Climate education advocates have asked the state to adopt the new materials because despite their flaws, they include substantial climate content that explains the science underlying the climate crisis; the last set of textbooks adopted by the state a decade ago largely did not. Yet some supporters of the fossil-fuel industry, including a congressional representative, say the books represent, in the words of that representative, an infiltration of “the radical climate lobby” into education, and have asked people to pressure the state to reject them.

The books have been written expressly to conform to Texas’s new science standards—expectations about what students learn in each class and grade. When the State Board of Education updated the standards in 2021, it chose to include information about the climate crisis in a required class—middle school science—for the first time in Texas history. As first reported by Scientific American in 2022, however, the new climate standards did not go as far as many educators hoped. After a concerted campaign by the Texas Energy Council, an industry association that primarily represents oil and gas companies, the board limited the breadth and depth of its new climate science standards. This spring, as reported by E&E News, the board took the additional step of changing its textbook policy to explicitly favor books that emphasize fossil fuels’ “positive” aspects.

Because Texas is among the largest textbook markets in the U.S., the state has had long-standing influence over textbooks published nationwide. That means content written with Texan politics—and the state’s fossil-fuel industry—in mind winds up in classrooms across the country. Textbooks often have a long shelf life, so the approved materials will likely be read by children into the 2030s.

The bulk of public comment at the hour-long public hearing on August 29 comprised testimony by climate education advocates encouraging the board to approve the proposed books as they are because for the most part, their content about the climate crisis is accurate and direct. An 11^th-grade student who testified at the hearing, Marygrace Beinke, argued that it is essential that her fellow students—as well as “our future presidents, teachers and scientists”—understand the threat the climate crisis poses. “Climate change isn’t patient or ineffable,” she said. “It’s a simple cause and effect, something we can and have to stop. Leaving these kids blind to that—it’s not just poor form but dangerous.”

Some members of the board appeared sensitive to the effect that teaching about climate change would have on students’ perception of the oil and gas industry. Board member Will Hickman, who works as an in-house attorney for Shell Oil, asked a testifier whether instructional materials “should also include the benefits” of burning carbon. “We could turn the lights off and turn off the air-conditioning in here. It’d be 110 degrees, and we’d be sitting in the dark,” he said. “Is there a benefit to turning the lights on, turning on the air-conditioning?” The testifier responded that Hickman had conflated the use of fossil fuels with the benefits of electricity, which can be produced with renewable sources.

A few weeks after the meeting, the aforementioned congressperson, Representative August Pfluger of Texas, who represents a portion of the state’s fossil-fuel-rich Permian Basin, wrote a post on Facebook in which he requested that his followers submit a comment to the State Board of Education asking for students to be taught “the truth about the importance of secure, reliable energy produced in the Permian Basin.” He noted that the new science standards require eighth graders to learn about climate change. “We cannot allow the radical climate lobby to infiltrate Texas middle schools and brainwash our children,” he wrote. Pfluger sits on the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. His office did not return a call for comment.

To examine how political tensions have affected the upcoming textbooks, I reviewed the climate content in the new middle school science textbook sets put forth by the three largest K–12 publishers: McGraw Hill, Savvas Learning Company (formerly Pearson K12 Learning) and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), which together accounted for four of every five textbooks in U.S. public middle school science classrooms as of 2018. My review found that the proposed new textbooks include much more robust information about the climate crisis than their earlier editions did. In some cases, however, the books appear to cloud the human causes of the crisis.

Each of the three sets—McGraw Hill’s Texas Science, Savvas’s Texas Experience Science and HMH’s Into Science Texas—put the bulk of their climate content in a chapter of an eighth-grade science textbook. Overall, these respective chapters describe recent climate change’s mechanism, impact and human origins without equivocation. But in places, they seem to downplay the role of fossil fuels. Oil, gas and coal account for more than 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations, yet the chapters each spend more words on the contributions of deforestation, agriculture and urbanization than they do on fossil fuels. In places, the books lean on the phrase “releasing greenhouse gases” rather than “emitting greenhouse gases” or “burning fossil fuels.” The HMH book closes its chapter by highlighting the climate contributions of deforestation, urbanization and “carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by human activities.” Representatives from HMH did not respond to requests for comment about that language.

McGraw Hill’s eighth-grade climate section begins with a scenario for students to evaluate in which four friends are discussing recent climate change. One suggests that while there is evidence of humans impacting the climate, it’s “not considered scientific evidence.” A second says, “I think we now have evidence that supports the idea that humans are affecting Earth’s climate.” A third suggests that “we need more evidence,” while a fourth asserts that climate change “is a natural event. There is no evidence that human activities affect climate.” The book instructs students to evaluate which of the four characters they agree with.

Asking students to debate the causes of climate change is not uncommon: more than half of science teachers across the U.S. say they teach the causes of climate change as a debate. Expert climate educators discourage this approach, however, noting that it could leave students with the misunderstanding that the causes of the climate crisis are also debated by scientists, which they are not.

Outside of the eighth-grade chapters specific to recent climate change, the subject appears in a smattering of other places but not always robustly. In two places, McGraw Hill’s seventh-grade book asserts that both human and natural activities have recently increased carbon levels in the atmosphere. In a response to questions about Texas Science’s climate content, a McGraw Hill representative said that the company “is committed to developing accurate and effective educational materials aligned to the standards and curriculum requirements of our customers. We highly value the insight that our customers and the public bring to discussions of our content during this adoption process, which is ongoing.”

A section in Savvas’s eighth-grade Texas Experience Science about how scientists learn about past climates by studying glaciers lists natural factors that have caused the climate to change over the course of time, including “distance from the sun” and “ups and downs” in ocean temperature. “But these naturally occurring events do not entirely explain the Earth’s temperature changes over the last few centuries. Human activities are another cause,” the section states. “Greenhouse gases are playing a role in warming the planet.”

In an e-mail to Scientific American, representatives of Savvas defended this language, saying that it and other climate content in the book are “fully aligned” with Texas’s new middle school science standards and that Savvas is “committed to ensuring our learning solutions provide the teachers and students we serve with the most accurate, relevant, fact-based, and pedagogically sound content.” Jesse Wilcox of the University of Northern Iowa, a co-author of the textbook, wrote in an e-mail that “we recognize humans are causing climate change. We note in the curriculum that nature, by itself, doesn’t account for the climate change we are experiencing and that greenhouse gases are warming the planet. While we want students to understand that our current climate is a human-caused problem, we also want students to recognize that natural factors (e.g., changes in radiation, orbital changes, and volcanic eruptions) influence climate. This is not a denial of human-caused climate change, but rather, a more complete understanding of factors that impact our climate on Earth.”

The textbooks are still drafts and were initially submitted for public review in April. As part of the adoption process, the Texas Education Agency organized two panels of reviewers to examine them. Neither set of panels asked for changes to the climate content of the three major textbook companies’ middle school books.

Nevertheless, when McGraw Hill presented the changes it planned to make to these drafts, it included tweaks to the eighth-grade climate change material. In one case, the original language said:

“The main way humans have contributed to climate change is by burning fossil fuels to power automobiles and to produce electrical energy. Burning the fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which increases the amount of solar energy that is trapped in the atmosphere. Deforestation also increases carbon dioxide emissions, contributing to global warming.”

In the edited version, this language was changed, and another reference to urbanization was added:

“The main way humans have contributed to climate change is by burning fossil fuels to meet energy demand. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Deforestation and urbanization also increase carbon dioxide emissions, contributing to global warming.”

When asked about these and other proposed edits by Scientific American, a McGraw Hill representative said changes were made for editorial reasons, “such as clarity, length, consistency, and alignment to standards.”

The previous set of middle school science textbooks McGraw Hill put up for adoption in Texas was called iScience and published in 2012. A book in the set suggested that the cause of the climate crisis wasn’t fully understood: “Although many scientists agree with” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s conclusion that human industry has caused the crisis, “some scientists propose that global warming is due to natural climate cycles.” Editions of the textbook were also sold in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Oklahoma. By 2018 versions of iScience sat on the shelves of a quarter of American middle school science classrooms, all with that language intact. In 2021 when I asked why that and other inaccurate language about climate change had been written into their science textbooks, McGraw Hill representatives responded that the content had been written between 2007 and 2009, when, they said, the U.N. IPCC “was still in its infancy,” and the science for the human causes of climate change wasn’t as settled as it is today. Yet the IPCC was formed in 1988 and issued its first warning about global warming in 1990.

Two groups of climate education advocates, the Texas Freedom Network and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), conducted their own joint review of the proposed new textbooks’ climate content and found it overall met the limited requirements of the new standards. But in an interview, NCSE’s deputy director Glenn Branch noted that “even the best of the books have lots of room for improvement.”

Judy Dickey, a doctoral student at Texas A&M’s Atmospheric Sciences program and former high school teacher, was one of the reviewers. She says the middle school textbooks left her with the impression that the publishers had watered down the contributions of fossil fuels to the crisis while overemphasizing the contributions of urbanization and deforestation.

“I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but it felt like they were trying to shift the blame to other countries,” she says. “Deforestation and urbanization are not a North American problem, so it’s like saying that it’s all these other evil countries that are responsible for climate change.”

The textbooks’ suggestions that nature is contributing to the crisis are “100 percent false,” Dickey says, because while there are natural sources of greenhouse gases, the evidence suggests the planet would be in a cooling cycle if it were not for human emissions.

The Texas State Board of Education is expected to make its final decision about the textbooks at its next meeting, which will take place during the week of November 14. Texas residents can submit written comments on the proposed textbooks until October 30.

Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world and for self-enlightenment. This is so since quality education equips one with capability to interpret things rightly and applying the gathered information in real life scenarios.

Sustainable Development Goal 4

Sustainable Development Goal 4 is about quality education and is among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in September 2015. The full title of SDG 4 is "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

What is importance of education?

Education assist a person hone their communication skills by learning how to read, write, speak and listen. Education grow's critical thinking. This plays a vital role in teaching a person how to utilize logic when making decisions and interacting with people. Education unlocks up a world of possibilities for individuals by empowering them with knowledge. It is the cultivation of learning in various ways. People with good academic and educational backgrounds tend to get well-paid jobs. The higher their education and accomplishments, the better employment options they get. People who grew up poor but educated themselves have high chances to transform their lives, thus contributing to a decrease in society’s poverty rates. Education helps countries grow economically since it is about getting knowledge and being able to apply it wisely to our lives and, at the same time, improving other people’s lives. One of the benefits of education is that the educational system teaches us how to obtain and develop critical and logical thinking and make independent decisions.

Why people are lacking education?

Even in schools, a lack of trained teachers, inadequate education materials and poor infrastructure make learning difficult for many students. Others come to class too hungry, ill or exhausted from work or household tasks to benefit from their lessons.

How is poverty related to education?

Poverty and education are inextricably linked, because people living in poverty may stop going to school so they can work, which leaves them without literacy and numeracy skills they need to further their careers.

What are the targets?

Hence, these are the targets for Quality Education.

Conclusion:

Finally, it may be concluded as Education makes you a better person and teaches you various skills, Education therefore helps to reduce inequalities and to reach gender equality.

Alternative source: https://elearningindustry.com/how-important-is-technology-in-education

Renee Dsouza, 3 B

Shining Star International School

But she sees little of that at her school in Fort Moore, Ga.

The students who solve algebra equations and hone essays at Faith Middle School attend one of the highest-performing school systems in the country.

It is run not by a local school board or charter network, but by the Defense Department.

With about 66,000 students — more than the public school enrollment in Boston or Seattle — the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees quietly achieve results most educators can only dream of.

Voices in Miami is in our third season, and a week ago we released our second-annual SDG Day episode! SDG Day is celebrated on September 25thNicole Yeager and I discussed the history of sustainability goals in the United Nations, beginning with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and continuting with the Sustainable Development Goals we know today. 

An overview of what Nicole and I discussed about the history of actions for Sustainable Development by the United Nations:

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

The SDGs build on decades of work by countries and the UN, including the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

• In June 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, more than 178 countries adopted Agenda 21, a comprehensive plan of action to build a global partnership for sustainable development to improve human lives and protect the environment.

• Member States unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 at UN Headquarters in New York. The Summit led to the elaboration of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce extreme poverty by 2015.

• The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development and the Plan of Implementation, adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa in 2002, reaffirmed the global community's commitments to poverty eradication and the environment, and built on Agenda 21 and the Millennium Declaration by including more emphasis on multilateral partnerships.

• At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012, Member States adopted the outcome document "The Future We Want" in which they decided, inter alia, to launch a process to develop a set of SDGs to build upon the MDGs and to establish the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. The Rio +20 outcome also contained other measures for implementing sustainable development, including mandates for future programmes of work in development financing, small island developing states and more.

• In 2013, the General Assembly set up a 30-member Open Working Group to develop a proposal on the SDGs.

• In January 2015, the General Assembly began the negotiation process on the post-2015 development agenda. The process culminated in the subsequent adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 SDGs at its core, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015.

• 2015 was a landmark year for multilateralism and international policy shaping, with the adoption of several major agreements:

• Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (March 2015)

• Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development (July 2015)

• Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 SDGs was adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York in September 2015.

• Paris Agreement on Climate Change (December 2015)

• Now, the annual High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development serves as the central UN platform for the follow-up and review of the SDGs.

Today, the Division for Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) provides substantive support and capacity-building for the SDGs and their related thematic issues, including water, energy, climate, oceans, urbanization, transport, science and technology, the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), partnerships and Small Island Developing States. DSDG plays a key role in the evaluation of UN system wide implementation of the 2030 Agenda and on advocacy and outreach activities relating to the SDGs. In order to make the 2030 Agenda a reality, broad ownership of the SDGs must translate into a strong commitment by all stakeholders to implement the global goals. DSDG aims to help facilitate this engagement.

Listen to our podcast for more information on the SDGs in our everyday lives, and to find out what Nicole and my favorite SDGs are! 

(Information sourced from https://sdgs.un.org/goals) 

Yet, there’s hope on the horizon. Universities worldwide are ramping up efforts to keep students not only informed but also equipped to tackle these impending challenges. However, there’s a lingering sentiment among some: do everyday sustainable actions truly count?

Building Sustainable Campuses and Communities 

Highlighting the importance of collective action, the University of Galway’s Environmental Society convened a special panel consisting of students and environmental advocates. Their mission was to brainstorm on transforming the university campus into a beacon of inclusivity, resilience, safety, and sustainability, and to catalyse broader positive changes throughout Galway City.

Malema Threm, the university’s Officer of Environment and Sustainability, emphasised the gathering’s significance, noting, “This event serves as a unified platform for students to raise awareness, exchange innovative solutions, and truly make a difference.”

“I believe University students hold the potential to reshape our world, ensuring the realisation of all global objectives.,” she added.

Using the UN’s SDGs as a Blueprint

The University of Galway is harnessing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide its students in addressing Galway’s unique sustainable development challenges.

According to Malema Threm, sustainability has steadily solidified its position as a cornerstone value at the university. This commitment is evident in the University of Galway’s Strategic Plan for, 2020-2025 which prioritises sustainable initiatives.

“I hope to see us create a Galway where we have proper structure for walking, cycling, and mobility for people with disability,” said Malema. 

Meanwhile, the university’s Environmental Society plans to host future events to promote sustainability across learning, research, and the student experience so that the campus community can become sustainability role models.

In this regard, the University of Galway has recently been designated a national SDG Champion for 2023–24 by the Department of Environment, Climate, and Communications thereby becoming a role model to other universities.

 Bitwul Dashe is a Global media and communications student at the University of Galway.

Esra said she had a great experience being part of the program as an English teacher. In her words, “I believe that thanks to this program, advocates all around the world help to create a positive atmosphere by working with people who live in communities collaboratively. Also, getting the chance to observe that students are eager to help people with their outstanding ideas and solutions is inspiring".

Below are some of the activities that GSP Advocate Esran Karahan has carried out with students in her school.

First, the primary school students carried out a research process on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and decided to work on one of these goals by designing posters with their group members. Third-grade students prepared posters about SDG 13: Climate Action. Brainstorming about the differences between climate zones, students created a mind map to observe the connections and concepts of different climate zones all around the world. English teachers split students into two heterogeneous groups and asked provoking questions such as: “What are the factors that cause climate change?” and “What are the relationships between temperature and climate zones?” Students reflected on their ideas and innovative solutions on their group posters. 

Second, at the beginning of November, some of the volunteer students from third grade carried out a detailed mind map project about SDGs 1: No Poverty and 10: Reduce Inequalities.

Supporting students’ agencies is an important role according to İSTEK Kasgarli Mahmut Primary School's vision and mission. Therefore, English teachers assigned some differentiated tasks to students to enforce their ownership and voice. In the scope of the activity, Peri Erdoğan (9) and Tanem Özkan (9) chose the goals they were eager to learn more about and filled out the maps to present their findings to the learning community.

“One of the schools from Canada read our book, so the students who wrote the book took into action to raise their voices in the community,” said Esra Karahan.

Finally, primary students prepared posters by using Canva. They activated the pre-knowledge about SDGs as communicators and inquirers throughout the project. Students presented their posters to take SDGs to the street in their school community. Students’ posters illustrated primary school bulletin boards.