assignment importance of education

Essay on Importance of Education

Importance of Education Essay

Education is one of the key components for an individual’s success. It has the ability to shape one’s life in the right direction. Education is a process of imparting or acquiring knowledge, and developing the powers of reasoning and judgement. It prepares growing children intellectually for a life with more mature understanding and sensitivity to issues surrounding them. It improves not only the personal life of the people but also their community. Thus, one cannot neglect the significance of Education in life and society. Here, we have provided an essay on the Importance of Education. Students can use this essay to prepare for their English exam or as a speech to participate in the school competition.

Importance of Education

The importance of education in life is immense. It facilitates quality learning for people throughout their life. It inculcates knowledge, belief, skill, values and moral habits. It improves the way of living and raises the social and economic status of individuals. Education makes life better and more peaceful. It transforms the personality of individuals and makes them feel confident.

Well said by Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world”. To elaborate, it is the foundation of the society which brings economic wealth, social prosperity and political stability. It gives power to people to put their views and showcase their real potential. It strengthens democracy by providing citizens with the tools to participate in the governance process. It acts as an integrative force to foster social cohesion and national identity.

In India, education is a constitutional right of every citizen. So, people of any age group, religion, caste, creed and region are free to receive education. An educated person is respected everywhere and well-treated in society. As a kid, every child dreams of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, actor, sportsperson, etc. These dreams can come true through education. So, investment in education gives the best return. Well-educated people have more opportunities to get a better job which makes them feel satisfied.

In schools, education is divided into different levels, i.e., preschool, primary, secondary and senior secondary. School education comprises traditional learning which provides students with theoretical knowledge. However, now various efforts are being made to establish inbuilt application-based learning by adding numerous experiments, practicals and extracurricular activities to the school curriculum. Students learn to read, write and represent their viewpoints in front of others. Also, in this era of digital Education, anyone can easily access information online at their fingertips. They can learn new skills and enhance their knowledge.

Steps Taken By Government To Promote Education

Education is evidently an important aspect that no government can ignore in order to ensure the equitable development of a nation. Unfortunately, some children still do not have access to education. The Government has thereby taken initiatives to improve education quality and made it accessible to everyone, especially the poor people.

The Government passed the Right to Education Act 2009 (RTE Act 2009) on 4 August 2009. This Act came into effect on 1 April 2010, following which education has become the fundamental right of every child in India. It provides free and compulsory elementary education to children of the age group of 6-14 years in a neighbourhood school within 1 km, up to Class 8 in India. On similar lines, there are other schemes launched by the government, such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan , Mid-Day Meal , Adult Education and Skill Development Scheme, National Means cum Merit Scholarship Scheme, National Program for Education of Girls at Elementary Education, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, Scheme for Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutions, Beti Bachao , Beti Padhao, etc.

For our country’s growth, we require a well-educated population equipped with the relevant knowledge, attitude and skills. This can be achieved by spreading awareness about the importance of Education in rural areas. There is a famous saying that “If we feed one person, we will eliminate his hunger for only one time. But, if we educate a person, we will change his entire life”. Henceforth he will become capable of earning a livelihood by himself.

This essay on the Importance of Education must have helped students to improve their writing section for the English exam. They can also practice essays on other topics by visiting the CBSE Essay page. Keep learning and stay tuned with BYJU’S for the latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams. Also, download the BYJU’S App for interactive study videos.

Frequently Asked Questions on Education Essay

How can the literacy rate in india be increased.

People in rural areas must be informed about the importance of providing education to their children. Also, with the COVID-19 situation, the government should take steps by providing laptops/phones for children to follow online classes.

Are girl children still denied their right to get educated?

Although awareness has now improved, there are still many villages in India where girl children are not provided with proper education or allowed to enrol themselves in schools. This mentality has to change for the betterment of the society.

Teaching subjects/academics alone is enough, or should students be introduced to other forms of educational activities too?

Extracurricular activities, moral value education, etc., are also as important as regular academic teachings.

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Education Essay Samples: Choose Yours to Get A+

What is an essay on education?

It’s a paper that students write in school or college to tell why education is important (1). The rules of structuring and formatting it are standard:

Hook readers and introduce a thesis.
Provide arguments and evidence in the body to support your statement.
Write a conclusion restating the thesis and summarizing the body.

In this article, you’ll find three samples of education essays. All are of different lengths. Choose one that fits your assignment best, and feel free to use it as an example for writing your paper like a boss.

Importance of Education: Essay (250 words)

When asked to write an essay about the importance of education, check this sample for inspiration.

College Essay on Importance of Education (300 words)

A 300-word paper has a more complex structure. You can divide it into three paragraphs. Or, create a five-paragraph story with three parts in a body. It all depends on how you craft a thesis and how many arguments you have.

Bonus: How to Write a 300 Words Essay

500 Word Essay on Why Education Is Important

“Why is education important” essay can be long, too. If you get an assignment to write a 500+ word paper on this topic, here you have a sample to check.

What is education essay?

It is a short academic paper students write in school or college to explain the importance of education to the audience. It has a corresponding thesis statement and requires arguments and evidence to prove its relevance.

What is the purpose of education essay?

The purpose (2) is to explain the role of education and persuade readers of this idea with arguments and evidence.

When writing, a student can use facts, statistics, and examples to support the arguments. Topics are numerous, but all relate to the idea that education is crucial for young generations and society in general.

How long is an essay on why education is important?

The length varies from 150 to 750 words. It depends on the assignment or how in-depth you intend to go on the topic and structure your academic paper.

Thus, a 150-word paper will be one paragraph, which is prevalent for middle school students. For 500-word essays, the structure is as follows: education essay introduction, body, and conclusion.

The longer your essay, the more structured and in-depth it will be.

Ready to Write Your Essay on Education?

I hope the examples from this article have helped you learn how to write an essay on importance of education. Whatever the length, please structure it accordingly: Follow the rules of academic writing. Use arguments and provide evidence.

An essay on education isn’t that challenging to write. Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts on the topic. Even a controversial idea works if you know how to spark readers with it.

References:

https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/10-reasons-why-is-education-important/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-education
Essay samples
Essay writing
Writing tips

Prehistoric and primitive cultures

Mesopotamia
North China
The Hindu tradition
The introduction of Buddhist influences
Classical India
Indian influences on Asia
Xi (Western) Zhou (1046–771 bce )
Dong (Eastern) Zhou (770–256 bce )
Qin autocracy (221–206 bce )
Scholarship under the Han (206 bce –220 ce )
Introduction of Buddhism
Ancient Hebrews
Education of youth
Higher education
The institutions
Physical education
The primary school
Secondary education
Early Roman education
Roman modifications
Education in the later Roman Empire
Ancient Persia
Elementary education
Professional education
Early Russian education: Kiev and Muscovy
Influences on Muslim education and culture
Aims and purposes of Muslim education
Organization of education
Major periods of Muslim education and learning
Influence of Islamic learning on the West
From the beginnings to the 4th century
From the 5th to the 8th century
The Irish and English revivals
The cultural revival under Charlemagne and his successors
Influences of the Carolingian renaissance abroad
Education of the laity in the 9th and 10th centuries
Monastic schools
Urban schools
New curricula and philosophies
Thomist philosophy
The Italian universities
The French universities
The English universities
Universities elsewhere in Europe
General characteristics of medieval universities
Lay education and the lower schools
The foundations of Muslim education
The Mughal period
The Tang dynasty (618–907 ce )
The Song (960–1279)
The Mongol period (1206–1368)
The Ming period (1368–1644)
The Manchu period (1644–1911/12)
The ancient period to the 12th century
Education of the warriors
Education in the Tokugawa era
Effect of early Western contacts
The Muslim influence
The secular influence
Early influences
Emergence of the new gymnasium
Nonscholastic traditions
Dutch humanism
Juan Luis Vives
The early English humanists
Luther and the German Reformation
The English Reformation
The French Reformation
The Calvinist Reformation
The Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation
The legacy of the Reformation
The new scientism and rationalism
The Protestant demand for universal elementary education
The pedagogy of Ratke
The pedagogy of Comenius
The schools of Gotha
Courtly education
The teaching congregations
Female education
The Puritan reformers
Royalist education
The academies
John Locke’s empiricism and education as conduct
Giambattista Vico, critic of Cartesianism
The condition of the schools and universities
August Hermann Francke
Johann Julius Hecker
The Sensationists
The Rousseauists
National education under enlightened rulers
Spanish and Portuguese America
French Québec
New England
The new academies
The middle colonies
The Southern colonies
Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces.
The social and historical setting
The pedagogy of Pestalozzi
The influence of Pestalozzi
The pedagogy of Froebel
The kindergarten movement
The psychology and pedagogy of Herbart
The Herbartians
Other German theorists
French theorists
Spencer’s scientism
Humboldt’s reforms
Developments after 1815
Girls’ schools
The new German universities
Development of state education
Elementary Education Act
Secondary and higher education
The educational awakening
Education for females
New Zealand
Education under the East India Company
Indian universities
The Meiji Restoration and the assimilation of Western civilization
Establishment of a national system of education
The conservative reaction
Establishment of nationalistic education systems
Promotion of industrial education
Social and historical background
Influence of psychology and other fields on education
Traditional movements
Progressive education
Child-centred education
Scientific-realist education
Social-reconstructionist education
Major trends and problems
Early 19th to early 20th century
Education Act of 1944
The comprehensive movement
Further education
Imperial Germany
Weimar Republic
Nazi Germany
Changes after World War II
The Third Republic
The Netherlands
Switzerland
Expansion of American education
Curriculum reforms
Federal involvement in local education
Changes in higher education
Professional organizations
Canadian educational reforms
The administration of public education
Before 1917
The Stalinist years, 1931–53
The Khrushchev reforms
From Brezhnev to Gorbachev
Perestroika and education
The modernization movement
Education in the republic
Education under the Nationalist government
Education under communism
Post-Mao education
Communism and the intellectuals
Education at the beginning of the century
Education to 1940
Education changes during World War II
Education after World War II
Pre-independence period
The postindependence period in India
The postindependence period in Pakistan
The postindependence period in Bangladesh
The postindependence period in Sri Lanka
South Africa
General influences and policies of the colonial powers
Education in Portuguese colonies and former colonies
German educational policy in Africa
Education in British colonies and former colonies
Education in French colonies and former colonies
Education in Belgian colonies and former colonies
Problems and tasks of African education in the late 20th century
Colonialism and its consequences
The second half of the 20th century
The Islamic revival
Migration and the brain drain
The heritage of independence
Administration
Primary education and literacy
Reform trends
Malaysia and Singapore
Philippines
Education and social cohesion
Education and social conflict
Education and personal growth
Education and civil society
Education and economic development
Primary-level school enrollments
Secondary-level school enrollments
Tertiary-level school enrollments
Other developments in formal education
Literacy as a measure of success
Access to education
Implications for socioeconomic status
Social consequences of education in developing countries
The role of the state
Social and family interaction
Alternative forms of education

What was education like in ancient Athens?

How does social class affect education attainment, when did education become compulsory, what are alternative forms of education, do school vouchers offer students access to better education.

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World History Encyclopedia - Education in the Elizabethan Era
Academia - Return on Education Using the Concept of Opportunity Cost
National Geographic - Geography
Table Of Contents

What does education mean?

Education refers to the discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments, as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization .

Beginning approximately at the end of the 7th or during the 6th century, Athens became the first city-state in ancient Greece to renounce education that was oriented toward the future duties of soldiers. The evolution of Athenian education reflected that of the city itself, which was moving toward increasing democratization.

Research has found that education is the strongest determinant of individuals’ occupational status and chances of success in adult life. However, the correlation between family socioeconomic status and school success or failure appears to have increased worldwide. Long-term trends suggest that as societies industrialize and modernize, social class becomes increasingly important in determining educational outcomes and occupational attainment.

While education is not compulsory in practice everywhere in the world, the right of individuals to an educational program that respects their personality, talents, abilities, and cultural heritage has been upheld in various international agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948; the Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1959; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.

Alternative forms of education have developed since the late 20th century, such as distance learning , homeschooling , and many parallel or supplementary systems of education often designated as “nonformal” and “popular.” Religious institutions also instruct the young and old alike in sacred knowledge as well as in the values and skills required for participation in local, national, and transnational societies.

School vouchers have been a hotly debated topic in the United States. Some parents of voucher recipients reported high levels of satisfaction, and studies have found increased voucher student graduation rates. Some studies have found, however, that students using vouchers to attend private schools instead of public ones did not show significantly higher levels of academic achievement. Learn more at ProCon.org.

Should corporal punishment be used in elementary education settings?

Whether corporal punishment should be used in elementary education settings is widely debated. Some say it is the appropriate discipline for certain children when used in moderation because it sets clear boundaries and motivates children to behave in school. Others say can inflict long-lasting physical and mental harm on students while creating an unsafe and violent school environment. For more on the corporal punishment debate, visit ProCon.org .

Should dress codes be implemented and enforced in education settings?

Whether dress codes should be implemented and enforced in education settings is hotly debated. Some argue dress codes enforce decorum and a serious, professional atmosphere conducive to success, as well as promote safety. Others argue dress codes reinforce racist standards of beauty and dress and are are seldom uniformly mandated, often discriminating against women and marginalized groups. For more on the dress code debate, visit ProCon.org .

News •

education , discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization (e.g., rural development projects and education through parent-child relationships).

(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)

Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialization or enculturation. Children—whether conceived among New Guinea tribespeople, the Renaissance Florentines, or the middle classes of Manhattan—are born without culture . Education is designed to guide them in learning a culture , molding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood , and directing them toward their eventual role in society. In the most primitive cultures , there is often little formal learning—little of what one would ordinarily call school or classes or teachers . Instead, the entire environment and all activities are frequently viewed as school and classes, and many or all adults act as teachers. As societies grow more complex, however, the quantity of knowledge to be passed on from one generation to the next becomes more than any one person can know, and, hence, there must evolve more selective and efficient means of cultural transmission. The outcome is formal education—the school and the specialist called the teacher.

As society becomes ever more complex and schools become ever more institutionalized, educational experience becomes less directly related to daily life, less a matter of showing and learning in the context of the workaday world, and more abstracted from practice, more a matter of distilling, telling, and learning things out of context. This concentration of learning in a formal atmosphere allows children to learn far more of their culture than they are able to do by merely observing and imitating. As society gradually attaches more and more importance to education, it also tries to formulate the overall objectives, content, organization, and strategies of education. Literature becomes laden with advice on the rearing of the younger generation. In short, there develop philosophies and theories of education.

This article discusses the history of education, tracing the evolution of the formal teaching of knowledge and skills from prehistoric and ancient times to the present, and considering the various philosophies that have inspired the resulting systems. Other aspects of education are treated in a number of articles. For a treatment of education as a discipline, including educational organization, teaching methods, and the functions and training of teachers, see teaching ; pedagogy ; and teacher education . For a description of education in various specialized fields, see historiography ; legal education ; medical education ; science, history of . For an analysis of educational philosophy , see education, philosophy of . For an examination of some of the more important aids in education and the dissemination of knowledge, see dictionary ; encyclopaedia ; library ; museum ; printing ; publishing, history of . Some restrictions on educational freedom are discussed in censorship . For an analysis of pupil attributes, see intelligence, human ; learning theory ; psychological testing .

Education in primitive and early civilized cultures

The term education can be applied to primitive cultures only in the sense of enculturation , which is the process of cultural transmission. A primitive person, whose culture is the totality of his universe, has a relatively fixed sense of cultural continuity and timelessness. The model of life is relatively static and absolute, and it is transmitted from one generation to another with little deviation. As for prehistoric education, it can only be inferred from educational practices in surviving primitive cultures.

The purpose of primitive education is thus to guide children to becoming good members of their tribe or band. There is a marked emphasis upon training for citizenship , because primitive people are highly concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the thorough comprehension of their way of life during passage from prepuberty to postpuberty.

Because of the variety in the countless thousands of primitive cultures, it is difficult to describe any standard and uniform characteristics of prepuberty education. Nevertheless, certain things are practiced commonly within cultures. Children actually participate in the social processes of adult activities, and their participatory learning is based upon what the American anthropologist Margaret Mead called empathy , identification, and imitation . Primitive children, before reaching puberty, learn by doing and observing basic technical practices. Their teachers are not strangers but rather their immediate community .

In contrast to the spontaneous and rather unregulated imitations in prepuberty education, postpuberty education in some cultures is strictly standardized and regulated. The teaching personnel may consist of fully initiated men, often unknown to the initiate though they are his relatives in other clans. The initiation may begin with the initiate being abruptly separated from his familial group and sent to a secluded camp where he joins other initiates. The purpose of this separation is to deflect the initiate’s deep attachment away from his family and to establish his emotional and social anchorage in the wider web of his culture.

The initiation “curriculum” does not usually include practical subjects. Instead, it consists of a whole set of cultural values, tribal religion, myths , philosophy, history, rituals, and other knowledge. Primitive people in some cultures regard the body of knowledge constituting the initiation curriculum as most essential to their tribal membership. Within this essential curriculum, religious instruction takes the most prominent place.

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16.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

List the major functions of education.
Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009). Table 16.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these approaches say.

Table 16.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical perspective	Major assumptions
Functionalism	Education serves several functions for society. These include (a) socialization, (b) social integration, (c) social placement, and (d) social and cultural innovation. Latent functions include child care, the establishment of peer relationships, and lowering unemployment by keeping high school students out of the full-time labor force.
Conflict theory	Education promotes social inequality through the use of tracking and standardized testing and the impact of its “hidden curriculum.” Schools differ widely in their funding and learning conditions, and this type of inequality leads to learning disparities that reinforce social inequality.
Symbolic interactionism	This perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues. Specific research finds that social interaction in schools affects the development of gender roles and that teachers’ expectations of pupils’ intellectual abilities affect how much pupils learn.

The Functions of Education

Functional theory stresses the functions that education serves in fulfilling a society’s various needs. Perhaps the most important function of education is socialization . If children need to learn the norms, values, and skills they need to function in society, then education is a primary vehicle for such learning. Schools teach the three Rs, as we all know, but they also teach many of the society’s norms and values. In the United States, these norms and values include respect for authority, patriotism (remember the Pledge of Allegiance?), punctuality, individualism, and competition. Regarding these last two values, American students from an early age compete as individuals over grades and other rewards. The situation is quite the opposite in Japan, where, as we saw in Chapter 4 “Socialization” , children learn the traditional Japanese values of harmony and group belonging from their schooling (Schneider & Silverman, 2010). They learn to value their membership in their homeroom, or kumi , and are evaluated more on their kumi ’s performance than on their own individual performance. How well a Japanese child’s kumi does is more important than how well the child does as an individual.

A second function of education is social integration . For a society to work, functionalists say, people must subscribe to a common set of beliefs and values. As we saw, the development of such common views was a goal of the system of free, compulsory education that developed in the 19th century. Thousands of immigrant children in the United States today are learning English, U.S. history, and other subjects that help prepare them for the workforce and integrate them into American life. Such integration is a major goal of the English-only movement, whose advocates say that only English should be used to teach children whose native tongue is Spanish, Vietnamese, or whatever other language their parents speak at home. Critics of this movement say it slows down these children’s education and weakens their ethnic identity (Schildkraut, 2005).

A third function of education is social placement . Beginning in grade school, students are identified by teachers and other school officials either as bright and motivated or as less bright and even educationally challenged. Depending on how they are identified, children are taught at the level that is thought to suit them best. In this way they are prepared in the most appropriate way possible for their later station in life. Whether this process works as well as it should is an important issue, and we explore it further when we discuss school tracking shortly.

Social and cultural innovation is a fourth function of education. Our scientists cannot make important scientific discoveries and our artists and thinkers cannot come up with great works of art, poetry, and prose unless they have first been educated in the many subjects they need to know for their chosen path.

Figure 16.1 The Functions of Education

The Functions of Education: social integration, social placement, socialization, social and cultural innovation

Schools ideally perform many important functions in modern society. These include socialization, social integration, social placement, and social and cultural innovation.

Education also involves several latent functions, functions that are by-products of going to school and receiving an education rather than a direct effect of the education itself. One of these is child care . Once a child starts kindergarten and then first grade, for several hours a day the child is taken care of for free. The establishment of peer relationships is another latent function of schooling. Most of us met many of our friends while we were in school at whatever grade level, and some of those friendships endure the rest of our lives. A final latent function of education is that it keeps millions of high school students out of the full-time labor force . This fact keeps the unemployment rate lower than it would be if they were in the labor force.

Education and Inequality

Conflict theory does not dispute most of the functions just described. However, it does give some of them a different slant and talks about various ways in which education perpetuates social inequality (Hill, Macrine, & Gabbard, 2010; Liston, 1990). One example involves the function of social placement. As most schools track their students starting in grade school, the students thought by their teachers to be bright are placed in the faster tracks (especially in reading and arithmetic), while the slower students are placed in the slower tracks; in high school, three common tracks are the college track, vocational track, and general track.

Such tracking does have its advantages; it helps ensure that bright students learn as much as their abilities allow them, and it helps ensure that slower students are not taught over their heads. But, conflict theorists say, tracking also helps perpetuate social inequality by locking students into faster and lower tracks. Worse yet, several studies show that students’ social class and race and ethnicity affect the track into which they are placed, even though their intellectual abilities and potential should be the only things that matter: white, middle-class students are more likely to be tracked “up,” while poorer students and students of color are more likely to be tracked “down.” Once they are tracked, students learn more if they are tracked up and less if they are tracked down. The latter tend to lose self-esteem and begin to think they have little academic ability and thus do worse in school because they were tracked down. In this way, tracking is thought to be good for those tracked up and bad for those tracked down. Conflict theorists thus say that tracking perpetuates social inequality based on social class and race and ethnicity (Ansalone, 2006; Oakes, 2005).

Social inequality is also perpetuated through the widespread use of standardized tests. Critics say these tests continue to be culturally biased, as they include questions whose answers are most likely to be known by white, middle-class students, whose backgrounds have afforded them various experiences that help them answer the questions. They also say that scores on standardized tests reflect students’ socioeconomic status and experiences in addition to their academic abilities. To the extent this critique is true, standardized tests perpetuate social inequality (Grodsky, Warren, & Felts, 2008).

As we will see, schools in the United States also differ mightily in their resources, learning conditions, and other aspects, all of which affect how much students can learn in them. Simply put, schools are unequal, and their very inequality helps perpetuate inequality in the larger society. Children going to the worst schools in urban areas face many more obstacles to their learning than those going to well-funded schools in suburban areas. Their lack of learning helps ensure they remain trapped in poverty and its related problems.

Conflict theorists also say that schooling teaches a hidden curriculum , by which they mean a set of values and beliefs that support the status quo, including the existing social hierarchy (Booher-Jennings, 2008) (see Chapter 4 “Socialization” ). Although no one plots this behind closed doors, our schoolchildren learn patriotic values and respect for authority from the books they read and from various classroom activities.

Symbolic Interactionism and School Behavior

Symbolic interactionist studies of education examine social interaction in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues. These studies help us understand what happens in the schools themselves, but they also help us understand how what occurs in school is relevant for the larger society. Some studies, for example, show how children’s playground activities reinforce gender-role socialization. Girls tend to play more cooperative games, while boys play more competitive sports (Thorne, 1993) (see Chapter 11 “Gender and Gender Inequality” ).

Another body of research shows that teachers’ views about students can affect how much the students learn. When teachers think students are smart, they tend to spend more time with them, to call on them, and to praise them when they give the right answer. Not surprisingly these students learn more because of their teachers’ behavior. But when teachers think students are less bright, they tend to spend less time with them and act in a way that leads the students to learn less. One of the first studies to find this example of a self-fulfilling prophecy was conducted by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968). They tested a group of students at the beginning of the school year and told their teachers which students were bright and which were not. They tested the students again at the end of the school year; not surprisingly the bright students had learned more during the year than the less bright ones. But it turned out that the researchers had randomly decided which students would be designated bright and less bright. Because the “bright” students learned more during the school year without actually being brighter at the beginning, their teachers’ behavior must have been the reason. In fact, their teachers did spend more time with them and praised them more often than was true for the “less bright” students. To the extent this type of self-fulfilling prophecy occurs, it helps us understand why tracking is bad for the students tracked down.

Pre schoolers working on arts and crafts

Research guided by the symbolic interactionist perspective suggests that teachers’ expectations may influence how much their students learn. When teachers expect little of their students, their students tend to learn less.

ijiwaru jimbo – Pre-school colour pack – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Other research focuses on how teachers treat girls and boys. Several studies from the 1970s through the 1990s found that teachers call on boys more often and praise them more often (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998; Jones & Dindia, 2004). Teachers did not do this consciously, but their behavior nonetheless sent an implicit message to girls that math and science are not for girls and that they are not suited to do well in these subjects. This body of research stimulated efforts to educate teachers about the ways in which they may unwittingly send these messages and about strategies they could use to promote greater interest and achievement by girls in math and science (Battey, Kafai, Nixon, & Kao, 2007).

Key Takeaways

According to the functional perspective, education helps socialize children and prepare them for their eventual entrance into the larger society as adults.
The conflict perspective emphasizes that education reinforces inequality in the larger society.
The symbolic interactionist perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom, on school playgrounds, and at other school-related venues. Social interaction contributes to gender-role socialization, and teachers’ expectations may affect their students’ performance.

For Your Review

Review how the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives understand and explain education. Which of these three approaches do you most prefer? Why?

American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. (1998). Gender gaps: Where schools still fail our children . Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.

Ansalone, G. (2006). Tracking: A return to Jim Crow. Race, Gender & Class, 13 , 1–2.

Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2009). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Battey, D., Kafai, Y., Nixon, A. S., & Kao, L. L. (2007). Professional development for teachers on gender equity in the sciences: Initiating the conversation. Teachers College Record, 109 (1), 221–243.

Booher-Jennings, J. (2008). Learning to label: Socialisation, gender, and the hidden curriculum of high-stakes testing. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29 , 149–160.

Grodsky, E., Warren, J. R., & Felts, E. (2008). Testing and social stratification in American education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34 (1), 385–404.

Hill, D., Macrine, S., & Gabbard, D. (Eds.). (2010). Capitalist education: Globalisation and the politics of inequality . New York, NY: Routledge; Liston, D. P. (1990). Capitalist schools: Explanation and ethics in radical studies of schooling . New York, NY: Routledge.

Jones, S. M., & Dindia, K. (2004). A meta-analystic perspective on sex equity in the classroom. Review of Educational Research, 74 , 443–471.

Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality (2nd ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom . New York, NY: Holt.

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Top 10 Reasons Why Is Education Important

Updated: June 19, 2024

Published: April 15, 2020

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Most of us have grown up being taught the importance of education. But why is education important? Through your frustrating school years, you may have thought that it was a waste of time, or was just something that you needed to do in order to get a job. Truth be told, however, education goes so much beyond just getting a job and making your parents happy. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful tools out there.

What Is Education?

Education means studying in order to obtain a deeper knowledge and understanding of a variety of subjects to be applied to daily life. Education is not limited to just knowledge from books, but can also be obtained through practical experiences outside of the classroom.

Top 10 Reasons: Why Is Education Important?

There are many different understandings and definitions of what education is, but one thing can be universally agreed upon, which is the importance of education — and here’s why.

1. Provides Stability

Education provides stability in life, and it’s something that no one can ever take away from you. By being well-educated and holding a college degree , you increase your chances for better career opportunities and open up new doors for yourself.

2. Provides Financial Security

On top of stability, education also provides financial security, especially in today’s society. A good education tends to lead to a higher paying job, as well as provide you with the skills needed to get there.

3. Needed For Equality

In order for the entire world to really become equal, it needs to start with education. If everyone was provided with the same opportunities to education , then there would be less gaps between social classes. Everyone would be able to have an equal chance at higher paying jobs — not just those that are already well-off.

4. Allows For Self-Dependency

The importance of education is evident when it comes to being self-dependent. If we are we educated, then it’s something that belongs to us, and only us, allowing us to rely on no one else other than ourselves. It can allow you to not only be financially independent, but also to make your own choices.

5. Make Your Dreams Come True

If you can dream it, you can achieve it. An education is the most powerful weapon you can possibly have, and with it, you can make all of your dreams come true. There are of course certain exceptions, depending on what you’re aiming for, but generally an education will take you as far as you’re willing to go.

6. A Safer World

Education is something that’s not only needed on a personal level, but also on a global level, as it’s something that keeps our world safe and makes it a more peaceful place. Education tends to teach people the difference between right and wrong, and can help people stay out of risky situations.

7. Confidence

Being self-confident is a major part of being successful in life. And what better way to gain that confidence than with an education? Your level of education is often considered a way to prove your knowledge, and it can give you the confidence to express your opinions and speak your mind.

8. A Part Of Society

In today’s society, having an education is considered a vital part of being accepted by those around you. Having an education is believed to make you a useful part of society, and can make you feel like a contributing member as well.

9. Economic Growth On A National Level

An educated society is crucial for economic growth. We need people to continue to learn and research in order to constantly stay innovative. Countries with higher literacy rates also tend to be in better economic situations. With a more educated population, more employment opportunities are opened.

10. Can Protect You

Education can protect you more than you know, not only on a financial level, but it can help prevent you from being taken advantage of by knowing how to read and write, such as knowing not to sign any bogus documents.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Education is important for children.

Children are the future of our world, making education crucial for them. Their knowledge is what’s going to keep our world alive and flourishing.

At Childhood

During the childhood development stages, the importance of education is stronger than ever. It’s a time for children to learn social and mental skills that will be crucial for their growth and success in the future. Education at childhood also offers a chance for self-discovery and to learn about their unique interests.

The importance of education in our lives goes far beyond what we can read in a textbook. Education also provides childhood with knowledge such as how to produce artwork and make music. Education allows us to analyze what’s in front of us, and even learn from our mistakes.

Goal Building

By learning from a young age, children are given the chance to start building goals for themselves. Education means having the logic to set your mind to something and achieve it.

Importance Of Education In Society

For a modern society, education is of utmost importance. There are so many influences coming from all directions, and education can help us decipher what we should take as true, and what we should take with a grain of salt. Education can mold people into functional members of society with the right kinds of values.

Productivity

Education is needed for a productive society. Our population only continues to increase, and in turn, so do our needs. We need a strong and efficient workforce of educated people to provide us with the services we need for everyday life.

The Impact Education Has On The World

With education, people can become better citizens, knowing right from wrong, allowing for a better society where laws are followed. An educated nation knows about the importance of voting, doing so with the knowledge not blindly, but also having an understanding of what their party truly stands for. Education can also help people get jobs, which is what a nation thrives on.

Inspiring Quotes On What Education Truly Is

Why is education important, and what is it exactly? While every person has a different understanding of its true meaning, here are some of the most inspiring quotes by some legendary people.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” — Malcolm X
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” — John Dewey

What Are Some Other Reasons Why Education Is Important?

There are endless reasons why education is so important, especially since it also has endless connotations and meanings.

Mind And Body

Our mind and bodies are connected more than we know. With a powerful, well-educated mind, so too are our bodies.

Education helps us understand how to best take care of ourselves, boosting our confidence and overall well-being. Studies have shown that each additional year of education can add up to 1.7 years to our lifespan at the age of 35.

The importance of education also extends to personal growth. By constantly learning, asking questions, and seeking knowledge, we can achieve things we never imagined before. Education helps us get to know ourselves better, whether through books, courses, or professional consultations.

Photo by Burst from Pexels

Worldwide value.

Education is the best way to ensure a positive global perspective. Without proper education, it is difficult to understand what is considered appropriate and how to behave.

Education brings us closer to the goal of world peace by teaching us about our place in the world and our responsibilities to humanity. It instills values far beyond the classroom, encompassing lessons learned at home and through interactions with others. These teachings are essential aspects of what education entails, guiding our behavior and understanding of the world.

Sharpens Your Thinking

Education is essential for sharp and clear thinking. It keeps you informed about the world, making you aware of current events and the people around you. Education helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses, guiding you to focus on the right areas.

It enhances logical reasoning, enabling you to argue effectively with accurate facts and work through situations logically. Education keeps you focused and on track, knowing the right path for you.

It also promotes innovation and creativity, allowing your mind to reach its full potential. Education develops basic life skills and street smarts, teaching us how to best conduct ourselves daily.

Education can be the most freeing and empowering thing in the world. It enables you to live life to the fullest by gaining a vast amount of knowledge about the world. Education ensures continual learning from various sources, whether through people, newspapers, experiences, research, or traditional classes.

It breaks barriers, empowering people globally and offering equal opportunities for all socio-economic backgrounds. University of the People, a tuition-free, online university, exemplifies this by providing accessible higher education to everyone.

Education allows you to become the best version of yourself, discovering your interests, strengths, and place in the world, making you feel complete and self-aware.

Education In The Modern World

Education today is more important than ever before, and has reached new heights with new understandings of what it truly entails. Ask yourself “Why is education important?” and it will surely not be the same as anyone else’s answer.

While in modern society, holding a college degree is considered to be highly beneficial for a successful career and to be socially accepted, it is not the only means of education. Education is all around us in everything that we do, so use it wisely!

FAQ Section

What are the primary goals of education.

The primary goals of education are to impart knowledge, develop critical thinking, and foster personal and social growth. It aims to prepare individuals for the workforce, promote civic responsibility, and encourage lifelong learning.

How does education influence future opportunities?

Education enhances future opportunities by increasing employability, boosting earning potential, and providing a foundation for personal and professional growth. It opens doors to higher-paying jobs and further educational pursuits.

How does education vary across different countries?

Education varies globally in structure, quality, and accessibility due to differences in economic development, cultural values, and government policies. Some countries focus on standardized testing, while others emphasize holistic or experiential learning.

What is the role of technology in education?

Technology enhances education by providing access to online learning, digital resources, and interactive tools. It supports personalized learning, enables innovative teaching methods, and makes education more accessible and engaging.

How does education contribute to personal growth?

Education promotes personal growth by expanding knowledge, improving cognitive abilities, and fostering critical thinking. It helps develop self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and effective communication skills.

How does education address societal issues like discrimination?

Education combats discrimination by promoting inclusivity and awareness. It teaches about diversity, tolerance, and human rights, helping to break down prejudices and empower marginalized communities.

What are the economic benefits of investing in education?

Investing in education leads to higher productivity, increased innovation, and a more skilled workforce. It reduces poverty, boosts economic growth, and lowers reliance on social welfare programs.

Can education foster innovation and entrepreneurship?

Yes, education fosters innovation and entrepreneurship by encouraging creative thinking and problem-solving. It provides the skills and knowledge necessary for developing new ideas and launching successful businesses.

What role do educators play in shaping the educational experience?

Educators shape the educational experience by creating engaging learning environments, guiding students, and adapting teaching methods to meet diverse needs. They mentor and inspire students to achieve their full potential.

At UoPeople, our blog writers are thinkers, researchers, and experts dedicated to curating articles relevant to our mission: making higher education accessible to everyone. Read More

In this article

The World Bank Group is the largest financier of education in the developing world, working in 94 countries and committed to helping them reach SDG4: access to inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion.

For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a  9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling . For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion. Education is further a powerful catalyst to climate action through widespread behavior change and skilling for green transitions.

Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed, as the 2018 World Development Report (WDR) stressed.

Making smart and effective investments in people’s education is critical for developing the human capital that will end extreme poverty. At the core of this strategy is the need to tackle the learning crisis, put an end to Learning Poverty , and help youth acquire the advanced cognitive, socioemotional, technical and digital skills they need to succeed in today’s world.

In low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in Learning Poverty (that is, the proportion of 10-year-old children that are unable to read and understand a short age-appropriate text) increased from 57% before the pandemic to an estimated 70% in 2022.

However, learning is in crisis. More than 70 million more people were pushed into poverty during the COVID pandemic, a billion children lost a year of school , and three years later the learning losses suffered have not been recouped . If a child cannot read with comprehension by age 10, they are unlikely to become fluent readers. They will fail to thrive later in school and will be unable to power their careers and economies once they leave school.

The effects of the pandemic are expected to be long-lasting. Analysis has already revealed deep losses, with international reading scores declining from 2016 to 2021 by more than a year of schooling. These losses may translate to a 0.68 percentage point in global GDP growth. The staggering effects of school closures reach beyond learning. This generation of children could lose a combined total of US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value or the equivalent of 17% of today’s global GDP – a sharp rise from the 2021 estimate of a US$17 trillion loss.

Action is urgently needed now – business as usual will not suffice to heal the scars of the pandemic and will not accelerate progress enough to meet the ambitions of SDG 4. We are urging governments to implement ambitious and aggressive Learning Acceleration Programs to get children back to school, recover lost learning, and advance progress by building better, more equitable and resilient education systems.

Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024

The World Bank’s global education strategy is centered on ensuring learning happens – for everyone, everywhere. Our vision is to ensure that everyone can achieve her or his full potential with access to a quality education and lifelong learning. To reach this, we are helping countries build foundational skills like literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills – the building blocks for all other learning. From early childhood to tertiary education and beyond – we help children and youth acquire the skills they need to thrive in school, the labor market and throughout their lives.

Investing in the world’s most precious resource – people – is paramount to ending poverty on a livable planet. Our experience across more than 100 countries bears out this robust connection between human capital, quality of life, and economic growth: when countries strategically invest in people and the systems designed to protect and build human capital at scale, they unlock the wealth of nations and the potential of everyone.

Building on this, the World Bank supports resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. We do this by generating and disseminating evidence, ensuring alignment with policymaking processes, and bridging the gap between research and practice.

The World Bank is the largest source of external financing for education in developing countries, with a portfolio of about $26 billion in 94 countries including IBRD, IDA and Recipient-Executed Trust Funds. IDA operations comprise 62% of the education portfolio.

The investment in FCV settings has increased dramatically and now accounts for 26% of our portfolio.

World Bank projects reach at least 425 million students -one-third of students in low- and middle-income countries.

The World Bank’s Approach to Education

Five interrelated pillars of a well-functioning education system underpin the World Bank’s education policy approach:

Learners are prepared and motivated to learn;
Teachers are prepared, skilled, and motivated to facilitate learning and skills acquisition;
Learning resources (including education technology) are available, relevant, and used to improve teaching and learning;
Schools are safe and inclusive; and
Education Systems are well-managed, with good implementation capacity and adequate financing.

The Bank is already helping governments design and implement cost-effective programs and tools to build these pillars.

Our Principles:

We pursue systemic reform supported by political commitment to learning for all children.
We focus on equity and inclusion through a progressive path toward achieving universal access to quality education, including children and young adults in fragile or conflict affected areas , those in marginalized and rural communities, girls and women , displaced populations, students with disabilities , and other vulnerable groups.
We focus on results and use evidence to keep improving policy by using metrics to guide improvements.
We want to ensure financial commitment commensurate with what is needed to provide basic services to all.
We invest wisely in technology so that education systems embrace and learn to harness technology to support their learning objectives.

Laying the groundwork for the future

Country challenges vary, but there is a menu of options to build forward better, more resilient, and equitable education systems.

Countries are facing an education crisis that requires a two-pronged approach: first, supporting actions to recover lost time through remedial and accelerated learning; and, second, building on these investments for a more equitable, resilient, and effective system.

Recovering from the learning crisis must be a political priority, backed with adequate financing and the resolve to implement needed reforms. Domestic financing for education over the last two years has not kept pace with the need to recover and accelerate learning. Across low- and lower-middle-income countries, the average share of education in government budgets fell during the pandemic , and in 2022 it remained below 2019 levels.

The best chance for a better future is to invest in education and make sure each dollar is put toward improving learning. In a time of fiscal pressure, protecting spending that yields long-run gains – like spending on education – will maximize impact. We still need more and better funding for education. Closing the learning gap will require increasing the level, efficiency, and equity of education spending—spending smarter is an imperative.

Education technology can be a powerful tool to implement these actions by supporting teachers, children, principals, and parents; expanding accessible digital learning platforms, including radio/ TV / Online learning resources; and using data to identify and help at-risk children, personalize learning, and improve service delivery.

Looking ahead

We must seize this opportunity to reimagine education in bold ways. Together, we can build forward better more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems for the world’s children and youth.

Accelerating Improvements

Supporting countries in establishing time-bound learning targets and a focused education investment plan, outlining actions and investments geared to achieve these goals.

Launched in 2020, the Accelerator Program works with a set of countries to channel investments in education and to learn from each other. The program coordinates efforts across partners to ensure that the countries in the program show improvements in foundational skills at scale over the next three to five years. These investment plans build on the collective work of multiple partners, and leverage the latest evidence on what works, and how best to plan for implementation. Countries such as Brazil (the state of Ceará) and Kenya have achieved dramatic reductions in learning poverty over the past decade at scale, providing useful lessons, even as they seek to build on their successes and address remaining and new challenges.

Universalizing Foundational Literacy

Readying children for the future by supporting acquisition of foundational skills – which are the gateway to other skills and subjects.

The Literacy Policy Package (LPP) consists of interventions focused specifically on promoting acquisition of reading proficiency in primary school. These include assuring political and technical commitment to making all children literate; ensuring effective literacy instruction by supporting teachers; providing quality, age-appropriate books; teaching children first in the language they speak and understand best; and fostering children’s oral language abilities and love of books and reading.

Advancing skills through TVET and Tertiary

Ensuring that individuals have access to quality education and training opportunities and supporting links to employment.

Tertiary education and skills systems are a driver of major development agendas, including human capital, climate change, youth and women’s empowerment, and jobs and economic transformation. A comprehensive skill set to succeed in the 21st century labor market consists of foundational and higher order skills, socio-emotional skills, specialized skills, and digital skills. Yet most countries continue to struggle in delivering on the promise of skills development.

The World Bank is supporting countries through efforts that address key challenges including improving access and completion, adaptability, quality, relevance, and efficiency of skills development programs. Our approach is via multiple channels including projects, global goods, as well as the Tertiary Education and Skills Program . Our recent reports including Building Better Formal TVET Systems and STEERing Tertiary Education provide a way forward for how to improve these critical systems.

Addressing Climate Change

Mainstreaming climate education and investing in green skills, research and innovation, and green infrastructure to spur climate action and foster better preparedness and resilience to climate shocks.

Our approach recognizes that education is critical for achieving effective, sustained climate action. At the same time, climate change is adversely impacting education outcomes. Investments in education can play a huge role in building climate resilience and advancing climate mitigation and adaptation. Climate change education gives young people greater awareness of climate risks and more access to tools and solutions for addressing these risks and managing related shocks. Technical and vocational education and training can also accelerate a green economic transformation by fostering green skills and innovation. Greening education infrastructure can help mitigate the impact of heat, pollution, and extreme weather on learning, while helping address climate change.

Examples of this work are projects in Nigeria (life skills training for adolescent girls), Vietnam (fostering relevant scientific research) , and Bangladesh (constructing and retrofitting schools to serve as cyclone shelters).

Strengthening Measurement Systems

Enabling countries to gather and evaluate information on learning and its drivers more efficiently and effectively.

The World Bank supports initiatives to help countries effectively build and strengthen their measurement systems to facilitate evidence-based decision-making. Examples of this work include:

(1) The Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) : This tool offers a strong basis for identifying priorities for investment and policy reforms that are suited to each country context by focusing on the three dimensions of practices, policies, and politics.

Highlights gaps between what the evidence suggests is effective in promoting learning and what is happening in practice in each system; and
Allows governments to track progress as they act to close the gaps.

The GEPD has been implemented in 13 education systems already – Peru, Rwanda, Jordan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sierra Leone, Niger, Gabon, Jordan and Chad – with more expected by the end of 2024.

(2) Learning Assessment Platform (LeAP) : LeAP is a one-stop shop for knowledge, capacity-building tools, support for policy dialogue, and technical staff expertise to support student achievement measurement and national assessments for better learning.

Supporting Successful Teachers

Helping systems develop the right selection, incentives, and support to the professional development of teachers.

Currently, the World Bank Education Global Practice has over 160 active projects supporting over 18 million teachers worldwide, about a third of the teacher population in low- and middle-income countries. In 12 countries alone, these projects cover 16 million teachers, including all primary school teachers in Ethiopia and Turkey, and over 80% in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

A World Bank-developed classroom observation tool, Teach, was designed to capture the quality of teaching in low- and middle-income countries. It is now 3.6 million students.

While Teach helps identify patterns in teacher performance, Coach leverages these insights to support teachers to improve their teaching practice through hands-on in-service teacher professional development (TPD).

Our recent report on Making Teacher Policy Work proposes a practical framework to uncover the black box of effective teacher policy and discusses the factors that enable their scalability and sustainability.

Supporting Education Finance Systems

Strengthening country financing systems to mobilize resources for education and make better use of their investments in education.

Our approach is to bring together multi-sectoral expertise to engage with ministries of education and finance and other stakeholders to develop and implement effective and efficient public financial management systems; build capacity to monitor and evaluate education spending, identify financing bottlenecks, and develop interventions to strengthen financing systems; build the evidence base on global spending patterns and the magnitude and causes of spending inefficiencies; and develop diagnostic tools as public goods to support country efforts.

Working in Fragile, Conflict, and Violent (FCV) Contexts

The massive and growing global challenge of having so many children living in conflict and violent situations requires a response at the same scale and scope. Our education engagement in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) context, which stands at US$5.35 billion, has grown rapidly in recent years, reflecting the ever-increasing importance of the FCV agenda in education. Indeed, these projects now account for more than 25% of the World Bank education portfolio.

Education is crucial to minimizing the effects of fragility and displacement on the welfare of youth and children in the short-term and preventing the emergence of violent conflict in the long-term.

Support to Countries Throughout the Education Cycle

Our support to countries covers the entire learning cycle, to help shape resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone.

The ongoing Supporting Egypt Education Reform project , 2018-2025, supports transformational reforms of the Egyptian education system, by improving teaching and learning conditions in public schools. The World Bank has invested $500 million in the project focused on increasing access to quality kindergarten, enhancing the capacity of teachers and education leaders, developing a reliable student assessment system, and introducing the use of modern technology for teaching and learning. Specifically, the share of Egyptian 10-year-old students, who could read and comprehend at the global minimum proficiency level, increased to 45 percent in 2021.

In Nigeria , the $75 million Edo Basic Education Sector and Skills Transformation (EdoBESST) project, running from 2020-2024, is focused on improving teaching and learning in basic education. Under the project, which covers 97 percent of schools in the state, there is a strong focus on incorporating digital technologies for teachers. They were equipped with handheld tablets with structured lesson plans for their classes. Their coaches use classroom observation tools to provide individualized feedback. Teacher absence has reduced drastically because of the initiative. Over 16,000 teachers were trained through the project, and the introduction of technology has also benefited students.

Through the $235 million School Sector Development Program in Nepal (2017-2022), the number of children staying in school until Grade 12 nearly tripled, and the number of out-of-school children fell by almost seven percent. During the pandemic, innovative approaches were needed to continue education. Mobile phone penetration is high in the country. More than four in five households in Nepal have mobile phones. The project supported an educational service that made it possible for children with phones to connect to local radio that broadcast learning programs.

From 2017-2023, the $50 million Strengthening of State Universities in Chile project has made strides to improve quality and equity at state universities. The project helped reduce dropout: the third-year dropout rate fell by almost 10 percent from 2018-2022, keeping more students in school.

The World Bank’s first Program-for-Results financing in education was through a $202 million project in Tanzania , that ran from 2013-2021. The project linked funding to results and aimed to improve education quality. It helped build capacity, and enhanced effectiveness and efficiency in the education sector. Through the project, learning outcomes significantly improved alongside an unprecedented expansion of access to education for children in Tanzania. From 2013-2019, an additional 1.8 million students enrolled in primary schools. In 2019, the average reading speed for Grade 2 students rose to 22.3 words per minute, up from 17.3 in 2017. The project laid the foundation for the ongoing $500 million BOOST project , which supports over 12 million children to enroll early, develop strong foundational skills, and complete a quality education.

The $40 million Cambodia Secondary Education Improvement project , which ran from 2017-2022, focused on strengthening school-based management, upgrading teacher qualifications, and building classrooms in Cambodia, to improve learning outcomes, and reduce student dropout at the secondary school level. The project has directly benefited almost 70,000 students in 100 target schools, and approximately 2,000 teachers and 600 school administrators received training.

The World Bank is co-financing the $152.80 million Yemen Restoring Education and Learning Emergency project , running from 2020-2024, which is implemented through UNICEF, WFP, and Save the Children. It is helping to maintain access to basic education for many students, improve learning conditions in schools, and is working to strengthen overall education sector capacity. In the time of crisis, the project is supporting teacher payments and teacher training, school meals, school infrastructure development, and the distribution of learning materials and school supplies. To date, almost 600,000 students have benefited from these interventions.

The $87 million Providing an Education of Quality in Haiti project supported approximately 380 schools in the Southern region of Haiti from 2016-2023. Despite a highly challenging context of political instability and recurrent natural disasters, the project successfully supported access to education for students. The project provided textbooks, fresh meals, and teacher training support to 70,000 students, 3,000 teachers, and 300 school directors. It gave tuition waivers to 35,000 students in 118 non-public schools. The project also repaired 19 national schools damaged by the 2021 earthquake, which gave 5,500 students safe access to their schools again.

In 2013, just 5% of the poorest households in Uzbekistan had children enrolled in preschools. Thanks to the Improving Pre-Primary and General Secondary Education Project , by July 2019, around 100,000 children will have benefitted from the half-day program in 2,420 rural kindergartens, comprising around 49% of all preschool educational institutions, or over 90% of rural kindergartens in the country.

In addition to working closely with governments in our client countries, the World Bank also works at the global, regional, and local levels with a range of technical partners, including foundations, non-profit organizations, bilaterals, and other multilateral organizations. Some examples of our most recent global partnerships include:

UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Coalition for Foundational Learning

The World Bank is working closely with UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the Coalition for Foundational Learning to advocate and provide technical support to ensure foundational learning. The World Bank works with these partners to promote and endorse the Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning , a global network of countries committed to halving the global share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 by 2030.

Australian Aid, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Echida Giving, FCDO, German Cooperation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Conrad Hilton Foundation, LEGO Foundation, Porticus, USAID: Early Learning Partnership

The Early Learning Partnership (ELP) is a multi-donor trust fund, housed at the World Bank. ELP leverages World Bank strengths—a global presence, access to policymakers and strong technical analysis—to improve early learning opportunities and outcomes for young children around the world.

We help World Bank teams and countries get the information they need to make the case to invest in Early Childhood Development (ECD), design effective policies and deliver impactful programs. At the country level, ELP grants provide teams with resources for early seed investments that can generate large financial commitments through World Bank finance and government resources. At the global level, ELP research and special initiatives work to fill knowledge gaps, build capacity and generate public goods.

UNESCO, UNICEF: Learning Data Compact

UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning data gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries from monitoring the quality of their education systems and assessing if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a Learning Data Compact , a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS): Learning Poverty Indicator

Aimed at measuring and urging attention to foundational literacy as a prerequisite to achieve SDG4, this partnership was launched in 2019 to help countries strengthen their learning assessment systems, better monitor what students are learning in internationally comparable ways and improve the breadth and quality of global data on education.

FCDO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: EdTech Hub

Supported by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the EdTech Hub is aimed at improving the quality of ed-tech investments. The Hub launched a rapid response Helpdesk service to provide just-in-time advisory support to 70 low- and middle-income countries planning education technology and remote learning initiatives.

MasterCard Foundation

Our Tertiary Education and Skills global program, launched with support from the Mastercard Foundation, aims to prepare youth and adults for the future of work and society by improving access to relevant, quality, equitable reskilling and post-secondary education opportunities. It is designed to reframe, reform, and rebuild tertiary education and skills systems for the digital and green transformation.

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Areas of focus.

Data & Measurement

Early Childhood Development

Financing Education

Foundational Learning

Fragile, Conflict & Violent Contexts

Girls’ Education

Inclusive Education

Skills Development

Technology (EdTech)

Tertiary Education

Initiatives

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Essay On The Importance Of Education

Introduction: Education is very important for every country. Education begins at home and continues throughout our life. There are many reasons why people need education. It helps them to learn new things, find good jobs and lead a respectable life in the society. The more educated a person the higher is the chances of her or his success in life. Education gives us knowledge of the world around us. It prepares us to face the world. It changes us for better and provides us with a perspective of life. When you are educated, you know when to speak and when to remain silent. The entire progress of the nation is dependent on her literacy rates. But unfortunately, education is not free of cost today. Education, for all, remains a distant dream.

Importance of Education: Everyone knows that education is very important for our life. With education, we can do lots of things. Education is the basic requirement nowadays for everything that we wish to do. If we need to work, our employers will ask about our education. When getting married, the bride or groom’s family will also ask our educational qualifications. To succeed in life and make money too, we need education.

Education is the foundation of the progress of a country. Let us see in detail below:

Education Alleviates Poverty – People who have necessary skills like reading, writing, and numerical skills have more opportunities than those who lack it. They can explore the world and find their purpose in life. Educated people are health conscious and are more productive in their work. With the right education, people do not get addicted to harmful drugs and alcohol.

Education can help people choose their desired skills and career paths. With high literacy rates, we can have happy and healthy citizens.

Education Reduces Crime Rates – Education can improve the law and order situation of a place. People are more aware of fraudulent practices and have the courage to fight against crooked people. They become reluctant in giving bribes and do not fall in the traps of cons and criminals.

Primary and secondary education, if made free and compulsory, can prevent lots of children from committing crimes such as robbery, rape, and murder. After completing school education, children who go to universities, have better employability scope, and will not consider crime as an option for survival. Thus, education plays a crucial role in making society safe and secure.

Education Reduces Inequality in Society – Our society was patriarchal in nature, and women were not allowed to earn money. Moreover, they did not have the right to own property and were utterly dependent on men. They were made helpless and often faced discrimination and oppression. But all these can change if women go to schools and colleges. They get to know about their rights and have the courage to fight for justice.

When women in low-income families go to work in industries, they get fewer wages as compared to men. Education can bring in the system where one has to pay equal wages for equal work.

Education is the only way to bust myths and superstitions – We live in a diverse world with a plethora of cultural and traditional norms. But sometimes our ancestral beliefs can ruin a person’s life. For example, some people are considered ill-fated right from birth. We have even grouped people as untouchables and denied them their fundamental rights. The illiterate people believe in miracles where a simple prayer can make a blind person see, a dumb person talks, and a lame person walk. They end up wasting precious money by following such myths. There are many fraudsters who take advantage of the ignorance of the people. Education promotes scientific reasons for the occurrence of all the events in the world. So educated people alone can quash the existing black market based on religion and faith.

Education can prevent wars and terrorism – Education sows the seed of hope in young minds. They imagine, dream, and proceed towards a brighter future. Education alone teaches us that waging wars could lead to nothing but a complete loss for everybody involved. Some lose their families, their youth, and their future in the name of protests and fights. Some innocent people lose their lives, their properties, and their loved ones too. A lot of natural resources are depleted in the name of war, and it is nothing but irreversible damage to Mother Nature by humankind. A sound education system can teach us ways to communicate and compromise. Knowing about all these losses through education; we can resolve our issues peacefully.

Education promotes health and hygiene – In primary schools, kids are taught about the significance of cleanliness and eating a balanced diet. We are also told about the advantages of recycling and reuse. We get to know about the scarcity of natural resources and the importance of conservation of nature and the environment. We make judicious choices in everyday life. Lessons on living in harmony with nature and keeping the environment pollution free, when applied practically, could improve the quality of air, water, and soil. It will also enhance the aesthetic beauty of the environment, and we will be able to attract more tourists.

Educational Sector and Problem: Meanwhile, modern-day education is something we are aware of. Other than some ancient practices, education nowadays is available from –

Universities
Military training institutes
Places of worship
Finishing schools
Private tuitions
Internet and online resources

Many people say that education and wealth are closely linked. This is not entirely true. Education does not merely mean a good degree of some great university. Education actually means how we see and perceive things. Above that, education also means how we respond or react to situations. Education from schools and colleges is important because it helps us how to live in a civilized society and respect one another. It shows us how to obey the laws of the society and laws of the land we dwell.

Problems – Education is not available free of cost in our country. We don’t have enough reforms in primary education that represents the grassroots level. Poor people cannot afford to pay high tuition fees in private schools. There is a lack of punctuality, discipline, and motivation among the teachers and management too. So the number of dropouts from schools keeps increasing. Such children end up working as laborers and remain in poverty for the rest of their lives. In order to progress as a nation, the government has to set right the condition of all primary schools in the country.

Conclusion: Nowadays, education is important because there are thousands of things around us that are made with modern technology. We require education to use these modern gadgets and get the best benefits of technology. Education also teaches us how to respect other human beings. It is because of education that every country has laws that tell people what can be done and what should be avoided.

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What’s the Purpose of Standards in Education? An Explainer

For almost the past four decades, academic standards have been a defining focus of efforts to improve student achievement.

The movement for high academic standards—determinations of what students should know and be able to do across subjects and grade levels—promised to center teaching and learning on common themes across schools and raise expectations for all students. Standards have shaped the teaching and learning landscape in American schools, dictating everything from curriculum content to assessment design.

They have also been, and continue to be, a site of controversy and political battles.

In this explainer, Education Week breaks down what standards are, how they have come to occupy such a central place in the U.S. education system, and how they have—and have not—changed instructional practice and student outcomes.

What are standards?

Academic standards—sometimes called content standards—describe what students should know and be able to do in the core academic subjects at each grade level. They can cover skills, such as adding and subtracting within 100, or content, like understanding the roles of the three branches of government.

Standards are not a curriculum, though. They don’t outline the day-to-day lessons and activities teachers use; rather, they provide an end goal for instruction.

States set academic standards and school districts are required to teach to them. Most states revise their standards every 5-10 years, a process that usually involves convening panels of writers from different parts of the education system, opportunities for public comment, and several rounds of drafts.

There can be big differences in focus and rigor between different states’ standards in the same subject—something that helped pave the way for the drive for common, national standards in English/language arts and math (more on this below).

There are also differences in grain size. Some standards are very specific. Take, for instance, Tennessee’s social studies standards, which name historical figures, documents, and discrete events that students should know at each grade level. Compare these to Maine’s social studies standards, which focus mainly on overarching themes, trends, and eras.

Finally, academic standards are distinct from performance standards, which define the level of achievement that students need to reach—often on a standardized test—to be described as “proficient” or not.

Still, academic and performance standards are connected. In theory, performance standards measure to what degree students have mastered the content and skills outlined in the academic standards.

Why are standards important?

The underlying assumption of standards-based reform is that all students are capable of meeting high expectations. In a nation that has held students to varying academic expectations according to school quality and social class, many advocates saw standards as a foundation upon which excellence and equity could be built into the nation’s public education system.

Setting rigorous academic standards, measuring student progress against those standards, and holding students and educators accountable for meeting them are the essential components of the standards-based reform movement. Whether or not they have helped to raise the quality of American education remains a subject of heated debate.

In 1983, a national commission convened by the U.S. Department of Education published “A Nation At Risk,” sharply criticizing the state of curriculum and instruction in U.S. schools. The seminal report declared that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.”

The report triggered a tidal wave of concern, critique, and policy change. Throughout the 1990s, states began to write their own academic standards. In 2002, then-President George W. Bush signed the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which required states to test students’ mastery of those state-crafted standards annually.

President Ronald Reagan addresses a meeting of teachers and administrators in Washington from outstanding secondary schools across the nation on Aug. 27, 1984.

In his 2021 book Beyond Standards: The Fragmentation of Education Governance and the Promise of Curriculum Reform , Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California, outlines the theory of change behind the standards-based reform movement. The standards would set the vision and the framework for instruction. States would then support schools in achieving that vision, by creating aligning assessments, recommending curricula, and offering professional learning for teachers.

Nearly every state adopted standards in English, math, social studies, science, and other subjects. Still, some advocates and researchers argued that the quality of the standards developed after “A Nation At Risk” varied too widely state by state, resulting in widely disparate expectations for students depending on where they lived. In 2008, influential policy groups called for a “common core” of national standards in English and math.

These standards, they said, should be more tightly focused, so that students learned about a smaller range of topics with more depth. They should be more rigorous, introducing advanced topics at earlier grade levels. And they would be coherent, with each grade’s content building toward the next and avoiding repetition.

The Common Core State Standards were born from this effort.

What are the Common Core State Standards?

In 2009, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association launched an initiative to create common national standards in English/language arts and math.

Panels of experts drafted them, and states reviewed and revised them. Within a few years of their 2010 release, 46 states and the District of Columbia had adopted them. All but a few states also agreed to participate in two projects to design matching, shared tests for the new standards as well, financed with $360 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education.

But in the following years, the standards saw a strong backlash. By 2017, 11 states had announced that they were replacing the Common Core or doing a major rewrite .

The standards became a political lightning rod in several quarters. On the left, critics worried that common standards would lead to a top-down, homogenized curriculum that stifled teacher professional autonomy. On the right, critics accused the federal government of overreach into education decisions.

(The standards were national in scope, created and adopted by states. They weren’t federally mandated. The federal government is prohibited from creating any program that directs the curriculum of schools. But then-President Barack Obama’s Education Department did give states incentives to adopt new “college- and career-ready standards” as part of grant program.)

For a deeper dive into the Common Core State Standards, see this explainer .

The standards are still a site of partisan politics.

Running for election in 2016, former President Donald Trump said his administration would be “getting rid of Common Core.” That’s not something that a president can do , as the federal government can’t force states to abandon any particular set of standards.

Many states still use the standards, or have replaced them with standards that are very similar.

Do higher standards improve student achievement?

Most evidence suggests that, at least on their own, they don’t have a big effect. But it’s also hard to measure this question because standards reform often takes place at the same time as other changes.

Between the 1990s and the 2010s—the height of the standards-based reform era—scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress generally trended upward. But this period also saw the implementation of No Child Left Behind, for example, which put in place accountability measures that required districts and schools to offer additional services, change governance, or take other improvement steps if groups of underserved students didn’t make progress.

Recent research on the effects of the Common Core has been mixed.

One federally funded study , published in 2019, compared different groups of states that had adopted the Common Core. One group of states already had standards similar to CCSS, so adoption didn’t shift their standards much. The other group of states had to make sweeping changes.

The researchers found that in states where standards changed the most, students’ performance actually declined slightly in 4th grade reading and 8th grade math.

But another study, published in 2021 , found a positive effect of the Common Core by comparing states that implemented the standards earlier to later implementers. This research found a positive initial effect on math scores. But this effect was not evenly distributed, with economically advantaged students benefiting and economically disadvantaged students showing no difference.

A decade after states started implementing the standards, some education researchers and policy experts have argued that the focus on standards without as much attention to curriculum was misplaced.

In Beyond Standards, Polikoff argues states should step up quality control of curriculum materials—and that even curriculum-focused instructional reform can’t succeed unless the field addresses foundational, structural inequities that are baked into the education system as it currently operates. In another 2021 book, Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of the Common Core, Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Loveless also suggests a greater focus on curriculum and instruction, the “technical core” of the classroom.

Both of these books highlight an important limitation of standards: Even under the same state standards, district-level—and even classroom-level—decisions about materials and methods can lead to big variations in the quality of instruction that children receive.

Some of the architects of the standards movement have made similar points , arguing that states should be doing more “quality control” when it comes to curriculum materials. Achieving that coherence is the next part of the agenda, they have said. Some states have started to exert more control in this way .

Researchers claim that this kind of coherence could lead to better student outcomes. And in interviews with researchers from the RAND Corporation , teachers said that they valued knowing what goals they’re supposed to meet, and what roadmap they’re going to use to get there.

Are there other national standards?

While the Common Core State Standards have received the lion’s share of attention and commentary, the common-standards movement touched other subjects beyond ELA and math.

There are the Next Generation Science Standards, released in 2013. Developed by a bipartisan network of 26 states and several research and professional organizations, the standards outline what K-12 students need to know about physical, life, and earth and space sciences.

The standards aim to center scientific investigation, integrating science and engineering practices alongside content knowledge. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards . (Read more about NGSS here .)

Then there’s the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards , developed by state leaders and 15 social studies professional organizations. These standards emphasize historical inquiry and civic participation. They focus more on skills in the discipline than on content, however—states that use them would have to decide which historical figures, events, and documents students should study.

In art, there are the National Core Arts Standards, adopted by at least 14 states . There are also National Sex Education Standards .

None of these standards are mandatory for states to adopt. Even so, most have set off heated debates—both about their approach to instruction, and the content they cover or omit.

Why are standards so political?

Deciding what’s important for children to learn is inextricably linked with values and norms. Sometimes, these choices about teaching and learning get caught up in partisan politics.

In 2021, conservative pundits and Republican politicians began a campaign against what they perceived as inappropriate discussion of race and racism in social studies classrooms. They argued that teachers were overemphasizing histories of oppression and suffering, and making white children feel guilty for the racial injustice woven throughout America’s past.

This political movement upended the social studies standards revision process in several states that had scheduled updates planned that year, resulting in volatile working sessions and thousands of angry public comments.

Decisions about teaching techniques can strike a nerve, too.

That’s what happened with the common core’s approach to math instruction. Teaching to the standards meant using new strategies like “decomposing,” or breaking numbers into parts that are easier to work with, and “making 10,” or finding combinations of numbers that add up to 10 to solve addition and subtraction problems.

Many of these techniques, which aimed to cement children’s conceptual understanding of number relationships, were unfamiliar to elementary school parents . Politicians and late-night comedians alike ridiculed these new ways of teaching.

Debates about standards cut to the core of some of the biggest issues in education: What do we think children should know about the world? How can schools best prepare them to succeed later in life?

These questions are complex and involve high stakes—and as such, will likely always court controversy.

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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the historic Ritz Theatre in downtown Jacksonville, Fla., on July 21, 2023. Harris spoke out against the new standards adopted by the Florida State Board of Education in the teaching of Black history.

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Why Is Assessment Important?

Asking students to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter is critical to the learning process; it is essential to evaluate whether the educational goals and standards of the lessons are being met.

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Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not the goals of education are being met. Assessment affects decisions about grades, placement, advancement, instructional needs, curriculum, and, in some cases, funding. Assessment inspire us to ask these hard questions: "Are we teaching what we think we are teaching?" "Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?" "Is there a way to teach the subject better, thereby promoting better learning?"

Today's students need to know not only the basic reading and arithmetic skills, but also skills that will allow them to face a world that is continually changing. They must be able to think critically, to analyze, and to make inferences. Changes in the skills base and knowledge our students need require new learning goals; these new learning goals change the relationship between assessment and instruction. Teachers need to take an active role in making decisions about the purpose of assessment and the content that is being assessed.

Grant Wiggins, a nationally recognized assessment expert, shared his thoughts on performance assessments, standardized tests, and more in an Edutopia.org interview . Read his answers to the following questions from the interview and reflect on his ideas:

What distinction do you make between 'testing' and 'assessment'?
Why is it important that teachers consider assessment before they begin planning lessons or projects?
Standardized tests, such as the SAT, are used by schools as a predictor of a student's future success. Is this a valid use of these tests?

Do you agree with his statements? Why or why not? Discuss your opinions with your peers.

When assessment works best, it does the following:

What is the student's knowledge base?
What is the student's performance base?
What are the student's needs?
What has to be taught?
What performance demonstrates understanding?
What performance demonstrates knowledge?
What performance demonstrates mastery?
How is the student doing?
What teaching methods or approaches are most effective?
What changes or modifications to a lesson are needed to help the student?
What has the student learned?
Can the student talk about the new knowledge?
Can the student demonstrate and use the new skills in other projects?
Now that I'm in charge of my learning, how am I doing?
Now that I know how I'm doing, how can I do better?
What else would I like to learn?
What is working for the students?
What can I do to help the students more?
In what direction should we go next?

Continue to the next section of the guide, Types of Assessment .

This guide is organized into six sections:

Introduction
Types of Assessment
How Do Rubrics Help?
Workshop Activities
Resources for Assessment

EdTrust in Texas advocates for an equitable education for Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds across the state. We believe in centering the voices of Texas students and families as we work alongside them for the better future they deserve.

Our mission is to close the gaps in opportunity and achievement that disproportionately impact students who are the most underserved, with a particular focus on Black and Latino/a students and students from low-income backgrounds.

EdTrust–New York is a statewide education policy and advocacy organization focused first and foremost on doing right by New York’s children. Although many organizations speak up for the adults employed by schools and colleges, we advocate for students, especially those whose needs and potential are often overlooked.

EdTrust-Tennessee advocates for equitable education for historically-underserved students across the state. We believe in centering the voices of Tennessee students and families as we work alongside them for the future they deserve.

EdTrust–West is committed to dismantling the racial and economic barriers embedded in the California education system. Through our research and advocacy, EdTrust-West engages diverse communities dedicated to education equity and justice and increases political and public will to build an education system where students of color and multilingual learners, especially those experiencing poverty, will thrive.

The Education Trust in Louisiana works to promote educational equity for historically underserved students in the Louisiana’s schools. We work alongside students, families, and communities to build urgency and collective will for educational equity and justice.

EdTrust in Texas advocates for an equitable education for historically-underserved students across the state. We believe in centering the voices of Texas students and families as we work alongside them for the better future they deserve.

EdTrust in Washington advocates for an equitable education for historically-underserved students across the state. We believe in centering the voices of Washington students and families as we work alongside them for the better future they deserve.

Massachusetts

The Education Trust team in Massachusetts convenes and supports the Massachusetts Education Equity Partnership (MEEP), a collective effort of more than 20 social justice, civil rights and education organizations from across the Commonwealth working together to promote educational equity for historically underserved students in our state’s schools.

Home – Blog – Classroom Assignments Matter. Here’s Why.

Classroom Assignments Matter. Here’s Why.

As a former classroom teacher, coach, and literacy specialist, I know the beginning of the school year demands that educators pay attention to a number of competing interests. Let me…

As a former classroom teacher, coach, and literacy specialist, I know the beginning of the school year demands that educators pay attention to a number of competing interests. Let me suggest one thing for teachers to focus on that, above all else, can close the student achievement gap: the rigor and quality of classroom assignments.

Digging into classroom assignments is revealing. It tells a story about curricula, instruction, achievement, and education equity. In the process, it uncovers what teachers believe about their students, what they know and understand about their standards and curricula, and what they are willing to do to advance student learning and achievement. So, when educators critically examine their own assignments (and the work students produce), they have an opportunity to gain powerful insight about teaching and learning — the kind of insight that can move the needle on student achievement. This type of analysis can identify trends across content areas such as English/language arts, science, social studies, and math.

At Ed Trust, we undertook such an analysis of 4,000 classroom assignments and found that students are being given in-school and out-of-school assignments that don’t align with grade-level standards, lack sufficient opportunities and time for writing, and include tasks that require low-level thinking and work production. We’ve seen assignments with little-to-no meaningful discussion and those with teachers over-supporting students, which effectively rob students of the kind of challenging thinking that leads to academic growth. And we’ve seen assignments where the reading looked like stop-and-go traffic, overrun with prescribed note-taking, breaking down students’ ability to build reading flow and deep learning.

These findings served as the basis for our second Equity in Motion convening. For three days this summer, educators from across the country explored the importance of regular and thoughtful assignment analysis. They found that carefully developed assignments have the power to make a curriculum last in students’ minds. They saw how assignments reveal whether students are grasping curricula, and if not, how teachers can adapt instruction. They also saw how assignments give clues into their own beliefs about students, which carry serious equity implications for all students, especially those who have been traditionally under-served. Throughout the convening, educators talked about the implications of their assignments and how assignments can affect overall achievement and address issues of equity. If assignments fall short of what standards demand, students will be ill-equipped to achieve at high levels.

The main take-away from this convening was simple but powerful: Assignments matter!

I encourage all teachers to take that message to heart. This school year, aim to make sure your assignments are more rigorous, standards-aligned, and authentically relevant to your students. Use our Literacy Analysis Assignment Guide to examine your assignments — alone, or better yet, with colleagues — to ensure you’re delivering assignments that propel your students to reach higher and achieve more. Doing this will provide a more complete picture of where your students are in their learning and how you can move them toward skill and concept mastery.

Remember this: Students can do no better than the assignments they receive.

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Essay on Education for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on education.

Education is an important tool which is very useful in everybody’s life. Education is what differentiates us from other living beings on earth. It makes man the smartest creature on earth. It empowers humans and gets them ready to face challenges of life efficiently. With that being said, education still remains a luxury and not a necessity in our country. Educational awareness needs to be spread through the country to make education accessible. But, this remains incomplete without first analyzing the importance of education. Only when the people realize what significance it holds, can they consider it a necessity for a good life. In this essay on Education, we will see the importance of education and how it is a doorway to success.

Importance of Education

Education is the most significant tool in eliminating poverty and unemployment . Moreover, it enhances the commercial scenario and benefits the country overall. So, the higher the level of education in a country, the better the chances of development are.

In addition, this education also benefits an individual in various ways. It helps a person take a better and informed decision with the use of their knowledge. This increases the success rate of a person in life.

Subsequently, education is also responsible for providing with an enhanced lifestyle. It gives you career opportunities that can increase your quality of life.

Similarly, education also helps in making a person independent. When one is educated enough, they won’t have to depend on anyone else for their livelihood. They will be self-sufficient to earn for themselves and lead a good life.

Above all, education also enhances the self-confidence of a person and makes them certain of things in life. When we talk from the countries viewpoint, even then education plays a significant role. Educated people vote for the better candidate of the country. This ensures the development and growth of a nation.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Doorway to Success

To say that education is your doorway to success would be an understatement. It serves as the key which will unlock numerous doors that will lead to success. This will, in turn, help you build a better life for yourself.

An educated person has a lot of job opportunities waiting for them on the other side of the door. They can choose from a variety of options and not be obligated to do something they dislike. Most importantly, education impacts our perception positively. It helps us choose the right path and look at things from various viewpoints rather than just one.

With education, you can enhance your productivity and complete a task better in comparison to an uneducated person. However, one must always ensure that education solely does not ensure success.

It is a doorway to success which requires hard work, dedication and more after which can you open it successfully. All of these things together will make you successful in life.

In conclusion, education makes you a better person and teaches you various skills. It enhances your intellect and the ability to make rational decisions. It enhances the individual growth of a person.

Education also improves the economic growth of a country . Above all, it aids in building a better society for the citizens of a country. It helps to destroy the darkness of ignorance and bring light to the world.

FAQs on Education

Q.1 Why is Education Important?

A.1 Education is important because it is responsible for the overall development of a person. It helps you acquire skills which are necessary for becoming successful in life.

Q.2 How does Education serve as a Doorway to Success?

A.2 Education is a doorway to success because it offers you job opportunities. Furthermore, it changes our perception of life and makes it better.

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Pedagogy - Diversifying Your Teaching Methods, Learning Activities, and Assignments

Inclusive Teaching at a PWI is in a blue rectangle at the top. Below are three green circles for Climate, Pedagogy, and Content. Pedagogy is emphasized with key points: Diversify and critically assess teaching methods, learning activities, assignments.

Definition of Pedagogy

In the most general sense, pedagogy is all the ways that instructors and students work with the course content. The fundamental learning goal for students is to be able to do “something meaningful” with the course content. Meaningful learning typically results in students working in the middle to upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy . We sometimes find that novice instructors conflate course content with pedagogy. This often results in “teaching as talking” where the presentation of content by the instructor is confused with the learning of content by the students. Think of your course content as clay and pedagogy as the ways you ask students to make “something meaningful” from that clay. Pedagogy is the combination of teaching methods (what instructors do), learning activities (what instructors ask their students to do), and learning assessments (the assignments, projects, or tasks that measure student learning).

Key Idea for Pedagogy

Diversify your pedagogy by varying your teaching methods, learning activities, and assignments. Critically assess your pedagogy through the lens of BIPOC students’ experiences at a PWI . We visualize these two related practices as a cycle because they are iterative and ongoing. Diversifying your pedagogy likely means shedding some typical ways of teaching in your discipline, or the teaching practices you inherited. It likely means doing more active learning and less traditional lecturing. Transforming good pedagogy into equitable pedagogy means rethinking your pedagogy in light of the PWI context and considering the ways your pedagogy may help or hinder learning for BIPOC students.

PWI Assumptions for Pedagogy

Understanding where students are on the spectrum of novice to expert learning in your discipline or course is a key challenge to implementing effective and inclusive pedagogy (National Research Council 2000). Instructors are typically so far removed from being a novice learner in their disciplines that they struggle to understand where students are on that spectrum. A key PWI assumption is that students understand how your disciplinary knowledge is organized and constructed . Students typically do not understand your discipline or the many other disciplines they are working in during their undergraduate years. Even graduate students may find it puzzling to explain the origins, methodologies, theories, logics, and assumptions of their disciplines. A second PWI assumption is that students are (or should be) academically prepared to learn your discipline . Students may be academically prepared for learning in some disciplines, but unless their high school experience was college preparatory and well supported, students (especially first-generation college students) are likely finding their way through a mysterious journey of different disciplinary conventions and modes of working and thinking (Nelson 1996).

A third PWI assumption is that instructors may confuse students’ academic underpreparation with their intelligence or capacity to learn . Academic preparation is typically a function of one’s high school experience including whether that high school was well resourced or under funded. Whether or not a student receives a quality high school education is usually a structural matter reflecting inequities in our K12 educational systems, not a reflection of an individual student’s ability to learn. A final PWI assumption is that students will learn well in the ways that the instructor learned well . Actually most instructors in higher education self-selected into disciplines that align with their interests, skills, academic preparation, and possibly family and community support. Our students have broader and different goals for seeking a college education and bring a range of skills to their coursework, which may or may not align with instructors’ expectations of how students learn. Inclusive teaching at a PWI means supporting the learning and career goals of our students.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge as a Core Concept

Kind and Chan (2019) propose that Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is the synthesis of Content Knowledge (expertise about a subject area) and Pedagogical Knowledge (expertise about teaching methods, assessment, classroom management, and how students learn). Content Knowledge (CK) without Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) limits instructors’ ability to teach effectively or inclusively. Novice instructors that rely on traditional lectures likely have limited Pedagogical Knowledge and may also be replicating their own inherited teaching practices. While Kind and Chan (2019) are writing from the perspective of science education, their concepts apply across disciplines. Moreover, Kind and Chan (2019) support van Driel et al.’s assertion that:

high-quality PCK is not characterized by knowing as many strategies as possible to teach a certain topic plus all the misconceptions students may have about it but by knowing when to apply a certain strategy in recognition of students’ actual learning needs and understanding why a certain teaching approach may be useful in one situation (quoted in Kind and Chan 2019, 975).

As we’ve stressed throughout this guide, the teaching context matters, and for inclusive pedagogy, special attention should be paid to the learning goals, instructor preparation, and students’ point of entry into course content. We also argue that the PWI context shapes what instructors might practice as CK, PK, and PCK. We recommend instructors become familiar with evidence-based pedagogy (or the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning , SoTL) in their fields. Moreover, we advise instructors to find and follow those instructors and scholars that specifically focus on inclusive teaching in their fields in order to develop an inclusive, flexible, and discipline-specific Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

Suggested Practices for Diversifying + Assessing Pedagogy

Although diversifying and critically assessing teaching methods, learning activities, and assignments will vary across disciplines, we offer a few key starting points. Diversifying your pedagogy is easier than critically assessing it through a PWI lens, but both steps are essential. In general, you can diversify your pedagogy by learning about active learning, peer learning, team-based learning, experiential learning, problem-based learning, and case-based learning, among others . There is extensive evidence-based pedagogical literature and practical guides readily available for these methods. And you can also find and follow scholars in your discipline that use these and other teaching methods.

Diversifying Your Pedagogy

Convert traditional lectures into interactive (or active) lectures.

For in-person or synchronous online courses, break a traditional lecture into “mini-lectures” of 10-15 minutes in length. After each mini-lecture, ask your students to process their learning using a discussion or problem prompt, a Classroom Assessment Technique (CAT), a Think-Pair-Share, or another brief learning activity. Read Lecturing from Center for Teaching , Vanderbilt University.

Structure small group discussions

Provide both a process and concrete questions or tasks to guide student learning (for example, provide a scenario with 3 focused tasks such as identify the problem, brainstorm possible solutions, and list the pros/cons for each solution). Read How to Hold a Better Class Discussion , The Chronicle of Higher Education .

Integrate active learning

Integrate active learning, especially into courses that are conceptual, theoretical, or otherwise historically challenging (for example, calculus, organic chemistry, statistics, philosophy). For gateway courses, draw upon the research of STEM and other education specialists on how active learning and peer learning improves student learning and reduces disparities. Read the Association of American Universities STEM Network Scholarship .

Include authentic learning

Include authentic learning, learning activities and assignments that mirror how students will work after graduation. What does it mean to think and work like an engineer? How do project teams work together? How does one present research in an educational social media campaign? Since most students seeking a college education will not become academic researchers or faculty, what kinds of things will they do in the “real world?” Help students practice and hone those skills as they learn the course content. Read Edutopia’s PBL: What Does It Take for a Project to Be Authentic?

Vary assignments and provide options

Graded assignments should range from low to high stakes. Low stakes assignments allow students to learn from their mistakes and receive timely feedback on their learning. Options for assignments allow students to demonstrate their learning, rather than demonstrate their skill at a particular type of assessment (such as a multiple choice exam or an academic research paper). Read our guide, Create Assessments That Promote Learning for All Students .

Critically Assess Your Pedagogy

Critically assessing your pedagogy through the PWI lens with attention to how your pedagogy may affect the learning of BIPOC students is more challenging and highly contextual. Instructors will want to review and apply the concepts and principles discussed in the earlier sections of this guide on Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), PWI Assumptions, and Class Climate.

Reflect on patterns

Reflect on patterns of participation, progress in learning (grade distributions), and other course-related evidence. Look at your class sessions and assignments as experimental data. Who participated? What kinds of participation did you observe? Who didn’t participate? Why might that be? Are there a variety of ways for students to participate in the learning activities (individually, in groups, via discussion, via writing, synchronously/in-person, asynchronously/online)?

Respond to feedback on climate

Respond to feedback on climate from on-going check-ins and Critical Incident Questionnaires (CIQs) as discussed in the Climate Section (Ongoing Practices). Students will likely disengage from your requests for feedback if you do not respond to their feedback. Use this feedback to re-calibrate and re-think your pedagogy.

Seek feedback on student learning

Seek feedback on student learning in the form of Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs), in-class polls, asynchronous forums, exam wrappers, and other methods. Demonstrate that you care about your students’ learning by responding to this feedback as well. Here’s how students in previous semesters learned this material … I’m scheduling a problem-solving review session in the next class in response to the results of the exam …

Be diplomatic but clear when correcting mistakes and misconceptions

First-generation college students, many of whom may also identify as BIPOC, have typically achieved a great deal with few resources and significant barriers (Yosso 2005). However, they may be more likely to internalize their learning mistakes as signs that they don’t belong at the university. When correcting, be sure to normalize mistakes as part of the learning process. The correct answer is X, but I can see why you thought it was Y. Many students think it is Y because … But the correct answer is X because … Thank you for helping us understand that misconception.

Allow time for students to think and prepare for participation in a non-stressful setting

This was already suggested in the Climate Section (Race Stressors), but it is worth repeating. BIPOC students and multilingual students may need more time to prepare, not because of their intellectual abilities, but because of the effects of race stressors and other stressors increasing their cognitive load. Providing discussion or problem prompts in advance will reduce this stress and make space for learning. Additionally both student populations may experience stereotype threat, so participation in the “public” aspects of the class session may be stressful in ways that are not true for the majority white and domestic students. If you cannot provide prompts in advance, be sure to allow ample individual “think time” during a synchronous class session.

Avoid consensus models or majority rules processes

This was stated in the Climate Section (Teaching Practices to Avoid), but it’s such an entrenched PWI practice that it needs to be spotlighted and challenged. If I am a numerical “minority” and I am asked to come to consensus or agreement with a numerical “majority,” it is highly likely that my perspective will be minimized or dismissed. Or, I will have to expend a lot of energy to persuade my group of the value of my perspective, which is highly stressful. This is an unacceptable burden to put on BIPOC students and also may result in BIPOC students being placed in the position of teaching white students about a particular perspective or experience. The resulting tensions may also damage BIPOC students’ positive relationships with white students and instructors. When suitable for your content, create a learning experience that promotes seeking multiple solutions to problems, cases, or prompts. Rather than asking students to converge on one best recommendation, why not ask students to log all possible solutions (without evaluation) and then to recommend at least two solutions that include a rationale? Moreover, for course content dealing with policies, the recommended solutions could be explained in terms of their possible effects on different communities. If we value diverse perspectives, we need to structure the consideration of those perspectives into our learning activities and assignments.

We recognize the challenges of assessing your pedagogy through the PWI lens and doing your best to assess the effects on BIPOC student learning. This is a complex undertaking. But we encourage you to invite feedback from your students as well as to seek the guidance of colleagues, including advisors and other student affairs professionals, to inform your ongoing practices of teaching inclusively at a PWI. In the next section, we complete our exploration of the Inclusive Teaching at a PWI Framework by exploring the importance of auditing, diversifying, and critically assessing course content.

Pedagogy References

Kind, Vanessa and Kennedy K.H. Chan. 2019. “Resolving the Amalgam: Connecting Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Knowledge.” International Journal of Science Education . 41(7): 964-978.

Howard, Jay. N.D. “How to Hold a Better Class Discussion: Advice Guide.” The Chronicle of Higher Education . https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-hold-a-better-class-discussion/#2

National Research Council. 2000. “How Experts Differ from Novices.” Chap 2 in How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition . Washington D.C.: The National Academies Press. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/9853/how-people-learn-brain-mind-experience-and-school-expanded-edition

Nelson, Craig E. 1996. “Student Diversity Requires Different Approaches to College Teaching, Even in Math and Science.” The American Behavioral Scientist . 40 (2): 165-175.

Sathy, Viji and Kelly A. Hogan. N.D. “How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive: Advice Guide.” The Chronicle of Higher Education . https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-make-your-teaching-more-inclusive/?cid=gen_sign_in

Yosso, Tara J. 2005. “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth.” Race, Ethnicity and Education . 8 (1): 69-91.

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How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?

Prepared by allison boye, ph.d. teaching, learning, and professional development center.

Assessment is a necessary part of the teaching and learning process, helping us measure whether our students have really learned what we want them to learn. While exams and quizzes are certainly favorite and useful methods of assessment, out of class assignments (written or otherwise) can offer similar insights into our students' learning. And just as creating a reliable test takes thoughtfulness and skill, so does creating meaningful and effective assignments. Undoubtedly, many instructors have been on the receiving end of disappointing student work, left wondering what went wrong… and often, those problems can be remedied in the future by some simple fine-tuning of the original assignment. This paper will take a look at some important elements to consider when developing assignments, and offer some easy approaches to creating a valuable assessment experience for all involved.

First Things First…

Before assigning any major tasks to students, it is imperative that you first define a few things for yourself as the instructor:

Your goals for the assignment . Why are you assigning this project, and what do you hope your students will gain from completing it? What knowledge, skills, and abilities do you aim to measure with this assignment? Creating assignments is a major part of overall course design, and every project you assign should clearly align with your goals for the course in general. For instance, if you want your students to demonstrate critical thinking, perhaps asking them to simply summarize an article is not the best match for that goal; a more appropriate option might be to ask for an analysis of a controversial issue in the discipline. Ultimately, the connection between the assignment and its purpose should be clear to both you and your students to ensure that it is fulfilling the desired goals and doesn't seem like “busy work.” For some ideas about what kinds of assignments match certain learning goals, take a look at this page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons.
Have they experienced “socialization” in the culture of your discipline (Flaxman, 2005)? Are they familiar with any conventions you might want them to know? In other words, do they know the “language” of your discipline, generally accepted style guidelines, or research protocols?
Do they know how to conduct research? Do they know the proper style format, documentation style, acceptable resources, etc.? Do they know how to use the library (Fitzpatrick, 1989) or evaluate resources?
What kinds of writing or work have they previously engaged in? For instance, have they completed long, formal writing assignments or research projects before? Have they ever engaged in analysis, reflection, or argumentation? Have they completed group assignments before? Do they know how to write a literature review or scientific report?

In his book Engaging Ideas (1996), John Bean provides a great list of questions to help instructors focus on their main teaching goals when creating an assignment (p.78):

1. What are the main units/modules in my course?

2. What are my main learning objectives for each module and for the course?

3. What thinking skills am I trying to develop within each unit and throughout the course?

4. What are the most difficult aspects of my course for students?

5. If I could change my students' study habits, what would I most like to change?

6. What difference do I want my course to make in my students' lives?

What your students need to know

Once you have determined your own goals for the assignment and the levels of your students, you can begin creating your assignment. However, when introducing your assignment to your students, there are several things you will need to clearly outline for them in order to ensure the most successful assignments possible.

First, you will need to articulate the purpose of the assignment . Even though you know why the assignment is important and what it is meant to accomplish, you cannot assume that your students will intuit that purpose. Your students will appreciate an understanding of how the assignment fits into the larger goals of the course and what they will learn from the process (Hass & Osborn, 2007). Being transparent with your students and explaining why you are asking them to complete a given assignment can ultimately help motivate them to complete the assignment more thoughtfully.
If you are asking your students to complete a writing assignment, you should define for them the “rhetorical or cognitive mode/s” you want them to employ in their writing (Flaxman, 2005). In other words, use precise verbs that communicate whether you are asking them to analyze, argue, describe, inform, etc. (Verbs like “explore” or “comment on” can be too vague and cause confusion.) Provide them with a specific task to complete, such as a problem to solve, a question to answer, or an argument to support. For those who want assignments to lead to top-down, thesis-driven writing, John Bean (1996) suggests presenting a proposition that students must defend or refute, or a problem that demands a thesis answer.
It is also a good idea to define the audience you want your students to address with their assignment, if possible – especially with writing assignments. Otherwise, students will address only the instructor, often assuming little requires explanation or development (Hedengren, 2004; MIT, 1999). Further, asking students to address the instructor, who typically knows more about the topic than the student, places the student in an unnatural rhetorical position. Instead, you might consider asking your students to prepare their assignments for alternative audiences such as other students who missed last week's classes, a group that opposes their position, or people reading a popular magazine or newspaper. In fact, a study by Bean (1996) indicated the students often appreciate and enjoy assignments that vary elements such as audience or rhetorical context, so don't be afraid to get creative!
Obviously, you will also need to articulate clearly the logistics or “business aspects” of the assignment . In other words, be explicit with your students about required elements such as the format, length, documentation style, writing style (formal or informal?), and deadlines. One caveat, however: do not allow the logistics of the paper take precedence over the content in your assignment description; if you spend all of your time describing these things, students might suspect that is all you care about in their execution of the assignment.
Finally, you should clarify your evaluation criteria for the assignment. What elements of content are most important? Will you grade holistically or weight features separately? How much weight will be given to individual elements, etc? Another precaution to take when defining requirements for your students is to take care that your instructions and rubric also do not overshadow the content; prescribing too rigidly each element of an assignment can limit students' freedom to explore and discover. According to Beth Finch Hedengren, “A good assignment provides the purpose and guidelines… without dictating exactly what to say” (2004, p. 27). If you decide to utilize a grading rubric, be sure to provide that to the students along with the assignment description, prior to their completion of the assignment.

A great way to get students engaged with an assignment and build buy-in is to encourage their collaboration on its design and/or on the grading criteria (Hudd, 2003). In his article “Conducting Writing Assignments,” Richard Leahy (2002) offers a few ideas for building in said collaboration:

• Ask the students to develop the grading scale themselves from scratch, starting with choosing the categories.

• Set the grading categories yourself, but ask the students to help write the descriptions.

• Draft the complete grading scale yourself, then give it to your students for review and suggestions.

A Few Do's and Don'ts…

Determining your goals for the assignment and its essential logistics is a good start to creating an effective assignment. However, there are a few more simple factors to consider in your final design. First, here are a few things you should do :

Do provide detail in your assignment description . Research has shown that students frequently prefer some guiding constraints when completing assignments (Bean, 1996), and that more detail (within reason) can lead to more successful student responses. One idea is to provide students with physical assignment handouts , in addition to or instead of a simple description in a syllabus. This can meet the needs of concrete learners and give them something tangible to refer to. Likewise, it is often beneficial to make explicit for students the process or steps necessary to complete an assignment, given that students – especially younger ones – might need guidance in planning and time management (MIT, 1999).
Do use open-ended questions. The most effective and challenging assignments focus on questions that lead students to thinking and explaining, rather than simple yes or no answers, whether explicitly part of the assignment description or in the brainstorming heuristics (Gardner, 2005).
Do direct students to appropriate available resources . Giving students pointers about other venues for assistance can help them get started on the right track independently. These kinds of suggestions might include information about campus resources such as the University Writing Center or discipline-specific librarians, suggesting specific journals or books, or even sections of their textbook, or providing them with lists of research ideas or links to acceptable websites.
Do consider providing models – both successful and unsuccessful models (Miller, 2007). These models could be provided by past students, or models you have created yourself. You could even ask students to evaluate the models themselves using the determined evaluation criteria, helping them to visualize the final product, think critically about how to complete the assignment, and ideally, recognize success in their own work.
Do consider including a way for students to make the assignment their own. In their study, Hass and Osborn (2007) confirmed the importance of personal engagement for students when completing an assignment. Indeed, students will be more engaged in an assignment if it is personally meaningful, practical, or purposeful beyond the classroom. You might think of ways to encourage students to tap into their own experiences or curiosities, to solve or explore a real problem, or connect to the larger community. Offering variety in assignment selection can also help students feel more individualized, creative, and in control.
If your assignment is substantial or long, do consider sequencing it. Far too often, assignments are given as one-shot final products that receive grades at the end of the semester, eternally abandoned by the student. By sequencing a large assignment, or essentially breaking it down into a systematic approach consisting of interconnected smaller elements (such as a project proposal, an annotated bibliography, or a rough draft, or a series of mini-assignments related to the longer assignment), you can encourage thoughtfulness, complexity, and thoroughness in your students, as well as emphasize process over final product.

Next are a few elements to avoid in your assignments:

Do not ask too many questions in your assignment. In an effort to challenge students, instructors often err in the other direction, asking more questions than students can reasonably address in a single assignment without losing focus. Offering an overly specific “checklist” prompt often leads to externally organized papers, in which inexperienced students “slavishly follow the checklist instead of integrating their ideas into more organically-discovered structure” (Flaxman, 2005).
Do not expect or suggest that there is an “ideal” response to the assignment. A common error for instructors is to dictate content of an assignment too rigidly, or to imply that there is a single correct response or a specific conclusion to reach, either explicitly or implicitly (Flaxman, 2005). Undoubtedly, students do not appreciate feeling as if they must read an instructor's mind to complete an assignment successfully, or that their own ideas have nowhere to go, and can lose motivation as a result. Similarly, avoid assignments that simply ask for regurgitation (Miller, 2007). Again, the best assignments invite students to engage in critical thinking, not just reproduce lectures or readings.
Do not provide vague or confusing commands . Do students know what you mean when they are asked to “examine” or “discuss” a topic? Return to what you determined about your students' experiences and levels to help you decide what directions will make the most sense to them and what will require more explanation or guidance, and avoid verbiage that might confound them.
Do not impose impossible time restraints or require the use of insufficient resources for completion of the assignment. For instance, if you are asking all of your students to use the same resource, ensure that there are enough copies available for all students to access – or at least put one copy on reserve in the library. Likewise, make sure that you are providing your students with ample time to locate resources and effectively complete the assignment (Fitzpatrick, 1989).

The assignments we give to students don't simply have to be research papers or reports. There are many options for effective yet creative ways to assess your students' learning! Here are just a few:

Journals, Posters, Portfolios, Letters, Brochures, Management plans, Editorials, Instruction Manuals, Imitations of a text, Case studies, Debates, News release, Dialogues, Videos, Collages, Plays, Power Point presentations

Ultimately, the success of student responses to an assignment often rests on the instructor's deliberate design of the assignment. By being purposeful and thoughtful from the beginning, you can ensure that your assignments will not only serve as effective assessment methods, but also engage and delight your students. If you would like further help in constructing or revising an assignment, the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center is glad to offer individual consultations. In addition, look into some of the resources provided below.

Online Resources

“Creating Effective Assignments” http://www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence/resources/Assignments.htm This site, from the University of New Hampshire's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, provides a brief overview of effective assignment design, with a focus on determining and communicating goals and expectations.

Gardner, T. (2005, June 12). Ten Tips for Designing Writing Assignments. Traci's Lists of Ten. http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/034.shtml This is a brief yet useful list of tips for assignment design, prepared by a writing teacher and curriculum developer for the National Council of Teachers of English . The website will also link you to several other lists of “ten tips” related to literacy pedagogy.

“How to Create Effective Assignments for College Students.” http:// tilt.colostate.edu/retreat/2011/zimmerman.pdf This PDF is a simplified bulleted list, prepared by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University, offering some helpful ideas for coming up with creative assignments.

“Learner-Centered Assessment” http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/learner_centered_assessment.html From the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, this is a short list of suggestions for the process of designing an assessment with your students' interests in mind. “Matching Learning Goals to Assignment Types.” http://teachingcommons.depaul.edu/How_to/design_assignments/assignments_learning_goals.html This is a great page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons, providing a chart that helps instructors match assignments with learning goals.

Additional References Bean, J.C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fitzpatrick, R. (1989). Research and writing assignments that reduce fear lead to better papers and more confident students. Writing Across the Curriculum , 3.2, pp. 15 – 24.

Flaxman, R. (2005). Creating meaningful writing assignments. The Teaching Exchange . Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008 from http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Sheridan_Center/pubs/teachingExchange/jan2005/01_flaxman.pdf

Hass, M. & Osborn, J. (2007, August 13). An emic view of student writing and the writing process. Across the Disciplines, 4.

Hedengren, B.F. (2004). A TA's guide to teaching writing in all disciplines . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Hudd, S. S. (2003, April). Syllabus under construction: Involving students in the creation of class assignments. Teaching Sociology , 31, pp. 195 – 202.

Leahy, R. (2002). Conducting writing assignments. College Teaching , 50.2, pp. 50 – 54.

Miller, H. (2007). Designing effective writing assignments. Teaching with writing . University of Minnesota Center for Writing. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008, from http://writing.umn.edu/tww/assignments/designing.html

MIT Online Writing and Communication Center (1999). Creating Writing Assignments. Retrieved January 9, 2008 from http://web.mit.edu/writing/Faculty/createeffective.html .

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Unit 6: Assignments to Support the Learning Process

Assignments as a focus for what is important to learn

T ake a moment to reflect on your own experience of learning in a formal course. At what point in the process did you start asking questions about the way in which you would be assessed? When did you first sit down to read the assignment descriptions in your course outline, or ask your teacher what would be required of you in the assignments?

If you are like most learners, this was probably something you did fairly early on in the course. And as a result, if you are like most learners, your understanding of what you would be assessed on, and how you would be assessed, probably helped you decide what to focus on as you progressed through the course. It probably also helped you decide what to ignore.

Assignments help learners to focus on the essential learning and not to get swamped by details. Being transparent about the exact requirements of assignments from the start of the course is an important way in which you can support your learners in managing their time.

Assignments are also an opportunity for the tutor to provide individual feedback to learners. Your feedback will help learners to gauge their progress throughout the course, and can play a critical role in either motivating or demotivating learners as they continue with their studies.

A third role that assignments can play is in helping you evaluate what is working on your course and what aspects need improvement. If large numbers of your learners struggle with a particular assignment, or a particular aspect of an assignment, that is possibly an indication that you need to revisit the relevant section of the course and build in more support for learners. It could also be an indication that the assignment itself needs to be revised.

Assignments as scaffolding

Assignments, more than any other component of an online course, create the scaffolding that enables learning to occur. (Have a look at the section on constructivism in Unit 3 if you need a brief reminder of the concept of scaffolding.)

A thoughtfully constructed assignment can take the learner on an exhilarating journey into unknown territory, all the while providing signposts and pit stops exactly where they are needed. At the end, the learner should be able to look back in pride and say, 'Wow! I did that!' Each successfully completed assignment should contribute to the learner’s growing sense of confidence in himself as a professional in the field in which he is studying. The assignments themselves acted as the scaffolding for the learning to occur.

Here are some ways in which you can create assignments as scaffolding:

If possible, try designing the whole course around a series of assignments, each one building on the last. If learners can see that Assignment 1 helps them to get to grips with the concepts that will be applied in Assignment 2, they are likely to put a great deal of effort into Assignment 1. (In this scenario, it is even more critical than ever to provide learners with prompt feedback on their assignments, so that they can clarify any misunderstandings before they embark on the next assignment.)
Create staged assignments. Each stage has to be completed before the next one can be started, and there is some form of feedback – either from other learners, or from you – at the end of each stage to help learners judge their own progress towards the expected outcomes.
Build in a requirement that learners have to collaborate on some part of the assignment. This is surprisingly easy to do using online communication tools, such as discussion forums and wikis. These tools allow learners to participate at times that suit them over an extended period, and provide a permanent record, for the learners and for you, of the communication, for later reference. This idea is elaborated on in the next section.
H ow do you approach assignments in the distance course(s) you teach? Do you use any of the approaches described above – i.e. a series of assignments all building on one another; staged assignments; and/or a requirement of collaboration on some part of the assignment? If so, can you give examples of how your assignments provide scaffolding for learners in your particular discipline?
Perhaps you're a tutor on a course where someone else designs the assignments. But nevertheless, which of the suggestions given above could you use to support the learners to complete their assignments well?

A survey conducted by the Associated Press has revealed that around 58% of parents feel that their child has been given the right amount of assignments. Educators are thrilled that the majority has supported the thought of allocating assignments, and they think that it is just right.

However, the question arises when students question the importance of giving assignments for better growth. Studies have shown that students often get unsuccessful in understanding the importance of assignments.

What key purpose does an assignment have? They often question how an assignment could be beneficial. Let us explain why a teacher thinks it is best to allot assignments. The essential functions of assigning tasks or giving assignments come from many intentions.

What is the Importance of Assignment- For Students

The importance of the assignment is not a new concept. The principle of allocating assignments stems from students’ learning process. It helps teachers to evaluate the student’s understanding of the subject. Assignments develop different practical skills and increase their knowledge base significantly. As per educational experts, mastering a topic is not an impossible task to achieve if they learn and develop these skills.

Cognitive enhancement

While doing assignments, students learn how to conduct research on subjects and comprise the data for using the information in the given tasks. Working on your assignment helps you learn diverse subjects, compare facts, and understand related concepts. It assists your brain in processing information and memorizing the required one. This exercise enhances your brain activity and directly impacts cognitive growth.

Ensured knowledge gain

When your teacher gives you an assignment, they intend to let you know the importance of the assignment. Working on it helps students to develop their thoughts on particular subjects. The idea supports students to get deep insights and also enriches their learning. Continuous learning opens up the window for knowledge on diverse topics. The learning horizon expanded, and students gained expertise in subjects over time.

Improve students’ writing pattern

Experts have revealed in a study that most students find it challenging to complete assignments as they are not good at writing. With proper assistance or teacher guidance, students can practice writing repetitively.

It encourages them to try their hands at different writing styles, and gradually they will improve their own writing pattern and increase their writing speed. It contributes to their writing improvement and makes it certain that students get a confidence boost.

Increased focus on studies

When your teachers allocate a task to complete assignments, it is somehow linked to your academic growth, especially for the university and grad school students. Therefore, it demands ultimate concentration to establish your insights regarding the topics of your assignments.

This process assists you in achieving good growth in your academic career and aids students in learning concepts quickly with better focus. It ensures that you stay focused while doing work and deliver better results.

Build planning & organization tactics

Planning and task organization are as necessary as writing the assignment. As per educational experts, when you work on assignments, you start planning to structurize the content and what type of information you will use and then organize your workflow accordingly. This process supports you in building your skill to plan things beforehand and organize them to get them done without hassles.

Adopt advanced research technique

Assignments expand the horizon of research skills among students. Learners explore different topics, gather diverse knowledge on different aspects of a particular topic, and use useful information on their tasks. Students adopt advanced research techniques to search for relevant information from diversified sources and identify correct facts and stats through these steps.

Augmenting reasoning & analytical skills

Crafting an assignment has one more sign that we overlook. Experts have enough proof that doing an assignment augments students’ reasoning abilities. They started thinking logically and used their analytical skills while writing their assignments. It offers clarity of the assignment subject, and they gradually develop their own perspective about the subject and offer that through assignments.

Boost your time management skills

Time management is one of the key skills that develop through assignments. It makes them disciplined and conscious of the value of time during their study years. However, students often delay as they get enough time. Set deadlines help students manage their time. Therefore, students understand that they need to invest their time wisely and also it’s necessary to complete assignments on time or before the deadline.

What is the Importance of Assignment- Other Functions From Teacher’s Perspective:

Develop an understanding between teacher and students .

Teachers ensure that students get clear instructions from their end through the assignment as it is necessary. They also get a glimpse of how much students have understood the subject. The clarity regarding the topic ensures that whether students have mastered the topic or need further clarification to eliminate doubts and confusion. It creates an understanding between the teaching faculty and learners.

Clarity- what is the reason for choosing the assignment

The Reason for the assignment allocated to students should be clear. The transparency of why teachers have assigned the task enables learners to understand why it is essential for their knowledge growth. With understanding, the students try to fulfill the objective. Overall, it fuels their thoughts that successfully evoke their insights.

Building a strong relationship- Showing how to complete tasks

When a teacher shows students how to complete tasks, it builds a strong student-teacher relationship. Firstly, students understand the teacher’s perspective and why they are entrusted with assignments. Secondly, it also encourages them to handle problems intelligently. This single activity also offers them the right direction in completing their tasks within the shortest period without sacrificing quality.

Get a view of what students have understood and their perspective

Assigning a task brings forth the students’ understanding of a particular subject. Moreover, when they attempt an assignment, it reflects their perspective on the specific subject. The process is related to the integration of appreciative learning principles. In this principle, teachers see how students interpret the subject. Students master the subject effectively, whereas teachers find the evaluation process relatively easy when done correctly.

Chance to clear doubts or confusion regarding the assignment

Mastering a subject needs practice and deep understanding from a teacher’s perspective. It could be possible only if students dedicate their time to assignments. While doing assignments, students could face conceptual difficulties, or some parts could confuse them. Through the task, teachers can clear their doubts and confusion and ensure that they fully understand what they are learning.

Offering individualistic provisions to complete an assignment

Students are divergent, and their thoughts are diverse in intelligence, temperaments, and aptitudes. Their differences reflect in their assignments and the insight they present. This process gives them a fair understanding of students’ future and their scope to grow. It also helps teachers to understand their differences and recognize their individualistic approaches.

Conclusion:

You have already become acquainted with the factors that translate what is the importance of assignments in academics. It plays a vital role in increasing the students’ growth multifold.

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that they will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
apply —use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove their point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, they still have to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and they already know everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality they expect.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Why Should You Use Writing Assignments in Your Teaching?

Brad hughes, director, writing across the curriculum, university of wisconsin-madison.

Why should you use writing assignments in your teaching? That’s an important question. Even though this is a Writing Across the Curriculum website, designed to encourage faculty to incorporate writing into their teaching, let’s be honest—there are many reasons why you might not want to assign writing in your courses. And many of those reasons have to do with limits on your time. Designing writing assignments and responding to student writing take valuable time—lots of time if you do them carefully. The larger the enrollment is in your classes, the more time responding to student papers takes. You have lots of important course content to cover, so you have limited time for building in a sequence of writing assignments and some instruction around those assignments. . . .

You also need to remember that writing assignments take substantial time for your students to do well. And not all of your students are well prepared to succeed with the writing you assign. This list could go on; the challenges can be formidable.

Yet countless faculty—in every discipline across the university—make writing an integral part of their teaching and reap benefits from doing so. Why? Here are some of the many reasons writing is an especially effective means for students to learn.

Writing deepens thinking and increases students’ engagement with course material.
Well-designed writing assignments prompt students to think more deeply about what they’re learning. Writing a book review, for example, forces students to read more thoroughly and critically. As an old saying goes, “How do I know what I think until I hear what I say or see what I’ve written?”
In fact, research done by Richard Light at Harvard confirms that “students relate writing to intensity of courses. The relationship between the amount of writing for a course and students’ level of engagement—whether engagement is measured by time spent on the course, or the intellectual challenge it presents, or students’ self-reported level of interest in it—is stronger than any relationship we found between student engagement and any other course characteristic” ( The Harvard Assessment Seminars , Second Report, 1992, 25).
Research done by the Association of American Colleges and Universities demonstrates that writing-intensive courses are a high-impact practice in undergraduate education (George D. Kuh, High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter , 2008).
Research done by Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner ( The Meaningful Writing Project , 2017) demonstrates that certain writing projects can be especially meaningful parts of undergraduate education.
Writing can improve our relationship with our students. When students write papers, we get to know them and their thinking better; they’re more likely to talk with us after class, or come to our office hours to share a draft or seek advice.
Writing gives us a window into our students’ thinking and learning. Through our students’ writing, we can take pleasure in discovering that students see things in course readings or discussion we didn’t see; students make connections we ourselves hadn’t made. And through our students’ writing, we also discover what confuses our students. Admittedly, we’re not always eager to discover the gaps in our students’ knowledge or understanding, but it’s our job to expand that knowledge and improve students’ thinking.
Writing assignments can improve our classroom discussions. By helping students keep up with readings, regular writing assignments can prepare students to participate in discussion.
Writing assignments provide us with an opportunity to teach students to organize ideas, develop points logically, make explicit connections, elaborate ideas, argue points, and situate an argument in the context of previous research-all skills valued in higher education.
Students remember what they write about-because writing slows thinking down and requires careful, sustained analysis of a subject. No matter how many years it’s been, most of us can remember some paper we wrote as undergraduates, the writing of which deepened our knowledge of a particular subject.
Students and professors remember what they’ve written, in part, because writing individualizes learning. When a student becomes really engaged with a writing assignment, she has to make countless choices particular to her paper: how to focus the topic, what to read, what to make the central argument, how to organize ideas, how to marshal evidence, which general points to make, how to develop and support general ideas with particulars, how to introduce the topic, what to include and what to omit, which style and tone to adopt. . . .
Finally, though it’s much more than this, writing is a skill—a skill that atrophies when it isn’t practiced regularly. Because learning to write well is difficult and because it requires sustained and repeated practice, we need to ensure our undergraduates write regularly, throughout the curriculum, in all majors. It’s the responsibility of all of us to ensure that students learn to think and write clearly and deeply.

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Article Contents

I. introduction, ii. institutional background, iv. identification strategy, vi. robustness, vii. conclusion, data availability.

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Evolution vs. Creationism in the Classroom: The Lasting Effects of Science Education *

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Benjamin W Arold, Evolution vs. Creationism in the Classroom: The Lasting Effects of Science Education, The Quarterly Journal of Economics , Volume 139, Issue 4, November 2024, Pages 2331–2375, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjae019

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Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on societies. Can schools be an important agent in mitigating the propagation of such attitudes? This article investigates the effect of the content of science education on anti-scientific attitudes, knowledge, and choices. The analysis exploits staggered reforms that reduce or expand the coverage of evolution theory in U.S. state science education standards. I compare adjacent student cohorts in models with state and cohort fixed effects. There are three main results. First, expanded evolution coverage increases students’ knowledge about evolution. Second, the reforms translate into greater evolution belief in adulthood, but do not crowd out religiosity or affect political attitudes. Third, the reforms affect high-stakes life decisions, namely, the probability of working in life sciences.

Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on public health, the environment, and the economy. Misinformation about the danger of COVID-19 and a lack of trust in scientists have undermined compliance with social distancing measures and vaccination recommendations, prolonging the pandemic ( Bursztyn et al. 2020 ; Algan et al. 2021 ; Brzezinski et al. 2021 ; Jin et al. 2021 ). Climate change denial has reduced the support for policies cutting greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to environmental and economic damage ( Akter, Bennett, and Ward 2012 ; Linden et al. 2015 ). The rejection of evolution theory has been used to justify white supremacy and racism in the United States ( Marks 2012 ) and has contributed to anti-scientific agricultural policies and associated food shortages in the former Soviet Union ( Graham 2016 ). 1 While there is broad understanding of the societal costs of anti-scientific attitudes, evidence on its determinants is surprisingly scant despite the relevance for effective policy responses.

This article isolates the content of science education in high school as one determinant of anti-scientific attitudes that is directly subject to policy makers. 2 To study whether the content of science education has a lasting impact on individuals beyond attitudinal outcomes, the study also analyzes how it affects scientific knowledge and life decisions. Specifically, I estimate the causal effect of students’ exposure to the teaching of evolution theory in science education on (i) their knowledge about evolution at the end of high school, (ii) their belief in evolution in adulthood, and (iii) the probability that they work in life sciences.

The focus is on evolution theory because of its fundamental role in science and its controversy in the population and the education system. Evolution can scientifically explain the existence of all species, including our own. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (2021 ) states that “the foundation of all life sciences is biological evolution.” Ninety-eight percent of its members express support for the statement that humans have evolved over time ( Pew Research Center 2015 ). In contrast, evolution is a highly charged topic among the U.S. population with only 65% agreeing that humans have evolved over time. Prior to World War II and up to the present day, this controversy has been reflected in heated debates and legal battles on whether evolution is supposed to be taught in schools. 3 Teachers and school districts have been convicted for not following the education standards’ stance on evolution. Even today, there is substantial variation across U.S. states and over time in how evolution is covered in education standards.

To isolate exogenous variation in students’ exposure to the teaching of evolution, this article exploits staggered state-level reforms of the coverage of evolution in U.S. State Science Education Standards (Science Standards). In the study period from 2000 until 2009, 15 states reduced the coverage of evolution in their education standards, and 22 states expanded it. I argue that the political and institutional processes leading to these reforms, particularly the predetermined timing of gubernatorial elections in combination with the tenure of members of state Boards of Education, create idiosyncrasies in the determination of the precise reform years. This setting allows for the estimation of causal effects in two-way fixed-effects models with state and cohort fixed effects, overcoming the identification problem that the content of science education is generally correlated with scientific, religious, and political attitudes of the students’ environment, which independently affect student outcomes.

Beyond the theoretical argument that the reform timing is determined by institutional idiosyncrasies, my empirical setup explicitly accounts for a range of endogeneity concerns by comparing adjacent cohorts around sharp reforms of the Science Standards. Specifically, the performed two-way fixed-effects estimations can rule out as confounding factors (i) time-invariant state-specific differences (such as education levels), (ii) cohort-specific national differences (such as national changes in attitudes across time), (iii) time-varying state-specific shocks that affect adjacent cohorts similarly (such as natural disasters or state-level political or religious shocks that do not differentially affect children of different cohorts), and (iv) time-varying state-specific shocks that affect adjacent cohorts differentially but smoothly (such as state-specific trends in science skepticism or science prestige), in a robustness test that includes state-specific time trends. I account for potential biases in staggered two-way fixed effects designs from time-varying treatment effects ( Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021 ). To conduct the analyses, I link state-level data on the evolution coverage in Science Standards with three individual-level data sets.

First, this article shows that the evolution coverage in Science Standards affects what students learn about evolution in school. Specifically, I use the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to demonstrate that students exposed to a more comprehensive evolution coverage in high school are more likely to correctly answer knowledge questions on evolution by the end of high school. This finding exemplifies how the content of education standards can foster scientific knowledge, an outcome of direct economic importance given its effects on innovation, earnings, and economic growth in the long run ( Lucas 1988 ; Barro 2001 ; Hanushek and Woessmann 2008 , 2012 ). 4

Second, this study demonstrates that the evaluated reforms have lasting effects on attitudes. To that end, I make use of the General Social Survey (GSS) to show that evolution teaching affects the probability of believing in the concept of evolution in adulthood. There are no effects on religiosity and political attitudes. Being exposed to a comprehensive evolution coverage in the education standards in high school compared to no evolution coverage increases evolution belief in adulthood by 57% of the sample mean, corresponding to a persuasion rate of 79% ( DellaVigna and Gentzkow 2010 ). Effects are largest for mainline Protestants. This analysis underscores that reform effects persist long after students have left high school. This result exemplifies how science education can promote scientific attitudes, which can be directly relevant for improving public health, the environment, and the economy ( Brzezinski et al. 2021 ; Martinez-Bravo and Stegmann 2022 ).

Third, I show that the evaluated reforms affect high-stakes choices, namely, occupational choice. It seems plausible that if people know more about and believe more in a particular theory, they are also more interested in working in the field that was founded on it. After all, skills and interest are important determinants of occupational choice ( Speer 2017 ). Specifically, I hypothesize that learning about evolution, the fundamental theory of life sciences, affects the probability of working in life sciences in adulthood. Using the American Community Survey (ACS), I demonstrate that high school exposure to a comprehensive evolution coverage in the education standards compared with no evolution coverage increases the probability of working in life sciences in adulthood by 23% of the sample mean. This effect mostly comes from the subfield of biology, the subject in which evolution is typically taught. This finding exemplifies how science education can attract future STEM workers, which not only raises wages at the individual level ( Hastings, Neilson, and Zimmerman 2013 ; Kirkeboen, Leuven, and Mogstad 2016 ; Deming and Noray 2020 ) but also has wider economic consequences through fostering innovation, technological change, labor productivity, and economic growth ( Griliches 1992 ; Jones 1995 ; Kerr and Lincoln 2010 ; Peri, Shih, and Sparber 2015 ). In all three analyses, I consistently find that effects are larger in absolute terms for the subgroup of reforms that reduce the evolution coverage compared with the subgroup that expands it.

This article provides evidence on how learning about evolution theory—the fundamental theory of the evolution of life that explains the existence of humans—actually shapes humans. Specifically, I show that evolution teaching not only affects the related knowledge of students but also translates into evolution belief in adulthood. This implies that scientific beliefs can be “taught” in school and persist into adulthood. This finding complements seminal research on the effects of non–science-related school curricula reforms on financial decision making ( Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki 2001 ), identity ( Clots-Figueras and Masella 2013 ), labor market participation and employment ( Fuchs-Schündeln and Masella 2016 ; Costa-Font, García-Hombrados, and Nicińska 2024 ), political and economic preferences ( Cantoni and Yuchtman 2013 ; Cantoni et al. 2017 ), civic values ( Bandiera et al. 2019 ), and religiosity ( Bazzi, Hilmy, and Marx 2020 ). 5

This study further demonstrates that attitudinal changes induced by science school curricula reforms translate into high-stakes choices of individuals. Specifically, the finding on occupational choice enhances our understanding of how to increase the share of STEM graduates, which is a policy goal with widespread support in many societies. 6 Occupational sorting is influenced by demand-side factors such as expected earnings and nonpecuniary job benefits ( Wiswall and Zafar 2018 ; Arcidiacono et al. 2020 ), perceived ability ( Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner 2014 ; Arcidiacono et al. 2016 ), and heterogeneous tastes ( Wiswall and Zafar 2015 ). Supply-side factors such as grading policies ( Butcher, McEwan, and Weerapana 2014 ), admissions systems ( Bordon and Fu 2015 ), affirmative action policies ( Arcidiacono, Aucejo, and Hotz 2016 ), and the provision of role models ( Porter and Serra 2020 ) can also play a role; see Altonji, Arcidiacono, and Maurel (2016 ) for an overview. I demonstrate that the content of science education in high school can be an effective policy tool to attract STEM graduates.

This article speaks to the emerging literature on the determinants of religiosity ( Iannaccone 1998 ; Iyer 2016 ; McCleary and Barro 2019 ). Finding null effects on religious outcomes demonstrates that expanding the scientific content of science education neither reduces the belief in nor the belonging to a religion. 7 This is true despite the fact that being raised as Evangelical is a large negative predictor of evolution belief. While a number of studies have found a positive relationship between education and religiosity ( McCleary and Barro 2006a , 2006b ; Glaeser and Sacerdote 2008 ; Meyersson 2014 ), other research suggests that education can decrease religiosity ( Hungerman 2014 ; Becker, Nagler, and Woessmann 2017 ). In the specific setting of evolution teaching in the United States, religiosity is not crowded out.

Finally, this work contributes to the literature on the effects of the content of education on students’ knowledge. While there is broad understanding about the effects of topic-specific instruction time ( Cortes and Goodman 2014 ), minimum high school course requirements ( Goodman 2019 ), advanced placement courses ( Conger et al. 2021 ), and the interaction of curricula and internet penetration ( Sen and Tucker 2022 ), this article shows that the content of education standards affects the knowledge of students on the topic in question in the intended direction. The effects of the content of education standards last until adulthood. In sum, this study demonstrates that high school curricula exert a lifetime influence on students.

The article proceeds as follows. Section II outlines the institutional background of the teaching of evolution. Section III provides information on the data measuring the coverage of evolution in Science Standards and the micro data sets. Section IV describes the identification strategy. Section V presents the results. Section VI discusses robustness tests. Section VII concludes.

II.A. The Battle for Teaching Evolution in U.S. Public Schools

For at least a century, the teaching of evolution in public schools has been a contested issue in the United States. Before World War I, evolution teaching was rare ( Beale 1941 ). In the 1920s, more than 20 states considered bills to ban the teaching of evolution. Among other states, such a bill became law in Tennessee, resulting in the famous “monkey trial” where a biology teacher was convicted for having taught evolution. 8 This law was overturned in 1967, and similar decisions followed in other states. In 1987, another law requiring that equal time must be spent on teaching evolution and creation was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. In short, the legislative and adjudicative decisions of the second half of the twentieth century have paved the way for evolution to be taught in public schools ( Moore, Jensen, and Hatch 2003b ). Still, there continues to be substantial variation across states and years in the twenty-first century, as the subsequent analysis of the evolution coverage in Science Standards demonstrates.

II.B. State Science Education Standards

In general, Science Standards define the scientific knowledge and skills that students are supposed to master in a grade in public schools. The scientific teaching a student is ultimately exposed to also depends on local school curricula; the selection of textbooks ( Adukia et al. 2023 ); the knowledge, ability and ideology of teachers; testing formats; and other factors. However, Science Standards form the basis of many of these factors. For instance, they affect how local curricula and teachers’ lesson plans are written ( Lerner 2000b ). Furthermore, science textbooks are arranged to match the content laid out in Science Standards. Statewide standardized exams often directly test the content set out in the Science Standards. Lerner (2000b , ix) summarizes that Science Standards “are meant to serve as the frame to which everything else is attached, the desired outcome that drives countless other decisions about how best to attain it.” With regard to evolution, 88% of a nationwide representative sample of U.S. public high school biology teachers state that they focus heavily on what students need to know to meet Science Standards when teaching evolution, see Online Appendix Figure A.1.

Science Standards cover many topics. However, the reforms evaluated herein primarily concentrate on evolution. In Online Appendix A.1, I present evidence from a text analysis of the Science Standards, demonstrating that while the reforms modify the coverage of many topics, the treatment of evolution is altered to a significantly greater extent.

II.C. The Adoption Process of Reforms of Science Standards

How do reforms of Science Standards come into existence? In each state, they are decided by majority vote of the members of the state Board of Education. The selection process for these members differs across states. In some states, members are appointed by the governor, sometimes with the consent of the legislature (e.g., in California and Florida). In other states, members are elected by the public (e.g., in the District of Columbia and Texas). A few states combine these selection mechanisms by appointing some members and electing others (e.g., Louisiana and Ohio). Before the final vote of the Board of Education, Science Standards are typically drafted by advisory committees. These consist of a panel of teachers and other stakeholders such as parents, scientists, and religious representatives. Moreover, the Boards of Education hold public hearings.

This process implies that these reforms happening at some point is not random. Instead, it reflects changing views, expressed either by the election of a governor or by direct election of the Board of Education members.

However, the exact reform year in a given state can be regarded as as good as random due to institutional idiosyncrasies. If beliefs in evolution change among the population in a certain year, it will take an arbitrary number of years until this results in a reform of Science Standards. In states where the Board of Education is appointed by the governor, the year of a reform crucially depends on the governor's year of election, as determined by the legislation period lasting four years in general. In states where the Board of Education is directly elected, the reform year depends on the elections, which typically take place in a staggered manner across districts and years. Further idiosyncrasies are induced by the fact that the tenure of board members differs across states, which can last up to nine years as in West Virginia. Even after a new majority in the Board of Education is in power, drafting, hearing, and voting on new standards can take months or years. 9 In sum, there may be a great number of years between a shock and a reform of the Science Standards. However, it can also be small if election dates and tenure expiration of a marginal board member occur shortly after a shock. I identify from this arguably exogenous reform timing.

Online Appendix A.2 provides anecdotal evidence on the political processes leading to reforms in Florida and Texas. While Florida expanded the evolution coverage in 2008, Texas reduced it in 2009; neither reform following a partisan change in government.

Online Appendix A.3 provides quantitative evidence on the exogenous timing of the reforms. I regress state-by-year characteristics, such as (i) unemployment rate, partisan composition, and school resources, and (ii) Google search frequencies of keywords specific to evolution and creationism, on the evolution coverage in the Science Standards, in models with state and year fixed effects. All estimates are insignificant and close to zero. This suggests that the timing of the reforms is independent of (i) economic, political, and educational conditions, and (ii) the interest of the population in evolution and creationism.

II.D. The Implementation of Reforms of Science Standards

After new Science Standards are adopted, their implementation in the classroom tends to be rather swift. In general, widely publicized lawsuits convicting school districts for not implementing the teaching of evolution as outlined in Science Standards contribute to a fast implementation. 10 Newspaper articles and policy reports suggest that the content of textbooks, lesson plans, and standardized testing questions was changed because of the reforms, while there is no indication of new teachers being hired. 11 In Florida in 2008, for example, school districts were supposed to adjust their lessons by comprehensively including evolution as outlined in the newly adopted Science Standard within one year. Evolution was required to become part of standardized testing in Florida from 2012 onward. In the 2009 Texas reform, the evolution coverage of the new Science Standard had to be in textbooks from 2011 onward. These dates are likely the upper end of the implementation timeline, as in reality teachers have to implement many changes earlier to allow for a smooth transition of classroom activities before the deadline. Still, some people coded as exposed to the post-reform treatment may have been exposed to some pre-reform treatment. This dilutes the treatment-control contrast and implies that any effects should be interpreted as lower-bound estimates.

III.A. Coding of Reforms of Science Standards

To measure the coverage of evolution in Science Standards, I make use of the “evolution score” provided by Lerner (2000a ) and Mead and Mates (2009 ). The evolution score is a composite index based on an evaluation of whether the word “evolution” appears in a Science Standard; of the respective coverages of biological, human, geological, and cosmological evolution; and of the connection of the different aspects of evolution. The absence of creationist jargon and creationist disclaimers in textbooks is also taken into account. The evolution score is defined between 0 and 1, with 0.01 increments. An evolution score of zero indicates no or a creationist coverage of evolution, and a score of one indicates a very comprehensive coverage of evolution. Notably, the creationist jargon in all standards evaluated in this article is never openly religious, which would be unconstitutional. However, there is large variation in the emphasis of (alleged) weaknesses and critique of evolution theory, creating or removing scope for teachers wishing to teach creationist content. 12

The evolution score is available for all states for 2000 and 2009, provided by Lerner (2000a ) and Mead and Mates (2009 ), respectively. They also provide information on the evolution score’s year of reform for each state between 2000 and 2009 (if there was any reform). If more than one reform took place between 2000 and 2009 in a given state, there is information on the last reform. 13 The evolution score serves as a treatment variable in this article. When merging it with individual-level data sets, each individual is defined as being exposed to the evolution score from 2000 if she started high school before the reform year in her state and to the evolution score from 2009 if she started high school in the year of the reform or later in her state. The high school entry year is the pertinent year, as most of the teaching on evolution takes place at the beginning of high school. 14

To illustrate the identifying variation, Figure I depicts the state-level evolution score difference between 2000 and 2009. 15 The evolution score decreased in 15 states (implying a negative evolution-score difference) and increased in 22 states (implying a positive evolution-score difference) between 2000 and 2009. In the remaining 14 states, it remained unchanged. The states with the largest evolution-score decreases are Connecticut, Louisiana, and Texas. The largest evolution-score increases are found in Kansas, Mississippi, and Florida. By construction, the changes partly depend on the baseline level, in the sense that Science Standards covering evolution very comprehensively in 2000 cannot expand the coverage by much by 2009, and vice versa. However, by identifying from changes within states, I control for fixed differences between states. Overall, the evolution-score changes are fairly well spread over the United States, with each census region having at least one state in which the evolution coverage became less comprehensive, more comprehensive, and remained unchanged, respectively.

Map of the United States showing the evolution score differences between 2000 and 2009. The map uses a color gradient ranging from dark blue to dark orange, indicating changes in evolution scores. States with the highest positive changes (0.80 to 1.00) are in dark blue, while states with the most negative changes (-0.60 to -0.40) are in dark orange. All reforming states are labeled with the year of the reform. The legend is provided to the right of the map, detailing the color coding for the evolution score differences.

Map of Evolution-Score Difference between 2000 and 2009

The map depicts the evolution-score difference, which I define as the evolution score of 2009 minus the evolution score of 2000. A positive (negative) difference implies an increase (decrease) in the evolution score between 2000 and 2009, as indicated by blue plain coloring (orange striped coloring). White plain coloring indicates no change of the evolution score between 2000 and 2009. The years reported below the two-letter state codes mark the respective reform years. A list of the evolution-score differences and reform years underlying this map is provided in Online Appendix Table A.XI. Data sources: Lerner (2000b ), Mead and Mates (2009 ).

III.B. Micro Data

This subsection describes the three micro-level data sets used in this article. Each repeated cross-sectional data set is standardized and hence comparable across states and cohorts, making it suitable for analyses with state and cohort fixed effects. In all three data sets, I keep students in the sample who start high school after 1990 and before 2010. Thereby, I balance temporal proximity to the reform years and having sufficient years to estimate pre-trends and fixed effects credibly (and with statistical power in general). 16 This approach also prevents identification from the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, which started in 2013.

1. NAEP (Evolution Knowledge in School)

To estimate the effect of students’ exposure to the teaching of evolution in high school on their knowledge about evolution by the end of high school, I link the evolution score with the restricted-use individual-level National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) ( U.S. Department of Education 2020 ). NAEP is a standardized student achievement test, measuring the knowledge of U.S. students in various subjects since 1990. I use the NAEP test for science in grade 12 because it contains questions on evolution. Students are coded as exposed to the Science Standard in place in the year and state of their high school entry, assuming they started high school three years before taking the test in grade 12 in the same state.

The main outcome variable, evolution knowledge, is defined as the share of correctly answered questions on evolution. The nine categories of scientific knowledge on topics other than evolution include reproduction, climate change, or the universe, and are defined analogously. In addition, the NAEP student surveys provide rich student-level control variables, such as subsidized lunch status or home possessions, to approximate the socioeconomic status.

The main sample consists of more than 14,000 students who were asked at least one question on evolution. It contains only public school students, as Science Standards have never been binding for private schools. The average evolution score equals 0.65, implying that the sampled students were on average exposed to a “satisfactory” evolution coverage. 17 The mean of the main outcome variable evolution knowledge equals 0.32. The fact that on average, not even a third of the questions on evolution are answered correctly underscores the questions’ difficulty. Online Appendix A.4.1 provides descriptive statistics, correlations, sample questions, and further information.

2. GSS (Evolution Belief in Adulthood)

To estimate the effect of students’ exposure to the teaching of evolution in high school on their belief in evolution in adulthood, I link the evolution score with the restricted-use individual-level General Social Survey (GSS) ( Smith et al. 2017 ). The GSS is a biennial cross-sectional survey that monitors societal change by interviewing a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States since 1972. Since 2006, respondents have been asked about their belief in evolution. The GSS also provides the state of residence at age 16 and the birth year. I assume that respondents started high school in this state at age 14 and merge the evolution score for this state-year combination accordingly. Hence, I can link individuals’ belief in evolution in adulthood to the evolution coverage of the Science Standard they were exposed to as students, even if they moved to other states after finishing school.

The main outcome variable evolution belief is based on the question “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. Is that true or false?” 18 The corresponding indicator variable is set to one if the answer “true” was given and zero if any other answer option was reported such as “false,” “don’t know,” or “no answer.” The GSS asks a broad range of questions on other scientific topics and on religious and political attitudes. Variables capturing dimensions of the childhood environment serve as controls, including the religion a respondent was raised in.

The GSS is sampled from the entire U.S. adult population, irrespective of type of school attendance. This makes it impossible to differentiate between public and private school attendance. Instead, one can estimate effects net of endogenous sorting across school types, including homeschooling. The estimation sample of individuals who were asked the question on evolution belief contains more than 1,800 individuals; 58% of this sample believe in evolution, which largely corresponds to other surveys at the time ( Pew Research Center 2009 ). Further descriptive statistics, raw correlations, and data background are provided in Online Appendix A.4.2. 19

3. ACS (Occupational Choice)

To estimate the effect of students’ exposure to the teaching of evolution in high school on their probability of working in life sciences during adulthood, I link the evolution score with the individual-level IPUMS American Community Survey (ACS) ( Ruggles et al. 2020 ). The ACS is a large-scale demographic survey that draws from a national random sample of the U.S. population. Responding and providing correct information is required by U.S. law. The ACS contains detailed information on the respondents’ occupational field. It also elicits the state and year of birth. I assume that students start high school in this state at age 14 and accordingly merge the evolution score for this state-year combination.

Given that evolution is a fundamental theory of life sciences, the occupational field of primary interest in this study is life sciences. The main outcome variable, working in life sciences, is coded as an indicator variable equal to one if the respondent works in life sciences and zero otherwise. It can be divided into the subfields biology, agriculture and food, conservation and forestry, and medical and other.

Like in the GSS, the ACS is sampled from the entire U.S. population, which also includes individuals who went to private school and homeschoolers. The estimation sample of individuals who are older than 18 years (i.e., who typically completed secondary education) consists of more than 6 million individuals. Further information, including descriptive statistics, is provided in Online Appendix A.4.3.

The analyses presented in this article are based on the following two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) model. The model exploits the different timing of reforms of the evolution coverage in Science Standards across states and the fact that some of the reforms reduced the coverage of evolution, while others extended it, and a third group of states did not reform the evolution coverage. It compares outcomes of cohorts who went to high school in states where the evolution coverage was reformed with previous cohorts from the same states prior to reforms, relative to how outcomes of these cohorts changed in states that did not reform at the time, after accounting for fixed differences between states and birth cohorts. The baseline TWFE model is specified as follows:

where |$Y_{istu}$| is the outcome of interest of individual i , who started high school in state s and year t , and completed the test or survey in year u . The treatment variable |$Evolution\_Score_{st}$| measures the intensity of the evolution coverage in the Science Standard in state s and year t . Hence, the treatment status is based on the evolution score in force in the state and year in which an individual enters high school. |$\beta$| is the parameter of interest capturing the effect on the outcome of being exposed to a very comprehensive coverage of evolution ( ⁠|$Evolution\_Score_{st}$| = 1) as compared to being exposed to no or a creationist coverage of evolution ( ⁠|$Evolution\_Score_{st}$| = 0). The vector |$\mathbf {X_{i}}$| contains individual-level control variables. State fixed effects |$\delta _{s}$|⁠ , birth cohort/high school entry cohort fixed effects |$\lambda _{t}$|⁠ , test/survey year fixed effects |$\theta _{u}$|⁠ , and an error term complete the model. 20 Standard errors are clustered at the state level to account for the potential correlation of error terms across cohorts within states ( Abadie et al. 2023 ; Athey and Imbens 2022 ).

The key identifying assumptions are that in the absence of the evolution coverage reforms, the outcomes of students attending high school in different states would have evolved along parallel trends, and that treatment effects are homogeneous over time.

The TWFE model allows me to rule out various concerns about the ability to estimate causal effects of the evolution coverage in Science Standards. First, one might be concerned that state-level differences in scientific, religious, or political attitudes are correlated with the evolution coverage in Science Standards and affect scientific knowledge, beliefs, and occupational choice. The state fixed effects absorb all differences in outcomes that are constant between states. In addition, one might be worried that national trends, such as attitudinal trends on scientific, religious, or political topics, might erroneously appear as reform effects. To counter this concern, the cohort fixed effects eliminate all national differences between cohorts.

Moreover, the state fixed effects rule out time-varying state-specific shocks as long as they affect adjacent cohorts equally. This is as the empirical setup exploits cross-cohort variation within a narrow time window around the evolution curriculum reforms and identifies from reforms that affect adjacent cohorts in different ways. Specifically, a reform adopted in a given state and calendar year primarily affects the new high school entry cohort (and younger cohorts in the following years when they start high school), see Section III.A . 21 I argue that many potential shocks that one might typically be concerned about (such as state-specific church scandals or shocks that affect the prestige of science) do not discontinuously affect different high school cohorts. 22 Furthermore, a robustness specification with state-specific linear and quadratic time trends accounts for time-varying state-specific shocks that affect adjacent cohorts differentially but smoothly. This specification is particularly demanding in terms of statistical power, as reform effects are only detectable as “jumps” from the cross-cohort trend. For example, this specification accounts for changes in trust in science that could develop differently in the various states and change smoothly across cohorts.

Because the evolution-score treatment variable is continuous, the parallel-trends assumption has to hold in its strong form. The average potential outcomes for individuals exposed to a reform of the evolution coverage have to be the same at each level of evolution coverage. This excludes selection into a particular level of dosage (evolution coverage) ( Callaway, Goodman-Bacon, and Sant’Anna 2021 ). Following Cook et al. (2023 ), I probe the plausibility of this assumption by testing for correlations between the evolution score and covariates. Specifically, I regress the evolution score on predetermined observables and find little evidence of systematic correlations. 23 I also show in robustness analyses that reform effects hold when transforming the continuous evolution-score variable into binary variables. Moreover, I note (i) that active selection into exposure to a different state Science Standards requires moving across states, which seems unnecessarily costly in most cases as students can simply switch to a private school (or do homeschooling), 24 and (ii) that the institutional idiosyncrasies determining the exact reform timing, as discussed in Section II , make it difficult to proactively select into certain evolution coverages. Last, I probe robustness on a smaller sample without individuals belonging to the top and bottom 20% of the evolution-score distribution. Following an idea by Marie and Zwiers (2022 ), this approach alleviates concerns about selection into evolution coverage, as individuals from the extremes of the evolution coverage distribution, with arguably the most diverse potential outcomes and the strongest incentive to move, are excluded from the sample.

To further probe the plausibility of the parallel-trends assumption, I estimate an event study version of equation (1 ), in which the reform of the evolution coverage in Science Standards in a given state and year is referred to as the “event.” This approach now views every reform as a discrete event and ignores differences in the intensity of the reform as indicated by the evolution score used in the baseline TWFE model, as follows:

I estimate the effect of exposure to a reform of the evolution coverage in Science Standards in year |$t_{s}$| on outcomes of students starting high school k years before and after the evolution coverage reform, as captured by the parameter vector |$\beta _{k}$|⁠ . All event-study regressions are estimated by grouping two years together in one bin to smooth the number of observations across bins as not all micro data are collected in every year (see Section III ). 25 This model allows us to examine nonlinear pre-reform trends in outcome variables and disentangle effects that directly occur at the time of the reforms from those that phase in gradually after the reform. Note that the event-study estimations yield changes in outcomes induced by the average reform. This requires running the event-study models separately for the sets of states that reduce and expand the evolution coverage, respectively, because joint event-study models would cancel out effects from opposing reforms. In each set of states, the regression coefficients can be interpreted as changes in outcomes induced by the average reform of the evolution coverage in that set.

Even in the absence of confounding trends or shocks, consistent estimation of reform effects requires homogeneity in treatment effects. The treatment effect from the baseline TWFE model is a weighted average of all possible 2 × 2 difference-in-differences comparisons between treated and untreated groups as well as groups treated at different points in time ( Goodman-Bacon 2021 ). In settings with staggered treatment timing, time-varying treatment effects can bias results away from the true effect if already-treated students act as controls for later-treated students, which also applies to the event studies ( Sun and Abraham 2021 ).

To test whether my TWFE OLS event-study regressions are immune to this bias, I run the CS estimator ( Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021 ), which excludes those 2 × 2 difference-in-differences comparisons in which already-treated students act as controls from the sample. Because I run the event-study models separately for the sets of states that reduce and expand the evolution coverage without never-treated states, the CS estimator uses not-yet-treated students as controls. To alleviate concerns about the multicollinearity of dynamic treatment effects and time fixed effects ( Borusyak, Jaravel, and Spiess forthcoming ), I bin both endpoints, which allows for separate identification even when using not-yet-treated units only ( Schmidheiny and Siegloch 2023 ). In robustness analyses I also add a set of never-treated states to the sample. 26

In three steps, this section shows that the evolution coverage in Science Standards affects students' knowledge about evolution, the belief in evolution in adulthood, and the probability of working in life sciences.

V.A. Evolution Knowledge in School

1. baseline estimates.

To assess reform effects on student knowledge about evolution, I regress the share of questions on evolution answered correctly in the 12th-grade NAEP science test on the evolution coverage in Science Standards and different sets of control variables, following equation (1 ).

As shown in Table I , Panel A, column (1), the raw correlation is positive. This could imply that a comprehensive coverage of evolution increases students’ evolution knowledge (reform effect), that evolution knowledge raises the probability of states adopting Science Standards that cover evolution comprehensively (e.g., because students might not accept creationist content; reverse causality), or that third variables such as socioeconomic status affect both (omitted variable bias). To isolate reform effects, I add control variables in columns (2)–(4). The full model in column (4) is the preferred specification because it exploits the idiosyncratic timing of reforms of Science Standards as a source of arguably exogenous variation. I find that being exposed to an evolution score of one (very comprehensive coverage of evolution) compared with an evolution score of zero (no or a creationist coverage of evolution) increases the share of questions on evolution answered correctly by 6.5 percentage points ( p -value = .005). Given that, on average, students answer 32% of the questions on evolution correctly, the reported effect amounts to 20% of the sample mean.

The Effects of Evolution Coverage in Science Standards

.	Controls: No .	Controls: Yes .	Controls: No .	Controls: Yes .
.	State FE: No .	State FE: No .	State FE: Yes .	State FE: Yes .
.	Cohort FE: No .	Cohort FE: No .	Cohort FE: Yes .	Cohort FE: Yes .
.	(1) .	(2) .	(3) .	(4) .
Panel A: Outcome: Evolution knowledge in school
Evolution score	0.039**	0.035***	0.074**	0.065***
	(0.018)	(0.012)	(0.028)	(0.022)
Mean of dep. var.	0.32	0.32	0.32	0.32
Std. dev. of dep. var.	0.42	0.42	0.42	0.42
Adj. -squared	0.001	0.035	0.015	0.041
Observations	14,080	14,080	14,080	14,080
Panel B: Outcome: Evolution belief in adulthood
Evolution score	0.122***	0.084**	0.235*	0.333***
	(0.042)	(0.036)	(0.125)	(0.107)
Mean of dep. var.	0.58	0.58	0.58	0.58
Std. dev. of dep. var.	0.49	0.49	0.49	0.49
Adj. -squared	0.006	0.088	0.038	0.107
Observations	1,801	1,801	1,801	1,801
Panel C: Outcome: Working in life sciences
Evolution score	0.039**	0.035**	0.035**	0.035**
	(0.018)	(0.013)	(0.014)	(0.014)
Mean of dep. var.	0.15	0.15	0.15	0.15
Std. dev. of dep. var.	3.84	3.84	3.84	3.84
Adj. -squared	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.001
Observations	6,460,650	6,460,650	6,460,650	6,460,650

.	Controls: No .	Controls: Yes .	Controls: No .	Controls: Yes .
.	State FE: No .	State FE: No .	State FE: Yes .	State FE: Yes .
.	Cohort FE: No .	Cohort FE: No .	Cohort FE: Yes .	Cohort FE: Yes .
.	(1) .	(2) .	(3) .	(4) .
Panel A: Outcome: Evolution knowledge in school
Evolution score	0.039**	0.035***	0.074**	0.065***
	(0.018)	(0.012)	(0.028)	(0.022)
Mean of dep. var.	0.32	0.32	0.32	0.32
Std. dev. of dep. var.	0.42	0.42	0.42	0.42
Adj. -squared	0.001	0.035	0.015	0.041
Observations	14,080	14,080	14,080	14,080
Panel B: Outcome: Evolution belief in adulthood
Evolution score	0.122***	0.084**	0.235*	0.333***
	(0.042)	(0.036)	(0.125)	(0.107)
Mean of dep. var.	0.58	0.58	0.58	0.58
Std. dev. of dep. var.	0.49	0.49	0.49	0.49
Adj. -squared	0.006	0.088	0.038	0.107
Observations	1,801	1,801	1,801	1,801
Panel C: Outcome: Working in life sciences
Evolution score	0.039**	0.035**	0.035**	0.035**
	(0.018)	(0.013)	(0.014)	(0.014)
Mean of dep. var.	0.15	0.15	0.15	0.15
Std. dev. of dep. var.	3.84	3.84	3.84	3.84
Adj. -squared	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.001
Observations	6,460,650	6,460,650	6,460,650	6,460,650

Notes . The table shows TWFE OLS coefficients and standard errors clustered at the state level in parentheses from estimating equation (1 ), for different sets of control variables and fixed effects as indicated in the column header. Each entry is from a separate regression model. Panel A, dependent variable: the share of questions about evolution that are answered correctly. Controls: indicator variables for gender, races/ethnicities, subsidized lunch status, home possessions (separate indicator variables for computer and books), birth month, test session, and test year. Data source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1996–2009 Science Assessments for Grade 12. Panel B, dependent variable: belief in evolution (“Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals—Is that true or false?,” indicator variable, 1 = true, 0 = false; don’t know). Controls: indicator variables for gender, races/ethnicities, parents born abroad, parental education, having lived with parents in adolescence, raised in a rural area, religion raised in (indicator variables for mainline Protestantism, evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism, no religion, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, other Eastern, Islam, orthodox Christian, Christian, Native American, inter/nondenominational, other religion), and survey year. Data source: General Social Survey. Panel C, dependent variable: probability of working in life sciences (multiplied by 100 for interpretability). Controls: indicator variables for gender, races/ethnicities, and survey year. Data source: American Community Survey. * p < .10, ** p < .05, *** p < .01.

2. Event-Study Graphs

To test for parallel trends and to study the dynamics of treatment effects, I conduct event-study regressions following equation (2 ).

Figure II , Panel A, depicts the event-study graph of evolution knowledge in school for the set of states where the reform reduces the evolution coverage in Science Standards. The TWFE OLS coefficients of pre-reform years are all close to zero: the largest pre-reform point estimate is smaller than 0.018, which is less than a third of the smallest post-reform coefficient. All pre-reform coefficients are individually and jointly insignificant, even at the 10% level ( F -test of joint significance: F = 0.27, p = .844). These findings are consistent with the idiosyncratic timing of the reforms and the parallel-trends assumption. After the reform, we observe immediate, stable, and significant changes in evolution knowledge. The second post-reform coefficient is the largest and amounts to 9 percentage points ( p -value = .025).

Figure depicts two event study graphs, appearing one below the other in two panels. In panel A, the upper event study graph for states reducing the evolution coverage is depicted. It shows changes in evolution knowledge over time for states with a reform that reduces the evolution coverage. The y-axis represents evolution knowledge, ranging from -0.1 to 0.15, and the x-axis represents years relative to the curriculum reform, in two-year bins from -7 to 5. The graph includes two event study estimators representing different estimation methods: TWFE OLS, and Callaway-Sant'Anna. Each effect is represented by a point estimate with 95 percent confidence intervals. In panel B, the lower event study graph for states expanding the evolution coverage is depicted. It shows changes in evolution knowledge over time for states with a reform that increases the evolution coverage. The y-axis represents evolution knowledge, ranging from -0.1 to 0.15, and the x-axis represents years relative to the curriculum reform, in two-year bins from -7 to 5. The graph includes two event study estimators representing different estimation methods: TWFE OLS, and Callaway-Sant'Anna. Each effect is represented by a point estimate with 95 percent confidence intervals.

Event-Study Graphs for the Effect of Evolution Coverage in Science Standards on Evolution Knowledge in School

The figure shows point estimates and 95% confidence intervals from estimating equation (2 ). Dependent variable: share of questions about evolution answered correctly. In Panel A, the outcome variable is multiplied by −1 (inverted outcome due to inverted reform, to allow for comparability across results). TWFE OLS is shown in blue (color version available online) with circle markers. Controls: indicator variables for gender, races/ethnicities, subsidized lunch status, home possessions (separate indicator variables for computer and books), birth month, test session, and fixed effects for state, cohort, and test year. CS estimates ( Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021 ) are depicted in red with diamond markers, using doubly robust inverse probability weighting and not-yet-treated observations as controls. Numbers on the horizontal axis refer to the final year of respective two-year bins; that is, −1 = last two years prior to treatment. Inference: clustering at the state level. Data source: National Assessment of Educational Progress.

To account for heterogeneous treatment effects in the presence of staggered treatment timing, I complement the OLS estimates with CS estimates ( Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021 ). The CS pre-reform and post-reform coefficients are similar to the OLS coefficients in terms of size and significance, which implies that the OLS results are immune to bias from time-varying treatment effects. Specifically, all CS pre-reform coefficients are individually and jointly insignificant, and all post-reform coefficients are individually and jointly significant (the last two individual coefficients at the 1% level). The corresponding simple aggregate CS estimates based on the discrete reforms are also mostly significant (see Online Appendix Table A.IV). 27

Figure II , Panel B, depicts the event-study graph of evolution knowledge in school for the set of states where the reform expands the evolution coverage in Science Standards. I can formally reject the significance of pre-reform coefficients and document some significant post-reform coefficients. However, the reform effects are more pronounced for the states that reduce the evolution coverage (this pattern consistently reemerges in the analyses on evolution belief and occupational choice). Why is this the case? Plausible reasons include the disproportionate threat of lawsuits against teachers who do not adhere to Science Standards after evolution was removed from the standards, given the long history of anti-evolution advocacy groups litigating against teachers who “illegally” teach evolution. Another plausible reason is the disproportionate media attention that such reforms typically garner, which may heighten the awareness of teachers and other stakeholders and contribute to a swift implementation. 28

3. Further Classroom Outcomes

Beyond reform effects on evolution knowledge, I present supporting analyses on a range of other classroom outcomes related to evolution and biology. Using teacher survey data, I show suggestive evidence that high school biology teachers who are exposed to a more comprehensive coverage of evolution in the Science Standards spend more time teaching evolution (see Online Appendix A.5). Other teaching strategies including the expression of teachers’ personal opinions on the validity of evolution remain unaffected.

Moreover, I demonstrate that the reforms do not affect the probability of students’ selection of high school biology courses, see Online Appendix Table A.V.

V.B. Evolution Belief in Adulthood

The second analysis shows that teaching evolution has a lasting impact on attitudes in adulthood, shedding light on the persistence of effects of scientific educational content. At the same time, it examines whether the effect on evolution knowledge translates into neutral settings during which the scientifically correct answer is not encouraged. It could well be that students exposed to evolution content are both willing and able to answer science exam questions correctly to gain points in an exam but are not convinced of the correctness of evolution theory.

Table I , Panel B, presents the GSS results from regressions of evolution belief in adulthood on the evolution score in high school, conditional on different sets of control variables. The evolution score estimate of the full model presented in column (4) shows that individuals who were exposed to an evolution score of one, as compared to an evolution score of zero, are 33.3 percentage points more likely to believe in evolution in adulthood ( p -value = .003). This effect amounts to 57% of the sample mean, making it larger than the corresponding effect on evolution knowledge.

To benchmark the effect size relative to other determinants of attitudes, I calculate persuasion rates ( DellaVigna and Gentzkow 2010 ). I define the persuasion rate induced by a reform changing the evolution score from zero to one as the average treatment effect on evolution belief divided by the share of students who do not believe in evolution in the entire sample. 29 The corresponding persuasion rate equals 79%. This is larger than the persuasion rates Cantoni et al. (2017 ) report for a Chinese school textbook reform on a range of outcomes. 30 It is also on the upper end of the persuasion rate distribution of media, which includes rates from 3% to 8% ( DellaVigna and Kaplan 2007 ) to 65% ( Enikolopov, Petrova, and Zhuravskaya 2011 ) for different media, settings, and outcomes. Reasons for the large persuasion rate of evolution teaching may include the large amount of time dedicated to evolution teaching, 31 the credibility of the persuader, 32 and the difficulty of avoiding exposure. 33

In terms of effect heterogeneities, I observe significantly larger reform effects on evolution beliefs among individuals raised as mainline Protestants compared to those raised nonreligiously, as well as among Blacks compared with Whites and among those raised in urban areas compared to rural areas. These heterogeneity results, along with others from the analyses on evolution knowledge and occupational choice, are discussed in more detail in Online Appendix A.6.

The event-study graphs for reform effects on evolution belief are presented in Figure III .

Event-Study Graphs for the Effect of Evolution Coverage in Science Standards on Evolution Belief in Adulthood

The figure shows point estimates and 95% confidence intervals from estimating equation (2 ). Dependent variable: belief in evolution (“Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals—Is that true or false?”, indicator variable, 1 = true, 0 = false; don’t know). In Panel A, the outcome variable is multiplied by −1 (inverted outcome due to inverted reform, to allow for comparability across results). TWFE OLS estimates are depicted in blue with circle markers. Controls: fixed effects for state, cohort, and survey year. CS estimates ( Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021 ) are depicted in red with diamond markers, using doubly robust inverse probability weighting and not-yet-treated observations as controls. Numbers on the horizontal axis refer to the final year of respective two-year bins; that is, −1 = the last two years prior to treatment. Inference: clustering at the state level. Data source: General Social Survey.

For the set of states reducing the evolution coverage shown in Figure III , Panel A, the pre-reform TWFE OLS coefficients are close to zero and individually and jointly insignificant, even at the 10% level ( F -test of joint significance: F = 0.75, p = .540). After the reform, I observe immediate and significant changes in evolution belief. The first post-reform coefficient is the largest; it amounts to 31 percentage points ( p -value = .017). The CS results are similar to the OLS results, both in terms of size and significance, for the pre- and post-reform coefficients. These findings are consistent with the idiosyncratic timing of the reforms and the parallel-trends assumption, and with the absence of contamination by time-varying treatment effects of the OLS. As before, reform effects are more pronounced for the states that reduce evolution coverage (Panel A) compared with the states that expand it (Panel B).

V.C. Occupational Choice

The third analysis reveals that teaching evolution translates into real-world high-stakes outcomes beyond attitudinal outcomes. Specifically, I focus on occupational choice as one high-stakes life decision in which an individual’s attitudes, values, and beliefs may be revealed. We know from the literature that skills and interest are important determinants of occupational choice ( Speer 2017 ). If education standards are able to change students’ knowledge about and belief in a given theory, they could also change the desire to work in the area built on this theory. I hypothesize that exposure to evolution theory (and hence to the fundamental scientific theory about the existence of life) affects individuals’ probability of choosing to work in life sciences.

Table I , Panel C shows that being exposed to a more comprehensive teaching of evolution in school increases the probability of working in life sciences during adulthood. The full model presented in column (4) demonstrates that individuals who were exposed to an evolution score of one, as compared to an evolution score of zero, are 0.035 percentage points more likely to work in life sciences as adults ( p -value = .016). This effect is numerically small; however, it amounts to 23% of the sample mean. In absolute terms, it corresponds to more than 90,000 workers (approx. 260,000,000 adults in the United States × 0.00035). Because the life science industry faces a severe shortage of skilled workers, an addition of 90,000 workers would yield a substantial contribution. 34 This is also of wider economic relevance, given the significance of the life science industry for growth, innovation, employment, and trade. 35 Not least, the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of the life science sector and its innovations ( Barro 2022 ).

Subfield analysis reveals that the overall effect on the life sciences is mostly coming from the subfield of biology, see Figure IV .

This figure shows heterogeneities of the reform effect on the probability of working in life sciences by field of study. The fields include Biology, Agriculture and Food, Conservation and Forestry, and Medical and Other. The x-axis ranges from -0.02 to 0.04, indicating the coefficient values. Each effect by field is represented by a point estimate with 95 percent confidence intervals.

The Effect of Evolution Coverage in Science Standards on the Probability of Working in Life Sciences, by Subfields of Life Sciences

The figure shows TWFE OLS coefficients and 95% confidence intervals of the effect of evolution coverage in Science Standards on the probability of working in life sciences (multiplied by 100 for interpretability), by subfields of life sciences as indicated along the vertical axis from estimating equation (1 ). Sample sizes of subfields are in parentheses (raw value). Controls: indicator variables for gender and races/ethnicities, and fixed effects for state, cohort, and survey year. Inference: clustering at the state level. Data source: American Community Survey.

The effect on biology is large in relative size, amounting to more than 39% of the sample mean ( p -value = .001). It is significantly different from the effects on agriculture and food as well as conservation and forestry (with reform effects on all non-biology subfields themselves being indistinguishable from zero). This subgroup pattern underpins that it is indeed the evolution teaching that drives reform effects, in line with the fundamental relevance of evolution for biology, 36 and given that evolution is being taught in biology.

Figure V depicts the event-study graph of the probability of working in life sciences.

Event-Study Graphs for the Effect of Evolution Coverage in Science Standards on the Probability of Working in Life Sciences

The figure shows point estimates and 95% confidence intervals from estimating equation (2 ). Dependent variable: the probability of working in life sciences (multiplied by 100 for interpretability). In Panel A, the outcome variable is multiplied by inverted outcome due to inverted reform, to allow for comparability across results). TWFE OLS estimates are depicted in blue with circle markers. Controls: indicator variables for gender and races/ethnicities, and fixed effects for state, cohort, and survey year. CS estimates ( Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021 ) are depicted in red with diamond markers, using doubly-robust inverse probability weighting and not-yet-treated observations as controls. Numbers on the horizontal axis refer to the final year of respective two-year bins; that is, −1 = the last two years prior to treatment. Inference: clustering at the state level. Data source: American Community Survey.

For the states reducing evolution coverage depicted in Figure V , Panel A, the pre-reform TWFE OLS coefficients are close to zero as well as individually and jointly insignificant, even at the 10% level ( F -test of joint significance: F = 0.17, p = .912). After the reform, I observe changes in the probability of working in life sciences that peak at the second post-reform coefficient of 0.052 percentage points ( p -value = .008). We repeatedly observe in this article that reform effects do not reach their peak immediately after reform adoption (with the OLS event study on evolution belief for the set of states reducing evolution coverage shown in Figure III , Panel A, being an exception to this pattern). In general, this pattern aligns with reports of slight delays in the implementation of reforms, likely attributable to adjustments in lesson plans, curricula, textbooks, and standardized testing, as discussed in Section II . Also, note that in Figure V , Panel A, the CS results are similar to the OLS results in terms of size and significance. As before, reform effects are more pronounced for the states that reduce the evolution coverage (Panel A) compared with the states that expand it (Panel B).

This section shows additional analyses on placebo reforms, other outcome variables, event-study figures, and a range of further checks including estimations that control for state-specific trends and that run on a set of states with closely elected governors.

VI.A. Placebo Tests

As an alternative way of inference, I randomly reshuffle the reform years across the different reforming states. For the analysis on evolution knowledge, the density plot of the baseline TWFE OLS placebo coefficients based on 1,000 permutations shows that the baseline estimated reform effect on evolution knowledge is larger than the 95th percentile of the distribution of the 1,000 placebo reform effects; see Online Appendix Figure A.IV. The baseline effect on evolution belief is also larger than the 95th percentile of the placebo reform effect distribution (see Online Appendix Figure A.V), and the baseline effect on the probability of working in life sciences is larger than the 90th percentile of the placebo reform effect distribution (see Online Appendix Figure A.VI). These findings suggest that all three main effects of this article are unlikely to be spurious.

VI.B. Other Outcomes

Beyond evolution knowledge and belief, I estimate reform effects on knowledge of non-evolution scientific topics at the end of high school and attitudes about non-evolution scientific, religious, and political topics in adulthood. In principle, these outcomes could interact with each other and react to the reforms.

As is visible in column (2) of Online Appendix Table A.VI, there is no effect of the evolution coverage in Science Standards on the average student knowledge in the non-evolution scientific topics (I reject the equality of coefficients with evolution knowledge at the 10% level; p -value = .058). The coefficients for the nine non-evolution topics are all numerically smaller than that of evolution, but I only reject the equality of coefficients of evolution and “motion” at the 10% level ( p -value = .086), and “energy” at the 5% level ( p -value = .034). As is visible in Online Appendix Tables A.VII, A.VIII, A.IX, and A.X, respectively, there is no effect of the reforms on non-evolution scientific, religious, and political outcomes. 37 In sum, the reform effects are neatly tied to the topic of evolution in independent data sets and outcomes therein.

How could the null finding on religious outcomes arise? For some subgroups, such as those raised as Evangelicals and nonreligious, there is no reform effect on evolution belief. For those, we do not expect to observe a “crowding out” of religious beliefs. But what about the other subgroups? For some of those, evolution may not be contradictory to their religious beliefs, for example, if they follow “theistic evolution” (the belief that God does not interfere with the laws of nature after creation). For some others where evolution and religion contradict, compartmentalization, a mechanism whereby a person separates conflicting beliefs from each other, could be at work. Furthermore, religious beliefs may be harder to change by the school curriculum compared with evolution beliefs, for example, due to the relatively early exposure to religiosity during childhood ( Huber 2007 ), the connection of religious activities to social groups ( Levy and Razin 2012 ), and the social pressure to maintain religious beliefs ( Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann 2006 ; Wiles 2014 ). Finally, if the impact of evolution teaching on religiosity manifests at a later stage in life compared with its effect on evolution belief, my data structure may not be capable of detecting religiosity effects. (Note that I do not have data on older postreform cohorts, as the evaluated reforms occurred between 2000 and 2009).

VI.C. Event-Study Graphs

I assess the sensitivity of the event-study estimates to violations of parallel trends. Following Rambachan and Roth (2023 ), I compare the confidence intervals of my main event-study estimates from Figures II , III , and V with confidence intervals that account for the precision of pre-trends and allow for per period deviations from linear trends up to parameter M . These confidence sets correct for the unintuitive property of standard pre-trend testing that zero pre-trends are less likely to be rejected if they are estimated less precisely ( Roth 2022 ; Roth et al. 2023 ).

For the states reducing the evolution coverage shown in Panel A of Online Appendix Figures A.VII, A.VIII, and A.IX, the 95% confidence intervals become smaller and exclude zero when assuming linear trends ( M = 0) in all three analyses. Confidence intervals gradually increase with larger deviations from linearity, and exclude zero for values of M up until 0.002, 0.11, and 0.005, respectively. These thresholds correspond to 8%, 94%, and 33% of the standard error of the respective coefficient of interest. This indicates that the finding on belief in evolution is most robust against low power of pre-trends and nonlinear violations of parallel trends, followed by the result on the probability of working in life sciences, while the finding on knowledge of evolution only demonstrates robustness against relatively smooth nonlinear trends. Note that these estimates are conservative because I do not impose any restriction on the sign or monotonicity of the differential trends. In contrast, reform effects for the states expanding the evolution coverage are not robust to nonlinear violations of parallel trends; see Panel B of Online Appendix Figures A.VII, A.VIII, and A.IX.

Moreover, I probe the robustness of the main event-study graphs to adding of a set of never-treated states to the sample. The event-study graphs do not change meaningfully; see Online Appendix Figures A.X, A.XI, and A.XII. 38

VI.D. Further Robustness

Table II covers a range of further robustness checks, including specifications that control for state-specific trends and that are estimated on a subsample of closely elected governors.

Robustness of the Effect of Evolution Coverage in Science Standards

.	Close elections .	Control: governor’s party .	State-specific time trends .	Dosage treatment .	Only one reform event .	Only large states .	Only states with std. text .	Sample start: 1995 .	Sample start: 2000 .	Probit .	Outcome coding variation 1 .	Outcome coding variation 2 .
.	(1) .	(2) .	(3) .	(4) .	(5) .	(6) .	(7) .	(8) .	(9) .	(10) .	(11) .	(12) .
Panel A: Outcome: Evolution knowledge in school
Evolution score	0.093***	0.066***	0.043	0.042	0.089***	0.056**	0.078***	0.048***	0.037	0.076**	0.058**	n/a
	(0.022)	(0.022)	(0.065)	(0.034)	(0.029)	(0.022)	(0.025)	(0.017)	(0.026)	(0.032)	(0.022)
Equality test w/	.265	.798	.533	.220	.314	.621	.340	.052	.014	.494	.153
base. coef. ( -value)
Panel B: Outcome: Evolution belief in adulthood
Evolution score	0.605***	0.332***	0.625***	0.177**	0.394**	0.433***	0.322**	0.257**	0.313*	0.329**	0.288**	0.426***
	(0.188)	(0.111)	(0.218)	(0.070)	(0.163)	(0.117)	(0.131)	(0.116)	(0.171)	(0.130)	(0.138)	(0.145)
Equality test w/	.072	.954	.042	.461	.582	.158	.893	.029	.852	.792	.323	.107
base. coef. ( -value)
Panel C: Outcome: Working in life sciences
Evolution score	0.039	0.036**	0.025	0.034**	0.031	0.040**	0.057***	0.036***	0.029**	0.035	n/a	n/a
	(0.025)	(0.014)	(0.025)	(0.016)	(0.021)	(0.017)	(0.016)	(0.013)	(0.012)	(0.026)
Equality test w/	.848	.731	.439	.963	.724	.663	.080	.982	.385	.984
base. coef. ( -value)

.	Close elections .	Control: governor’s party .	State-specific time trends .	Dosage treatment .	Only one reform event .	Only large states .	Only states with std. text .	Sample start: 1995 .	Sample start: 2000 .	Probit .	Outcome coding variation 1 .	Outcome coding variation 2 .
.	(1) .	(2) .	(3) .	(4) .	(5) .	(6) .	(7) .	(8) .	(9) .	(10) .	(11) .	(12) .
Panel A: Outcome: Evolution knowledge in school
Evolution score	0.093***	0.066***	0.043	0.042	0.089***	0.056**	0.078***	0.048***	0.037	0.076**	0.058**	n/a
	(0.022)	(0.022)	(0.065)	(0.034)	(0.029)	(0.022)	(0.025)	(0.017)	(0.026)	(0.032)	(0.022)
Equality test w/	.265	.798	.533	.220	.314	.621	.340	.052	.014	.494	.153
base. coef. ( -value)
Panel B: Outcome: Evolution belief in adulthood
Evolution score	0.605***	0.332***	0.625***	0.177**	0.394**	0.433***	0.322**	0.257**	0.313*	0.329**	0.288**	0.426***
	(0.188)	(0.111)	(0.218)	(0.070)	(0.163)	(0.117)	(0.131)	(0.116)	(0.171)	(0.130)	(0.138)	(0.145)
Equality test w/	.072	.954	.042	.461	.582	.158	.893	.029	.852	.792	.323	.107
base. coef. ( -value)
Panel C: Outcome: Working in life sciences
Evolution score	0.039	0.036**	0.025	0.034**	0.031	0.040**	0.057***	0.036***	0.029**	0.035	n/a	n/a
	(0.025)	(0.014)	(0.025)	(0.016)	(0.021)	(0.017)	(0.016)	(0.013)	(0.012)	(0.026)
Equality test w/	.848	.731	.439	.963	.724	.663	.080	.982	.385	.984
base. coef. ( -value)

Notes . The table shows TWFE OLS coefficients and standard errors clustered at the state level in parentheses from estimating equation (1 ), for different robustness checks indicated in the column headers as follows. Column (1) sample only includes states where the members of the state Board of Education are appointed by the governor, and where the governor in office at the time of the reform was voted into office with a margin of less than 10 percentage points compared with the runner-up. Column (2) regressions control for the political affiliation of the governor ruling in the state and year of the student’s high school entry. Column (3) regressions include state-specific linear and quadratic time trends. Column (4) main evolution score is replaced by a weighted average of pre- and post-reform evolution scores, with weights corresponding to the number of pre- and post-reform high school years. Column (5) sample only includes individuals from states that had only one reform event between 2000 and 2009, see Online Appendix Table A.XI for more details. Column (6) sample only includes individuals from the 20 states with the largest population. Column (7) sample only includes individuals from states for which the text of the Science Standards is available for text analysis implemented in Online Appendix A.1. Column (8) sample only includes individuals who started high school after 1994. Column (9) sample only includes individuals who started high school after 1999. Column (10) coefficient reports the average marginal treatment effect of a probit specification. Column (11), Panel A: recoding of dependent variable: the share of questions about evolution answered correctly, indicator variable, 1 = true, 0 = false, missing = omitted/not reached/off-task/etc. (dependent on the question type); Panel B: sample excludes individuals whose dependent variable question on evolution replaces the words “human beings” with the word “elephants”; Panel C: n/a. Column (12), Panel A: n/a; Panel B: recoding of dependent variable: belief in evolution (“Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals—Is that true or false?”, indicator variable, 1 = true, 0 = false; missing = don’t know); Panel C: n/a. Each entry is from a separate regression model. “Equality test w/ base. coef. ( p -value)” refers to the p -value of a test for equality between the coefficient reported in the given column and the corresponding baseline coefficient presented in Table I , column (4). Panel A: dependent variable: the share of questions about evolution answered correctly. Controls: indicator variables for gender, races/ethnicities, subsidized lunch status, home possessions (separate indicator variables for computer and books), birth month, test session, and fixed effects for state, cohort, and test year. Data source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1996–2009 Science Assessments for Grade 12. Panel B: Dependent variable: belief in evolution (“Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals—Is that true or false?”, indicator variable, 1 = true, 0 = false; don’t know). Controls: indicator variables for gender, races/ethnicities, parents born abroad, parental education, having lived with parents in adolescence, raised in a rural area, religion raised in (indicator variables for mainline Protestantism, Evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism, no religion, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, other Eastern, Islam, orthodox Christian, Christian, Native American, inter/nondenominational, other religion), and fixed effects for state, cohort, and survey year. Data source: General Social Survey. Panel C: Dependent variable: probability of working in life sciences (multiplied by 100 for interpretability). Controls: indicator variables for gender and races/ethnicities, and fixed effects for state, cohort, and survey year. Data source: American Community Survey. Online Appendix Tables A.XII, A.XIII, and A.XIV provide further statistics of each regression including the mean and standard deviation of the dependent variable, adjusted R -squared, and the number of observations. * p < .10, ** p < .05, *** p < .01.

More information about these robustness checks, as well as other checks that account for multiple-hypothesis testing or which define treatment as a binary variable, is presented in Online Appendix A.7.1. Note that some of the point estimates are quite sensitive to the inclusion of control variables, which I mostly attribute to the relatively small number of observations in each state-cohort cell relative to the number of control variables added to some specifications (for example, compare the main results in Table I , columns (3) and (4), or the robustness check with state-specific time trends in Table II , column (3), to the main results in Table I , column (4)). The robustness test on the set of states with closely elected governors is particularly demanding because it reduces the sample size by around two-thirds, but reform effects are still robust (with the effects on the probability of working in life science being estimated less precisely, but yielding a similar point estimate).

Online Appendix A.7.2 assesses student movements between public schools, private schools, and homeschooling due to the reforms, and finds no evidence of meaningful changes to the sample composition by school type.

This article shows that school curricula have lasting effects on students by affecting their knowledge, attitudes, and choices. To demonstrate this, I focus on the teaching of evolution theory in the United States. Exploiting institutional idiosyncrasies in the timing of reforms of the evolution coverage in Science Education Standards, I show that the teaching of evolution affects (i) students’ knowledge about evolution, (ii) their belief in evolution in adulthood, and (iii) the probability of working in the life sciences. To illustrate effect sizes, I calculate changes in outcomes that one would expect to observe if all states adopted Science Standards with a highly comprehensive evolution coverage relative to the average coverage in the sample. Naive linear extrapolation of the estimation results suggests that the evolution belief in the U.S. population would increase by 20% of the sample mean in such a scenario. Analogously, the number of adults working in life sciences (biology) would increase by 8% (13%) of the sample mean.

The three sets of results provide empirical support to important arguments raised in the policy debate about evolution teaching. As suggested by proponents of evolution teaching, the results indicate that teaching evolution has wider economic and societal benefits given the positive effects of scientific knowledge ( Hanushek and Woessmann 2008 ), scientific attitudes ( Brzezinski et al. 2021 ), and working in STEM occupations ( Peri, Shih, and Sparber 2015 ) on individual and societal outcomes (although ultimate welfare implications also depend on other factors, such as substitution patterns). Furthermore, the results speak against a major concern brought forward by some skeptics of evolution teaching, namely, that teaching evolution might undermine students’ religiosity. The null findings on various religious outcomes imply that neither believing in nor belonging to a religion ( Barro and McCleary 2003 ; McCleary and Barro 2019 ) is crowded out by teaching evolution. The same is true for political attitudes.

This study shows that the content of education standards is relevant for individuals in the short and long run. This conclusion challenges the notion that education standards have no meaningful effect on students. It has been argued that in reality, there is limited scope for education standards to affect teaching due to the dominance of other factors, such as the teachers’ own ideology ( Moore, Jensen, and Hatch 2003a ; Loveless 2021 ). Still, legal pressures on school districts to follow education standards, and the reflection of education standards in textbooks and standardized testing questions have arguably incentivized teachers to follow education standards. The analyses presented here provide empirical evidence that education standards indeed affect what students learn.

More broadly, this article shows that the content of school curricula and instruction shapes students over the long term. This is true even for a topic like evolution that is highly charged in political and societal debates. Despite its fundamental relevance for and overwhelming acceptance in science, people have strong partisan views on it. These views are likely to be determined by a multitude of factors. Still, what schools teach has long-lasting effects on individuals’ fundamental views and translates into high-stakes choices.

Beyond the reforms evaluated in this article, the findings indicate potential relevance of other education policies that increase the time teachers spend on teaching evolution, such as the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards. Beyond the United States, the findings may also have a bearing for other countries where teaching evolution is controversial. 39 Beyond the topic of evolution, the findings of this study might also be relevant more broadly for further topics of science teaching, such as vaccinations, climate change, or trust in science in general. It is up to future research to study this explicitly.

The programs underlying this article are available in Arold (2024 ) in the Harvard Dataverse, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HYLZUO .

I am very grateful to Elliott Ash, Ludger Woessmann, and Davide Cantoni for their support throughout this project. I also thank Robert Barro and Lawrence Katz, four anonymous referees, and Karun Adusumilli, Barbara Biasi, Luca Braghieri, Florian Ederer, Sarah Eichmeyer, Sergio Galletta, Eleonora Guarnieri, Eric Hanushek, Martina Magli, Rachel McCleary, Markus Nagler, Nathan Nunn, Paul Peterson, Matteo Sandi, M. Danish Shakeel, Claudia Steinwender, Joseph Stiglitz, Gregory Veramendi, Martin West, Brian Wheaton, Scott Williamson, Larissa Zierow, as well as the participants of the seminar in Religion and Political Economy (Harvard), the Graduate Workshop on Political Economy (Harvard), seminars at University of Cambridge, UC Riverside, ETH Zurich, UZH Zurich, LMU Munich, Mannheim, briq Institute Bonn, Luxembourg, Nuremberg, and the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2022, ASSA/AEA Annual Meeting 2022, ASREC Conference 2022, ifo-WZB EffEE Conference 2022, ESPE Conference 2021, EALE/SOLE/AASLE World Conference 2020, German Economic Association (VfS) Meeting 2020, and the AEFP Conference 2020. Clementine Abed Meraim, Shufan Ma, Caroline Michler, and Sophia Stutzmann provided excellent research assistance. I thank Paul Peterson, Antonio Wendland, and the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University for their hospitality while writing parts of this article. I gratefully acknowledge financial support by the DAAD through a one-year scholarship for doctoral students funding my stay at Harvard University. Financial support by the Leibniz Competition (SAW 2019) is also gratefully acknowledged. Some of the data used in this analysis are derived from Sensitive Data Files of the GSS, obtained under special contractual arrangements designed to protect the anonymity of respondents. These data are not available from the author. Persons interested in obtaining GSS Sensitive Data Files should contact the GSS at [email protected]. Similar requirements apply to NAEP. All errors are my own.

The rejection of evolution theory by Trofim Lysenko, then president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union and leading agricultural adviser to Joseph Stalin, has been held responsible for prolonging Soviet food shortages in the 1930s (Lysenkoism) ( Joravsky 1962 ).

In general, attitudes are shaped by a multitude of factors, many of which are rather shielded in the private domain. An extensive literature on the formation of attitudes and beliefs has emphasized the impact of intergenerational transmission in families ( Bisin and Verdier 2001 ; Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2008 ; Tabellini 2008 ). Other determinants include peers and social networks ( Sacerdote 2001 ; Bailey et al. 2020 ), the media ( Martin and Yurukoglu 2017 ), and political systems ( Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln 2007 ).

For example, the New York Times published a report on controversies of the previous decade with the headline “Questioning Evolution: The Push to Change Science Class” ( Haberman 2017 ).

At the correlational level, Biasi and Ma (2022 ) show a direct link between higher education curricula and innovation.

Scientific attitudes are arguably more challenging to change, as they pertain to the acceptance of knowledge rather than opinions. Note that the only scientific attitude addressed in the previous papers, environmental attitudes in Cantoni et al. (2017 ), did not change due to the curriculum reform (in contrast to political and economic attitudes).

In the United States, increasing the number of STEM graduates is a central policy goal of the federal government’s strategic plan for STEM education 2018–2023 ( National Science and Technology Council 2018 ). Similarly, the EU aims to increase the number of STEM graduates as one of its 12 policy goals of the European Skills Agenda 2020–2025 ( European Commission 2020 ).

The distinction of religious outcomes between believing and belonging follows Barro and McCleary (2003 ) who find in cross-country analyses that believing stimulates economic growth, while belonging tends to reduce economic growth at given levels of religious beliefs.

This decision was later overturned on a technicality, see Larson (1999 ).

In some cases, there are also idiosyncrasies induced by spillovers, in the sense that Science Standards reforms of one state affect the teaching in other states. This occurs, for example, because textbooks used in smaller states may follow Science Standards reforms of larger states. Building on this point, I show that reform effects also hold in a subsample of large states only, see Table II , column (6).

For example, a lawsuit that received national attention was Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in 2005. The Dover Area School District had required biology teachers to teach intelligent design (a form of creationism attributing the creation of the world to an intelligent designer) as an alternative to evolution. This requirement contradicted the content of the Science Standard in force at the time and was ruled unconstitutional. Specifically, the verdict prohibited the district from requiring teachers to “denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as intelligent design” (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707, M.D. Pa. 2005).

The likelihood of discussing evolution versus creationism in the household could be affected as well and would be a mechanism of the main results to the extent that it is specific to the treated cohorts.

In 2000, Kansas received an out-of-range score of −0.18, as “it is a special case, unique in the extremity of its exclusion of evolution from statewide science standards” ( Lerner 2000b , 16). In this article, I change this evolution score from −0.18 to 0 for ease of interpretability. All results using the original score of −0.18 for Kansas instead of 0 do not differ meaningfully (results available on request). Iowa had no Science Standards in 2000, which is coded as missing. The District of Columbia is treated as a state throughout this article. The evolution score was originally defined between 0 and 100, but I rescale it by dividing it by 100, again for ease of interpretability. More information about the scoring scheme is provided in Lerner (2000b , 10–17). I also estimate the effects of the different components of the evolution score separately on the relevant outcomes, but find that no component stands out in particular (these results are available on request).

This implies that reforms before the respective last reform are not taken into account in the analyses. In theory, ignoring these prior reforms merely creates attenuation bias as long as these prior reforms are uncorrelated with the timing of the last reform in a given state. To explicitly test for this, I perform a robustness check restricting the sample to students from states for which careful examination of academic articles, legal documents, and state education websites indicates that they only had one reform between 2000 and 2009; see Table II , column (5).

Although reforms of Science Standards are generally applicable to all cohorts from the year of adoption onward, the change in evolution coverage typically only affects the high school entry cohorts. This is because the standard high school curriculum typically features biology (the subject in which evolution is being taught) in the first year of high school. To account for the possibility that evolution could also be taught in other years, I run a dosage specification. Here, the main evolution score is replaced by the weighted average of the pre- and post-reform evolution scores, with the weights corresponding to the number of pre- and post-reform high school years; see Table II , column (4).

Online Appendix Figure A.II also depicts the evolution score levels in 2000 and 2009.

The results of this article do not depend on this specific sample cut; see Table II , columns (8) and (9).

Lerner (2000b ) classifies evolution scores between 0.60 and 0.79 as “satisfactory.”

The words “human beings” are replaced by the word “elephants” for 10% of the questions on evolution belief. Table II , Panel B, column (11) shows that the results are robust to dropping those from the sample.

Building on Barro (2022 ), I show for example that state-level averages of evolution belief and the evolution score correlate positively with COVID vaccination rates and negatively with Trump voting; see Online Appendix Tables A.I and A.II.

In the analyses using NAEP, cohort and year fixed effects generally coincide as each cohort was examined in grade 12.

To the extent that evolution is also being taught in higher grade levels, the difference in exposure to the teaching of evolution between pre- and post-reform cohorts is overstated in my coding. Hence, I interpret my results as lower-bound estimates because parts of the cohorts coded as exposed to pre-reform Science Standards would be partially treated by post-reform Science Standards in this scenario.

See also Cantoni et al. (2017 , 363), who exploit a cohort-specific introduction of a curriculum reform in models with state and cohort fixed effects and note: “This method of introducing the new curriculum considerably reduces concerns about omitted variables, as many time-varying, province-specific shocks seem unlikely to have very different effects across adjacent cohorts of students.”

Each row of Online Appendix Figure A.III displays the estimate from a separate regression of the evolution score on the covariate defined along the vertical axis and survey-year fixed effects. The estimates show little correlation overall. The one notable exception is mainline Protestants, which, however, has the opposite sign as compared to other religious groups, such as Evangelicals and Catholics.

The main regression estimates using the GSS and ACS are based on a sample of students from public school, private schools, and homeschoolers that are net of spurious selection across school types. For NAEP, the results hold on a sample of public and private schools, see column (4) of Online Appendix Table A.III, and there is no NAEP test for homeschoolers.

Longer post-reform time horizons are not available in the micro data. Effects are estimated relative to the bin directly before the reform, that is, the bin that covers the years [−2, −1]. The bins at the beginning (end) of the domain additionally include the years before (after) the domain’s starting (ending) year. In event studies with GSS data, the individual-level covariates are dropped as the number of observations is particularly small relative to the number of covariates and estimated coefficients.

I add the four never-treated states Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, and Wisconsin to the sample of states that reduce (or expand) the evolution coverage. These four states are selected to be largely representative for the United States and to be large enough to allow for separate identification of dynamic treatment effects and time fixed effects.

They are stronger for the set of reforms that reduce the evolution coverage compared with those that expand it and stronger for the smaller sample without individuals belonging to the top 20% or bottom 20% of the evolution score ( Marie and Zwiers 2022 ).

For example, the reforms that reduce the evolution coverage in Texas and Louisiana received heightened media attention. For Texas, journalists published numerous local and national newspaper articles, for example in the New York Times ( McKinley 2009 ), and even the film The Revisionaries ( Gold 2012 ). For Louisiana, journalists published numerous newspaper articles as well, for example in the New York Times ( Nossiter 2009 ), and teacher organizations (including the National Association of Biology Teachers) alongside 78 Nobel Prize laureates endorsed the repeal of this reform, further contributing to its visibility.

Another definition of the persuasion rate would require dividing the treatment effect of the average reform by the share of individuals who do not believe in evolution and who studied before the evolution coverage was reformed. However, compositional differences by states and cohorts between individuals who studied before and after the reforms would bias results. Similarly, calculating the persuasion rate based on predicting treated and untreated students’ beliefs and subtracting the treatment effect from the treated students’ beliefs as in Cantoni et al. (2017 ) is not feasible because most students are treated to some extent even before the reforms, which then go in different directions with different intensities.

They find the largest persuasion rates for the outcomes “not investing in a bond” (50% persuasion rate) and “trusting the local government” (47% persuasion rate).

The number of hours a high school biology teacher in U.S. public schools spends on teaching evolution amounts to 14–20 hours on average; see Plutzer, Branch, and Reid (2020 ).

Trust in public schools has exceeded trust in other persuaders such as newspapers and television news consistently throughout the past decades; see Gallup (2022 ).

That is, the inability of students to “switch off” the teacher like a TV program conditional on being in class.

In recent years, the number of unique vacancies has exceeded the number of new hires by about 40% in the life science industry, indicating a tight labor market ( Cushman and Wakefield 2023 ). The report “How to Ensure That America’s Life-Sciences Sector Remains Globally Competitive” by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation concludes, “Overall, we need more qualified STEM workers” ( Kennedy 2020 , 5).

The life science industry accounts for 2.9% of U.S. GDP (or 7.3% when indirect effects are included) and has grown by an average of 7.8% per year over the past decade ( Biotechnology Innovation Organization 2022 ). Furthermore, it plays a particularly crucial role in driving innovation in the United States, with about 20% of US patents originating from the life sciences ( Cipher 2022 ). Moreover, the employment multiplier of the life science industry is estimated to be 4.82, implying that for every job in the life sciences, an additional 3.82 jobs are supported across the rest of the U.S. economy ( Biotechnology Innovation Organization 2022 ). The export volume of U.S. biopharmaceutical goods has quadrupled between 2002 and 2022, amounting to almost US$90 billion in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau).

This can be illustrated by the well-known assertion by Dobzhansky (1973 ) that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Between the main outcome, evolution belief, and the average of the scientific topical outcomes, I reject the equality of coefficients at the 1% level ( p -value = .0001). The analogous equality for the average of the broader science attitudes (interpreted as science prestige) is rejected at the 1% level as well ( p -value = .004). The analogous equality for the average of the political and religious outcomes is rejected at the 1% level ( p -value = .003), and at the 5% level ( p -value = .022), respectively. Regarding the individual outcomes, I reject the equality of coefficients between evolution belief and the individual scientific topical outcomes for six out of nine comparisons and between evolution belief and the individual broader science attitudes for three out of three comparisons. For the individual religious and political outcomes, I reject the analogous equality for 8 out of 13 comparisons, and for 7 out of 17 comparisons, respectively.

For the finding on the probability of working in the life sciences, I observe a positive pre-trend for the OLS estimator. This pre-trend completely disappears for the CS estimator that accounts for heterogeneous treatment effects.

Examples include India, Israel, and Turkey, as illustrated by the news headlines “Indian education minister dismisses theory of evolution” by the Guardian ( Safi 2018 ), “Israeli schools largely avoid teaching evolution” by the Times of Israel ( Staff 2018 ), and “Turkey’s new school year: Jihad in, evolution out” by the BBC ( Altunaş 2007 ).

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Clerical Assistant II, Categorical - HEAL Department (Req. 25-645) at Imperial County Office Of Education

Application Deadline

10/25/2024 5:00 PM Pacific

Date Posted

Number of openings, add'l salary info, length of work year, employment type, immediate supervisor:, work schedule:, about the employer.

Build a Career with Us! We are committed to improving the quality of life in Imperial County by promoting strong families and students who are prepared for life, college, and career. We are dedicated to the core human values of respect, responsibility and integrity. Our priority is service to our students, schools, districts, families, and the community- at-large. We strive to provide a safe, courteous, and professional environment that fosters teamwork and professional development for our employees. We hold ourselves and each other accountable for the highest level of performance, efficiency, resource management, and professionalism. Empowering our community to be an ideal place to live, learn, and work!

Requirements / Qualifications

***This position is Categorially Funded for the duration of the grant given to the Higher Education & Adult Learning Department.*** “This is a specifically funded categorically Classified position as provided by Ed Code § 45117(g). This grant is contingent upon funding, is expected to expire December 2027, and may have the possibility of renewal.” Applications are screened to determine minimum qualifications; qualified applicants will be notified of the test date, time, and place. Testing may include written, oral, performance, or other evaluation methods appropriate to measure the knowledge and skills required. Applicants must pass all tests in order to be further considered in the hiring process. Only completed applications will be considered. All fields in the work experience section must be completed. A resume will not be accepted in lieu and your application will be disqualified. Mark fields that are “not applicable” as “N/A”.

IMPORTANT This position requires a typing certificate taken at America's Job Center. Only certificates from this agency will be accepted. Please see below for a list of locations in Imperial County. You will be required to submit your typing certificate on the day of the exam or attach it to your application. The typing speed required is 45 words per minute. Brawley 860 Main Street, Brawley, CA 92227 (442) 265-5376 Calexico 301 Heber Avenue, Calexico, CA 92231 (442) 265-6192 El Centro 1550 W. Main Street, El Centro, CA 92243 (442) 265-7579

Letter of Introduction (Letter of Intent)
Letter(s) of Recommendation (3) Letters of Recommendation issued within the last year and must be dated))
Other (Reference List (Must Include Supervisor's name, Title, Phone Number and email address)

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COMMENTS

4 Core Purposes of Education, According to Sir Ken Robinson
We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—"learning," "education," "training," and "school"—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning.
Importance of Education Essay for Students in English
Importance of Education. The importance of education in life is immense. It facilitates quality learning for people throughout their life. It inculcates knowledge, belief, skill, values and moral habits. It improves the way of living and raises the social and economic status of individuals. Education makes life better and more peaceful.
Essay on Importance of Education in Life and Society (500+ Words)
Education is a weapon to improve one's life. It is probably the most important tool to change one's life. Education for a child begins at home. It is a lifelong process that ends with death. Education certainly determines the quality of an individual's life. Education improves one's knowledge, skills and develops the personality and ...
(PDF) The Importance of Education
The Importance of Education. Education is an important issue in one's life. It is the key to success in the future, and t o. have many opportunities in our life. Education has many advantages ...
Essay On Education: Examples to Help With Your Assignment
500 Word Essay on Why Education Is Important. "Why is education important" essay can be long, too. If you get an assignment to write a 500+ word paper on this topic, here you have a sample to check. Education stands as the foundational pillar upon which the progress and evolution of individuals and societies rest.
Education
Education is designed to guide them in learning a culture, molding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood, and directing them toward their eventual role in society. In the most primitive cultures, there is often little formal learning—little of what one would ordinarily call school or classes or teachers.
16.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education
The Functions of Education. Functional theory stresses the functions that education serves in fulfilling a society's various needs. Perhaps the most important function of education is socialization.If children need to learn the norms, values, and skills they need to function in society, then education is a primary vehicle for such learning.
Top 10 Reasons Why Is Education Important
6. A Safer World. Education is something that's not only needed on a personal level, but also on a global level, as it's something that keeps our world safe and makes it a more peaceful place. Education tends to teach people the difference between right and wrong, and can help people stay out of risky situations. 7.
Education Overview: Development news, research, data
Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion. For individuals, education promotes ...
Essay On The Importance Of Education
Introduction: Education is very important for every country. Education begins at home and continues throughout our life. There are many reasons why people need education. It helps them to learn new things, find good jobs and lead a respectable life in the society. The more educated a person the higher is the chances of her or his success in life.
Writing a Philosophy of Education or Teaching Philosophy Statement
Your teaching philosophy should be 1-3 pages in length and written in first person and in present tense. (You might include a shortened summary of your teaching philosophy statement on your syllabus or faculty profile.) It should state your goal of education and several ideas you have about how to reach that goal.
What's the Purpose of Standards in Education? An Explainer
In 1983, a national commission convened by the U.S. Department of Education published "A Nation At Risk," sharply criticizing the state of curriculum and instruction in U.S. schools.
Education
Education is the transmission of knowledge, skills, and character traits and manifests in various forms. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education also follows a structured approach but occurs outside the formal schooling system, while informal education entails unstructured learning through daily ...
Why Is Assessment Important?
July 15, 2008. New! Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not the goals of education are being met. Assessment affects decisions about grades, placement, advancement, instructional needs, curriculum, and, in some cases, funding. Assessment inspire us to ask these hard questions: "Are we teaching what we ...
Classroom Assignments Matter. Here's Why.
Digging into classroom assignments is revealing. It tells a story about curricula, instruction, achievement, and education equity. In the process, it uncovers what teachers believe about their students, what they know and understand about their standards and curricula, and what they are willing to do to advance student learning and achievement.
(PDF) The Use of Assignments in Education
The Use of Assignments in Education. Base for Electronic Educational Sciences, 1(1), 20-26. Published Online September 17, 2020. Article Views 1 single - 1 cumulative.
Essay on Education for School Students and Children
500+ Words Essay on Education. Education is an important tool which is very useful in everybody's life. Education is what differentiates us from other living beings on earth. It makes man the smartest creature on earth. It empowers humans and gets them ready to face challenges of life efficiently. With that being said, education still remains ...
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the combination of teaching methods (what instructors do), learning activities (what instructors ask their students to do), and learning assessments (the assignments, projects, or tasks that measure student learning). Key Idea for Pedagogy. Diversify your pedagogy by varying your teaching methods, learning activities, and assignments.
How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?
Even though you know why the assignment is important and what it is meant to accomplish, you cannot assume that your students will intuit that purpose. Your students will appreciate an understanding of how the assignment fits into the larger goals of the course and what they will learn from the process (Hass & Osborn, 2007).
The role of assignments in supporting learning
Assignments help learners to focus on the essential learning and not to get swamped by details. Being transparent about the exact requirements of assignments from the start of the course is an important way in which you can support your learners in managing their time. Assignments are also an opportunity for the tutor to provide individual ...
What is the Importance of Assignment- For Students
The importance of the assignment is not a new concept. The principle of allocating assignments stems from students' learning process. It helps teachers to evaluate the student's understanding of the subject. Assignments develop different practical skills and increase their knowledge base significantly.
Understanding Assignments
What this handout is about. The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms ...
Why Should You Use Writing Assignments in Your Teaching?
You have lots of important course content to cover, so you have limited time for building in a sequence of writing assignments and some instruction around those assignments. . . . You also need to remember that writing assignments take substantial time for your students to do well.
Evolution vs. Creationism in the Classroom: The Lasting Effects of
This article isolates the content of science education in high school as one determinant of anti-scientific attitudes that is directly subject to policy makers. 2 To study whether the content of science education has a lasting impact on individuals beyond attitudinal outcomes, the study also analyzes how it affects scientific knowledge and life ...
Clerical Assistant II, Categorical
Build a Career with Us! We are committed to improving the quality of life in Imperial County by promoting strong families and students who are prepared for life, college, and career. We are dedicated to the core human values of respect, responsibility and integrity. Our priority is service to our students, schools, districts, families, and the community- at-large. We strive to provide a safe ...

Importance of Education Essay

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