by Goldie Blumenstyk
American higher education is at a crossroads. Technological innovations and disruptive market forces are buffeting colleges and universities at the very time their financial structure grows increasingly fragile. Disinvestment by states has driven up tuition prices at public colleges, and student debt has reached a startling record-high of one trillion dollars. Cost-minded students and their families–and the public at large–are questioning the worth of a college education, even as study after study shows how important it is to economic and social mobility. And as elite institutions trim financial aid and change other business practices in search of more sustainable business models, racial and economic stratification in American higher education is only growing.

In American Higher Education in Crisis?: What Everyone Needs to Know, Goldie Blumenstyk, who has been reporting on higher education trends for 25 years, guides readers through the forces and trends that have brought the education system to this point, and highlights some of the ways they will reshape America’s colleges in the years to come. Blumenstyk hones in on debates over the value of post-secondary education, problems of affordability, and concerns about the growing economic divide. Fewer and fewer people can afford the constantly increasing tuition price of college, Blumenstyk shows, and yet college graduates in the United States now earn on average twice as much as those with only a high-school education. She also discusses faculty tenure and growing administrative bureaucracies on campuses; considers new demands for accountability such as those reflected in the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard; and questions how the money chase in big-time college athletics, revelations about colleges falsifying rankings data, and corporate-style presidential salaries have soured public perception.

Higher education is facing a serious set of challenges, but solutions have also begun to emerge. Blumenstyk highlights how institutions are responding to the rise of alternative-educational opportunities and the new academic and business models that are appearing, and considers how the Obama administration and public organizations are working to address questions of affordability, diversity, and academic integrity. She addresses some of the advances in technology colleges are employing to attract and retain students; outlines emerging competency-based programs that are reshaping conceptions of a college degree, and offers readers a look at promising innovations that could alter the higher education landscape in the near future.

An extremely timely and focused look at this embattled and evolving arena, this primer emphasizes how open-ended the conversation about higher education’s future remains, and illuminates how big the stakes are for students, colleges, and the nation.

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Charlotte, NC (Monday, April 17, 2023)—Discovery Education—the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports instruction wherever it takes place—has announced a host of exciting updates to the company’s award-winning services. Together, these new enhancements drive deeper student engagement and offer even greater support to educators.

Discovery Education’s award-winning products and services have long been recognized as the “teacher’s choice” for their high-quality digital content, grab-and-go lessons, and teaching tools that drive deep student learning in all K-12 topics. Through these latest enhancements by Discovery Education’s expert product development team, educators using the company’s innovative services now have even more ways to drive inquiry, excitement, and exploration in the classroom. Among the updates made recently to the Discovery Education platform are:

A new Discovery Education Original Series, Real-World Phenomena Jr. Featuring short videos in English and Spanish that are paired with ready-to-use instructional activities, this exciting new content brings compelling natural science phenomena alive for students.  

10 new learning games from Arcademics. These skill-building, multi-player games help students build critical skills in math, language arts, and social studies in a fun and entertaining way.  

A new collection of compelling social studies and civics education resources from Sesame Workshop which can be found in the Discovery Education platform’s Sesame Learning Channel. 

Discovery Education has also enhanced its Pivot Interactives solution, which joined the Discovery Education family in 2022. Pivot Interactives makes teaching science with active learning and scientific phenomena engaging and easy with 10,000 authentic, video-based science interactives crafted by Pivot’s expert curriculum team and teacher community. Recently, Pivot’s product team added several new enhancements to the service including the additions of:

Responsive feedback, which provides each student with targeted and specific feedback based on their answers.

Randomized questions. To support academic integrity, randomized questions ensure each student is assigned unique problems to work on.

A new drag-and-drop question type that develops students’ critical thinking skills by helping them build evidence and concepts into models. 

A redesigned grading tool that streamlines grading Pivot-based assignments for teachers, saving them time.

Discovery Education has also upgraded the company’s Mystery Science service, which has been honored with SIIA’s Best Science Instructional Solution CODiE award for Grades PK –8. Mystery Science provides K-5 educators with simple-to-use, open-and-go, hands-on lessons that inspire students to love science. The new enhancements to Mystery Science include:

The addition of anchor layers to kindergarten lessons. Anchor layers introduce scientific phenomena to students at the beginning of a lesson and provide a new layer of support to emerging readers.

New and revised hands-on lessons in grades 2-5 that deepen student understanding of key concepts of the NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) and state standards.

These new service updates and more will be highlighted during a special upcoming webinar conducted by Discovery Education’s Product Development Team. This webinar, which will be held on Thursday, April 27 at 3:00 PM ET, will provide a deep dive into the enhanced functionality of all Discovery Education services and highlight how to integrate the new features into classroom instruction. Learn more and register for the webinar here.

“The latest improvements to Discovery Education’s services are sourced directly from the recommendations of teachers in the field,” said Lance Rougeux, Discovery Education’s Senior Vice President of Curriculum Instruction and Student Engagement and former middle school teacher. “Guided by educator feedback, we’ve made valuable upgrades to our suite of award-winning services that improve every educator’s ability to engage today’s learners and scale what we know is best practice.”

All educators using Discovery Education services enjoy access to the Discovery Educator Network. A global network of education professionals, the Discovery Educator Network connects members across school systems and around the world through social media, virtual conferences, and in-person events, fostering valuable idea-sharing and inspiration.

For more information about Discovery Education’s award-winning digital resources—which can be purchased with federal stimulus funds—and professional learning services, visit www.discoveryeducation.com, and stay connected with Discovery Education on social media through Twitter and LinkedIn. 

The Positive Action program shows that we can promote academic achievement and build students’ character. Every day as millions of students go to school, their parents and caretakers hope these young people will be treated with care, valued, inspired, and educated. Students hope they will get along with their peers and teachers, have their work measured up, and enjoy the process of learning. These hopes define positive classrooms for parents and students, so we provide Seven Strategies for Building Positive Classrooms below.

Unfortunately, the accountability requirements of No Child Left Behind have created a different definition of positive classrooms for many educators. For them, positive classrooms have come to mean places where students arrive at school ready to learn; work diligently to master academic standards (particularly math and reading); go home and accurately complete homework; and return to school the next day eager to learn more. Often, teachers are so focused on ensuring that students pass achievement tests that they have little or no time to address students’ social and emotional needs.

Seven Strategies for Building Positive Classrooms

1. Make Learning Relevant

Students are more engaged in learning and retain knowledge better when they see that it is relevant and vital to their own success and happiness. By discovering students’ talents, learning styles, and interests, teachers can adjust teaching methods and strategies. By giving students a say in how the classroom operates, teachers increase students’ sense of ownership in the education process.

2. Create a Classroom Code of Conduct