Goal

• Whatever the reason, many high school teachers say something significant happens to school engagement levels around Year 9.
• Read more:
  20% of Australian students don't finish high school: non-mainstream schools have a lot to teach us about helping kids stay

Lost, disengaged and ‘in never-never land’

• One Year 9 teacher told me students at this age see themselves
  as that in-between stage.
• What if I’m neither?’ Students at this age often strongly feel they no longer fit in.
• Year 9 teachers described this year to me as “the lost year”, where students often drift off to “never-never land”.
• This suggests an opportunity for schools to design their Year 9 curriculum to help these students see the relevance of school.

Specialist Year 9 programs

• Some schools have implemented specialist programs for Year 9.
• Some have large-scale residential programs, where students live and learn away from home for extended periods.
• Other programs focus on students learning about and through their local communities.
• Other programs are conducted entirely offsite over the course of a term.

A different approach

• In the Renewal program, the careers unit and mock job interviews are done at the start of the year to support students to get part-time employment.
• Students are given more agency than a traditional approach would allow.
• School work might be done, for example, via essay-writing, painting, drawing, in the form of a radio interview or other formats.
• The kids have more opportunity in regards to choosing their own destination […] to be able to find their own learning.

Resonating with students’ lives

• The success of Year 9 programs hinges on a tailored curriculum that resonates with students’ lives, taught by teachers dedicated to fostering strong connections.
• Read more:
  'I would like to go to university': flexi school students share their goals in Australia-first survey

Josh Ambrosy is on the board of Outdoors Victoria, the state not-for-profit peak body. He runs professional development sessions related to Year 9 programs and other middle years curricula.

• At the time of the 1954 ruling, 17 U.S. states had laws permitting or requiring racially segregated schools.
• With Brown, the justices overturned decades of legal precedent that kept Black Americans in separate and unequal schools.
• As a professor of education and demography at Penn State University, I research racial desegregation and inequality in K-12 schools.

Recent setbacks

• The decision followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated racial inequalities in the U.S.
• Meanwhile, politicians and school boards have banned or removed books by authors of color from school libraries and restricted teaching about racism in U.S. history.
• I believe these legal setbacks amid the current political climate make finally realizing the full promise of Brown more urgent.

Resistance to Brown ruling

• The Brown vs. Board of Education decision did not immediately change the nation’s public schools, especially in the completely segregated South, where there was massive resistance to desegregation.
• Resistance was so fierce in the first decade after Brown that compliance with desegregation orders at times required federal troops to escort Black students to enroll in formerly all-white schools.

While only 2% of Southern Black K-12 students attended majority white schools in 1964 – 10 years after Brown – the number had grown to 33% by 1970. The South surpassed all other regions in desegregation progress for Black students.

Segregation persists

• At the time of Brown, about 90% of students were white and most other students were Black.
• Today, according to a 2022 federal report, 46% of public school students are white, 28% are Hispanic, 15% are Black, 6% Asian, 4% multiracial and 1% American Indian.
• Based on my analysis of 2021 federal education data, public schools in 22 states and Washington, D.C., served majorities of students of color.
• In 2021, approximately 60% of Black and Hispanic public school students attended schools where 75% or more of students were students of color.

Benefits of diversity

While Brown was an attempt to address the inequality that students experienced in segregated Black schools, the harms of segregation affect students of all races. Racially integrated schools are associated with reduced prejudice, enhanced critical thinking or simply building cross-racial friendships that teach children how to work effectively with others.
White students are the least exposed to students of other races and ethnicities, and therefore they often miss out on the benefits of diversity. Nearly half of white public school students attend a school in which white students are 75% or more of the student body.

Factors that exacerbate segregation

• How those boundaries are drawn or redrawn can exacerbate or alleviate school segregation.
• A high level of income and racial segregation also exists between neighboring school districts.
• And district secession – when schools leave an existing school district to form a new district – is linked to higher segregation.
• One study found that areas with more students enrolled in charter schools were associated with higher school segregation.

Potential solutions

• For the rest of the country, voluntary integration efforts are attempts to finally achieve the goals of the Brown decision.
• Finally, since reducing residential segregation could also reduce school segregation, some efforts have combined school desegregation and housing integration policies.

Erica Frankenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Ukraine advances, Ukraine overcomes the path.
• He said: “Ukrainians will cope with any energy shortage as they have no shortage of resilience and courage.
• We defeated the darkness.” He took time to thank the Ukrainian people, talking up the country’s unity in the face of existential threat.
• A refugee or a citizen?” The cold hard fact is that 2023 ended badly on the battlefield for Ukraine.
• As late as the beginning of December Russia announced it was calling up another 170,000 troops.

• In the meantime, a raft of new economic measures will increase the tax burden on ordinary Ukrainians, while at the same time radically reducing public spending.
• Read more:
  Ukraine war increasingly seen as 'fought by the poor’, as Zelensky raises taxes and proposes strict mobilisation laws

• You can also subscribe to our fortnightly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.
• James Horncastle, of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, meanwhile, believes that while Ukraine has suffered setbacks over the past six months or so, it can still prevail.
• And then works out exactly what it will take in terms of western military aid to achieve that initial goal.

Do they know it’s Christmas?

• Accordingly Ukrainians celebrated Easter and other important religious festivals and saints days at different times as well.
• But in May 2023, the Ukrainian government took the decision to adopt the revised Julian – what we know as the Gregorian – calendar.
• As Hann reports, the old religious calendar survived the Soviet era, but has now been swept away by decree from Kyiv.

• You’ve committed to a healthier lifestyle and are determined that this time is going to be different.
• Your refrigerator is stocked with fruits and veggies, you’ve tossed out processed foods, and your workout routine is written in pen in your daily planner.
• Thinking about these long-term consequences, the argument goes, should help you avoid indulging right now and better stick to your goals.

To resist temptation, think short term

• We tested this approach in seven studies with over 4,000 participants.
• In one study, we invited university students to view one of two public service announcements detailing reasons to avoid energy drinks.

• Those who read about the short-term costs were 25% less likely to choose the energy drink than those who read about the long-term costs.
• For fast food, think about how it can make you feel bloated or give you indigestion.
• The takeaway is simple: To avoid indulging, think short term.

Focus on the fun of healthy options

• On the flip side, can you nudge yourself toward consuming more healthy foods?
• These findings were independently replicated in an intervention at five university dining halls that used food labels focused on either tastiness or healthfulness.

• In one study, Kaitlin asked gymgoers to choose a weightlifting workout from a list of similarly difficult routines.
• The participants who were instructed to select a fun exercise completed more reps than those told to pick an exercise most useful for their long-term fitness goals.

Timing the reward sweet spot

• One strategy for persistence is to use rewards to stay committed.
• It seems rewards are most effective when people have to work to unlock them, after which they become regular.

• They ended up persisting longer and completing more workouts than people in a lump-sum group who received a larger, occasional reward for every four workouts they finished.
• People in the work-to-unlock-rewards group – three days of flossing without rewards followed by daily rewards – flossed for more days than those who received continual rewards right way.

Resistance, enjoyment and persistence

• Our research highlights three effective strategies to help you achieve your goals: prioritizing short-term consequences to resist temptation, finding enjoyment in long-term choices, and continually rewarding yourself for sustained persistence.
• What’s great about these strategies is that you can adapt them to any personal goal you hold.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.