Annenberg’s Education Workshop Seminar Series is an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Seminars are typical academic presentations intended for a broad academic audience. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions and we seek to be inclusive to a broad, multi-disciplinary audience.

We invite faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education to participate.

Event speaker: Edom Tesfa 

Event Title: Between welcome and exclusion: Immigrant student and family engagement in K-12 schools

Climate change is a highly polarized issue in the United States. Democrats and Republicans differ substantially in how they understand the causes and consequences of climate change and in their support for many climate policies. Yet we know much less about how Americans think about the role of education. This talk will review what national surveys tell us about public opinion toward climate change education (e.g., EdNext, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, etc.) and draw especially on a decade of survey research conducted by the Center for Sustainable Futures at Teachers College. The talk will also consider why public opinion matters for what happens inside schools. Bringing together research on public opinion and educators, I will examine where Americans agree and disagree about climate change education, how those attitudes vary across social and political groups, and whether educators’ perceptions of public opinion correspond to what the public actually believes. The talk will conclude by considering what these patterns mean for efforts to expand climate change education in a politically divided society.

Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He earned his B.A. in Political Science and Educational Policy from Tel-Aviv University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology and Educational Leadership & Policy Studies from Indiana University–Bloomington. His research examines the emergence, diffusion, and impact of global education movements. His main line of work focuses on environmental sustainability education policy and politics as reflected in the activities of international organizations, NGOs, and cities. He also studies the influence of international large-scale assessments (e.g., TIMSS and PISA) on policymaking through public discourse and public opinion.

M. Patricia Fabian is a Professor of Environmental Health and Associate Director at the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University. She founded the Sustainable Built Environment Lab which conducts research on extreme heat resilience in cities, indoor air quality in schools and homes, and energy transitions in the built environment. Dr. Fabian leads multiple interdisciplinary teams and is a faculty affiliate of the BUSPH Center for Climate and Health, BU URBAN, and the BU Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.

In the 2010s, the United States faced 119 billion-dollar disasters, totaling roughly $802 billion and claiming over 5,200 lives. Research also shows that these environmental disruptions are occurring more frequently and with higher intensity (Davis, 2020). My central research focus will address how environmental disasters impact schooling communities; specifically, how such events interrupt learning for students, interfere with educators’ practices within and outside of the classroom, and hinder families from recovering long-term. In this presentation, I will summarize recent studies on community-centered strategies that support schools, students, and their families after hazards. I will also share my own lessons learned from collecting data across a diverse landscape in multiple regions of the USA. Although the studies in this presentation occurred in divergent environments, my lessons learned from these projects remain consistent: respondents acknowledged that the storms exacerbate preexisting inequalities and demand a just recovery that enables them to truly recover and return to a better, healthier state than before the event.

Cassandra R. Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work exposes the extent to which targeted groups (e.g., communities of color, low-income, etc.), who are already more susceptible to environmental disruptions, are made more vulnerable following an event. She defines environmental disruptions as anything from hurricanes to viral pandemics and intends to identify best-practices to support these groups, as well as educators, interested stakeholders, and policymakers.

How much does the natural/environmental component of a school's physical environment (heat and air pollution) contribute to human capital accumulation and to educational inequality, and can infrastructure investments mitigate these harms? This talk reviews a growing body of research on how environmental conditions shape student learning, focusing on heat, air pollution, and school infrastructure. Across this research, a consistent pattern emerges: cumulative exposure to both heat and air pollution meaningfully impairs learning, primarily by degrading the quality of instructional time rather than through indirect channels like health shocks or economic disruption. Effects fall disproportionately on Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. This talk will conclude by drawing connections between the empirical research and school infrastructure policy.

Dr. Joshua Goodman is a professor of education and of economics at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, where he works on the economics of education policy. His research applies causal inference methods to large quantitative data sets, to provide rigorous evidence on the impacts of education policies. His work focuses on a variety of education policy issues, including: the determinants and consequences of college choice; the effects of secondary math coursework; the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on public schools; and the role of stressors in student learning.

What is this film about?

"Counted Out" explores the power and influence of math in today's society, and how numeric illiteracy is a deeply urgent crisis worthy of the nation's attention.

Will there be opportunity for discussion?

Yes! There will be brief discussion moderated by Aréema Sweeney-Ashby and Linda McQuaide.

Who should attend?

This screening is open to Rhode Island educators.

More about the film

“Counted Out” investigates the biggest crises of our time. Political polarization. Racial biases. Social injustice. Economic inequity. Climate change. And a global pandemic. All viewed through a previously unseen lens: math

In our current information economy, math is everywhere.The people we date, the news we see, the influence of our votes, the candidates who win elections, the education we can access, the jobs we get is all underwritten by an invisible layer of math that few of us understand, or even notice.

But whether we know it or not, our numeric literacy — whether we can speak the language of math — is a critical determinant of social and economic power.

Through a mosaic of personal stories, expert interviews, and scenes of math transformation in action, “Counted Out” shows what’s at risk if we keep the status quo. Do we want an America in which most of us don’t consider ourselves “math people?” Where math proficiency goes down as students grow up? Or do we want a country where everyone can understand the math that undergirds our society — and can help shape it?

The film’s voices include the late civil rights icon Robert Moses as well as Talithia Williams, associate professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd University and TEDx speaker of “Own Your Body’s Data,” Julia Angwin, investigative journalist and founder of Proof, Steven Levitt, co-author of “Freakonomics.”