Children learning to swim early become more academically successful and more sociable

 With family budgets stretched ever-tighter, swimming lessons can be one of the first expenses to be cut back – but with research showing swimming helps children not just physically but developmentally, researchers are calling for greater government support.

A major four-year study spanning nearly 7,000 survey respondents and 177 individually tested children suggests that children who learn to swim early don’t just become safer in the water and fitter, but they become more academically successful and more sociable than their peers.

This study has been unpacked, explored and expanded upon by researcher Robyn Jorgensen, Emeritus Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia, in her new book, Why Young Children Should Learn to Swim.

Testing an industry hunch

The project began with a conversation between researcher Professor Jorgensen and Laurie Lawrence, an Olympic swim coach inducted into both the Australian and US Swimming Halls of Fame. Lawrence felt that children who learned to swim early were generally more ‘school-ready’.

“There was no formal evidence to support this observation, but it was one that Laurie felt he and many others in the swim industry observed,” Jorgensen explains.

Jorgensen and colleagues decided to verify this ‘industry hunch’ through rigorous academic investigation using internationally recognised testing tools: the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales and Woodcock-Johnson III assessments, normed against national census data.

The results surprised even Jorgensen, who said: “My early observations of the young learners piqued my interest while retaining some sense of scepticism about what could be achieved. I am not from a swimming background, so had no vested interest in the ‘proving’ or otherwise of Laurie’s hunch. My only interest in swimming was as a grandparent and around water safety for my children and grandchildren, and as a recreational activity.”

On measures of literacy, numeracy and following instructions, the study found that young children before the age of 5 who participated in swimming, regardless of socio-economic background, could be 5-18 months ahead of milestones in literacy, numeracy, and being able to follow instruction – at a much better rate than general children population of the same age.

Jorgensen is keen to impress this does not mean young children who have been learning to swim are innately ‘smarter’, instead, she argues swimming lessons build transferable skills and dispositions. For example, a child counting kicks from one to ten with an instructor, for instance, absorbs number sequencing and one-to-one correspondence – skills with direct value in a classroom.

While many parents enrol children in swimming for safety reasons, Jorgensen’s detailed study suggests participants gain measurable advantages in cognitive development, language skills and emotional regulation.

“It is reasonable to claim that swimming prepares children for the schooling years, particularly the early years and the transition into schooling,” Jorgensen explains.

The price of entry

Yet access to this advantage is sharply unequal. Most swim schools operate as commercial businesses, and cost is consistently identified as the single biggest barrier to participation.

According to Jorgensen’s analysis, the biggest equity barrier is faced in the U.S. and China, where only very affluent families can afford regular swimming lessons.

After this, Singapore, Australia, Brazil and South Africa also face notable geographic and economic barriers to swimming.

One respondent from Zimbabwe summed up the difficulty, saying: “So swimming is still seen in Africa in general as elite. But basically, if you are a working-level person well below average, swimming lessons will not be a priority; what will be a priority is feeding your family.”

Geography also compounds the problem. In Australia, families on remote farming properties can face journeys of hundreds of kilometres to reach the nearest pool. This creates what the study calls ‘a double whammy’ – children from low-income and rural communities are simultaneously the least likely to access lessons and the most at risk of drowning.

With cost-of-living crises around the world, Jorgensen’s call-to-action is for greater systemic support to allow equitable access.

A call for subsidy

Jorgensen argues governments have both a moral and financial incentive to intervene.

The study suggests that where governments worldwide already spend billions trying to close attainment gaps in schools.

“What this study has shown is that even when socio-economic backgrounds are accounted for, children who participate in quality lessons achieve better than the general population. It would make sense for the government to consider investing in providing or subsidising early years swimming for families who would otherwise be excluded from participation in early years swimming lessons,” Jorgensen explains.

“Investing in quality swimming lessons would make a politically wise move. The cost of lessons can be quite high, but if policies were created to offer subsidies for parents or to create swim programs for disadvantaged families, there is considerable potential for adding capital to these cohorts of learners,” she explains.

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DOI

10.4324/9781003774747 

The Sunshine Protection Act puts K–12 children at greater risk for fatal car crashes

In July 2026, the US House passed legislation to make daylight saving time (DST) permanent. But a new analysis of the consequences of the “Sunshine Protection Act,” reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 29, finds that this legislation would come with serious safety consequences for millions of schoolchildren across the US who would have to leave for school before sunrise, when fatal crashes with pedestrians are more likely, for much of the school year. Permanent DST would lead to more than 2 billion pre-sunrise commutes for children, and students who walk or take the bus to school would face an increased risk of early morning crashes. 

“Permanent DST would move the school day earlier relative to the sun without changing a single bell schedule, putting millions of children on streets and at bus stops in the dark for weeks or months every year,” says Horacio de la Iglesia of the University of Washington, Seattle. 

Much of the public debate around permanent DST has focused on the light available during the evening. But the researchers say that mornings are a critical time for schoolchildren, who would generally return home during light hours under any clock policy. The de la Iglesia lab has long studied the way school start times affect adolescent sleep, including the move in Seattle and many other school districts to later secondary school start times. When the US House passed the Sunshine Protection Act in July 2026, the team realized that no one had investigated how many children would be sent to school in the dark under the new policy.  

“The US has tried this before,” says Guadalupe Rodríguez Ferrante, also at the University of Washington, Seattle. Year-round DST took effect in January 1974 and was abandoned that October, in part because of public concern over dark winter mornings and children traveling to school. “All of today’s students, and most of today’s parents, have never lived through a winter on DST, so experience with the current seasonal system does not tell us what permanent DST would be like.” 

The researchers gathered school start times in 14 states with permanent DST along with local sunrise times. They counted the number of pre-sunrise commutes in each location and found that there would be about 356 million more pre-sunrise school commutes with the move to permanent DST. When they broadened their approach beyond these states to the entire US, they found that the Sunshine Protection Act would lead to more than 2 billion dark morning commutes for children. They also found that students in both northern and southern states would be impacted, and Georgia had the highest number of pre-sunrise school commutes of all states analyzed.   

The team then analyzed fatal-crash records in the US over a decade and found greater odds of crashes involving pedestrians on dark mornings. Among fatal morning crashes, those involving pedestrians aged 5 to 18 were more likely when it was dark. The data suggest that permanent DST would lead to more children at an increased risk of early morning crashes, say the researchers. 

“The burden of permanent DST is likely greatest for children who walk, wait for buses, or arrive early for school breakfast programs, which disproportionately serve lower-income families,” says Ferrante. 

The US’s current system of shifting the clocks forward and back also doubles the number of dark school mornings compared with permanent standard time (ST). Permanent ST is not only safer for children going to school, the researchers say, it also keeps students’ solar, biological, and social clocks best aligned, according to the team’s past research. 

“The name ‘Sunshine Protection Act’ is misleading,” says de la Iglesia. “No clock policy adds a single minute of daylight. It only changes when that daylight is available, and permanent DST moves an hour of light out of the morning, when children travel to school, and into the evening.” 

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Current Biology, Rodríguez Ferrante et al., “Over a billion more dark-morning school commutes for K–12 children under the Sunshine Protection Act” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)01348-5 

Permanent Daylight Saving Time = at least 2B more dark student commutes to school

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill this past summer that would make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent in the United States — meaning there would be no turning back the clocks each fall. Nineteen states, including Washington, have already preapproved this change. If the bill is ultimately signed into law, the change would go into effect in those states.

The bill is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate. School start times are a central issue because permanent DST would lead to darker mornings from November to March. This would mean darker commutes for everyone, but how much would it affect children going to school? University of Washington researchers did the math for 14 out of the 19 states that preapproved the change. Using school start times, enrollment data, and latitude and longitude measurements, the team calculated just how many days each child would be commuting to school in the dark and then added the trips together.

In Washington, there would be almost 35 million more trips to school in the dark under permanent DST compared to the current system of switching between DST and Standard Time twice a year. The other 13 states followed a similar trend, with Georgia having the highest deviation from the current system — 71 million more trips. When the researchers extrapolated these results for the rest of the country, it added at least 2 billion more dark commutes to school.

The team also analyzed traffic collision data from the U.S. and found that it was roughly twice as likely for a fatal crash involving a school-aged pedestrian to occur during dark mornings than after sunrise.

The researchers published these results Oct. 29 in Current Biology.

"It's called the 'Sunshine Protection Act' because you get an extra hour of light at the end of the day. But you will take that hour from the morning. You could call it the Sunshine Destruction Act," said senior author Horacio de la Iglesia, UW professor of biology. "These dark mornings will inequitably affect children who have to go to school at a certain time. It's a very tangible metric that anybody from any state or socioeconomic background can relate to. Nobody wants their kids to go to school in the dark."

Dark mornings affect everyone. Exposure to bright light in the morning helps set our circadian clock, which helps regulate many facets of our lives, such as our mood, sleep and appetite. Without that morning light, our bodies struggle to regulate these key functions.

"When we send kids to school in the dark, we are depriving them from an opportunity to get that morning daylight," said lead author Guadalupe Rodríguez Ferrante, a UW postdoctoral scholar in biology. "We were asking what's the cost for these children. We wanted actual numbers, a real number of kids based on the geographic location of each school." 

The study revealed the areas that would be the hardest hit by the switch: communities on the western edge of their time zones, such as Forks, Washington, and communities with early school start times. For example, Mississippi and Alabama schools have an average start time of earlier than 8 a.m. and both balloon from about 2 million dark trips for each state under the current system to more than 20 million dark trips for each state under permanent DST.

"Some districts probably never experience a dark commute under the current system, and, if this passes, suddenly they will wake up to this new reality that their kids are going to school in the dark," Rodríguez Ferrante said. "Keep in mind that we used the actual start time listed for each school, and a lot of schools offer breakfast or other things before school, so the kids could be getting there even earlier."

After calculating real numbers for 14 states, the researchers estimated the total change in dark commutes if the whole country shifted to permanent DST. It adds up to about 2 billion more trips than under the current system.

"For the estimation, we assumed students would be leaving home around 8 a.m.," Rodríguez Ferrante said. "That's pretty late, so our calculation is likely an underestimation of the real number."

The researchers argue that permanent DST would also undo the benefits of having a delayed start time for high school students, which is intended to account for teenagers’ shifted circadian clock compared to kids and adults.

"I've heard the argument, 'If we're in permanent DST, we can just delay the school start time to address these issues,'" de la Iglesia said. "Well, if we do that, you will end up going to work later. And everything is going to get delayed. You will get out of work an hour later, and you will miss the opportunity to enjoy your evening light. And essentially, we're just going to be realigning everybody to solar time. That, by definition, is Standard Time."

Asking teachers to set high expectations leads =more detailed feedback and subtle bias

 

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In a national study of nearly 1,000 elementary and middle school teachers, a simple “wise feedback” prompt made teachers’ comments more specific, but also surfaced small race- and gender-linked differences in feedback about students’ math ability and effort.

Prompting teachers to communicate high expectations and confidence in students’ potential leads them to give more detailed feedback, according to a new study led by Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, PhD, a professor of education at USC Rossier and co-director of the USC STEM Center; Ian Thacker, PhD, an associate professor of educational psychology at The University of Texas at San Antonio; and Joseph Cimpian, PhD , a professor of economics and education policy at New York University.

The study, which included nearly 1,000 elementary and middle school teachers across the United States, is the first to show that this kind of prompt can change the substance of what teachers tell students about their work.

The approach, known as “wise feedback,” pairs high performance standards with an assurance that students can meet them. Students who receive wise feedback tend to be more trusting and perform at higher levels.

“A relatively small prompt led teachers to give students more specific information about their performance, which is exactly what students need if feedback is going to support their learning,” said Copur-Gencturk. “Instead of a generic ‘good job,’ teachers pointed to the strengths and weaknesses in students’ reasoning.”

Testing the effect of a single prompt

The research team randomly assigned teachers to one of two groups. One group was asked to give feedback as they normally would in their classrooms. The other was asked to communicate both high expectations and confidence in the student’s ability to meet them.

All teachers reviewed the same set of mathematical solutions. Each was paired with the image of a randomly assigned White or Black girl or boy presenting the solution in an online classroom environment. That design let the researchers measure how the prompt changed teachers’ feedback and whether its effect depended on a student’s perceived race and gender.

More specific feedback, with an unintended consequence

Overall, prompted teachers gave more detailed feedback than teachers who responded as usual. They were more likely to name both what students had done well and what they still needed to work on.

The prompt also changed how often teachers commented on students’ ability and effort. Prompted teachers praised a student’s math ability nearly four times as often as teachers who weren’t prompted (8.1% of responses vs. 2.1%). The prompted teachers were also more than five times as likely to question a student’s ability or say the student needed to work harder, though those comments stayed rare, under 3% of responses.

“Asking teachers to emphasize a student’s potential nudged some of them to comment on the student instead of the work, more often praising or questioning their math ability,” said Cimpian. “Research has long shown that feedback about ability, even when it’s positive, can backfire once students hit a setback.”

Those ability and effort comments are also where differences by student race and gender emerged. Though the differences were small, the prompt increased negative comments about the math ability of both Black and White girls, and it significantly increased criticism of effort for every group except White boys. Among prompted teachers, for example, Black girls received negative feedback about their ability 3.3% of the time, compared with 0.6% among teachers who were not prompted.

“When teachers focused more explicitly on students’ potential, their feedback also reflected broader societal stereotypes about who is naturally capable in math and who needs to work harder,” said Copur-Gencturk. “It was a small effect that touched a small percentage of students, but even small slights and biases can snowball over time.”

The findings build on the team’s earlier research, which found similar patterns in teachers’ perceptions of students’ mathematical ability, and suggest those perceptions can also shape what teachers tell students directly.

“In our earlier work, we saw these patterns in what teachers believed about students’ math ability,” said Ian Thacker, associate professor of educational psychology at UT San Antonio, a USC Rossier alumnus, and a co-author of the study. “What’s new here is that those beliefs show up in what teachers actually say to students, which can shape their experience in math classrooms.”

What it means for teachers and schools

The researchers conclude that encouraging teachers to hold high expectations is not enough on its own. Teachers also need support in giving feedback that is specific, actionable and focused on students’ mathematical thinking rather than on assumptions about their ability or effort.

“Even when we asked them to, teachers rarely stated their expectations outright, and the prompt didn’t make them any more likely to give students a concrete strategy for improving,” said Cimpian. “Teachers became more likely to point out what needed work, but not to show students how to fix it. That’s a skill that teacher preparation programs and in-service professional development can help teachers build.”

The questions that remain

Because the study looked at feedback teachers gave to students they did not know, the team does not yet know whether teachers respond the same way in everyday classrooms, where they know their students and have more information about their understanding. It also remains unclear which kinds of professional learning best help teachers give feedback that is specific, actionable and equitable.

“Answering these questions requires continued research on race and gender in education,” said Copur-Gencturk. “Yet the current climate, from a lack of funding to pressure around public communication in this area, is making it harder to study inequities and develop evidence-based ways to address them. That limits our ability to create learning environments in which each and every student can flourish.”

The full study can be read here.

Who Benefits From Universal Prekindergarten?

Complete brief

Between 2009 and 2019, California made major policy changes to key educational investments for preschool and elementary school students, including the California State Preschool Program (CSPP); transitional kindergarten (TK), created by the Kindergarten Readiness Act; and K–12 financing, overhauled with the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). This study finds that each investment produced substantial, equity-enhancing gains in math and reading achievement—and that these gains compounded across the early years. TK delivered its largest benefits to the children least likely to have access to high-quality prekindergarten (PreK), narrowing gaps by family income. Those benefits were larger for children who first attended CSPP as 3-year-olds, were larger still in well-funded schools, and persisted longest where resources were the greatest. The findings show that sequenced public investments can produce multiplier effects that exceed the sum of their parts. 

The report on which this brief is based can be found here. 

Key findings of the study include the following: 

• Cohorts affected by the Kindergarten Readiness Act—who had access to TK at age 4 and attended CSPP at age 3 at much higher rates than prior cohorts—showed reading achievement nearly a full grade level higher and math achievement roughly two thirds of a grade level higher in 3rd and 4th grades than comparable earlier cohorts. 

• For children from low-income backgrounds with English-speaking parents, TK attendance led to about 7 months of additional learning in 3rd-grade math and reading. Effects were much smaller for children from more advantaged backgrounds. 

• Among low-income children, TK effects were larger for those who first attended CSPP. Low-income multilingual learners had nearly half a year of additional learning gains in 4th grade math when their TK attendance was preceded by CSPP attendance. 

• A $1,000 increase in CSPP per-pupil spending led to almost a quarter of a year of additional learning in math and reading 3 and 4 years after kindergarten, independent of TK and school spending. 

• TK attendance and LCFF-induced school spending were mutually reinforcing: TK effects grew with elementary school funding and persisted longer in better-resourced schools

The Advanced Placement gender gap is narrowing but not across all subjects

 

Boys take more STEM exams, girls more humanities. The disparity could hurt their education

The gender balance among the top scorers on Advanced Placement exams tends to track the gender balance among students taking those tests, according to a new study led by the University of Georgia.

That gender gap is currently quite wide.

Across more than two decades of exam data, the researchers found participation in AP tests were often split along gender lines. Girls dominated the languages, humanities and arts, while boys took more STEM (or science, technology, engineering and math) subjects.

In many subjects, the more evenly split the AP test takers were, the narrower the gender gaps among students earning top scores became, the study found.

“Gender stereotypes about ability, like persistent beliefs that boys are naturally better at mathematics, physics, computing or similar STEM courses, or that girls are better at arts, can influence both students’ choices on which class to take and how well they do in that class,” said Kadir Bahar, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor in the Mary Frances Early College of Education. “Students are more likely to enter and persist in a field when they feel that people like them belong in it.”

AP classes are offered in high schools across the country. They are designed by the College Board to match the rigor of college courses and can count toward college credits if students score well on the AP exams at the end of term.

Gender gaps narrowed significantly in some subjects, grew in others

The researchers analyzed more than 70 million AP exam results, covering about 40 million students between 1997 and 2020.

Out of 45 subjects, boys outnumbered girls in many science and math-centered subjects, especially physics and computer science, the study found. For example, the researchers found that for every one girl taking the AP Computer Science A exam, more than four boys were taking the exam.

Girls outnumbered boys in studio art exams by almost three to one, and in English literature exams by almost two to one.

“Think about it: You are going to an AP physics course, and there is only one girl for every three boys. That might give a girl a sense that physics is a boys’ room. That subject belongs to them,” Bahar said. That feeling may make girls question whether they should take a course, even if it interests them.

The researchers found that male overrepresentation has decreased in many of those STEM-related courses — calculus, computer science and chemistry, for instance — over the years.

You are going to an AP physics course, and there is only one girl for every three boys. That might give a girl a sense that physics is a boys’ room.

Kadir Bahar, Mary Frances Early College of Education

AP Calculus AB exam participation, for example, stayed close to evenly split between boys and girls while the gap in Calculus BC narrowed. Statistics also evened out, and German and Latin were roughly balanced throughout.

That was not the case for algebra-based Physics 1, though. It remained male-dominated, and the gap widened. In the years the exam was offered (2015 through 2020), three of every five students who took it were boys.

Studio art continued to skew more female, and that gap also grew. Roughly seven out of every 10 students taking those exams were girls.

“We aren’t sure exactly what changed,” Bahar said. “But there were nevertheless encouraging signs of change. Gender gaps narrowed significantly in several subjects.”

Participation in AP tests and exam scores could be linked

Across many AP subjects, gender representation among exam takers was strongly associated with gender representation among students earning a top score of 5. However, the relationship varied substantially by subject.

In some subjects that maintained a sizable gap in participation, the gender that made up the majority of students also made up the highest scores. But in several subjects where girls were most of the test takers, such as biology, environmental science and world history, boys still outnumbered girls among top scorers.

The gaps remained striking in some subjects. Across the study period, boys were represented among top scorers at roughly four times the rate of girls in Physics 1 and nearly six times the rate in Computer Science A.

“Participation and top achievement are related,” Bahar said. “Getting more girls into computer science may help narrow those excellence gaps.” Physics was a notable exception, though. There, changes in participation did not track changes among top scorers.

Gendered expectations can accumulate over many years.

Kadir Bahar

Simply increasing participation by one gender won’t necessarily close gaps among top scorers, the researchers said.

“Gendered expectations can accumulate over many years,” Bahar said. “Parents may perceive sons as more mathematically capable and daughters as more verbally capable. Teachers may unintentionally enforce such expectations, and peer norms can make certain subjects appear more or less socially appropriate for boys or girls.”

Making all students feel comfortable to try different subjects is key, the researchers said.

“Equity doesn’t mean forcing equal numbers of boys and girls into every subject,” Bahar said. “But it means ensuring that gender is not creating unnecessary barriers to opportunity, participation, support or high achievement.”

The study was published in the Journal of Educational Psychology and was co-authored by Yasemin Sipahi, a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Psychology, as well as Eter Mjavanadze, Erdogan Kaya and Ummugulsum Aydin.

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Journal

Journal of Educational Psychology

DOI

10.1037/edu0001070

Schools increasingly affected by poor air quality as wildfire smoke becomes more common

. – American children are increasingly exposed to air pollution as wildfire smoke becomes more common, and some schools and childcare centers struggle to keep indoor breathing conditions clean, a new national study shows.

The researchers note that components of wildfire smoke, including PM2.5, which is fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller, are known health hazards, especially for adolescents and younger children.

For the study, published in Environmental Research, scientists looked at air quality data from across the United States from 2006 through 2023 and found some alarming trends, said co-author Molly Kile of Oregon State University.

“The average number of annual smoke days at public schools rose from 6.8 to 54.4 between the beginning and end of the study period,” said Kile, an environmental epidemiologist in the OSU College of Health. “Childcare centers experienced an increase from 9.4 to 112.2 days. Our children are collectively experiencing billions of days of smoky air each year.”

Four decades of data from the National Interagency Fire Center show that the number of U.S. wildfires per year has remained relatively stable – generally in the range of 70,000 – but the intensity of those fires and the acreage burned have increased.

And while the western part of the country tends to see more fires and heavier smoke, the issue is a national one, Kile emphasizes.

“Yes, there is more severe wildfire smoke in the West, but fine particulate matter travels hundreds and thousands of miles,” she said. “And the prevailing wind blows from west to east, so it all goes downwind.”

PM2.5 can be inhaled deeply into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream, is a known cause of cardiovascular disease and is linked to the onset and worsening of respiratory illness. 

As climate change exacerbates wildfire risk, PM2.5 emissions from fires have surged to the point that wildfires now account for almost half of all PM2.5 across the United States and have negated air quality improvements in multiple regions.

“We are often told to stay indoors when air pollution gets severe but being indoors does not guarantee clean air,” Kile said, noting that indoor air quality measurements showed substantial variation in how well buildings protected occupants from outdoor fine particulate pollution.

“Some schools had higher indoor PM2.5 concentrations than nearby outdoor measurements during smoke days,” she said. “This is a particularly actionable finding and emphasizes the need for investment in improving indoor air quality in schools through HVAC upgrades, which can be expensive, or portable HEPA filters, which can be a more affordable approach.”

Stephanie Foster, the study’s corresponding author, notes because of the amount of time students spend in schools and childcare centers, those places are important settings for safeguarding children’s health.

“We found that the buildings where children spend much of their day do not consistently protect them from air pollution,” said Foster, scholarly activity program manager in Samaritan Health Services’ Research Development Office. “But educational facilities are places where coordinated preparedness plans, air filtration, indoor air quality monitoring and changes to activities during smoke events could reduce exposure.”

Joining Foster and Kile on the study were Andrew Larkin, Megan MacDonald, Megan McClelland and Perry Hystad of the OSU College of Health and Parichehr Salimifard of the OSU College of Engineering. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences supported the research.

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Journal

Environmental Research

DOI

10.1016/j.envres.2026.125883