America’s teenagers have a math problem – one that can’t be solved with a few punches on a calculator.

A steep drop in math test scores last year for eighth graders could hinder their movement through higher-level courses, and, ultimately, their job prospects, experts say. But as schools remediate academic shortfalls associated with the pandemic, they have one unusual resource at their disposal – money, and lots of it. 

Nearly $200 billion of federal aid has enabled some schools to bring on more tutors, adopt and enhance curriculum, or pilot other programs designed to bolster student learning.

The financial windfall carried relatively few guardrails. The federal government largely left it up to states and districts to spend as they saw fit to reopen schools and address the pandemic’s effect on students.

But how much are they putting toward specific academic needs, such as boosting eighth graders’ math skills? It’s difficult to say given the reporting differences between jurisdictions – and the reluctance of many large districts to share details of their spending plans. 

“They made very, very different decisions from one district to the next,” says Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, which has been tracking COVID-19 funding expenditures. “And in that sense, it’s hard to get a pulse on anything looking like an average.”

Paul Sancya/AP/File

In Detroit, Tina Walker (left) works with student Quandallis Perry-Fisher during a Beyond Basics literacy session at Denby High School, Oct. 27, 2021. Detroit's public school system has about $1.3 billion in federal COVID-19 relief aid, some of which is helping its students through tutoring and after school programs.

Broad spending categories – such as “salaries” – don’t indicate whether the money went toward existing teachers or the hiring of, say, math interventionists to work specifically with struggling students.

In a sense, it’s a dual race against time to help students close academic gaps and use the federal money as the spending clock winds down. The deadline for U.S. school districts and state education agencies to budget the largest chunk of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund money, $122 billion, is September 2024. There is a short window beyond that deadline to complete the spending.

An urgent priority: math

Declining math scores suggest why some schools have made the subject a priority. On a standardized test, only 26% of eighth graders in 2022 performed at or above a “proficient” level. That’s down from 34% in 2019, the last time students took the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card.

It means that nearly three-quarters of students last year had not “demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter.”  The average eighth grade math score was the lowest since 2003, underscoring the ways in which pandemic interruptions affected student learning.

On last year’s math test, a larger share of students – 60% of eighth graders – performed at the “basic” level, a step below proficient that indicates “partial mastery” of skills.

“If left unaddressed,” a NAEP official warned in a press release, “this could alter the trajectories and life opportunities of a whole cohort of young people.”

The math assessment analyzes students’ ability to classify angle measurements, use ratios, apply the Pythagorean theorem, and solve multistep equations, among other skills.  

Those may sound like foreign concepts for people far removed from eighth grade, but experts say they’re skills that lay the groundwork for more complex algebra and geometry courses in high school.

“We want them to be confident. We want them to know they can persist through more challenging mathematical problems, such as what they’re going to see in Algebra I,” says Corinne Colgan, chief of teaching and learning for District of Columbia Public Schools. “I think it is a pivotal year.”

A student-centered approach

In Charlotte, North Carolina, the public schools have adopted a discourse and problem solving-based curriculum.

Of 26 districts that are part of NAEP’s Trial Urban District Assessment, a two-decade-old, opt-in group based on city size and student demographics, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools saw the largest share of eighth graders – 30% – perform at or above “proficient” on last year’s math assessment. On the other end of the spectrum, only 4% of eighth graders attending Detroit Public Schools Community District did so. 

Leaders in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools say the curriculum adoption proved to be fortuitous: It occurred at the beginning of the 2019-2020 academic year, months before pandemic decisions plunged schools into remote learning. 

The district has been funneling ESSER money toward professional development to support the curriculum. It’s just one of multiple ways they’re using the relief funds to improve eighth graders’ math skills. 

District teacher Kyra Porter rarely instructs her students from the whiteboard. Instead, she meanders the classroom, asking questions that prompt discussion. 

“Why do you think it’s called a two-way table?” Ms. Porter asks during a class observed via Zoom in mid-March. 

As answers – and sometimes educated guesses – trickle in, she probes further. “What else, though?”

Slowly but surely, the students describe a table that has categorical variables. In this case, the information represents how many people in a certain age range have a cellphone. All the while, Ms. Porter keeps an eye out for those lightbulb moments when she sees students connecting the dots and understanding the underlying math concepts.

“They’re retaining the information more,” she says. “If you watch it in real time, it’s like the most beautiful thing.”

The district – like others across the nation – saw eighth graders’ average scores on the NAEP math test decline since 2019. Ms. Porter says teens’ math struggles aren’t that surprising given the nature of remote learning – with some students learning from parents or not at all, and teachers not easily able to gauge where students were making errors.

As of February, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had spent 52% of its ESSER funds, committed another 17% of the money, and planned how to use 26% more of it, leaving only 5% unbudgeted, according to a presentation the district gave its board.

The district has budgeted nearly $204 million to offset learning loss through programs that provide students with additional learning time – such as a math enrichment program for fourth through eighth graders that began this spring – curriculum investments and related professional development, and extra school-based instructional staff, among other initiatives. 

Charlotte educators say students need to be able to understand and apply math concepts, not just know the step-by-step procedures of solving a problem that, in today’s world, could easily be done by a machine. They hope the new approach to math instruction – bolstered by professional development from COVID-19 funding – changes students’ mindsets.

“We have a societal idea that it’s OK to not be good at math,” says Rob Leichner, a secondary math specialist at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. “ ... But we’re changing that.”

Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, an associate professor of teacher education at the University of Southern California, applauds the district’s move to student-centered teaching. She’s urging districts to go a step further, too, and connect the dots between each lesson to deepen students’ understanding of math concepts.

“So instead of teaching standards one by one, teachers need to look at it and see how, you know, these concepts are building on each other,” she says.

At least one student has found herself warming up to math this year. Eighth grader Ariadna Castro Pinto says her confidence in math plummeted after the pandemic’s virtual learning.

When in-person schooling resumed, Ariadna says she felt behind. Now in Ms. Porter’s class, Ariadna says she has boosted her grades to mostly A’s or B’s, which she credits to the discussion-style approach.

“I really like when we discuss it, because we all put our parts [together] and then she just comes in and she’s like, ‘OK, so this is right. You’re on the right track,’” Ariadna says.

Sustaining investments

Several hundred miles to the north, the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is employing some of the same instructional strategies using ESSER money. 

Seventeen percent of eighth graders attending public schools in the nation’s capital performed at or above the “proficient” level on the NAEP math test, placing the district roughly in the middle compared with its other urban peers.

DCPS has spent nearly 42% of its ESSER allocations, according to tracking done by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown. District officials say some of that money has gone toward boosting eighth graders’ math achievement through a new student-centered curriculum, tutoring, professional development, and investment in a staff dedicated to an overall math strategy. 

The district formed two Squads (Supporting Quality Academic Development for all Students) made up of strong math teachers who visit schools for a six-week period. They work shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers to build best practices that they hope will move the needle on student math achievement.

So far, it appears to be appreciated by the teachers receiving the mentoring, says Jennifer Burkett, director of math strategy and advancement for DCPS.

“At the end of the six weeks, they’re always like, ‘Can you stay longer? Can you please stay longer?’” she says.

Ms. Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab, has been sounding the alarm that districts could face a “messy fiscal cliff,” especially if they put ESSER toward staff salaries.  

DCPS leaders say they’re already preparing for the eventual funding decrease while evaluating initiatives.

“We are going to start our budget process super, super early to think about how we’re going to deal with the extra funds going away,” says Ms. Colgan. “Each year, we have tried to move a little bit more over to our operating budget.”

Now that many districts have already made spending decisions, experts say the next responsibility is perhaps even more important: tracking results to see what actually helped bridge students’ academic gaps.

But that’s reliant on mechanisms being put in place to do so.

“I’m worried,” Ms. Roza says, “that when this window closes, [it] closes, and we shift our attention to something else.” 

Jacques Witt/Reuters

Chinese leader Xi Jinping meets French President Emmanuel Macron during their summit in Guangzhou, China, on April 7, 2023. Mr. Xi turned down Mr. Macron's request that China try to persuade Russia to end its war in Ukraine.

Now you see it, now you don’t. China has been dropping conflicting hints in recent weeks over how, when – and whether – it might wield its influence to try to shape the outcome of the Ukraine war.

But when Chinese leader Xi Jinping signaled during his summit last week with France’s President Emmanuel Macron that he had no intention of intervening diplomatically to persuade Moscow to “see sense,” he brought one critical element into sharp focus.

It is the North Star principle by which Mr. Xi will ultimately decide his Ukraine policy.

Put simply, while Russia may fail to win the war, it is in China’s core interest that Vladimir Putin should not lose it outright.

And the reason that is a core interest may explain why Mr. Xi has held off making a move to tip the scales – as well as the contradictory signals China has been sending out over the past several months.

It’s because the interest is rooted in Mr. Xi’s core vision of a “Chinese century” in which his nation will supplant America as the world’s dominant power.

When it comes to Ukraine, he has concluded that a comprehensive Russian defeat would inevitably strengthen the United States and its Western allies.

Yet he has also been juggling other key elements in his vision of China’s ascending influence: a relationship with Russia that is more complex and constrained than it might appear, and Beijing’s ties with its two top trade partners, the European Union and the U.S.

Ludovic Marin/Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks as Chinese leader Xi Jinping listens at a Franco-Chinese business council meeting in Beijing April 6, 2023.

Mr. Macron’s lavish welcome in Beijing – he was the third EU visitor in recent months, following trade pilgrimages by the leaders of Germany and Spain – left little doubt of the importance Mr. Xi attaches to safeguarding and strengthening China’s relationship with America’s European allies.

It is more than a matter of trade and economic growth. Hosting high-profile European visitors holds an added political attraction: By encouraging ambitions in some European capitals – notably Paris – for a “third way” foreign policy independent of Washington, Mr. Xi hopes to drive a wedge into the transatlantic alliance.

All of these elements have figured in Mr. Xi’s lengthy search for an answer to the questions of how, when, and whether to involve China more actively in breaking the stalemate in Ukraine.

It is Russia that matters most, but only in the sense that staving off an unvarnished, humiliating Russian defeat is Mr. Xi’s bottom-line aim.

That, more than the “no limits” partnership he and Mr. Putin unveiled just days before the Russian invasion, is what has been motivating China’s Ukraine strategy. For while the relationship is important to both sides, Russia is very much the junior partner.

China has not criticized, much less condemned, the invasion. But it has not endorsed the war either. When Mr. Putin recognized new “independent republics” in Russian-held eastern Ukraine, China did not follow suit. And Beijing abstained from a U.N. General Assembly vote denouncing Mr. Putin’s war on the first anniversary of the invasion.

It appeared then that Mr. Xi was poised to get more actively involved in trying to find a way out of the war.

While the U.S., citing intelligence reports, warned he might be about to resupply and arm Mr. Putin’s battered military, Mr. Xi’s preferred option was apparently to wade in diplomatically.

Pavel Byrkin/Kremlin/Sputnik/Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping leave a reception in honor of the Chinese leader at the Kremlin in Moscow March 21, 2023. Mr. Xi is anxious that Russia not be seen to lose the war in Ukraine, which would undermine his ambition to undermine U.S. global leadership.

Mr. Xi sent his top foreign policy envoy, Wang Yi, to the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany with a twin message: that China, post-lockdown, was eager for reinvigorated trade with Europe; and that the Europeans, in their own interest, should peel themselves away from the U.S.-led drive to arm Ukraine, which would only prolong the war.

In the presumed opening act of a Chinese diplomatic effort to bring the warring parties together, the envoy said Mr. Xi was poised to deliver a major “peace speech” a few days later.

But the peace speech never happened. The overture to European leaders had been met with united condemnation of Russia’s war, and an insistence that any diplomatic deal would require Mr. Putin to pull out all his invasion forces – the kind of Russian defeat that Mr. Xi wants to avoid.

The Europeans also echoed U.S. warnings against supplying Mr. Putin with weapons – a message reportedly reiterated by Mr. Macron last week.

None of this means that either option – arms supplies or diplomacy – is necessarily off the table.

But the paramount importance Mr. Xi attaches to preventing a worst-case outcome for Mr. Putin suggests that the situation on the ground will determine which of those options China chooses, and when.

“China,” declared a Macron aide before his visit, “is the only country in the world capable of having an immediate and radical impact on the conflict, in one direction or the other.”

That is true, if only because China is both Russia’s closest friend and Ukraine’s valued trade partner. It is also a role very much in keeping with Mr. Xi’s view of China as an ascending world power.

Yet, however “immediate” China’s influence could prove, it’s clear that it will be deployed at a time of Mr. Xi’s careful choosing.

Paul Sancya/AP/File

An electric vehicle charges at an EVgo fast charging station in Detroit on Nov. 16, 2022. The Biden administration plans ramped-up investment in charging stations nationwide.

On Saturday, Paul Collins finished his first long-distance road trip in his year-and-a-half-old Tesla. “It was amazingly easy. Convenient,” he says of the 2,800-mile round trip from his Wellesley, Massachusetts, home to Florida and back again.

The software told him not only the available charging stations along his route, but also the number of chargers available and the restaurants and other amenities around. He didn’t even have to pull out a credit card when he plugged in. The charger automatically identified his car, and Tesla automatically billed him.

He says he’s not concerned about the dramatic leap in electric vehicle sales that the Biden administration is seeking, through proposed tougher tailpipe emission standards announced Wednesday. In effect, the administration is calling for two-thirds of new car sales to be EVs by 2032, up from less than 6% last year. “I might have said before I bought this EV that it might seem impractical,” says Mr. Collins, manager of an investment company. “Having made this road trip, it feels quite practical.”

Mary Beermann isn’t so sure. When she needed a new car, the Valparaiso, Indiana, retiree took a hard look at EVs. She visited several dealerships and even went to a car show in Chicago to check them out. But after friends sent her articles about the risks of EV batteries catching fire and problems disposing of the batteries once they’re used up, she decided last fall to buy a conventional Mazda instead.

“I was pretty happy with my decision,” she says. “It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t ever have [an EV].” She’s waiting for the technology to mature.

The proposed tightening of vehicle emission standards will test how much a major governmental push can transform the marketplace for a complex and costly product that Americans typically rely on every day. The “carrots” of federal rebates and other investments, combined with the “sticks” of tougher regulation of greenhouse gasses, will surely have an impact. Reaching the Biden administration’s goals isn’t impossible, but it remains a question whether the road ahead for EVs will track the experience of Mr. Collins or be more like that of Ms. Beermann.

Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters/File

Employees work at Rivian Automotive's electric vehicle factory in Normal, Illinois, April 11, 2022. The Biden administration is proposing automobile pollution limits that would require as many as two-thirds of U.S. new car sales to be electric by 2032.

“There’s a lot of momentum already. And what you see happening is the government trying to ensure that what the automakers said they’re going to do actually happens,” says Kenneth Gillingham, professor of energy and environmental economics at Yale University. 

If the proposed package of rules becomes regulation and is successfully implemented, it would mean the United States would produce almost 10 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide emissions through 2055, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s the same as eliminating more than two years’ worth of all current U.S. CO2 emissions, the EPA says. The rules would also improve air quality, eliminate demand for 20 billion barrels of oil, and save the average car owner $12,000 in reduced fuel and maintenance costs over the lifetime of a car.

But it would also boost the upfront cost of a new car by some $1,200 by 2030.

New cars already cost consumers a lot of money, and some industry analysts warn of price hikes at a time when inflation is already a top public concern.

“If this … EV market share requirement is implemented, within the proposed time frame, it will impact every aspect of the auto industry in the form of lost jobs and dramatic price hikes for both EVs and gasoline models,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars, a Boston area car-search website, in a statement. “These increases will either drive the price of new vehicles beyond the average American’s budget or put multiple global automakers in financial peril. Likely both, in that order.”

Still, the industry itself is committed to going electric.

“The question isn’t can this be done, it’s how fast can it be done,” John Bozzella, CEO of the industry group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, wrote in a blog post. “How fast will depend almost exclusively on having the right policies and market conditions in place.”

Several major automakers have set goals of making EVs 40% to 50% of their new car sales in the U.S. by 2030, such as Honda, Nissan, Stellantis (owner of Fiat and Chrysler), and Ford. General Motors aims to be all-electric by 2035. And some European brands are even more aggressive. Mercedes expects to be all-electric by 2030. Even before Wednesday’s announcement, BloombergNEF was projecting that 52% of all U.S. new car sales would be EVs by 2030, thanks to federal legislation that extended federal subsidies for EV sales. 

Those projections are not too far off from the low end of the administration’s new 2030 target of 54%. By adding the regulatory stick to the subsidy carrots the administration has already been offering, the U.S. could meet the new ambitious targets for EV sales, Dr. Gillingham says. There’s precedent for this.

Nam Y. Huh/AP

An Electrify America Charging Station for vehicles is seen at Westfield Old Orchard shopping center in Skokie, Illinois, Jan. 29, 2023. Consumer concerns about electric vehicles include reduced driving range in cold weather.

Using a combination of fees and generous subsidies to make EVs cheaper than conventional cars, Norway saw EVs grab a nearly 87% share of new car sales last month. Still, starting in 2027, the new rules would force the fastest ratcheting up of fuel-emission standards in U.S. history.  

In the U.S., a healthy majority of customers say they would be ready to buy a fully electric car by 2030, according to Dr. Gillingham’s research, which is not yet published.     

Of course, there are potential bumps along the way that could disrupt such forecasts, especially because they’re based on estimates of technological breakthroughs that haven’t happened yet. Supply chain problems, shortages of critical minerals for batteries, and other challenges could also slow the momentum. 

Federal incentives of as much as $7,500 for buying an electric car can help nudge consumers, but they are becoming less available due to a different policy priority: reducing U.S. dependence on China and other countries for batteries.

Another major looming issue is the network of charging stations. If it doesn’t grow fast enough, EV drivers on a trip will have to wait for a procedure that already takes far longer than filling up at a gas tank. Mr. Collins estimates he spent 25 to 30 minutes for each recharge of his Tesla on his recent Florida trip and had to wait no longer than 30 seconds to plug in. But if more EVs hit the road and as Tesla opens up its network to non-Tesla drivers, he worries that the wait times will lengthen.

The Biden administration has allocated $2.5 billion to encourage the building of 500,000 charging stations by 2030, 10 times today’s number. Estimates of the need run into the millions. 

And the distribution of those chargers is unequal. EV leader California has more than 14,000, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. South Dakota has 73. And it’s in very rural places like South Dakota as well as highly dense urban locations where EVs might meet the most resistance. Apartment dwellers in New York City, for example, may not have the at-home chargers they’d need if they owned an EV. And rural ranchers and contractors, used to driving hundreds of miles at a time, may find recharging their vehicles especially inconvenient. 

In a survey last year, Dr. Gillingham found that pickup drivers were less likely than either car owners or SUV owners to embrace electrification. While some 40% were eager to switch and another 30% were convincible, the rest were not. “There was a group of truck buyers who will not be buying electric trucks for a long time,” he says.

Chokwe Lumumba. It is a name of imagination, as much as it is a name of determination.

When the former Edwin Finley Taliaferro took on the name in 1969, he did so to honor the liberation-minded Chokwe people of Central Africa, along with the late Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It was a name he passed down to his son, who, like his father, eventually became the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, many miles away from the heart of Africa. And yet, the legacy of political imagination and Black self-determination remained. So when the name of Lumumba issues the charge of “apartheid,” it does not ring hollow.

“They are looking to colonize Jackson,” the younger Mr. Lumumba said in January after Mississippi’s state government proposed a host of controversial bills. “Not only in terms of putting their military force over Jackson but also dictating who has province over decision-making.

“It reminds me of apartheid.”

We largely view the segregationist culture of “apartness” through the 50 years of legislated minority rule in South Africa. The behaviors of state governments, such as those in Mississippi and – more recently – Tennessee, are functions of majority rule. The common thread between the two is the actions and attitudes of white supremacy, which denies determination and destiny for Black people and profoundly punishes Black resistance.

When two Black Democrats, state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, were expelled from the Tennessee state House after an unsanctioned gun control protest in the heart of the chamber, the white supermajority asserted its power. Amid protests, both have now been reinstated, pending special elections. 

Cheney Orr/Reuters

Rep. Justin Pearson (right), Rep. Justin Jones (center), and Rep. Gloria Johnson leave the Tennessee State Capitol after a vote at the Tennessee House of Representatives to expel the two Black men (but not Ms. Johnson) for their roles in a gun control demonstration at the statehouse, in Nashville, Tennessee, April 6, 2023.

But a third Democrat who protested alongside the men, Rep. Gloria Johnson, was not dismissed. She shared her reasoning for being spared expulsion with CNN.

“I am a 60-year-old white woman, and they are two young Black men,” Ms. Johnson said.

Her explanation provides context for understanding the bills in Mississippi. They concern Jackson’s chronic water crisis and local policing.

One bill seeks to transfer Jackson’s water system to a state-appointed, nine-member board. Another bill would create a separate judicial district around Jackson, where judges would be appointed by the chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, and prosecutors would be appointed by the attorney general. The second bill would also expand the zone patrolled by a special police force that protects state buildings. 

“They’re talking about a court system in which the judges would not be elected by Jackson residents, and a police force that has no accountability,” Mr. Lumumba said.  

In short, a city that is more than 80% Black is seeing its agency and authority dramatically stripped away by white state lawmakers.

So often, our societies today talk about the history of slavery and colonization worldwide, or of the struggle for civil rights in this country. But less discussed, and perhaps more important, is how Black people view self-determination – the ability to shape our own futures – and how often governments have pushed back against such a fundamental notion.

Rogelio V. Solis/AP/File

Jim Craig (left), with the Mississippi State Department of Health, leads Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (right), Deanne Criswell (center) of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (rear) through a water treatment facility in Ridgeland, Sept. 2, 2022.

The former Mr. Taliaferro changed his name after he joined the Republic of New Afrika, a Black nationalist and separatist organization. Its goal was to “Free the land!” Specifically, the RNA sought to carve out a separate Black nation from the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina, along with reparations payments of $10,000 for every Black person. Fifty-five years ago this March, the RNA met in Detroit at the Black Government Conference, where they signed a new declaration of independence.

In 1971, police raided the RNA’s headquarters in Jackson. Many RNA members were arrested and incarcerated as political prisoners.

I think about the members of the RNA, about Representatives Jones and Pearson, about constituents and countless others, and how many of us are casualties of the clash between Black self-determination and suppression – casualties of government, both figuratively and literally. Debates about gun control – even heated ones – should not turn into dismissals. 

It reminds me of the prophetic words of Patrice Lumumba regarding decency and democracy: “Without dignity there is no liberty, without justice there is no dignity, and without independence there are no free men.”

What does the absence of such ideals look like? Mass incarceration, communities controlled by violence, and the denial of basic human rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have always been the promise to those for whom the state was made. But too often the result has been the maintenance of white power, leaving the Black path to the promise of self-determination with one great opponent. 

The status quo.

AP

A teacher talks to his students at Ballard High School in Seattle, March 14.

The persistence of mass shootings in the United States has forced many towns and cities to be prepared to react when one occurs. Yet a new study provides an alternative response, one that is proactive. Based on data from 3,253 secondary schools across California between 2001 to 2019, a report by the University of California, Los Angeles found “significant and substantial” reductions in every category of violence – from verbal abuse to confrontations involving weapons.

Overall, said Ron Avi-Astor, a social welfare professor and co-author of the study, “on a day-to-day basis for most students, American schools are safer than they’ve been for many decades.”

The California study notes a correlation between empathy and safety – a “norm shift,” as the authors call it, reflecting a “massive social investment” in measures ranging from emergency preparedness to mental health care. For instance, the study found that 89% of students surveyed felt “there is a teacher or adult who truly cares about me,” or “who tells me when I do a good job,” or “who notices when I’m not there.” Other questions measured high levels of “belongingness” (79%) and being able to “make a difference” (76%).

At the same time, it found a 70% reduction in reports of guns carried onto school grounds and a 59% reduction in threats involving weapons. Those declines in victimization were largest among Black and Latino students.

The study, which found consistent reductions in data tracking school safety nationwide, comes at a time when society more broadly is rethinking violence prevention. Mayors aren’t waiting for national gun reforms. Instead they are trying and sharing a wide range of ideas that draw their communities together with empathy, compassion, and inclusivity.

A Politico survey of 50 mayors found that 70% want more social workers to handle more policing calls involving nonviolent or mental health incidents. More than half said that if given new funding to prevent violence, they would build more affordable housing and better public parks. That regard for quality of life runs in another direction, too. Nearly all said reducing violence also requires better caring for police officers and their families.

The important lesson in the California study may be that empathy begets empathy. That point has special resonance for Jose Sanchez, a high school civics teacher in Monterey Park, California. Two days after a shooter killed 11 people and wounded nine others in his community in January, he sat in his classroom helping his students grapple with the tragedy.

As he wrapped up a class, Mr. Sanchez told Politico last week, “a student patted me on the shoulder and asked if I was OK. It’s not that often that my students ask me how I’m doing.” They knew that two days later he was due to be sworn in as mayor. That caring and compassion can serve as a form of armor against violence.