Chalkbeat

Many migrant students need mental health support. Here’s why this program is a go-to for schools.

2024-03-11T09:00:00+00:00

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When thousands of Syrian families fleeing violence resettled in Canada several years ago, Ontario’s school mental health agency wanted to give schools tools to help refugee children process their traumatic journeys and adjust to their new lives.

The children didn’t necessarily need intensive support. But kids were bursting into tears and struggling to explain how they felt. Parents, too, noticed their usually social children had become more withdrawn and were struggling to make friends. That was especially common after kids had been in Canada for a few months and the honeymoon period ended.

So a team of experts in child mental health put their heads together and developed a program for newcomers that focuses on their strengths and who they can turn to for support. Known as STRONG, the program is now used across the U.S. in several cities serving lots of newcomers, including Chicago, Boston, Seattle, New York, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and Little Rock, Arkansas. Many others are asking for training, as schools struggle to meet the needs of students who’ve been through difficult journeys with limited school mental health staff, and even fewer bilingual ones.

STRONG, which stands for Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, can’t solve everything. Some kids may still need more intensive mental health support — and finding the time and staff to run these groups can be challenging. But many experts, educators, and students themselves see the intervention as a promising tool to help newcomers forge connections and head off mental health struggles before they turn into a crisis.

“They’ve just really appreciated the opportunity to connect with other kids,” said Lisa Baron, a psychologist who trains schools to use STRONG and directs the Boston-based Center for Trauma Care in Schools. “A lot of them said that they just had not really known that other kids were feeling the same way as they were.”

Why some newcomers struggle with mental health

Newcomer students can be refugees or asylum-seekers or the children of undocumented immigrants. Some arrive with families, some arrive alone. Some have been in the U.S. for just a few days or weeks, while others have been here longer. And while their experiences vary, they’ve often faced various hardships, from hunger to abuse.

Many children did not feel in control during their travels, and now crave stability and predictability.

It can also be difficult for newcomer families to access mental health services in the U.S. — driving home the importance of offering help at school. There’s often stigma around seeking treatment, and some families fear that doing so could put them at risk for deportation.

Here’s how STRONG typically works: The school identifies a group of students who are close in age and relatively new to the U.S. who could benefit from extra support. Then the school makes sure parents are on board, which can mean having careful conversations, especially if families are unfamiliar with schools offering mental health support.

The group meets for 10 sessions, usually during the school day. Early sessions help students understand that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed or stressed sometimes. Kids learn different relaxation techniques, such as curling their toes into the floor as if they were standing in a mud puddle, or visualizing the sights and smells of a favorite place.

In later sessions, they learn coping and problem-solving skills, such as how to map out steps to achieve a goal. Kids who are shy about speaking English could identify people they’d feel safe practicing with.

“The coping skills [are] what will stay with you forever,” one Ontario student told Canadian researchers for a 2019 report. “Whenever you are in a stressful situation, you will always remember what to do.”

In STRONG, students learn various problem-solving and coping skills.

What makes STRONG unique and appealing to many schools, said Colleen Cicchetti, a pediatric psychologist who helped develop the intervention, is that it takes a strengths-based approach.

“There were strengths that were inside you that you had in your home country that are still with you, here, today — how do we build on them?” said Cicchetti, who directs the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and now trains schools on how to use STRONG. “We really want young people and their parents to say: ‘This is a part of who I am and what I’ve experienced, but it shouldn’t define who I am entirely.’”

That’s what attracted the attention of mental health and school staff in the Madison, Wisconsin area. The district tried tweaking another group that addresses student trauma to help newcomers, but realized it wasn’t quite meeting their needs.

Kids need to “talk about good memories and coping strategies, not necessarily the exposure to the traumatic event,” said Carrie Klein, a school mental health coach for Madison Metro schools, which is considering using STRONG.

For Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School in Chicago, STRONG has been transformative for her and her students.

Related: Amid Chicago’s migrant influx, one school is trying to help newcomer students navigate trauma

Over the last year, Moorhouse has run four STRONG groups — known as “clubs” at her school — alongside school counselor Stephanie Carrillo. The program helped Moorhouse get to know newcomers’ families, and has made students comfortable to seek her out when they need essentials like toothpaste or body wash.

Brighton Park Elementary School threw a quinceañera for newcomer students who were sad they would miss celebrating in their home country.

The group has helped in unexpected ways, too. When kids said they weren’t eating at school because they didn’t like the food, Moorhouse figured out they did like Ritz crackers and Skinny popcorn, so she keeps those on hand. And when she found out some newcomers were crying in the bathroom, upset that they were going to miss their quinceñera back home, the group threw a big party at school, complete with balloons and empanadas.

“The students really have created this bond with Ms. Moorhouse — that’s their person,” said Cecilia Mendoza, the assistant principal. “Every student needs someone. For someone new entering the country, entering a new school, having someone is even more important.”

Brighton Park is one of 83 schools across the district that’s been trained in STRONG, with another 50 schools in line to be trained next school year.

Why talking about their journeys can help newcomers

When experts first developed STRONG, they imagined it would be delivered by social workers, school counselors and other mental health staff, since many newcomers have experienced trauma.

But given that mental health professionals are often stretched or in short supply, more schools are asking for others to be trained, too, said Sharon Hoover, a psychiatry professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine who helped create STRONG.

Now, many schools run STRONG sessions with two adults. A teacher with language or cultural skills can act as the interpreter, while the staffer with mental health training takes on tasks such as screening children for post-traumatic stress.

“We don’t want to be irresponsible with the curriculum and just throw it into the hands of anybody who has no mental health training at all,” Hoover said. “But on the other hand, we don’t want to restrict it in a way that’s going to lead to it not getting to students who might benefit.”

On a recent Tuesday morning, Hoover and Bianca Ramos, a STRONG trainer, showed what a one-on-one session that invites students to share about their journey can look like during a virtual training for two dozen school staffers.

The group, mostly social workers and school counselors from Connecticut, had gathered to learn strategies to help newcomer students from many parts of the world, including Haiti, Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Ukraine.

Related: We are facing a migrant mental health crisis. More school social workers could help

In the video demonstration, Hoover sat beside Ramos in the corner of a blue-walled room. Ramos, a Chicago-based social worker, played the role of a 13-year-old girl who’d fled Guatemala without time to say goodbye to family and friends after her father was killed. Hoover explained that talking about something hard can be like stepping into cold water.

“The more we do it, slowly and gradually, usually the more comfortable we get,” Hoover said. “You don’t have to dive right in.”

In early sessions of STRONG, students learn various relaxation techniques and that it's OK to feel stress sometimes.

In the scenario, as the young girl neared the U.S.-Mexico border, robbers threatened to take her family’s few belongings. Hoover asked how she got through that time, using it as an opportunity to draw out the child’s strengths.

“I had this picture of my mom and I just remember looking at it, and trying to stay hopeful that I was going to be able to see her again,” Ramos said. And she had her little sister to watch out for: “I was like a mom to her.”

“That’s amazing,” Hoover replied, pointing out how brave and caring the child had been.

Later, Hoover asked if the girl was having trouble sleeping, reliving any memories, or feeling sad a lot. She wasn’t, but thoughts of her dad did pop into her head in class, making it hard to concentrate. Hoover made sure that wasn’t happening too much, and then kept the door open to talk more in the future if anything changed.

In Chicago, Moorhouse has seen that some kids feel relieved when they share about their journey. But she also cautions that it can be a lot for other students and teachers to take in. After one student shared details that made Moorhouse tear up later, she realized she couldn’t probe too deeply in her conversations with the student, and needed to let the school counselor step in.

“We’re not therapists,” she said. “That’s very important for teachers to realize.”

STRONG can help students, but there are challenges

STRONG is still being rigorously evaluated in the U.S. But research conducted by Western University in Canada, where STRONG was first piloted during the 2017-18 school year, has shown promising results.

Evaluations from across Ontario found the program helped kids build trust, increase their confidence, and develop a sense of belonging at school. Students reported that STRONG helped them feel more welcome and connect with their peers.

STRONG can also shift school culture and help the entire staff become more attuned to newcomers’ needs. When Moorhouse notices certain patterns of behavior, she shares that with other teachers, so they can keep an eye out.

That could be explaining why some kids may not want to take off sweaters or jackets — after border agents took everything they had except for what they were wearing at the time — or that playing certain sounds, like chirping birds or rushing water, could be upsetting to kids whose journey involved swimming or walking through the jungle.

There can be practical challenges. School leaders may be hesitant to pull kids out of class for STRONG when they are struggling academically. Elizabeth Paquette, who’s part of the team that trains school staff in Ontario, said it can be tricky to get enough kids together in smaller schools and rural communities without resorting to virtual groups that can make it harder for students to make friends.

And if groups use more than two languages, the interpretation needs can take away from the group’s conversational flow.

Still, Moorhouse said the group can be a place for kids to talk about those academic struggles, whether they’re lost in class or frustrated because they already know the content, but can’t yet express themselves. This year, especially, kids want to talk about school stress even more than their journeys.

“They were struggling with: ‘Do I give up?’” Moorhouse said. And her message was: “Let’s keep finding other ways to work through this. What are your thoughts?”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

This New York City counselor used to teach math. Now she helps migrant students destress at school

2024-03-15T14:00:08+00:00

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As a middle school math teacher, Lisset Condo Dutan’s days often revolved around fractions and equations. But when the pandemic hit, her virtual classroom became a place where students came to confide in her.

“I would only see them through a screen, and they would share with me: I lost my grandma, I just lost my dad, I just lost my mom,” she said. She tried her best to listen, but she knew they needed more. “They didn’t really have the emotional support that they needed.”

Lisset Condo Dutan works with newcomer students at an elementary school in Queens through the nonprofit Counseling in Schools.

Driven by those conversations, Condo Dutan went back to school to get her master’s in counseling — while she was teaching full-time — and became a school counselor.

Last fall, she took a position with the nonprofit Counseling in Schools, which places school counselors in dozens of schools throughout New York City. Condo Dutan now works at P.S. 149 in Queens, not far from where she grew up. She was among a dozen bilingual or bicultural counselors that the nonprofit hired to meet the needs of a growing number of migrant students who’ve enrolled in the city’s schools.

Now, she spends her days popping into classrooms to see if newcomers need any help and meeting with students in small groups or one-on-one.

“Even though they went through a lot, they’re the strongest people that I’ve ever met,” she said. “I admire that.”

Condo Dutan spoke with Chalkbeat about how art therapy, breathing exercises, and sharing details from her visits to Ecuador have helped her connect with her students.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the mental health or social-emotional needs that your newcomer students have?

A lot of them have undergone some sort of trauma. Especially when they share their journey coming here to New York, either what they saw on their way here or what they saw at the detention centers at the border. It impacts them a lot.

Thankfully, a lot of the teachers pick up on these little emotions. Maybe they walk in sad one day or they look upset, or there’s a change in behavior. They’ll ask: Can you please just check up on the student? And when you check up on them, you realize that there’s a lot of things that are still bothering them.

They’ll share: You know, I had this nightmare, I’m still thinking about this. I remember when we were crossing the river. Or, honestly speaking, they’ve seen people pass away on their way here. Unfortunately, they’ve seen bodies and stuff like that. And these are third graders, second graders, fifth graders.

That’s still there for them. So, sometimes they do have days where they’re a little off. [It’s important] to provide them with that support and that safe space.

When you’re starting to build a relationship and a rapport with a student who has been through a really tough journey, what are some of the things you do to help establish that you’re a safe person and that they’re in a safe place?

I let them speak about their culture. A lot of these students are very proud of where they come from, so I give them that opportunity and that time to teach me about themselves.

Sometimes, we’ll share memories. But usually, we do a lot of art therapy. For most of them, that’s easier. Markers, crayons, glitter, pens, paints — anything that I have in the office.

They’re drawing their favorite dishes, their favorite places, or their favorite people that they left behind, as well as their pets or any traditional celebrations. For example, for Christmas, they shared that certain countries have a whole festival for like a week. They would draw bumper cars and parties, and certain cultural outfits.

What are some of the acculturation struggles that you’re seeing?

Usually, what they share is that it’s just hard overall. In their countries, they would have more freedom. There would be much more fresh air and free space for them to run around. Coming here and being in an apartment, or being stuck in school, it’s different for them.

They’ve slowly been getting accustomed to school life. It’s been a lot of teaching them how to schedule their time, time management, as well as asking them what other resources they need in order to feel comfortable.

What strategies or coping skills have you taught students that they’ve found helpful?

We’ve done a lot of breathing exercises. Sometimes [their exposure to trauma] does get them a little uneasy. They really like [an exercise called] smell the flower, blow out the birthday cake candle.

I usually ask them: If I had a flower in my hand, how would you smell the flower? And they would inhale and breathe in. And when I ask them to blow out a birthday candle, they blow out through their mouth. It teaches them how to not take quick breaths.

I’ve also done a lot of cooked spaghetti, uncooked spaghetti. I have students basically tense up every part of their body. So they’ll become very stiff, like uncooked spaghetti. And then I allow them to become like cooked spaghetti, very noodly, so they let go of everything.

It’s allowing them to take notice of what part of their body is under stress, and teaching them how to express themselves when they feel that stress.

How does being able to speak Spanish allow you to connect with the students in ways that wouldn’t be possible if you didn’t speak their language?

Instead of having to translate what they’re feeling, they’re able to just express themselves exactly how they feel.

If I don’t understand something, I do ask them: Oh, what do you mean by this? It could be because of cultural differences. I take that time to let them teach me about what they’re trying to say, or what they’re trying to get out.

Do you ever share things about yourself with the students to help make a connection with them?

My parents are Ecuadorian, and I do bring that to the table. When I go to Ecuador, I visit my grandpa, I go to the countryside, I go to the city, and I’m able to share that with them. Even if the child is not from Ecuador, they’re more open to opening up to me because they realize: She’s been outside of New York, she understands what’s going on in other countries.

Lisset Condo Dutan often shares stories about visiting her family in Ecuador as a way to connect with the students she works with.

They ask me: Have you tasted salchipapas? Have you tasted a traditional dish called tripa mishqui? I’m open to sharing that information with them, and they’re usually very happy [to talk about it].

Where my grandpa lives, it’s like a farmland. A lot of them came from farmland. So, me being able to say: You know, when I go to Ecuador, I spend a week with my grandpa, and I help him feed the cows and feed the horses. That usually sparks something in them. They look at me like: You did that? I used to do that! Little things like that have really helped me connect with them.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Think tank with ties to Trump lays out plan to deny free education to undocumented students

2024-04-09T19:33:42+00:00

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Leer en español.

An influential conservative think tank has laid out a strategy to challenge a landmark Supreme Court decision that protects the right of undocumented children to attend public school.

The Heritage Foundation, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to craft a policy playbook for a second Trump presidential term, recently released a brief calling on states to require public schools to charge unaccompanied migrant children and children with undocumented parents tuition to enroll.

Such a move “would draw a lawsuit from the Left,” the brief states, “which would likely lead the Supreme Court to reconsider its ill-considered Plyler v. Doe decision” — referring to the 1982 ruling that held it was unconstitutional to deny children a public education based on their immigration status.

Plyler has survived challenges for more than 40 years. But some legal experts and advocates for immigrant children say the newest proposal to undermine it should be taken seriously, given Trump’s extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric, a steady drumbeat of headlines about the “migrant crisis,” and the conservative-led Supreme Court’s recent willingness to overturn established legal precedent.

“The politics right now of illegal immigration and the picture that conservatives, and even some liberals, have painted of stressing the resources of states and localities, I think that that’s a huge factor,” said Brett Geier, a professor at Western Michigan University who wrote a book about K-12 schools and the Supreme Court. “I do think that this court has the chutzpah to say: We’re going to take it on and overturn it.”

But others say the real intent is to rile up voters in an election year, and that Plyler v. Doe isn’t truly at risk.

“Every time there’s an election, all of a sudden immigration becomes a big problem, and [we hear]: ‘We have to do something about these immigrants, and get rid of them, and not pay for their schooling,’” said Patricia Gándara, a research professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education who’s written extensively about how immigration enforcement affects children and schools. “Then after the election is over, it dies away.”

Charging school tuition in Texas led to Plyler ruling

A growing share of Americans, and Republicans in particular, say immigration policy is a top concern right now. And immigration issues are getting a lot of attention in this year’s presidential race.

Trump has campaigned on a series of hardline, restrictive immigration policies, including the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and the end of refugee resettlement. He’s also falsely claimed that migrant children have displaced other kids in New York City’s public schools.

The focus on immigration comes as the country is seeing a significant increase in migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Federal officials counted nearly 2.5 million people who reached the southern border last year. That was a 43% increase from two years earlier, though not all were admitted. A rising share are families with children.

More than three-quarters of Americans view what’s happening at the border as a major problem or a crisis, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found. Just under a quarter of U.S. adults said they were concerned that the rise in migrants would be an economic burden on the country.

The Heritage Foundation taps into those concerns with its recent brief, titled “The Consequences of Unchecked Illegal Immigration on America’s Public Schools.” In it, the organization criticizes President Biden’s approach to immigration policy, saying it’s led to “large influxes of non-English-speaking children” enrolling in public schools.

The document cites examples of Texas schools holding lessons in hallways, and a Brooklyn high school that had students learn virtually for a day after the school housed migrant families overnight during a rainstorm.

In response, the Heritage Foundation is calling on states to prohibit schools from housing undocumented immigrants and to require schools to collect student enrollment data by immigration status “so that accurate cost analyses can be done.” States should require school districts to charge undocumented children tuition to attend public school, the brief states.

It was this exact practice nearly half a century ago — in the same state that’s defying the federal government by handling its own immigration enforcement — that led to the Plyler v. Doe ruling.

Texas passed a law in 1975 saying that public schools would not receive state funding for the education of undocumented children and that districts could bar these students from attending public school for free.

Two years later, the Tyler Independent School District started charging undocumented children $1,000 a year to attend school — a sum district officials knew would be unaffordable for the area’s immigrant families, who often worked in Tyler’s famous rose industry, along with meat-packing plants and farms.

Twenty-one years after the Supreme Court's Plyler v. Doe ruling, the Tyler Independent School District in Texas offered a Spanish-English dual language program for kindergartners and first graders.

“I don’t think any family could have paid that,” James Plyler, the district’s superintendent, told an Education Week reporter in 2007. “One thousand dollars back in 1977 was lots and lots of money, and most of those families who came in were working for minimum wage.”

Four families whose children were blocked from attending school sued Plyler and the school district, and eventually won at the Supreme Court. In the 5-4 opinion for the majority, Justice William Brennan wrote that denying undocumented children the ability to learn how to read and write would take an “inestimable toll” on their “social, economic, intellectual, and psychological well-being.” (The dissenting justices agreed it was wrong to deny undocumented kids an education, but argued it wasn’t a constitutional violation.)

Now, the Heritage Foundation says those education costs have grown too high, and states and schools should be able to recoup them. The federal government could help, said Madison Marino, a senior research associate who co-authored the Heritage Foundation brief, or parents or sponsors of undocumented students could pay.

“We really aren’t looking to deprive these kids of their education,” Marino said. “We’re calling for everyone to contribute.”

Most undocumented families today would likely struggle to pay school tuition, as they did in 1977. And federal aid seems unlikely. Congress is bitterly divided over how to fund immigration policy and whether schools need more funding in the wake of the pandemic, and the U.S. Department of Education has historically devoted a tiny fraction of its budget to educating English learners and immigrant students.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the Heritage Foundation’s proposals to challenge Plyler, but observers widely believe the think tank would play a crucial role in a second Trump administration. Elsewhere, the campaign has said that external groups do not speak for Trump or his campaign, and that policy recommendations are just that.

Migrants bused to cities spur calls for federal help

Who bears the financial responsibility for educating undocumented children has been a heated topic of debate, especially over the last two years.

In May 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he wanted to challenge Plyler v. Doe “because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different” than in 1982. He called on the federal government to cover the educational costs for undocumented students.

Since then, Abbott has bused more than 75,000 migrants to six cities led by Democrats that have certain “sanctuary” policies protecting immigrants.

Newcomer students can bring many assets, from linguistic diversity to knowledge about life elsewhere in the world, educators say, and some schools have successfully adapted to meet newcomers’ needs.

But many schools have struggled to do so. Newcomer students often do not speak English and sometimes have missed months or even years of schooling. Many experienced trauma on their journey to the U.S. or in their home country that can affect their schooling. Schools often lack bilingual teachers and mental health staff to help. And when lots of students arrive in the middle of the year, state funding doesn’t always follow right away, leaving schools to make do with the resources they have.

Many educators and local officials have called on their states and the federal government to provide additional funding to help — with limited success. Extra money for migrant students was left out of the Illinois governor’s budget proposal, and extra funding allotted in Colorado breaks down to less than half of what the state would typically spend per student.

Plyler challenge could hinge on cost questions

Challenging Plyler would be difficult, said Thomas A. Saenz, the president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represented the families in the original Plyler case. The ruling is now tied up with other federal law, as well as privacy protections for K-12 students.

“It’s not like: ‘Oh, let’s just tee up Plyler, and pass a law, and immediately this more conservative Supreme Court will overturn the ‘82 decision,’” he said. “That analysis is way too facile.”

But there are ways Plyler could be vulnerable, said Amanda Warner, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University who analyzed past challenges to the ruling. The current Supreme Court has favored states’ rights and an originalist reading of the constitution. And in 1973, the Supreme Court held that there is no constitutional right to an education.

That is a “glaring hole” that could be exploited, Warner said.

Another avenue to challenge the ruling could center on educational conditions and costs, and whether those have changed enough to warrant denying undocumented children a free public education.

Back in 1982, Texas argued it needed to do that to preserve resources for educating its “lawful residents.” But the Supreme Court rejected that argument. Brennan wrote that undocumented students did not impose “special burdens” on Texas’ education system, and that excluding them from school would be unlikely to improve the overall quality of education.

The Heritage Foundation brief says that unauthorized immigration, particularly among children arriving without their parents, has reached a point where a “reconsideration is warranted.”

The original ruling seems to imply “there is a bar” for a state to show that educating undocumented students is too much of a financial burden, Warner said. But it wouldn’t be enough to simply show the cost of education is higher.

Any money saved by excluding undocumented children from school would have to be weighed against the ripple effects on housing, social services, and the criminal justice system. “Costs can be borne in a lot of ways,” Warner said. “What are the costs of having all these uneducated persons in the United States?”

Whether a serious challenge will emerge remains to be seen. Marino said no state official has reached out about making the Heritage Foundation’s proposal a reality.

After Abbott raised the possibility of challenging Plyler two years ago, a Texas lawmaker introduced a bill that would have denied undocumented students a free public education, unless the federal government paid for it. But unlike in 1975, the proposal didn’t go anywhere.

Nicholas Espíritu, the deputy legal director for the National Immigration Law Center, said if such a proposal couldn’t advance in Texas, that should deter other states from trying.

“It’s our hope that even though there might be some rumblings from the Heritage Foundation and states like Texas,” he said, “that eventually politicians will come to the same conclusion and realize that this is not a position that is ultimately supported.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

The 12 Black women behind Brown v. Board often go unrecognized. A new exhibit aims to change that.

2024-05-13T22:38:21+00:00

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To unearth the forgotten history of the Kansas women who served as plaintiffs in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, Donna Rae Pearson had to dig.

Without published scholarship to go on, Pearson and two other researchers hunted down the women’s obituaries, cross-referenced their details against Census records and city directories, and pored over newspaper clippings, oral histories, and court transcripts.

It was no easy feat: Some women’s names had changed, and some had moved as far away as Oregon.

The result of their work is “The Women of Brown,” which recognizes the lives and contributions of the 12 Black mothers who signed their names, alongside Oliver Brown, to the lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court.

Twelve Black women participated in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, but they often get overlooked. A new exhibit aims to shine a light on their lives and contributions.

A pop-up exhibit showcasing their findings is traveling across Kansas to mark the 70-year anniversary of the landmark decision. That includes a stop at Topeka Public Schools’ commemorative event this week.

Pearson hopes that students and others who see the exhibit will leave curious to find out more about the Black women who committed acts of “everyday activism” to further their children’s education.

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

“I don’t think Black women — I don’t think women — get the credit that they are supposed to have when it comes to these kinds of activities,” said Pearson, a museum curator at the Kansas Historical Society and a former local history librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. “I think that’s becoming more and more of a conversation that we have today: How did they contribute to these movements?”

The documents Pearson and her team collected will be housed at the Kansas Historical Society State Archives and Topeka’s local library, so future researchers won’t have to do as much legwork. Pearson is also starting to hear from relatives and others who knew the women, which she hopes will contribute to the scholarship, too.

“We just needed to bring them out of the dark,” she said. “We needed to say their names out loud again.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Pearson about why the 12 women joined the lawsuit and the challenges of researching Black women’s history. She also has thoughts on how students and teachers can keep the conversation going (see sidebar).

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did the 12 Black women who became plaintiffs in the Brown case come to be part of the lawsuit?

We don’t know exactly how all of them came to be part of it. Lucinda Todd, one of the plaintiffs, and actually the first plaintiff to sign up, was heavily involved in the NAACP. She was on a special committee when talk of this lawsuit started happening, and she helped recruit parents.

We also identified different locations throughout the city [of Topeka] where these women could have possibly met. They were all involved in formal religious activities. Some of them went to church together. Some of them were involved in social clubs together. So we believe there was this network where they could have been simply having coffee or tea and saying: ‘Hey, I decided to sign up. How about you?’

Why have they historically gotten less attention than Oliver Brown?

In our legal system, ‘et al’ can hide a lot of things. That means ‘and more.’ Et al really covers up, initially, the fact that these women were part of the case.

But then you go into a little bit deeper reasons. These are Black women. And our history is not recorded as well as the majority’s history.

The case, initially, was not necessarily as well-received, for different reasons. Why this case happened does not fit our prevailing narrative [in Kansas] of being a ‘free state,’ a state about civil rights. We were actually one of three northern states that allowed permissive segregation, which means, by law, they could segregate.

As part of "The Women of Brown" exhibit, researchers gathered information about the lives and contributions of the 12 Black women who signed their names to the famous lawsuit.

What were the ways in which the women saw that their children were not getting equal opportunities as white children at school?

When you read the transcript from the local court trial, you’ll find that there were problems with the busing system and being able to pick up their children in a timely manner. The Brown children had to walk almost a mile by railroad tracks just to get to their bus stop. These long commutes would have interfered with their schooling. You’re going to get up earlier than a person who’s going to walk two minutes. That’s eating time before school and after school.

[Students who lived far from their schools] couldn’t go home for lunch. They had to bring lunch, and supposedly the lunch wasn’t going to be as nutritious as a hot, home-cooked meal.

There were other things, in terms of activities that were not available. What sparked some of this was Lucinda Todd was super mad about the fact that her daughter, Nancy, could not participate in the district-wide [music] program. There were 18 schools, but only 14 of them were participating. What schools did they leave out? The four Black schools. It was because of Lucinda Todd’s complaints that they were finally able to get [music programs].

There were sports available at the upper levels in Topeka, but the [activities were] segregated. So there was a Black basketball team and a white basketball team. There was a Black prom and a white prom. Even though they all went to school together, all those activities were actually segregated. [Kansas law at the time permitted segregated elementary schools, but high schools were supposed to be integrated.]

Initially, the women were featured in some news coverage, but then their voices just kind of dropped out. What were you able to glean from what they did share over the years?

As the secretary of the NAACP, Lucinda Todd sent out this very long press release that explains the case to the community. But over time, you see the male figures that were involved with the case, they continue to be elevated. But the women, you don’t see them asked as many questions later on, or any questions.

Toward the ‘80s and ‘90s, when the historic site was being lobbied for and built here, they brought them back again. Locally, the one disarming piece that I found was an article that was talking about them, and it tried to give a status update. It kept saying: ‘No information known.’ And we discovered that some of these women were actually still alive, living in the city.

But I also have to remember … the challenge with doing women’s history — not just Black women, but women in general — is we are [often] forced to change our names. In some cases, especially then, they were not referred to by their first and last name. They’re referred to as ‘Mrs. Brown.’ And it’s like: ‘Well, Mrs. Brown surely has a first name!’ So that made it a little bit challenging.

How do the women who participated in this lawsuit fit within the larger tradition of African American women participating in advocacy and organizing in their communities?

It’s kind of a culmination of all the experiences they were able to have. Colored women’s clubs were here as early as the 1890s. Black women are the backbone of those [church] organizations. When you decide to have an event at church, and you’re the one in charge, you start organizing. You start getting people on board, you start raising money.

Among "The Women of Brown" is Lucinda Todd, whose letter to the national NAACP sparked the lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court.

We had Black women who were involved in entrepreneurship. There were women who owned their own businesses. They were not used to necessarily sitting on the sidelines here. I think as organizers, they were in a community where it was acceptable for them to sign up and do things like this.

What lessons can we draw from ‘The Women of Brown’ about the significance of everyday activism?

I think we need to broaden our definition of what activism is. It is not always Martin Luther King, standing at a pulpit. Everyday activism is really the little things that you can do in your own community to make a difference. It’s when we take a stand for something that we believe in.

Some would say what I’m doing right now is being an activist. I’m bringing up a story; I’m posing challenging questions.

Did you make any personal connections to what you learned about the women of Brown?

As a historian, I very intentionally did not talk about the decision [in the past]. Part of the reason was because of the way it is portrayed in the media. Yes, it is a celebration of sorts. But y’all have to remember, the reason why this case happened is because there was blatant segregation in this state for an extended period of time, within our lives.

My class, when I entered elementary school in the ‘70s, was considered the first truly integrated class. My older brothers, my older sisters, in particular, went to segregated Black schools. And this was post the [Brown] decision. These are things we are still wrestling with.

I didn’t think we were looking at [the Brown decision] from a very truthful perspective. I don’t think we were looking at all the nuances, and the impact that it created on different communities.

During this time period, you had a couple of things happen to the Black community. Redlining forced us into one community. With desegregation of schools, you were breaking up that school network, that bonding of a community. Then the next step was urban renewal — that totally wiped out some of these communities.

I needed to look closer at the decision from another perspective, so I could understand it.

What would you like for students who are going to see the exhibit to take away from it?

I hope it’s a conversation-starter for them. I hope that they can relate to the women.

They were ignored. Hopefully, this will again bring them to the forefront and shine some light on them. Hopefully, it makes you curious enough to want to learn a little bit more about them.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Not just oppression: Lessons from one state on how schools can get Asian American history right

2024-05-09T11:01:00+00:00

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A former California park ranger traced his fingers over the Chinese characters carved onto a wall. It was as if ghosts were there, sharing their stories, he said.

The ranger was standing in the immigration station on Angel Island, the lesser-known West Coast counterpart to Ellis Island. Tens of thousands of immigrants, mostly from China and Japan, were detained there in the early 1900s. Many left behind poems or messages.

Poems written in Chinese can be seen etched into the walls at the Angel Island Immigration Station in California.

Dozens of Illinois teachers watched the ranger in a recorded video. They had gathered over Zoom to learn about how they could incorporate Angel Island and other key elements of Asian American history into their lessons. It was part of a university-led training meant to help Illinois teachers comply with a three-year-old, first-in-the-nation law that requires schools statewide to teach at least one unit of Asian American history.

Laura Ouk, one of the trainers that April evening, pulled up two poems from Angel Island and asked the teachers to read them aloud. Then she offered some sample questions the teachers could use with their students to examine tone and themes, as well as how they might connect the poetry to the works of poets like Langston Hughes and Joy Harjo.

“They really appreciate being able to see it in action,” Ouk said, “rather than just being like: ‘Here’s a resource, now good luck!’”

Across the country, advocates are pushing for American history to include more perspectives and stories. Eleven states now require public schools to teach Asian American history in some capacity, and several others are considering similar proposals. But as states and school districts adopt new curriculum requirements, educators can struggle with their own lack of knowledge, where to find quality resources — and how to fit it all into an already crowded syllabus.

Laura Ouk demonstrates how teachers can use poems from Angel Island in their lessons as part of an April 2024 training about teaching Asian American history.

The work happening in Illinois offers insight into what can help. It’s common for teachers to feel overwhelmed and think: “I need to teach this, I don’t even fully know this yet,” said Ouk, the visiting inclusive education director at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s College of Education and Illinois State Board of Education.

To address that, teacher trainers say they’re modeling lessons, showing teachers where Asian American voices and experiences naturally fit within existing curriculum, and sharing strategies that are useful for teaching the history of many marginalized groups.

“We don’t want teachers to blow up their curriculums,” Ouk said.

Why states are requiring Asian American history lessons

When Illinois’ governor signed the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act in 2021, it became the first state with a standalone law requiring public schools to teach Asian American history. Since then, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Florida have enacted similar laws.

Half a dozen other states — California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon and Utah — require schools to teach Asian American history as part of a broader curriculum, according to a 2023 report by the Committee of 100, a nonprofit tracking these efforts.

Proponents of these laws say they’re necessary because students typically don’t learn much Asian American history at school.

Eighteen states are silent on what students should learn in their history classes, according to research conducted by Sohyun An, a professor of social studies education at Kennesaw State University.

Other states focus on just a handful of events in Asian American history, An found, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Often, that instruction presents Asian Americans as powerless victims, An said, without showing acts of resistance, such as how Chinese immigrants who built the railroad protested their working conditions and pay. And it tends to be simplistic, glossing over, for instance, how U.S. and European imperialism created economic hardships that forced many Chinese to leave their home country.

“When we teach about power and oppression, we need to highlight people’s agency, resistance, and solidarity,” An said. “That’s, I think, what good history education is about.”

Collaboration is key to Asian American history training

As happens in many states, Illinois did not offer additional funding to help schools fulfill the new Asian American history requirement. So nonprofits, universities, and foundations have stepped in to offer training and support.

Ouk is part of the University of Illinois’ efforts to offer teachers both live and go-at-your-own-pace sessions. Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Chicago, a nonprofit that works on racial equity issues, launched a free training for teachers in 2022 and put together written examples of how teachers can include Asian American experiences in their reading and social studies lessons.

The organization also maintains a giant database of lesson ideas.

“We’re trying to sift through all the garbage,” said Esther Hurh, an education consultant who helped develop the training and now leads sessions for educators. “Teachers want to do this, they just need people to support them.”

Together, the university and the nonprofit trained 1,700 teachers across Illinois last school year, the first year the new requirement was in effect. It’s a good start, advocates say, but a lot more teachers still need training. Without a better understanding of the Asian American experience, experts say, it’s harder for teachers to try out sample lessons, even if they’re good ones.

During the training that Hurh leads, teachers read reflections from Asian American teachers about how it felt not to see themselves in their own schools’ curriculum. Many felt ashamed or excluded.

Esther Hurh helped develop a teacher training for Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Chicago.

In one essay, a Japanese American teacher recalls that as her high school history class approached its unit on Japanese American incarceration, she readied herself to share what happened to her own family.

But the teacher sped through the lesson, and there was no time for sharing.

“When you’re negated in curriculum, that plays a huge role in how you feel and understand your connection to schooling,” Hurh said. “For a lot of teachers, that’s a very compelling argument for them to do this work. Because, in the end, they’re doing it for their students.”

The training breaks down the many nationalities and ethnic groups that fit within the Asian American umbrella. Teachers also learn about two major Asian American stereotypes — the racist “yellow peril” and the “model minority” — and how those ideas repeat throughout history.

With that groundwork laid, teachers watch several model lessons, including how they can include the story of Mamie Tape, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, in lessons about efforts to desegregate U.S. schools; how Larry Itliong, a Filipino American, contributed to the famous Delano grape strike; and how the children’s book “A Different Pond” can support teaching about the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees.

Trainers want to show teachers how they can choose literature and primary sources that not only center the voices of Asian Americans, but diversify the voices they include. Stories about Pacific Islanders and South and Southeast Asians tend to be even less represented than those from East Asia, Hurh noted.

How teachers have put their training into action

Tom McManamen, who heads the social studies department at Neuqua Valley High School in west suburban Chicago, walked away from his session with 24 pages of typed notes that he still consults.

He now looks for additional visuals as he teaches about what it means to be American. For example, he plays a video in his human geography class about a Sikh farmer in California. When his students see a man in cowboy boots wearing a turban, they often exclaim: “Oh, wow!”

High school teachers across McManamen’s school district and county are getting trained, too. One colleague used what he learned to incorporate the murder of Vincent Chin into lessons about immigration and the auto industry. Another used political cartoons to teach about Asian American stereotypes. The training helped teachers know what to look for as they searched for resources that weren’t shown during the training, too.

“What I love is when I hear them brainstorming over it,” McManamen said, “What used to be a difficult conversation, like: ‘How do we do this?’ It’s now: ‘Oh, you could do this, we could do this! I ran across this when I was watching TV that was totally a great example!’”

Still, even with this kind of training, experts in the field admit it can be difficult for teachers to cover as much ground as they might like, especially if their state also has requirements around teaching Black, Latino, and Indigenous histories.

An, of Kennesaw State University, noted that teaching students skills so they can conduct historical inquiries on their own helps them keep learning. That could include showing students how to find stories that challenge the dominant narrative, read between the lines of primary sources, or look for examples of resistance whenever there is oppression.

“We don’t have to teach every single topic,” An said. “One lesson can do so many things actually, if it’s well-done.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

LGBTQ students wonder what’s next as conservative states seek to block new Title IX rules

2024-05-01T01:19:00+00:00

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For LGBTQ youth whose rights have been under attack by Republican state officials, new federal regulations protecting them from discrimination at school were a welcome sign that someone in power had their back.

But within two days of new Title IX rules being published Monday, top officials in 15 states announced they were suing to block the new rules from going into effect. In four separate lawsuits, Republican officials alleged the new rules endangered free speech and represented an attack on the very group Title IX was designed to protect: women.

Officials in many of these states had already warned schools not to implement the new rules, which would protect students’ ability to use restrooms that match their gender identity and use the names and pronouns they prefer.

“Do not comply,” Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley told schools at a Monday press conference announcing his state’s lawsuit. “Allow this process, this legal process to unfold, rely on our office if you need support, but do not comply with these radical rules from the Biden administration.”

The lawsuits highlight an ongoing culture war centered on the rights of trans students at school. Republican states have passed a host of laws limiting trans youth’s participation in sports, which bathrooms these students can use, and which names they can go by. Supporters of these laws say they protect fairness, privacy, and free speech. Advocates for LGBTQ youth say they endanger vulnerable students and actually infringe on privacy and free speech, and that the new Biden Title IX rules give students key legal safeguards.

Some legal experts believe the new Title IX rules — which clarify that gender identity is covered by laws prohibiting sex discrimination — are likely to withstand conservative challenges. In the meantime, teachers and school administrators are caught between federal law, which usually takes precedence, and state law, which can loom larger in the classroom.

And queer youth and their allies say their states’ defiance of federal law reinforces the idea that their existence is a problem and that their government is targeting them.

“You already had kids who literally did not use the bathroom at school,” said A’Niya Robinson, an advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Louisiana. “They were afraid that they would be targeted for just completing a bodily function. These rules are a reprieve from kids having to experience that, and then to have your state want to undo that, it’s just unfortunate.”

States say new Biden rules undermine Title IX

In 2016, under former President Barack Obama, top officials at the Education and Justice departments issued guidance to schools saying that transgender students were protected from discrimination based on their gender identity under Title IX.

But that guidance was quickly rescinded by the Trump administration.

When President Joe Biden took office, officials moved to make the Obama-era interpretation binding by going through nearly two years of formal rule-making. The final rule, which the Biden administration announced April 19 and is slated to take effect Aug. 1, gives LGBTQ students and others explicit protection from sex discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

The backlash has been swift. Within days, top education officials in several states told schools to disregard the rule changes. This week, 15 states filed four separate lawsuits seeking to block the rules from taking effect.

At a Monday press conference announcing one of the lawsuits, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the new regulations sought “to remake American societal norms through classrooms, lunchrooms, bathrooms, and locker rooms of American schools.”

“These rules eviscerate Title IX,” Murrill said.

The following day, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said the text of Title IX refers “over and over again to a sex binary, to men and women, to one sex or the other.”

Though each lawsuit is slightly different, they all essentially argue that the U.S. Department of Education exceeded its authority by expanding the definition of what constitutes sex discrimination, and that the changes run contrary to the original intent of Title IX.

Even though the new rules don’t address sports and the Education Department is working on separate sports guidance, opponents of the new rules have said they believe they open the door to widespread participation by trans athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.

That view was underscored at Tuesday’s joint press conference with the attorneys general of Tennessee and West Virginia, which featured elite swimmer Riley Gaines. Gaines became an outspoken advocate for keeping transgender women out of women’s sports after having to compete against and share a locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Similarly, West Virginia is engaged in ongoing litigation to prevent a 13-year-old from competing in girls’ track.

The bulk of the concerns in the lawsuits focus on trans girls being permitted to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, and that school staff will be compelled to call trans and non-binary students by their preferred names and pronouns.

Skrmetti said the facilities concern is not just about gender identity. He fears that the new Title IX rules could require that any boy be allowed in girls’ restrooms. A girl who expressed discomfort with that could be liable for creating an illegal hostile environment because she questioned that student’s gender, he said.

But the Title IX rules make clear that schools can still maintain single-gender restrooms.

While the new rules bar invasive medical tests or burdensome documentation to establish gender identity, schools can request a written confirmation from the student, a parent, or other adult. Schools can also rely on the child’s consistent self-identification.

Several states’ laws forbid trans students from accessing bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity and permit school staff to use the pronouns and name a student was assigned at birth, even if the student now uses a different name or pronouns.

National surveys have repeatedly found that these kinds of policies negatively affect LGBTQ youth, who often feel unsafe at school, struggle with mental health, and are more likely to consider suicide than their peers. When the Education Department gathered feedback on a draft version of the rules, officials said many students reported that schools ignored bullying, threats, and harassment based on their gender identity, leaving them in constant fear and anxiety.

For Zelda Duitch, who is trans and co-president of the Gender Sexuality Alliance at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, finding a supportive school has been critical to his educational success.

“When I was socially transitioning, all of my teachers were really supportive,” he said. “That was integral not just for my mental health, but for my education. I would not have been able to learn if I hadn’t been accepted.”

When Florida adopted its “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Zelda felt sorry for queer youth there. Now his own state has a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and a package of anti-LGBTQ bills is sailing through the Louisiana Legislature.

“It’s hard to describe how much anger and pain there is,” Zelda said. “It made me feel like my state was trying to kill me.”

Why the new Title IX rules matter

Practically, the new rules matter because they give students, families, and advocates sturdier ground to stand on when they file a federal civil rights complaint or a lawsuit seeking to challenge a school’s policy.

The Title IX complaint process can be slow and cumbersome, but it’s a powerful tool for students to protect their rights, said Craig White, who runs the supportive schools program for the Campaign for Southern Equality. That’s especially true for students in small towns who may not have access to attorneys or large advocacy groups.

Students can say: “This discrimination is wrong, and I’m standing up,” White said.

The new rules explicitly state that denying a trans student access to a bathroom or locker room that corresponds with their gender identity causes harm to the student in a way that generally violates Title IX.

If a teacher repeatedly refused to call a student by their preferred name and pronouns, leaving the student feeling unwelcome at school, that could violate Title IX, too.

Suzanne Eckes, a professor of education law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the big legal question now is whether the definition of sex in Title IX can include sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Supreme Court decided in 2020 in Bostock v. Clayton County that employees are protected from sex discrimination, including based on sexual orientation and gender identity, under Title VII, another federal civil rights law.

And while there are a few outlier cases, plenty of federal courts have already ruled that Title IX should be interpreted the same way, Eckes said.

“The vast majority of federal and state courts have ended in favorable results for trans students,” Eckes said.

But Matt Sharp, senior counsel for conservative legal group the Alliance Defending Freedom believes the Bostock case doesn’t apply in many of the scenarios covered under Title IX, an interpretation shared by many Republican AGs.

Access to bathrooms and locker rooms implicates personal privacy, he said, and courts have found that physiological differences between men and women justify separate facilities.

Protesters chant outside the Indiana House of Representatives during an education committee hearing about that state's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill. Indiana is among the states suing the federal government to overturn new Title IX rules.

Advocates say anti-LGTBQ laws silence allies, spread fear

White, of the Campaign for Southern Equality, said the climate fostered by states’ policies can send ripple effects through the school day.

A student might be misgendered by a teacher in first period, attract scrutiny for which bathroom they use in second period, be unable to use a locker room in third period, then get bullied at lunch — only to be told by a lunch monitor that other students don’t agree with their “lifestyle.”

“Students do not experience these as isolated incidents,” White said.

But he also noted that such laws can spread fear and silence allies. In Indiana, for example, where a new law requires schools to notify parents if a student wants to go by a different name, Gender Sexuality Alliance clubs have stopped meeting in many schools, as students fear sponsors would be required to out them, said Chris Paulsen, CEO of Indiana Youth Group, which supports GSAs across the state.

Indiana is among the states that have directed schools not to change their policies to comply with the new Title IX rules, and it has joined Tennessee’s lawsuit.

Peyton Rose Michelle, who leads Louisiana Trans Advocates, remembers being bullied as early as first grade and called slurs she didn’t understand. By middle school, she had trained herself not to use the bathroom until she got home around 4:30 p.m.

She hears about students doing the same thing today — as well as skipping school to avoid bullying. The new Title IX protections are about doing the right thing for kids, she said.

“Bathrooms in middle school are for peeing and looking at yourself in the mirror,” Michelle said, “and trans kids should be able to do both of those things without fear of bullying and harassment.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

How the 2024 National Teacher of the Year helps English learners adapt in rural Appalachia

2024-04-03T19:50:00+00:00

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As an English as a Second Language specialist at her Tennessee school and a long-time member of her rural Appalachian community, Missy Testerman often finds herself straddling two worlds, trying to bridge the divide.

That could mean anything from accompanying a student and his mother to get a refill for epilepsy medication, to showing the staff at the local courthouse how to use a translation app so they can communicate with immigrant families.

“Simple gestures such as sitting with my students’ families at high school graduation or a school play goes a long way in helping them find acceptance in our rural area since I have belonged to this community for decades and others trust my lead,” Testerman wrote recently. “I take this role as ambassador seriously, and I am thankful for the opportunity to connect these groups.”

And now, Testerman will be serving as an ambassador on an even bigger stage: She’s the new National Teacher of the Year.

Testerman, who teaches English learners at Rogersville City School, earned the title on Wednesday as part of a competition run by the Council of Chief State School Officers. She was previously named Tennessee’s top teacher for 2023.

She’ll spend the next year traveling the country, speaking out about issues she says teachers need to be making noise about, including the persistent mental health challenges kids are facing and the need to offer services even as COVID relief funding dries up.

“At times, it feels as though state legislatures across this country are passing laws that do not address actual problems,” Testerman wrote in her application. “Schools had to hire someone to scan every book in the building under the guise that pornography is lurking in a kindergarten classroom, yet we do not have funding to hire a behaviorist to help with the kindergarteners who are disrupting classrooms every day.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Testerman about how field trips to the post office help her English learners, why she went back to school at the age of 51, and why it’s important for lawmakers to understand what’s really happening inside the nation’s classrooms.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You got your ESL endorsement after teaching for 30 years. Is there a moment or an interaction you had that made you think: ‘I’m going to go back and do this right now’?

Yes, actually, there was. One of my closest allies at school was our ESL teacher. She came to me and let me know that she was moving at the end of the school year. She had done a phenomenal job, not just educating these students and helping them acquire the English language, but also serving as their family resource person in our community. So I was very worried about who was going to advocate for these families.

The next day, I received an email that went out to everyone who was teaching in the state of Tennessee, explaining how the Tennessee Grow Your Own program works. One facet is that teachers who are already licensed could add an endorsement area in a hard-to-fill position, and that year, it was math, special education, and ESL. I was 51 years old, not your typical college student. But I enrolled, and at the end of the year, I was able to transition into her role and become the advocate for my students’ families.

You talked about how much you enjoy getting to be the first person who takes your ESL students to the library, or the post office, or the courthouse. Why is it important to you to do that, and how does that help your students and their families?

Many of my students are their family’s translators. They are the ones calling and making doctor’s appointments at 7 years old, or they are the ones who are translating documents.

Missy Testerman is the 2024 National Teacher of the Year. She teaches English learners at Rogersville City School in Tennessee.

A lot of times, my students are in a situation where pretty much all they do is come to school and go back home. They haven’t had the typical exposure to the things that we’re talking about. They may pass the post office every day, but they don’t understand: This is where I go when I need to mail a package.

Or they may be aware that we have a library, but there’s a language barrier for their parents to be able to take them to the library and explain that they need a library card.

Those are experiences that I get to have. And not only do I get to have them with my students, and open up that pathway for them to be able to share with their families, but also it helps the people in my community to see my families as just another member of the community. It helps them to adapt to living in our rural area.

You’ve been talking with educator prep programs and offering your feedback. What are some of the ways that you’d like to see teacher training improve or change?

The literacy piece is always a big thing. We passed a law called the Tennessee Literacy Act in 2021, and that requires that anyone entering into our classrooms be proficient in the science of reading, and how to teach literacy at any level — not just to students coming in. That’s been part of the conversation.

I’m also talking to them about the types of mental health challenges that we’re seeing, so that they can work that into the curriculum for students to be prepared, and to know what resources are available in schools.

As National Teacher of the Year, what do you want to make sure policymakers are better educated about?

I want our policymakers to know what’s going on inside our classrooms. For far too long, policy has been made by people who are not education experts. They’re not teachers, they don’t spend a lot of time within classrooms.

But we’re not going to make anyone aware unless our teachers are willing to speak up and be advocates — for their students, themselves, our profession — by being honest about what our struggles are, and what will make those struggles better.

Right now, I feel like the most pressing issue that schools across our country are facing are mental health challenges. I’m in a pre-K-8 school, so I’ve seen lots of different situations, anything from depression in our older students, where they are just totally withdrawn from the school situation — they don’t want to be there. That affects their education, obviously, and it also leads to chronic absenteeism.

In our younger students, what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing from other teachers is that students are showing up unable to regulate, or to deal with their frustrations.

These mental health challenges don’t just affect the child experiencing the crisis, or the teachers, they affect every kid in the classroom, every school employee who tries to help and intervene. I see that as a particular challenge.

You wrote in your application that ESSER funds are winding down, but we’re still dealing with big challenges around academic recovery and mental health. How do you think your advocacy can help raise alarms about some of the things that you’re seeing?

That $122 billion that was invested into schools helped schools hire mental health counselors, guidance counselors, behaviorists, and other support staff. And we know we’re still struggling with student mental health at this time. For those supports to be taken away can lead to a very difficult situation.

I hope that I empower teachers to share what that looks like, and why that’s difficult, and why that interrupts the learning of other students in the classroom, so that systems all across the country can figure out a way to make up for those funds and keep the supports in play.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Half of new state spending on preschool was backed by COVID aid last year, new report finds

2024-04-18T04:01:00+00:00

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After preschool enrollment took a nosedive during the pandemic, a new report offers some encouraging news. A record share of young children enrolled in preschool last school year, and state spending on preschool reached an all-time high.

New universal preschool initiatives in several states contributed to those increases, but federal COVID relief funding also played a crucial role, according to a report released Thursday by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

Half of the new spending on state preschool programs last year was backed by pandemic aid, the researchers found.

That money helped improve access — preschool enrollment was up in nearly every state — but it also raises real questions about whether states will be able to sustain their investments after that federal funding runs out this fall. Some of the 26 states that spent COVID aid on preschool last year have plans to bridge the gap, but others do not.

“It’s important to make sure that they all do, so we don’t move backwards,” said Steven Barnett, the director of the research institute and a co-author of the report. Already, “the nation remains very far away from providing a high-quality preschool education to every child at age 4, much less at age 3.”

The problem of the fiscal cliff isn’t unique to early education — K-12 schools are also grappling with how to fill budget holes left by expiring pandemic aid. State officials and school leaders nationwide are making difficult decisions about whether they can afford to keep many kinds of pandemic-era investments, including school mental health staff, intensive tutoring programs, and expanded summer school. Some districts, such as Chicago and New York City, also expanded preschool access with COVID dollars.

Earlier in the pandemic, COVID aid helped keep preschool teachers employed and child care providers open. But last school year, much of the money was spent to get more kids into preschool. Those strategies included recruiting and training preschool teachers, raising pay for preschool teachers at community-based providers, which typically pay less than schools, and doing more outreach to parents.

States spent at least $571 million in COVID aid on their preschool programs during the 2022-23 school year, the report found, though it’s likely more, as not all of the 26 states were able to say how much pandemic aid they used. That made up a small share of the overall $11.7 billion that states put toward their preschool programs that year. But it accounted for half of the $1.2 billion in new state spending on preschool.

Some states put a large chunk of their COVID dollars toward preschool expansion, but have come up with a plan to at least partially fill that gap.

North Dakota, for example, paid for its Best in Class program for 4-year-olds entirely with COVID relief funds last year. But state lawmakers recently approved putting $12 million in state money toward that program over the next two years, which will more than cover the gap left by expiring pandemic aid.

In Michigan, officials spent $83 million in COVID relief dollars on the state’s Great Start Readiness program, which offers free preschool to 4-year-olds primarily from low-income families. That made up a quarter of all state spending on preschool last year, and helped the program enroll an additional 2,200 children.

For this school year, Michigan lawmakers approved spending an extra $74 million in state funds to help make up for the loss of COVID funding. That investment comes as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer works to fulfill her pledge to make preschool free for all 4-year-olds.

Matt Gillard, the president and CEO of Michigan’s Children, a nonprofit that works on early education policies, said he’s not surprised that Michigan is one of the states that put a lot of COVID aid toward increasing preschool access, and now is using that investment as a springboard to get closer to a universal preschool program.

“Pre-K has been a priority with bipartisan support in Michigan for a long time,” he said. “We have a lot of need in communities, and the COVID relief dollars provided an opportunity for the state to expand that.”

But the picture is less clear elsewhere. Virginia spent around $16.3 million in COVID money last year on the state’s mixed-delivery program, which funds preschool at community-based providers and in other non-school settings. COVID funds make up the bulk of the spending for that program again this school year. Whether the state can sustain that spending will be determined by future budget negotiations, the report notes. (The Virginia Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.)

That states led by both Republican and Democratic governors used federal COVID aid to expand preschool suggests there could be bipartisan support for the federal government to offer more money for this work, Barnett said. That could be especially important as gaps in preschool access and quality continue to grow between states.

“New state initiatives for universal preschool have already started to reshape the preschool landscape,” said Allison Friedman-Krauss, an assistant research professor at Rutgers and the report’s lead author. “Which states will be left behind as all these other states move forward?”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Un grupo vinculado a Trump elabora un plan para negar la educación gratuita a los estudiantes indocumentados

2024-04-12T19:55:02+00:00

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Un grupo conservador influyente publicó recientemente un informe en el que pide a los estados que exijan a las escuelas públicas que cobren a los niños migrantes no acompañados y a los niños con padres indocumentados para inscribirse. La Fundación Heritage está gastando decenas de millones de dólares para elaborar un conjunto de políticas para un segundo mandato presidencial de Trump.

Esta medida “atraería una demanda de la izquierda”, afirma el informe, “lo que probablemente llevaría al Tribunal Supremo a reconsiderar su desacertada decisión en el caso Plyler v. Doe”, haciendo referencia a la sentencia de 1982 que consideraba inconstitucional negar a los niños la educación pública por su estatus migratorio.

Plyler ha sobrevivido ataques durante más de 40 años. Pero algunos expertos legales y defensores de los niños inmigrantes dicen que la nueva propuesta para debilitarla debe ser tomada en serio, dada la extrema retórica anti-inmigrante de Trump, el constante bombardeo de titulares sobre la “crisis de los migrantes” y la predisposición reciente de la Corte Suprema liderada por los conservadores a derogar precedentes legales establecidos.

Las políticas actuales de inmigración ilegal y la imagen que los conservadores, e incluso algunos liberales, han pintado de sobrecargar los recursos de los estados y las localidades, creo que es un factor enorme”, dijo Brett Geier, un profesor de la Universidad del Oeste de Michigan (Michigan Western University) que escribió un libro sobre las escuelas K-12 y el Tribunal Supremo. “Creo que este tribunal tiene el descaro de decir: Vamos a encargarnos de ello y derogarlo”.

Pero otros dicen que la verdadera intención es agitar a los votantes en un año electoral, y que el caso Plyler v. Doe realmente no corre peligro.

“Cada vez que hay elecciones, de repente el tema de la inmigración se convierte en un gran problema, y [oímos]: ‘Tenemos que hacer algo con estos inmigrantes, y deshacernos de ellos, y no pagar por su educación’”, dijo Patricia Gándara, profesora de investigación en la Escuela de Posgrado de Educación de la UCLA, que ha escrito mucho acerca de cómo la aplicación de las leyes migratorias afecta a los niños y las escuelas. “Después de las elecciones, el tema se esfuma”.

Cobrar la matriculación escolar en Texas condujo al fallo Plyler

Una proporción cada vez mayor de estadounidenses, y sobre todo republicanos, afirman que las políticas de inmigración son una de sus mayores preocupaciones en estos momentos. Y las cuestiones de inmigración están acaparando mucha atención en las elecciones presidenciales de este año.

Trump había hecho su campaña con una serie de políticas de inmigración de mano dura y restrictivas, como la deportación masiva de inmigrantes indocumentados y el fin del reasentamiento de refugiados. También ha asegurado falsamente que los niños inmigrantes han desplazado a otros niños en las escuelas públicas de Nueva York.

El enfoque en materia de inmigración se debe a que el país está viendo un aumento importante del número de inmigrantes que llegan a la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México. Las autoridades federales contabilizaron casi 2,5 millones de personas que llegaron a la frontera sur el año pasado. Esto representa un aumento del 43% en comparación con dos años antes, aunque no todos fueron admitidos. Una cantidad cada vez mayor corresponde a familias con niños.

Más de tres cuartas partes de los estadounidenses consideran que lo que está ocurriendo en la frontera es un problema grave o una crisis, según una encuesta reciente del Centro de Investigaciones Pew. Casi una cuarta parte de los adultos estadounidenses dijeron que les preocupaba que el aumento de inmigrantes podría ser una carga económica para el país.

La Fundación Heritage (The Heritage Foundation) ha abordado estas preocupaciones en su informe reciente, titulado “Las consecuencias de la inmigración ilegal desenfrenada en las escuelas públicas de Estados Unidos”. En él, la organización critica el enfoque del Presidente Biden a las políticas de inmigración, diciendo que ha dado lugar a “un gran número de niños que no hablan inglés” que se matriculan en las escuelas públicas.

El documento cita ejemplos de escuelas de Texas que daban clases en los pasillos, y de una escuela secundaria de Brooklyn que hizo que los alumnos aprendieran virtualmente durante un día después de que la escuela alojara a familias migrantes toda la noche durante una tormenta.

En respuesta, la Fundación Heritage le está pidiendo a los estados que prohíban a las escuelas el alojamiento de inmigrantes indocumentados y que exijan a las escuelas que recopilen datos de matriculación de estudiantes por estatus migratorio “para que se puedan hacer unos análisis de costos con precisión”. Los estados deberían exigir a los distritos escolares que cobren a los niños indocumentados la matriculación para asistir a la escuela pública, sostiene el informe.

Fue precisamente esta práctica hace casi medio siglo -en el mismo estado que desobedece al gobierno federal al ocuparse de la aplicación de las leyes de inmigración- la que condujo al fallo del caso Plyler v. Doe.

Texas aprobó en 1975 una ley que impedía que las escuelas públicas recibieran financiación estatal para la educación de niños indocumentados y que los distritos podían prohibir a estos estudiantes que asistieran gratuitamente a la escuela pública.

Dos años más tarde, el distrito escolar independiente de Tyler empezó a cobrarle a los niños indocumentados mil dólares al año por asistir a la escuela — una suma que los funcionarios del distrito sabían que sería inasequible para las familias inmigrantes de la zona, que a menudo trabajaban en la famosa industria de rosas de Tyler, en plantas procesadoras de carne y en granjas.

“Creo que ninguna familia podría haber pagado eso”, dijo James Plyler, superintendente del distrito, a un periodista de Education Week en 2007. “Mil dólares en 1977 era muchísimo dinero, y la mayoría de esas familias que llegaron trabajaban por el salario mínimo”.

Cuatro familias cuyos hijos no pudieron asistir a la escuela demandaron a Plyler y al distrito escolar, y finalmente ganaron ante el Tribunal Supremo. En la opinión de 5-4 de la mayoría, el juez William Brennan escribió que no permitir a los niños indocumentados aprender a leer y escribir tendría un " impacto incalculable” en su “bienestar social, económico, intelectual y psicológico”. (Los jueces que disentían estaban de acuerdo en que era incorrecto que se negara la educación a los niños indocumentados, pero argumentaron que no era una violación constitucional).

Actualmente, la Fundación Heritage sostiene que los costos de la educación han aumentado demasiado y que los estados y las escuelas deberían poder recuperarlos. El gobierno federal podría ayudar, dijo Madison Marino, una investigadora asociada senior que es coautora del informe de la Fundación Heritage, o los padres o patrocinadores de los estudiantes indocumentados podrían pagar.

“Realmente no buscamos privar a estos niños de su educación”, dijo Marino. “Hacemos un llamado para que todos contribuyan”.

La mayor parte de las familias indocumentadas de hoy probablemente tendrían dificultades para pagar la matrícula escolar, al igual que en 1977. Y la ayuda federal parece poco probable. El Congreso está profundamente dividido sobre cómo financiar políticas de inmigración y si las escuelas necesitan más fondos a raíz de la pandemia, y el Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. ha destinado históricamente una pequeña fracción de su presupuesto a la educación de estudiantes que aprenden inglés y de estudiantes inmigrantes.

La campaña de Trump no respondió a una solicitud de comentarios sobre las propuestas de la Fundación Heritage para impugnar el caso Plyler, pero hay observadores que creen que el think tank(gabinete estratégico) desempeñaría un papel crucial en una segunda administración de Trump. Por otra parte, la campaña ha dicho que los grupos externos no hablan en nombre de Trump ni de su campaña, y que las recomendaciones políticas son sólo eso.

Veintiún años después del fallo del Tribunal Supremo en el caso Plyler v. Doe, el Distrito Escolar Independiente de Tyler en Texas, ofrecía un programa bilingüe español-inglés para alumnos de preescolar y de primer grado.

El traslado en autobús de inmigrantes a ciudades impulsa pedidos de ayuda federal

Quién se hace cargo de la responsabilidad financiera de la educación de los niños indocumentados ha sido un tema polémico de debate, especialmente en los últimos dos años.

En mayo de 2022, el gobernador de Texas, Greg Abbott, dijo que quería impugnar el caso Plyler v. Doe “porque los gastos son exorbitantes y los tiempos son diferentes” que en 1982. Le pidió al gobierno federal que cubriera los gastos educativos de los estudiantes indocumentados.

Desde entonces, Abbott ha enviado en autobús a más de 75.000 inmigrantes a seis ciudades dirigidas por demócratas que tienen ciertas políticas “santuario” que protegen a los inmigrantes.

Los estudiantes recién llegados pueden aportar muchas cualidades, desde la diversidad lingüística hasta el conocimiento de la vida en otros lugares del mundo, dicen los educadores, y algunas escuelas se han adaptado con éxito para satisfacer las necesidades de los recién llegados.

Pero muchas escuelas han tenido dificultades para hacerlo. Los estudiantes recién llegados no suelen hablar inglés y a veces han pasado meses o incluso años sin ir a la escuela. Muchos han sufrido traumas en su viaje a Estados Unidos o en su país de origen que pueden afectar a su formación escolar. Las escuelas carecen a menudo de profesores bilingües y de personal de salud mental para proporcionar ayuda. Y cuando llegan muchos estudiantes a mitad de año, la financiación estatal no siempre llega de inmediato, por lo que las escuelas tienen que arreglárselas con los recursos disponibles.

Muchos educadores y funcionarios locales han pedido a sus estados y al gobierno federal que proporcionen fondos adicionales para ayudar, con un escaso éxito. El proyecto de presupuesto del gobernador de Illinois no incluía fondos adicionales para estudiantes inmigrantes, y los fondos adicionales asignados en Colorado equivalen a menos de la mitad de lo que el estado gastaría normalmente por estudiante.

La impugnación de Plyler podría depender de cuestiones de gastos

Desafiar a Plyler sería difícil, dijo Thomas A. Sáenz, presidente y consejero general jurídico del Fondo Educativo y de Defensa Legal México-Estadounidense, que representó a las familias en el caso Plyler original. El fallo está ahora vinculado a otras leyes federales, así como a la protección de la privacidad de los alumnos de primaria y secundaria.

“No es como: ‘Oh, simplemente preparémonos para Plyler, y aprobemos una ley, e inmediatamente este Tribunal Supremo más conservador anulará la decisión del 82′”, dijo. “Ese análisis es demasiado sencillo”.

Pero hay formas en que Plyler podría ser vulnerable, dijo Amanda Warner, candidata a doctorado en la Universidad George Mason que analizó las impugnaciones anteriores al fallo. El Tribunal Supremo actual ha favorecido los derechos de los estados y una lectura originalista de la Constitución. Y en 1973, el Tribunal Supremo sostuvo que no existe un derecho constitucional a la educación.

Según Warner, se trata de una “deficiencia evidente” que podría ser aprovechada.

Otra vía para impugnar el fallo podría centrarse en las condiciones y los costos de la educación, y si éstos han cambiado lo suficiente como para justificar que se niegue a los niños indocumentados una educación pública gratuita.

En 1982, Texas argumentó que necesitaba hacerlo para proteger los recursos destinados a la educación de sus “residentes legales”. Pero el Tribunal Supremo rechazó ese argumento. Brennan escribió que los estudiantes indocumentados no imponían “cargas especiales” al sistema educativo de Texas, y que excluirlos de la escuela probablemente no mejoraría la calidad general de la educación.

El informe de la Fundación Heritage sostiene que la inmigración no autorizada, especialmente entre los niños que llegan sin sus padres, ha llegado a un punto en el que “se justifica un replanteamiento”.

El fallo original parece implicar que “existe un umbral” para que un estado demuestre que educar a estudiantes indocumentados es una carga financiera excesiva, dijo Warner. Pero no bastaría con demostrar que el costo de la educación es más alto.

Todo el dinero ahorrado por excluir a los niños indocumentados de la escuela tendría que contrastarse con el efecto dominó sobre las viviendas, los servicios sociales y el sistema de justicia penal. “Los costos se pueden asumir de muchas maneras”, dijo Warner. “¿Cuáles son los costos de tener a todas estas personas sin educación en Estados Unidos?”.

Queda por ver si se planteará un cuestionamiento serio. Marino dijo que ningún funcionario del estado se ha puesto en contacto con la Fundación Heritage para hacer realidad su propuesta.

Después de que Abbott planteara la posibilidad de impugnar a Plyler hace dos años, un legislador de Texas presentó un proyecto de ley que habría negado a los estudiantes indocumentados una educación pública gratuita, a menos que la pagara el gobierno federal. Pero a diferencia de 1975, la propuesta no llegó a ninguna parte.

Nicholas Espíritu, subdirector jurídico del National Immigration Law Center, dijo que si una propuesta de este tipo no podía avanzar en Texas, eso debería desanimar a otros estados a intentarlo.

“Tenemos la esperanza de que, aunque haya algunos murmullos por parte de la Fundación Heritage y de estados como Texas”, dijo, “al final los políticos lleguen a la misma conclusión y se den cuenta de que esta no es una postura que al fin y al cabo cuente con apoyo.”

Traducido por Flavia Melisa Franco

Kalyn Belsha es periodista nacional de educación con residencia en Chicago. Puede ponerse en contacto con ella: kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Should kids learn about LGBTQ issues at school? Many teachers and teens say no, new surveys find.

2024-02-23T21:21:25+00:00

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Should elementary schoolers learn that people of the same gender can love each other? Do teens want to learn about how slavery’s legacy matters today? Should parents be able to opt their kids out of lessons they disagree with?

As Republican-dominated state legislatures limit how teachers talk about race and restrict transgender children’s access to bathrooms and sports, and as school board elections turn on book bans and parents’ rights, three new national studies from the Pew Research Center, the research corporation RAND, and the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education shed light on how teachers, parents, and students themselves think about these questions.

For all the attention LGBTQ issues receive in national politics, teachers said topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation rarely come up. And many said they don’t believe these topics should be taught in school.

In fact, large swaths of the public also don’t think gender and sexuality should be discussed in school, the studies found. However, there were wide partisan divides, as well as differences along racial and ethnic lines.

Adults and teens felt more comfortable with teachers teaching about racism than LGBTQ issues. They were also more comfortable with teachers talking about past injustices than present-day inequality, and more comfortable with gay rights than trans rights. And they were more comfortable with any of these topics coming up at the high school level — though many teens reported their own discomfort.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that two-thirds of teachers in one study said they decided on their own to limit how they talked about potentially contentious issues. One reason: They feared confrontations with upset parents.

“The topics of race and LGBTQ issues are often lumped together in discussions about these so-called ‘culture wars’ and how that’s playing out in K-12 education,” said Luona Lin, a research associate at Pew. But teachers and students actually “feel very different about these two topics.”

Here are some of the major takeaways of the three new reports:

Many teachers are censoring themselves

More than a third of American teachers work in states with laws restricting how teachers talk about issues that are considered divisive or controversial. But a study released this month by the research organization RAND found local restrictions and teachers’ own fears are having an effect as well.

In a survey of 1,500 teachers taken last year, two-thirds reported deciding on their own to limit how they talked about social and political issues in the classroom. Meanwhile, about half of teachers told RAND they were subject to either a state or local restriction. These limits could be formal, such as a school board policy, or informal, such as a principal’s comments.

More than 80% of those who were subject to a local restriction said they had made changes to their teaching, regardless of state law. That should not be surprising, said Ashley Woo, an assistant policy researcher at RAND.

“If your principal is telling you to do something, that is the person who is there with you at the school and can see what is happening in your classroom,” she said.

At the same time, more than half of teachers who were not subject to any restrictions said they had limited how they talked about certain topics, with self-censoring more common in conservative communities but still widespread in liberal ones.

A major reason teachers cited for limiting instruction, especially in communities with local restrictions, was a fear of confrontation with upset parents and that their administration would not support them if they faced a challenge.

LGBTQ issues raised less often than racism in classrooms

Though LGBTQ issues are prominent in local and national politics, a report released this week reveals a striking finding: Most teachers say gender identity and sexual orientation hardly get discussed in class — and many teachers say they shouldn’t be.

According to a nationally representative survey conducted last fall by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity rarely or never came up in their classroom last school year. Around 3 in 10 said the topics came up sometimes or often.

Half of teachers, meanwhile, said they thought students shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school, with an even higher share of elementary school teachers agreeing with that view.

The findings come as anti-trans legislation creates a more hostile environment for gender non-conforming youth in many states.

In contrast, more than half of teachers said they discussed topics related to racism or racial inequality at least sometimes. Around 4 in 10 teachers said the issues rarely or never came up.

Nearly two-thirds of teachers said students should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while just under a quarter said slavery should be taught only as a component of history — without any bearing on the present.

Lin, the Pew report’s lead author, says it’s likely that school board policies, local politics, and state laws are influencing what teachers discuss, though the survey doesn’t measure those factors.

What should young kids learn about gender and sexuality?

In Searching for Common Ground, a study released this week by a team at the University of Southern California, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,900 adults, about half of them parents of school-aged children, and asked them about dozens of scenarios related to race, sexuality, and gender.

Democrats were more comfortable than Republicans with almost every scenario, with independents and others roughly in the middle. But even Democrats were less supportive of discussing gender identity or asking students’ pronouns in elementary school than discussing racism or different family structures.

Nearly half of all respondents thought it was appropriate for an elementary teacher to have a picture of their same-sex spouse on their desk. And almost as many were OK with elementary students reading a book about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin.

But just 30% of respondents and only half of Democrats thought it was appropriate for an elementary classroom to display LGBTQ-friendly decorations, such as a Pride flag.

Democrats were far more likely to want gay or trans children to see themselves reflected at school, while Republicans were far more likely to fear discussing these topics would change children, leading to them thinking they are gay or trans.

“The largest partisan examples seem to have to do with LGBTQ and family issues in elementary school,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor and one of the study’s lead authors. “Democrats think that kids can handle that and Republicans do not.”

The rollout of Advanced Placement African American Studies reflects widespread interest among some students and teachers in learning more diverse history, but some conservatives have targeted the course.

More students feel comfortable discussing racism than LGBTQ issues

Students in grades 8-12 also tend to feel less comfortable discussing LGBTQ issues than issues of race and racism at school, and are more likely to say they shouldn’t be learning about them, the Pew report found.

In a nationally representative survey of 13- to 17-year-olds conducted last fall, around 4 in 10 teens said they felt comfortable when topics related to racism or racial inequality came up in class.

But only around 3 in 10 said the same about topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. And just under half of teens said they shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school. That rate was somewhat higher for teens who identified as Republicans than Democrats.

Only 11% of teens, meanwhile, said they shouldn’t learn about slavery. Around half said they should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while 40% said they should learn about slavery only in a historical context.

Black teens and teens who identify as Democrats were much more likely than white, Hispanic, or Republican teens to say they want to learn about how the legacy of slavery affects Black people today — a finding echoed among Black parents and Black teachers in other surveys.

Bridging these divides is tricky

The University of Southern California study found strong support for public education across the political spectrum.

But there’s a gap of nearly 39 percentage points between Democrats and Republicans on whether public schools should teach children to embrace differences. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats said yes, compared with just over a third of Republicans.

This underlying belief was a strong predictor of responses to specific scenarios. Those who said kids shouldn’t be taught to embrace differences also expressed more discomfort with race, gender, and sexuality being discussed in the classroom.

“Democrats on average think schools are exactly the place to do this — it’s one of the last places where everyone comes together regardless of their differences,” Polikoff said. “And Republicans don’t think that is an appropriate role for schools. And they think that because they perceive, in part correctly, that schools are a liberalizing force.”

There was broad support for parents having the right to opt their child out of certain lessons, but when researchers prompted respondents to consider downsides, such as their child missing out on the opportunity to learn critical thinking skills, support fell.

Understanding the values that drive differences and building on common ground, such as agreement that children should read books by authors of color and learn about historic injustices, could lead to a healthier conversation than what’s happening now.

“We need to have this conversation,” he said. “Instead we have Ron DeSantis saying we’ll ban everything, and Democrats sticking their fingers in their ears and saying you’re all bigots.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Long-awaited FAFSA fix means students from immigrant families can finally finish aid applications

2024-03-18T20:41:17+00:00

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Many students breathed a sigh of relief last week when federal education officials announced critical fixes to the federal application for financial aid that allows parents without Social Security numbers to contribute information to the form.

The change means tens of thousands of U.S. citizen students and others who are eligible for federal financial aid can finally complete their FAFSAs. But it also leaves families and college counselors scrambling to get through the process months after other students. And some families are still encountering problems.

“It can be very discouraging for students and families who feel like they’re doing all the right things and yet are still coming up against barriers,” said Amanda Seider, who oversees the Massachusetts branch of the college access group OneGoal.

Chalkbeat reported in January that a technical glitch had blocked students with undocumented parents from completing their financial aid applications for over two months. That left many educators and college access groups worried that students who already face higher barriers to college would be deterred by the delays — piled on top of an already difficult rollout of the new, supposedly easier FAFSA. Some colleges and scholarships award aid on a first-come, first-served basis, so students who apply later are at a disadvantage.

During that time, students were left to navigate a confusing array of options, including whether they should just sit tight and wait for a fix, or try a partial workaround that could put them at a higher risk of making a mistake on their application or would require them to come back and fill out more paperwork later.

And there are still outstanding issues. As federal officials put the new fix in place, they uncovered two more issues affecting the same group of students that still need to be resolved.

That means parents without Social Security numbers will have to enter their financial information manually, instead of having it pulled directly from the IRS. And in some cases — when a parent enters a name or address that doesn’t exactly match what their child put down, for example — parents are still getting error messages that block them from filling out the form. Federal officials said last week they would work to fix the issue “in the coming days.”

Federal officials estimated that around 2% of financial aid applicants were affected by the original Social Security number glitch, which would equate to hundreds of thousands of students in a typical year.

The issue caught the attention of dozens of Democratic House members, who sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona urging the department to fix the problem quickly. In a press release issued last week, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman of California said the glitch was a “completely unacceptable error” that had caused “fear, stress, and missed opportunities for many kids across my district and the country.”

“I hope to see the Department take the steps necessary to ensure issues like this never arise again,” Huffman said.

The rollout of the new FAFSA has been riddled with problems and delays. Education department officials have blamed insufficient funding and significant technical challenges in updating old systems. Republicans have accused the administration of being distracted by dealing with student loan forgiveness. Outside observers have said all these factors and more played a role, according to news reports.

FAFSA applications are down 33% compared with this time last year, according to federal data tracked by the National College Attainment Network.

In the meantime, many colleges have pushed back deadlines as they wait for student financial information that will help them assemble aid packages. And families are waiting.

Now, college counselors and advisers say they’re working to make sure students know what to do if they continue to encounter glitches. They’re also trying to keep students’ spirits up and getting them ready to compare their financial aid and acceptance packages when they come in.

“The most important thing we can do is to share information about how to go about entering information manually, how to make sure that as they are completing those steps that it requires a lot of precision,” Seider said. “We really want to make sure that students and families are being proactive, and not experiencing this as their shortcoming, but rather saying ‘Hey, this system has been a little confusing, we need some help with it.’”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Problema corregido en la FAFSA abre el formulario para muchas familias inmigrantes

2024-03-21T22:50:12+00:00

Read in English.

Muchos estudiantes sintieron alivio la semana pasada cuando los funcionarios federales de educación anunciaron correcciones críticas a la solicitud federal de ayuda financiera para permitir que los padres sin número de Seguro Social poder poner información en el formulario.

El cambio significa que decenas de miles de estudiantes ciudadanos de EE.UU. y otros que son elegibles para recibir ayuda financiera federal ahora pueden finalmente completar sus solicitudes FAFSA. Por otro lado, también significa que las familias y los orientadores universitarios están luchando para completar el proceso meses después que otros estudiantes. Y algunas familias todavía están teniendo problemas.

“Puede ser muy desalentador para los estudiantes y las familias, que sienten que están haciendo todo lo correcto y de todos modos siguen enfrentando obstáculos”, dijo Amanda Seider, a cargo de la oficina de Massachusetts del grupo de acceso a la universidad OneGoal.

Chalkbeat reportó en enero que un error técnico había impedido por más de dos meses que los hijos de padres indocumentados completaran sus solicitudes de ayuda financiera. Como resultado, a muchos educadores y grupos de acceso a la universidad les preocupaba que esos retrasos pudieran ser un impedimento adicional para los estudiantes que ya se enfrentan a mayores barreras para ir a la universidad — lo cual se sumaba a la ya complicada publicación de la FAFSA nueva y supuestamente más fácil de llenar. Algunas universidades y becas conceden las ayudas financieras por orden de solicitud, y por lo tanto los estudiantes que llenan la solicitud más tarde están en desventaja.

Durante ese tiempo, los estudiantes tuvieron que navegar por una variedad confusa de opciones, entre las que se incluía no hacer nada y esperar a que el problema se resolviera, o probar una solución parcial que podía ponerles en mayor riesgo de cometer un error en la solicitud o hacer que tuvieran que llenar más papeleo después.

Y aún quedan problemas pendientes. Mientras los funcionarios federales ponían en marcha la solución nueva, descubrieron otros dos problemas adicionales que afectan al mismo grupo de estudiantes y que todavía están por resolverse.

Esto significa que los padres que no tienen número de Seguro Social tendrán que poner su información financiera manualmente, en lugar de transferirla directamente del IRS. Y en algunos casos — por ejemplo, cuando uno de los padres pone un nombre o dirección que no coincide exactamente con la información que su hijo puso — los padres todavía reciben mensajes de error que les impiden llenar el formulario. Los funcionarios federales dijeron la semana pasada que trabajarían para solucionar el problema “en los próximos días”.

Los funcionarios federales calcularon que alrededor de un 2% de los solicitantes de ayuda financiera fueron afectados por el error original del número de Seguro Social, lo que sería equivalente a cientos de miles de estudiantes en un año típico.

El asunto llamó la atención de docenas de miembros demócratas de la Cámara, que enviaron una carta a Miguel Cardona, Secretario de Educación de EE.UU., pidiéndole al departamento que solucionara el problema rápidamente. En un comunicado de prensa publicado la semana pasada, el Rep. Jared Huffman de California dijo que el error técnico fue un “error completamente inaceptable” que había causado “miedo, estrés y pérdida de oportunidades para muchos niños de mi distrito y del país”.

“Espero que el Departamento tome las medidas necesarias para asegurar que nunca ocurran problemas como este”, dijo Huffman.

La publicación de la FAFSA nueva ha estado plagada de problemas y retrasos. Los funcionarios del Departamento de Educación le han echado la culpa a la falta de fondos y a retos técnicos significativos al actualizar los sistemas viejos. Los republicanos han acusado a la administración de estar distraída con la iniciativa de perdonar los préstamos estudiantiles. Según las noticias, observadores externos han dicho que todos estos y otros factores jugaron un papel.

Según datos federales rastreados por la National College Attainment Network, hay un 33% menos solicitudes de FAFSA en comparación con esta fecha el año pasado.

Por el momento, muchas universidades han retrasado las fechas límite mientras esperan por la información financiera de los estudiantes que les ayudará a preparar los paquetes de ayuda. Y las familias están esperando.

Ahora, los consejeros y orientadores universitarios dicen que están trabajando para asegurar que los estudiantes sepan qué hacer si siguen encontrando errores técnicos. También están tratando de mantener el ánimo de los estudiantes y prepararlos para comparar sus paquetes de ayuda financiera y aceptación cuando los reciban.

“Lo más importante que podemos hacer es compartir información sobre cómo poner la información manualmente, cómo asegurar que sean muy precisos al completar esos pasos”, dijo Seider. “Realmente queremos asegurar que los estudiantes y las familias estén siendo proactivos y no sientan que todo esto es por falta suya, sino que piensen: ‘Este sistema ha sido un poco confuso, necesitamos que nos ayuden’”.

Kalyn Belsha es reportera nacional de educación con sede en Chicago. Se habla español. Para comunicarte con ella, escríbele a kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Traducido por Milly Suazo-Martinez

Intensive tutoring is great for academics. Now there’s evidence it can boost attendance.

2024-03-22T10:00:00+00:00

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Twelve-year-old Ethen likes spending time with his math tutors — and not always for reasons related to math.

They crack jokes and play chess with him when he finishes his work early. He likes meeting with them in the library, where it’s easier to ask questions without being talked over. And when he’s had a rough day, he can count on his tutors to cheer him up.

“That’s something good for me because I get to finally see someone that’s happy to see me,” said Ethen, a sixth grader at Cardozo Education Campus in Washington, D.C. “Their smile makes me smile.”

Lots of research has shown that intensive tutoring is one of the best ways to help students improve academically. And it’s become a go-to strategy to help kids who missed a lot of instruction during the pandemic. But a new study suggests high-dosage tutoring can boost something else, too: attendance.

Preliminary research recently released by Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator, which is conducting various tutoring studies, found that D.C. students who participated in an intensive tutoring program were more likely to show up to school on days they had a scheduled session. Overall, the likelihood they’d miss school on tutoring days fell by 7%, researchers found.

That finding is especially significant because many schools are still working to re-engage students and curb higher-than-usual absenteeism rates in the wake of the pandemic.

The study doesn’t answer why tutoring boosted attendance. One reason could be that many students, like Ethen, really like their tutors, who often serve as informal mentors and sometimes bond with students outside the classroom, too.

“The kids do feel really cared for,” said Christine Maffuccio, who oversees the high-impact tutoring program at Cardozo. She said that’s because tutors are at students’ side asking: “What do you need? What’s your first step?”

Another reason could be that, after the isolation of remote learning, tutoring reinforces the idea that “learning happens in the classroom, together.”

“As we’re kind of re-teaching kids how to be in school and why they should be engaged in class,” Maffuccio said, “I think the tutor’s presence in the class helps with that.”

The link between tutoring and attendance

Tutors are everywhere at Cardozo. On any given day, 25 tutors are working with students at the combined middle and high school. Many are college students or AmeriCorps members.

Now, many students don’t think twice about getting extra help because it’s become so common. Earlier this school year, 330 students were getting tutored at Cardozo — almost half of all students.

Shweta Raman, a tutor with Math Matters at The George Washington University, works with Debela, a sixth grader at Cardozo.

The work happening at Cardozo is part of a three-year, $33 million initiative run by D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education with the help of federal COVID relief funding. To receive grant funding, schools agreed to follow certain tutoring best practices, such as keeping tutoring groups small, regularly pairing students with the same tutor, and offering at least 90 minutes a week of intensive help. (A rigorous study of the program’s academic effects is ongoing, but officials say there’s been promising early evidence that the high-dosage tutoring has helped struggling students improve in math and reading.)

As part of that initiative, Stanford researchers looked at attendance records for nearly 4,500 students who received intensive math or reading tutoring during the 2022-23 school year. That included students from Cardozo and 141 other D.C. schools.

The better attendance on tutoring days added up to students getting, on average, an extra two days of instruction over the course of the school year — and as much as five days if the student had been absent a lot.

The effect was most pronounced for middle schoolers, whose likelihood of attending school rose by 11% on days they had a scheduled tutoring session.

The research didn’t look at what exactly made students want to come to school more. But researchers and school staff have some ideas, based on feedback they’ve collected from students and what they’ve observed.

They think the consistency and frequency with which students met with their tutors was likely important. Many students liked the more-personalized attention and wanted to spend time with their tutors. Others wanted to come to school more when they did better academically.

“That individual relationship that they’re building in that tutoring session seems like it could be one of those things” boosting engagement, said Nancy Waymack, who directs research partnerships for the National Student Support Accelerator. “If tutoring is having a positive academic effect on that student, they’re also more likely to be able to be successful in their day-to-day schoolwork, which would also make it more attractive to be at school.”

At Cardozo, Maffuccio has seen that students who may feel intimidated by the idea of asking their teacher for help will feel comfortable turning to a tutor, who may seem more like a big brother or an auntie.

“Students’ personalities come out a lot because not every sentence that they speak with their tutor has to be on task,” Maffuccio said. “I see joking and just kind of talking about their lives. That’s really an important part of the relationship-building — that’s how the space becomes safe for students to try and potentially fail.”

Some tutors end up connecting with students outside of class, too. One tutor who works with ninth graders in their English language arts class, for example, now coaches Cardozo’s middle school soccer team and has close relationships with lots of the players.

Tutors start from ‘a really upbeat, positive place’

Isabelle Jennings Pickering started tutoring at Cardozo in October. Jennings Pickering, known to students as Miss J, works mostly with ninth and 12th graders in their history classes, and she also helps students with their English and reading fluency.

As she gets to know a student, she starts by asking them personal questions — Do they play sports? What music are they listening to? — before diving into the academic material.

Lucia Vallejo, a tutor with Math Matters at The George Washington University, works with Cristian, a sixth grader at Cardozo.

Last semester, for example, when she started working with 17-year-old Miguel several times a week in his D.C. history class, she noticed that he loved talking about music and culture, but it was harder to talk about what was tripping him up in class.

So they “started from a really upbeat, positive place,” by chatting in Spanish and trading notes about their favorite Salvadoran foods. After that, it was easier to talk about academic “concerns and fears and sticky places,” Jennings Pickering said.

Speaking English can be scary for Miguel and many other students whose first language isn’t English, Jennings Pickering said. So she tries to make the tutoring session a safe place where students won’t shut down if she gently corrects their pronunciation.

“It’s often the thought that school isn’t for me, and reading isn’t for me, or English isn’t for me,” she said. “And fighting through that can be the biggest hurdle.”

When she’s able to help students see that learning just one new word or sentence is a success, “that’s huge,” she said.

Since he started working with a tutor, Miguel says he feels more comfortable in class and he’s getting his assignments done faster, too. And he’s proud he can now use the transitional words that Miss J taught him in his essays.

Among his go-tos?

“Therefore” and “however.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Familias inmigrantes tienen problemas para completar la FAFSA. Aquí te informamos.

2024-01-31T00:01:48+00:00

Read in English.

Actualizado: Problema corregido en la FAFSA abre el formulario para muchas familias inmigrantes

Como muchos estudiantes en su último año de high school, Jocelyn, de 18 años, está tratando de completar su lista de pendientes para aplicar a la universidad.

Hasta ahora, ya envió aplicaciones a 10 universidades. Northeastern University en Chicago y la Universidad de Illinois en Chicago son sus preferidas. Le gustaría estudiar medicina veterinaria y trabajar con animales como sus dos gatos, Strawberry y Copito.

Con la ayuda de su hermano, Jocelyn completó su parte de la solicitud federal para ayuda financiera en alrededor de una hora. Pero ahora no puede hacer más porque su mamá, quien no tiene un número de Seguro Social, no ha podido agregar su información financiera.

El nuevo formulario de la Solicitud Gratuita de Ayuda Federal para Estudiantes (FAFSA, por sus siglas en inglés) que se lanzó el mes pasado supuestamente iba a facilitar que los estudiantes y sus familias lo completaran. Y de muchas maneras así es: es más corto y saca la información de impuestos directamente del IRS en lugar de pedirles a las familias que la ingresen ellas mismas. El objetivo es que más estudiantes soliciten ayuda y asistan a la universidad.

Pero el formulario se lanzó varios meses después de lo normal, lo cual dejó a muchos estudiantes con menos tiempo para completarlo y a escuelas con dificultades para ayudar a los estudiantes. Además de eso, muchas familias han enfrentado obstáculos. Uno de los mayores problemas ha sido que los padres sin un número de Seguro Social no pueden ingresar su información en este momento, y las soluciones alternativas ofrecidas en años anteriores ya no están disponibles. Es posible que decenas de miles de estudiantes con ciudadanía estadounidense—quienes cumplen requisitos para solicitar ayuda financiera federal sin importar el estatus migratorio de sus padres—se vean afectados.

Representantes federales dicen que el problema está por solucionarse, pero no saben cuándo exactamente. Los defensores de la educación dicen que se necesita actuar con urgencia para resolver el problema ya que algunas universidades distribuyen ayuda financiera por orden de llegada de las aplicaciones.

Jocelyn, de 18 años de edad, muestra el video de Instagram que vio para asegurarse de completar correctamente su parte del formulario de FAFSA.

“Necesitamos estar trabajando día y noche”, dijo Amalia Chamorro, quien dirige el proyecto de políticas educativas para UnidosUS, un grupo de derechos civiles que aboga a favor de mejores oportunidades educativas para los estudiantes latinos. “Nos preocupa que esto sea un obstáculo más, otra barrera, otra manera de que están recibiendo un mensaje de que no importan, de que no se merecen cursar estudios postsecundarios. Ese no es el mensaje que queremos que reciban”. Jocelyn, cuyo apellido Chalkbeat no está compartiendo para no poner en peligro el estatus migratorio de su mamá, se siente estresada. Pero está tratando de mantener el optimismo de que pronto podrá completar este paso en su lista de pendientes.

“No quería enviar el formulario de FAFSA tarde, y ahora voy a tener que esperar”, dijo. “Sé que mis otros amigos ya lo enviaron, y siento que estoy un poco retrasada”.

Por qué algunos estudiantes están trabados con el nuevo formulario de FAFSA

Jocelyn no es la única de sus compañeros de clase con problemas.

Durante una visita a mediados de enero a Kelvyn Park High School en Chicago, solo dos de los 15 estudiantes en su clase que los ayuda prepararse para y aplicar a la universidad habían logrado completar la FAFSA. La escuela atiende mayormente a estudiantes latinos de familias con bajos ingresos, y muchos de ellos serán los primeros en su familia en asistir a la universidad.

Algunos estudiantes tuvieron dificultades cuando intentaron agregar a sus padres como “contribuidores” en la FAFSA, un nuevo paso que requiere que los padres creen una cuenta y verifiquen su identidad. En el pasado, los estudiantes podían completar más fácilmente la sección de sus padres.

Esto ha creado desafíos especialmente para familias que no conocen el proceso para solicitar ayuda financiera, que enfrentan obstáculos con el idioma, o a quienes les preocupa compartir información personal con el gobierno federal.

Cuando los estudiantes son los primeros en su familia en asistir a la universidad, o hay preocupaciones migratorias, “vas a encontrar mucha paranoia, vas a tener muchas ansiedades relacionadas”, dijo Josh Kumm, quien enseña la clase de Jocelyn en colaboración con OneGoal, una organización sin fines de lucro enfocada en el acceso universitario y que trabaja en más de 30 high schools en Chicago.

Breann Sanford, de 18 años, fue una de los afortunados que lograron enviar su solicitud.

Ayudó que su mamá conocía la FAFSA—completó el formulario cuando estudió un par de clases universitarias—y el asesor universitario y profesional de Sanford supo exactamente qué hacer cuando Sanford ingresó por error su dirección electrónica en lugar de la de su mamá una vez.

“Fue una gran ayuda”, Sanford dijo. “Sabía que tenía muchas opciones de apoyo a las que podía acudir si necesitaba ayuda”.

Lee más: La universidad es cara. Llenar la FAFSA te puede ayudar con los gastos.

Breann Sanford, de 18 años, no pudo enviar su formulario de FAFSA a mediados de enero. En su clase de Kelvyn Park High School en Chicago que ayuda a los estudiantes para que apliquen a la universidad, solo unos pocos completaron el formulario sin dificultades.

Otros estudiantes tienen dificultades por diferentes razones. Durante la reciente visita a Kelvyn Park High School, Ángel Serrano, de 18 años, dijo que todavía estaba tratando de decirle a su mamá que está aplicando a la universidad y necesita su ayuda con el formulario de asistencia financiera. El momento más adecuado para hacer eso son los miércoles—el único día en que su mamá no está agotada ni trabajando, Serrano dijo.

Otro estudiante en la clase necesita la información financiera de su mamá, pero ya no viven juntos ni están en comunicación.

“Tienes todas estas cosas que te pasan”, Kumm dijo. “No es solo lo socioeconómico, también son las partes socioemocionales de la dinámica familiar … Eso es complicado”.

La ayuda individual es clave, pero algunos problemas de la FAFSA necesitan una solución federal

El apoyo individual ha sido clave para que los estudiantes puedan guiarse por los obstáculos de la FAFSA, aunque los asesores escolares y universitarios han recibido numerosos pedidos de ayuda. A veces la solución es quedarse esperando horas en el teléfono con el Departamento de Educación de EE. UU.—un paso que es imposible para muchos padres que trabajan.

Elve Mitchell, director principal de operaciones programáticas para College Possible en Chicago, una organización enfocada en el acceso universitario que trabaja con media docena de high schools en la ciudad, dijo que una de las cosas principales en la que los asesores de la organización están trabajando es asegurar que los estudiantes y sus padres sepan qué preguntas deben hacer cuando finalmente se conectan por teléfono con una persona del departamento de educación.

Otra manera como el personal y los asesores escolares están tratando de ayudar es al encontrar formas de que los estudiantes trabajen en sus solicitudes, como perfeccionar un ensayo personal o usar una calculadora de ayuda federal para hacer comparaciones aproximadas de los costos universitarios.

Pero para los estudiantes cuyos padres no tienen un número de Seguro Social, no hay mucho que los consejeros escolares puedan hacer en este momento.

Cuando Jocelyn se reunió con el asesor escolar de su escuela esta semana, el consejo fue que siguiera esperando, que siguiera consultando el sitio web del gobierno federal y esperando por “la luz verde para ver qué hacer”.

En el pasado, los padres sin un número de Seguro Social podían ingresar solo ceros y firmar un formulario impreso.

Las escuelas como Kelvyn Park High School en Chicago han estado ayudando a estudiantes que enfrentan dificultades para completar el nuevo formulario de FAFSA.

El departamento de educación estableció un nuevo proceso para que estos padres verificaran su identidad a través de una agencia de crédito, pero educadores dicen que no está funcionando sistemáticamente. Algunos padres han tenido que llamar a la línea telefónica de ayuda federal, abrir un caso, y luego compartir documentos que comprueben su identidad.

“Para alguien que es indocumentado, da mucho miedo darle al gobierno federal cualquier documentación”, dijo Tony Petraitis, un especialista en planes de estudios universitarios en las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago que ha estado creando guías útiles con imágenes para apoyar a los consejeros escolares. “Para uno de nuestros [grupos demográficos] más vulnerables, es un problema mayor”.

Aunque la agencia de crédito produzca una identificación correcta, estos padres no pueden compartir información adicional en el formulario de FAFSA hasta que el gobierno federal solucione el problema.

Chamorro, de UnidosUS, espera que los retrasos y las frustraciones adicionales no resulten en que los estudiantes decidan no aplicar a la universidad.

“No queremos que se den por vencidos”, dijo.

Kalyn Belsha es una reportera principal enfocada en la educación a nivel nacional que trabaja desde Chicago. Comunícate con ella por mensaje electrónico a kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Traducido por Alejandra X. Castañeda

¿Cómo se completa la FAFSA si un padre no tiene un número de Seguro Social?

2024-02-22T23:35:07+00:00

Actualizado: Problema corregido en la FAFSA abre el formulario para muchas familias inmigrantes

Los formularios de ayuda federal financiera, conocidos como la Solicitud Gratuita de Ayuda Federal para Estudiantes o FAFSA (por sus siglas en inglés), pueden dar acceso a mucho dinero para que los estudiantes paguen por sus estudios universitarios.

Los estudiantes que son ciudadanos estadounidenses, residentes permanentes y ciertos estudiantes sin ciudadanía pueden obtener ayuda financiera, sin importar el estatus migratorio de sus padres. Los estudiantes, los padres y el cónyuge del estudiante, si es un adulto casado, todos tienen que proporcionar información personal financiera para que los estudiantes reciban esta ayuda, aunque los padres o el cónyuge sean indocumentados.

Este año, hay un nuevo formulario que supuestamente es más simple y fácil—y los estudiantes de familias con bajos ingresos deben recibir más dinero que años anteriores. Pero el proceso ha tenido algunos problemas técnicos, especialmente si uno o ambos padres no tienen un número de Seguro Social. En este momento, el formulario disponible en línea no permite que esos padres proporcionen la información financiera necesaria—y eso significa que los estudiantes no pueden enviar sus formularios.

Los funcionarios federales dicen que el problema se solucionará a mediados de marzo. Mientras tanto, hay un par de alternativas disponibles si tu estudiante debe cumplir con las fechas límite de algún programa estatal, universitario o para solicitar becas en las próximas semanas.

Esto es lo que debes saber:

El primer paso es que los padres creen su propia cuenta.

Crea una cuenta de ayuda federal para estudiantes donde proporcionarás información. Los padres que no tengan un número de Seguro Social deben seguir las instrucciones para verificar su identidad a través de TransUnion. Para hacer esto, quizás sea necesario que proporciones ciertos documentos.

A veces TransUnion no tiene toda la información correcta. Si TransUnion no puede verificar tu identidad, llama al Centro de Información sobre Ayuda Federal para Estudiantes (FSAIC, por sus siglas en inglés) al 1-800-433-3243. Ahí abrirán un caso y te enviarán un mensaje por correo electrónico con instrucciones sobre el tipo de documentos que puedes proporcionar.

Los funcionarios federales dicen que están tratando de simplificar y facilitar este proceso, y que están agregando más agentes que hablan español para que contesten las llamadas.

El siguiente paso es proporcionar información financiera básica.

Ten a la mano tus declaraciones de impuestos de años anteriores, cheques de tus ingresos o salario e información bancaria mientras completas los formularios.

Este proceso es sencillo para las personas que tienen un número de Seguro Social. Para aquellas sin un número de Seguro Social, el proceso es un poco más complicado.

En este momento, si no tienes un número de Seguro Social, debes completar algunos pasos adicionales. Usa estas alternativas solo si tu estudiante necesita cumplir con ciertas fechas límite en las próximas semanas para una universidad o beca en particular. La razón es porque, más tarde, deberás regresar y hacer algunos cambios cuando los formularios se arreglen verdaderamente.

Puedes completar un formulario impreso. Haz clic aquí para encontrar el formulario en español. En la sección donde te piden un número de Seguro Social, ingresa todos ceros y proporciona un Número de Identificación Personal del Contribuyente o ITIN (por sus siglas en inglés) si tienes uno. Los padres pueden completar el formulario impreso sin pasar por el proceso para verificar su identidad.
Puedes usar una alternativa en el formulario en línea. No ingreses ningún número en el espacio donde piden el número de Seguro Social del padre o cónyuge. Al hacer esto, tendrás que ingresar manualmente la información sobre los ingresos e impuestos de la persona. El padre o cónyuge no debe completar su propio formulario todavía. Cuando haya un arreglo permanente en un par de semanas, el padre o cónyuge podrá regresar al formulario en línea, aprobar su información y agregar su firma.

Si tu estudiante no necesita cumplir con ciertas fechas límite en las próximas semanas, los funcionarios federales recomiendan esperar hasta que el problema se solucione para que puedas usar el proceso más simple en línea que otras familias usan.

¿Qué se debe hacer si el estudiante no tiene un número de Seguro Social?

La mayoría de los estudiantes que no tienen un número de Seguro Social no cumplen con los requisitos para obtener ayuda financiera federal. Sin embargo, algunos estados ofrecen ayuda financiera a ciertos estudiantes indocumentados. Hablen con el asesor universitario en la escuela de tu hijo o en la oficina de ayuda financiera en las universidades a las que enviaron una solicitud de admisión.

¿Tienes más preguntas?

Hablen con el asesor universitario en la escuela de tu hijo. Recuerden que no tienen que pasar solos por este proceso. El gobierno federal calcula que cientos de miles de estudiantes han sido afectados por este problema, así que muchas personas enfrentan las mismas dificultades.

El gobierno federal también ofrece un centro de ayuda telefónica llamando al 1-800-433-3243. Advertencia: el tiempo de espera puede ser largo.

Lee más: Familias inmigrantes tienen problemas para completar la FAFSA. Aquí te informamos.

Traducido por Alejandra X. Castañeda

Kalyn Belsha es reportera nacional de educación con sede en Chicago. Se habla español. Para comunicarte con ella, envíale un email a kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Grocery cards and car repairs: How COVID aid changed the way schools can help homeless kids

2024-03-14T21:15:14+00:00

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Mollie Eppers tried for years to give students experiencing homelessness prepaid grocery cards that would allow their families to shop for food.

But the student services specialist in Juneau, Alaska, couldn’t devise a system that would satisfy the spending rules for both her local school district and the federal program that helps homeless students.

So when Congress sent schools COVID aid for homeless students with fewer restrictions, Eppers knew her first order of business: Get the grocery cards.

She found a local Safeway that accepted prepaid cards, then bought them in bulk. Families can get $100 to $200 cards at a time, depending on how many kids they have. The aid has made it easier for families sleeping in their cars or who don’t have a stove to choose foods they can eat. That’s been especially helpful as Alaska works through a huge backlog of applications for food benefits that left many families waiting months to get aid.

The Juneau School District in Alaska purchased $25,000 in grocery cards to help students experiencing homelessness buy food.

“It’s been a lifesaver,” said Eppers, who’s spent $25,000 on grocery cards so far, and plans to buy more. “They don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Across the country, Eppers and other school staff are doing things to help homeless students that they’ve never been able to before. That’s in part due to the size of the aid package. But it’s also because federal education officials said explicitly that schools could spend this money on items like prepaid store cards, gas cards, and cell phones that schools were often reluctant to buy in the past for fear of running afoul of various spending and record-keeping rules.

That’s meant more schools are providing families with direct aid that allows them to choose which foods, clothing, and other supplies will best meet their children’s needs. It’s one more way that schools have stretched beyond their typical roles and used pandemic assistance to help families in dire straits in new ways.

But schools might stop doing this soon — unless federal officials spell out that other funds can be used like this, too.

“You can provide somebody a pair of shoes, but if you say: ‘Here’s a store card, pick out the shoes for your child that your child will wear,’ there is a sense of dignity, and there’s also a sense of agency,” said Barbara Duffield, the executive director of the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection, which recently gathered data on how often schools are spending COVID aid in this way. “And what that has translated to is trust and engagement. A store card is much more than a store card.”

Schools used to face more limits on helping students

In a survey of more than 1,400 school liaisons earlier this school year, SchoolHouse Connection found that 40% had purchased gas cards for families and 34% had bought store cards. That was double the share who planned to purchase cards when the nonprofit did a similar survey in 2021.

“These unusual uses may be the very ones that are the most impactful and strategic in meeting broader goals of increasing enrollment, attendance, and performance,” the report concludes.

In Washington state, one liaison said gas cards were now among the top-requested forms of assistance by families. The offering made families feel heard and open to more collaboration, the liaison wrote on the survey.

In Rhode Island, another liaison said that it had been a “huge plus” to give families store cards so they could buy sneakers and underwear. “I would argue that being able to make their own selections is better for the kids, physically and emotionally,” the liaison wrote.

In the past, some schools did provide this kind of assistance to homeless students. But Duffield said it often boiled down to a judgment call.

The federal education law that outlines the rights of homeless children, the McKinney-Vento Act, says that schools can provide “extraordinary or emergency assistance” to make sure homeless kids can attend school and participate in school activities.

While some schools interpreted that to include prepaid store cards, many other districts or states didn’t allow schools to buy store cards. Officials worried about how they would show the cards benefitted a particular student, Duffield said, and some feared giving away prepaid cards could be ripe for misuse or fraud — a long held, and often misplaced, complaint among critics of public assistance programs.

For that reason, Duffield and others are calling on the federal government to issue guidance saying that schools can use McKinney-Vento funding in the same ways that were permissible with the COVID aid.

“Having clear federal guidance saying that you can, that then shapes what a state allows,” Duffield said. Getting something in writing is key, because many school business officers will ask: “Where does it say that?”

How cell phones and car repairs help students

Still, school liaisons like Eppers say they’re taking lots of precautions. The grocery cards Eppers hands out to families don’t allow for the purchase of alcohol or tobacco, and she locks up the cards in her office to keep them safe. Families have to sign for each grocery card, too.

“I don’t want anything to come between my ability to provide that to the students,” she said.

In the suburbs of Madison, Wisconsin, Claire Bergman used COVID aid to buy five cell phones with internet hotspots for homeless teens who live on their own without the support of their parents. Each month, the Sun Prairie Area School District pays their phone bills.

The new initiative has helped social workers stay in touch with students who tend to move around a lot and may be parents themselves. That’s helped ensure their ride to school shows up in the right place and that students are connected with child care.

The phone hotspots enable unaccompanied teens to use the internet on their school-provided Chromebooks, so they can do their homework wherever they’re staying. And the district also allows the teens to download certain social media apps so they can stay in touch with classmates — an added benefit for kids who often feel isolated from their peers.

“The phones have really opened up lines of communication and supported attendance efforts,” Bergman said. That success has helped Bergman make the case the district should keep paying for cell phones when the COVID aid is gone.

“Our business office has been really open to exploring different opportunities and understanding the connection piece of the phones,” she said. “Once these funds run out, it will be a little bit more of a: ‘Is this really a priority?’ question.”

In North Dakota’s Bismarck Public Schools, COVID relief funding has allowed Sherrice Roness to make more “outside the box” purchases that she is hoping to continue, too.

With COVID aid, the district now covers up to $500 in critical car repairs, such as fixing brakes or power steering. It’s a strategy advocates for homeless youth say can be more cost-effective than paying for a bus pass or taxi, and it has the added benefit of helping families get to work and doctor’s visits, in addition to taking their children to school.

“It gives them that pride of: They’re able to do that — provide that normalcy for their kids,” Roness said.

Roness has also paid for children’s medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when a family’s insurance has lapsed, and she purchased a post office box so a 17-year-old who was no longer living with her parents could still get her college and financial aid letters in the mail.

When unique needs like that pop up, Roness said, it’s made a big difference to be able to tell students: “You know what? I can help you with that.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Biden education budget proposal includes $8 billion to extend pandemic recovery work like tutoring

2024-03-11T21:56:58+00:00

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With a deadline looming to spend pandemic education dollars, the Biden administration has proposed making another $8 billion available to states and school districts to encourage better attendance and support academic recovery through tutoring and summer school.

The idea is a key component of President Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the U.S. Department of Education for fiscal year 2025, and represents an acknowledgment that schools still have a lot of work to do to recover from pandemic learning disruptions. The proposal comes a few months after the Biden administration called on schools to prioritize spending remaining COVID relief funding in these same areas.

The president’s budget proposal, announced Monday, also calls for modest increases to federal programs supporting high-poverty schools, students learning English as a second language, and students with disabilities. The administration also wants more money to support the Office for Civil Rights, and a $750 increase in the maximum Pell Grant award to help make college more affordable.

The White House budget plan will almost certainly not be adopted as written. It heads to a dysfunctional Congress that has careened between threats of government shutdown and short-term spending resolutions. The Republicans who control the House have been particularly hostile to Biden’s efforts to increase spending in several areas , including the Title I program that supports high-poverty schools.

Overall the budget proposal calls for more than $82 billion in discretionary spending for the education department, a 4% increase from this year.

Officials emphasized that this budget proposal complies with spending caps agreed to in last year’s bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, while still investing in initiatives they hope will improve student success.

“When it comes to education, this budget is about raising the bar,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a call with reporters. “There are historic investments promised on top of historic investments delivered.”

Budget offers way to continue tutoring, attendance outreach

American schools received a combined $190 billion in assistance across three pandemic aid packages and have until September to spend any remaining money. Many schools have come to rely on their tutoring programs and want to keep them going after the pandemic aid expires.

But how they’ll fund them has been a big question. Some states have pledged added tutoring funds, but many districts would likely struggle to keep providing intensive help to students without making cuts elsewhere in their budget.

Similarly, the rate at which students are missing lots of school remains well above pre-pandemic levels in many parts of the country. Many schools launched home visit programs or hired staff specifically to work with kids who aren’t attending regularly, but school leaders say it will take additional time and investment to re-engage students and continue to boost attendance rates.

Expanded summer school programs were a popular investment during the pandemic, though they’ve been only moderately successful in helping students catch up. They’ve also been a common place school leaders have scaled back as COVID relief funding has wound down.

The proposed $8 billion in new money isn’t intended to replace pandemic assistance but would supplement current efforts. Officials envision a competitive grant program that would prioritize high-poverty schools, schools in communities especially hard-hit by COVID, and schools identified as needing academic improvement under federal accountability rules.

More money for English learners, civil rights investigations

Biden’s budget proposal calls for a 1.1% increase, or $200 million, to local grants in the Title I program, which provides money to low-income schools. Earlier in his administration, Biden called on Congress to double spending on Title I, but that hasn’t come to fruition. Congressional Republicans have questioned whether schools need more money after the pandemic stimulus, and last year, they sought to significantly cut Title I spending.

Cardona characterized this budget as defending public education from a “slash-and-burn” approach that would endanger the futures of American students.

Similarly, the White House is proposing a 1.4% increase in spending to support K-12 special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, as well as additional money for infants, toddlers, and preschool students with disabilities and grants to recruit special education teachers. Advocates have long called for the federal government to increase special education funding. Federal law lays out disabled students’ educational rights but leaves most of the costs to states and school districts.

The budget proposal calls for a roughly 5% increase or $50 million in new spending for Title III, which supports English learners.

Biden’s budget proposal also includes an extra $22 million, a 16% increase, for the Office for Civil Rights, which conducts investigations into allegations of discrimination in schools. Recently, the department announced it is looking into several incidents involving antisemitism or anti-Muslim discrimination at colleges and K-12 schools since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October.

The budget also calls for increased funding for preschool, student mental health, and community schools, which provide a wide range of services to support students and their families, as well as programs to encourage diverse candidates to enter the teaching profession.

The budget proposal includes a few cuts as well, including a 9% or $40 million reduction in a program that supports new charter schools and the replication of high-quality charter models.

Budget seeks to mitigate college costs

Biden’s budget blueprint would also increase the maximum Pell Grant award to $8,145, a 10% increase from current levels. Pell grants are available to college students from low-income families, and unlike loans, do not need to be repaid.

Budget analysts have warned of a looming shortfall in the Pell program after Congress expanded eligibility at the same time more students are heading back to college. The most recent continuing resolution to keep the federal government open walks back some of that recent expansion.

Advocates have argued that the maximum Pell award should be closer to $13,000 to keep pace with tuition increases and keep the door open to college for students of modest means.

The budget would increase funding for programs that allow high school students to earn college credit before graduating and for grants that help colleges support first-generation students and increase graduation rates.

The budget also calls for partnerships with states and tribes to make two years of community college free for students going to college for the first time and workers looking to change careers. Free community college was one of several education proposals that Biden ran on in 2020 that hasn’t gotten traction.

And the budget calls for more investment in the Office of Federal Student Aid amid a rocky rollout of a new federal financial aid form.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Partial FAFSA fix lets students from immigrant families apply for financial aid

2024-02-21T01:24:04+00:00

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Students whose parents lack a Social Security number can finally fill out federal financial aid forms after the Biden administration announced a workaround Tuesday for one of the most glaring problems with what was supposed to be a simpler, easier form.

U.S. Department of Education officials say these students can leave their parent or spouse’s Social Security number blank for now, and manually enter the person’s income and tax information. The department provided details about the workaround to Chalkbeat, and plans to post them online Wednesday.

Chalkbeat first reported in January that the Social Security glitch was preventing potentially tens of thousands of eligible U.S. citizen students from applying for financial aid.

The workaround is meant to help students meet fast-approaching deadlines for certain state, college, or scholarship applications. The department promised a permanent fix is coming next month. It is also urging students who don’t have an urgent submission deadline to wait until then. Those who use the workaround will need to take additional steps in March to fully submit their application.

This puts significant pressure on school counselors and college access organizations to guide families through the process on a compressed timeline.

The Better FAFSA, as the new version of the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid is known, was supposed to make it easier for students to apply for aid for college. While more than 4 million students have completed the form successfully, the rollout has been plagued by glitches and delays. Far fewer students have completed the form than in previous years, and frustration and anxiety is mounting among parents, counselors, and college administrators.

Department officials said they intend to fully resolve FAFSA submission issues for parents without Social Security numbers “in the first half of March.” After that, students won’t need the workaround.

The education department is also working to fix a separate problem that’s made it difficult for parents without Social Security numbers to create a login for the FAFSA website. Officials said they will automate that process this month and add more Spanish-speaking staff to the call center that’s helping families navigate that issue.

Department officials estimate that 2% of federal financial aid applicants are experiencing issues due to the Social Security number glitch.

The announcement came the same day that over 90 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives, led by U.S. Reps. Jesus “Chuy” García of Illinois, Colin Allred of Texas, and Jared Huffman and Nanette Barragán of California, sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona expressing concerns about the “flawed rollout” of the FAFSA.

They urged the department to quickly resolve the technical issues preventing students whose parents don’t have Social Security numbers from submitting their applications.

“Students eligible for financial aid have the right to access that aid, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status,” García wrote in a press release. “But because of a technical error in the new FAFSA form, many of my constituents from immigrant and mixed-status families were left without answers and no path forward as college financial aid deadlines crept up.”

García added that he and other lawmakers “spent weeks” urging the department to fix the issue, and that while the temporary fix was a good first step, “The Department must continue to rectify these errors in rollout so no student is blocked from the aid they need.”

The letter notes that federal officials identified the issue affecting parents without Social Security numbers on Jan. 4. Tuesday marked the first update. On past calls with reporters, top education department officials said only that they were working to fix the problem.

A paper version of the FAFSA still exists, but officials have not widely publicized it and there are downsides to using it, such as greater chance of making mistakes.

The letter writers also call on the department “to conduct outreach to proactively inform students, counselors, and other stakeholders about when families with undocumented parents can expect a solution and how to submit their forms once it’s resolved.”

Department officials said Tuesday evening that they would set up a new email list to keep students and families who’ve been affected by this issue in the loop on updates.

Without a fix, American high school students whose parents are undocumented could end up at the back of the line for financial aid, especially in the states — including Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee — that distribute aid on a first-come, first-served basis, the lawmakers note.

Justin Draeger, who heads the nonprofit National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement that he worried the temporary solution would be “confusing and burdensome” to many students and families and that it was imperative that the department met its mid-March deadline for a permanent fix.

“Any further delays would be disastrous for both students and schools,” Draeger wrote.

The Better FAFSA’s brief, rocky history

The rollout of the new federal financial aid process has been troubled from the start.

The form didn’t become available to families until January, which cut months off the normal timeline for students to fill out the form. Students experiencing homelessness, students in foster care, and students whose parents are undocumented immigrants — all students for whom financial support is critical to their college decisions — have faced major problems even completing the form.

As of mid-February, just 22% of high school seniors had completed the FAFSA, according to an analysis of federal data by the National College Attainment Network, compared with 41% of the Class of 2023 by this same time last year. Completion rates are down more than 50% at high schools serving large numbers of low-income students and students of color.

Spurred by Republican lawmakers, the Government Accountability Office has opened two investigations into the FAFSA launch, Politico reported.

Meanwhile, the education department has said it won’t be able to share student information with colleges until mid-March, a delay that means colleges aren’t able to share financial aid packages with students until later in the spring. That’s left school staff and advocates worried that students will rush to make decisions before they have all the financial information they need.

Already, a slew of colleges have announced they’re pushing back their deadlines for students to commit, a delay that has implications for those institutions’ own planning for the next academic year.

Advocates for first-generation college students and those from low-income backgrounds fear that a lack of accurate information about financial aid will cause many students to put off higher education or opt for community college.

Recent data suggests fewer than half of students who transfer from a community college to a four-year program go on to complete their bachelor’s degree, and the rate is lower among students from vulnerable backgrounds.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

¿No puedes llenar la FAFSA en línea? Esto es lo que debes saber sobre la solicitud impresa

2024-02-21T17:40:42+00:00

Read in English.

Como muchos estudiantes siguen teniendo problemas técnicos que les impiden presentar la solicitud de ayuda financiera federal en línea, existe una posible solución: un formulario en papel, como se hacía antes.

Pero las organizaciones de acceso a la universidad y los expertos en ayuda financiera advierten que para muchos estudiantes, ésta podría no ser la mejor alternativa.

Esto es lo que debes saber antes de llenar la versión impresa de la Solicitud Gratuita de Ayuda Federal para Estudiantes, o FAFSA:

¿Qué es el formulario FAFSA impreso? ¿Dónde lo consigo?

Los funcionarios federales han publicado durante mucho tiempo una versión en papel de la FAFSA, aunque solo una pequeña porción de los estudiantes presentaron una copia impresa en los últimos años, razón por la cual es posible que no hayas oído hablar de ella antes.

La copia impresa de la FAFSA en inglés está aquí, y en español aquí.

¿Por qué podría considerar llenar un formulario FAFSA en papel?

Ahora mismo, los padres que no tienen número de Seguro Social no pueden añadir su información a la solicitud en línea de ayuda financiera universitaria de sus hijos, y en algunos casos, es posible que no puedan obtener credenciales para entrar al sistema en línea.

Esto se debe a un problema técnico y los funcionarios federales dicen que están trabajando para solucionarlo. Un alto funcionario del Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. le dijo a la prensa el lunes que los funcionarios se están reuniendo a diario para tratar de resolver el problema, pero en este momento no es posible decir cuándo se resolverá. Este problema ha impedido que miles de estudiantes cuyos padres son inmigrantes puedan llenar la FAFSA.

El formulario en papel permite que los padres y cónyuges sin números de Seguro Social llenen esa información con ceros, como podían hacer en años anteriores en línea, y que indiquen un número de identificación individual del contribuyente, o ITIN, si lo tienen. Los padres pueden llenar el formulario en papel sin pasar por el proceso de verificación de identidad que impide que algunos obtengan las credenciales de acceso en línea.

Si tu universidad, estado u organización de becas tiene una fecha límite estricta para presentar la FAFSA, y esa fecha se está acercando, quizás debas considerar llenar el formulario en papel como una forma de cumplir con esa fecha límite. Una vez que envíes el formulario en papel por correo, el día en que se reciba la solicitud en el correo se marcará como la fecha de recibo.

¿Debo esperar a que se arregle el formulario en línea en lugar de llenar el formulario en papel?

Si no tienes una fecha límite para presentar la FAFSA dentro de poco, podría ser mejor que esperes a que se arregle el formulario en línea, dijo MorraLee Keller, directora senior de la organización sin fines de lucro National College Attainment Network.

Esto se debe a que los formularios en papel se procesarán después de las solicitudes en línea, por lo que te arriesgas a estar más atrás en la cola de procesamiento si optas por enviar un formulario impreso. Esto es importante porque algunas universidades otorgan las ayudas por orden de llegada.

Los funcionarios federales anunciaron recientemente que no compartirán la información de los estudiantes en las solicitudes en línea con las universidades hasta marzo. Debido a los retrasos en el proceso de la FAFSA, las universidades tendrán menos tiempo para preparar los paquetes de ayuda financiera y los estudiantes tendrán menos tiempo para revisarlos y tomar decisiones. Si llenas un formulario en papel, es posible que la universidad no revise tu solicitud de ayuda financiera hasta abril.

El formulario en papel también deja más margen para cometer errores, ya que las instrucciones pueden ser más complicadas de seguir. Si estás pensando en llenar el formulario en papel, acude a un orientador universitario de tu escuela o a una organización de acceso a la universidad para que te ayuden, sobre todo si nunca has llenado una FAFSA.

“Se trata de todas esas familias que no tienen a nadie que les guíe y que podrían cometer errores en el formulario en papel, aunque haya páginas y páginas de instrucciones”, dijo Keller. “Hay mucha más orientación en el formulario en línea”.

Si lleno el formulario en papel, ¿puedo también llenar el formulario en línea?

Sí. Si envías una FAFSA impresa por correo y luego llenas la versión en línea, el gobierno federal se basará en la versión en línea y tratará la copia en papel como un envío duplicado.

Y si cometes un error en la FAFSA, no te preocupes: también hay un proceso para enviar correcciones.

“Sólo queremos animar a las familias a seguir adelante”, dijo Keller. “No renuncies a la idea de ir a la universidad solo porque el formulario está siendo una barrera ahora mismo”.

Traducido por Milly Suazo-Martinez

Kalyn Belsha es reportera nacional de educación con sede en Chicago. Se habla español. Para comunicarte con ella, envíale un email a kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

A glitch blocks thousands of immigrant families from a new, simpler FAFSA. The fix is TBD.

2024-01-25T22:20:06+00:00

Leer en español.

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Update as of Feb. 21: There are now two workarounds for the Social Security number problem, one a paper form and the other online. Federal officials promise a permanent fix is coming in March.

Like many high school seniors, 18-year-old Jocelyn is trying to get through her college application to-do list.

She’s applied to 10 colleges so far. Northeastern University in Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago are her top picks. She’d like to study veterinary medicine and work with animals like her two cats, Strawberry and Copito.

With the help of her sibling, Jocelyn completed her portion of the federal application for financial aid in around an hour. But now she’s stuck. That’s because her mom doesn’t have a Social Security number, so she hasn’t been able to add her financial information.

The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid that debuted last month was supposed to be easier for students and families to complete. And in many ways it is: It’s shorter, and it pulls tax information directly from the IRS instead of asking families to enter it themselves. The goal is to get more students to apply for aid and attend college.

But the form was released months later than usual, leaving students much less time to complete it and schools scrambling to offer help. On top of that, many families have experienced glitches. One of the biggest issues is that parents who don’t have a Social Security number can’t enter their information right now, and workarounds from prior years are gone. Potentially tens of thousands of U.S. citizen students and others with legal status — who are eligible for federal financial aid regardless of their parents’ immigration status — could be affected.

Federal officials say a fix is on the way, but can’t say when. Education advocates say there needs to be a stronger sense of urgency to resolve the issue, as some colleges award aid on a first-come, first-served basis.

Eighteen-year-old Jocelyn shows the Instagram video she watched to make sure she filled out her portion of the FAFSA correctly.

“We need to be working around the clock,” said Amalia Chamorro, who directs the education policy project for UnidosUS, a civil rights group that advocates to improve educational opportunities for Latino students. “We do worry that this is just another hurdle, another barrier, another way that they’re getting the message that they don’t matter, that they’re not as deserving of pursuing post-secondary education. That’s not the message that we want them to get.”

Jocelyn, whose last name Chalkbeat is withholding so as not to jeopardize her mother’s immigration status, is feeling stressed. But she’s trying to stay optimistic that she’ll be able to check this off her list soon, too.

“I didn’t want to turn in the FAFSA form late, and now I’m going to have to wait,” she said. “I know that my other friends have turned it in already, and I feel like I’m a little behind.”

Why some students are getting stuck on new FAFSA

Jocelyn isn’t the only one of her classmates having trouble.

On a visit in mid-January to Kelvyn Park High School in Chicago, just two of the 15 students in her class that helps students prepare for and apply to college had managed to complete the FAFSA. The high school serves predominantly Latino students from low-income families, many of whom will be the first in their family to attend college.

Some students got tripped up trying to add their parents as “contributors” to the FAFSA, a new step that requires them to sign up for an account and verify their identity. In the past, students could more easily fill out their parent’s portion for them.

That has presented challenges especially for families who are unfamiliar with the financial aid process, who have language barriers, or who worry about sharing personal information with the federal government.

When students are the first in their family to attend college, or there are immigration concerns, “You’re going to have a lot of paranoia, you’re going to have a lot of anxieties around it,” said Josh Kumm, who teaches Jocelyn’s class in partnership with OneGoal, a nonprofit college access organization that works in over 30 high schools in Chicago.

Eighteen-year-old Breann Sanford was one of the lucky ones who got through.

It helped that her mom was familiar with the FAFSA — she filled one out when she took a few college classes — and Sanford’s college and career coach knew just what to do when Sanford accidentally entered her email instead of her mom’s in one instance.

“It was a big help,” she said. “I knew I had a lot of different support options that I could go to if I needed help.”

Breann Sanford, 18, was able to submit her FAFSA successfully by mid-January. In her class at Kelvyn Park High School in Chicago that helps students apply to college, only a few completed the form without challenges.

Others are struggling for other reasons. During the recent visit, 18-year-old Ángel Serrano said he was still trying to tell his mom that he’s applying to college and needs her help with the financial aid form. His window to do that is on Wednesdays — the only day she’s not exhausted or working, Serrano said.

Another student in the class needs financial information from his mom, but they’re no longer living together or on speaking terms.

“You’ve got all these other things going on,” Kumm said. “It’s not just socioeconomic, it’s also the social-emotional parts of the family dynamics … That’s complicated.”

One-on-one help is key, but some FAFSA issues need federal fix

One-on-one support has been crucial for students to navigate FAFSA hiccups, though school counselors and college coaches have been swamped with requests for help. Sometimes the fix is to sit on hold with the U.S. Department of Education for hours — a step that’s impossible for many working parents.

Elve Mitchell, the senior director of program operations for College Possible in Chicago, a college access organization that works with a half-dozen high schools in the city, said one big thing his organization’s coaches are working on is making sure students and parents know the right questions to ask when they finally do get through to a live person on the department’s helpline.

Another way school staff and coaches are trying to help is by finding other ways students can work on their applications, such as fine-tuning a personal essay or using a federal student aid estimator to do some rough comparisons of college costs.

But for students whose parents do not have Social Security numbers, there isn’t much a school counselor can do right now.

When Jocelyn met with her school’s college and career coach this week, the advice was to sit tight, keep checking the federal government’s website, and wait for “the green light on what to do.”

Schools like Kelvyn Park High School in Chicago have been stepping in to offer students help when they've struggled to complete the new FAFSA form.

In the past, parents without a Social Security number could enter all zeros and sign a paper form.

The education department set up a new process for these parents to verify their identity through a credit agency, but educators say it’s not working consistently. Parents have had to call the federal helpline, open a case, and then share documents that prove their identity.

“For someone who’s undocumented, it’s very scary to give the federal government any documentation,” said Tony Petraitis, a college and career curriculum specialist for Chicago Public Schools, who’s been assembling how-to guides with screenshots to support school counselors. “For one of our most vulnerable populations, it’s a pretty big deal.”

Even if the credit agency produces a correct match, these parents still can’t share additional information on the FAFSA until the federal government comes up with a fix.

Chamorro, of UnidosUS, hopes the added delays and frustrations don’t deter students from applying to college.

“We don’t want them to give up,” she said.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Frustrated with FAFSA? There is a paper form, but it might not be the best option.

2024-02-13T19:37:25+00:00

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As many students continue to experience technical glitches preventing them from submitting their application for federal financial aid online, there is one potential workaround: an old-fashioned paper form.

But college access organizations and financial aid experts caution that for many students, this may not be the best route.

Here’s what you should know before you fill out the paper version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA:

What is the paper FAFSA form? Where can I find it?

Federal officials have long released a paper version of the FAFSA, though only a small share of students submitted a hard copy in recent years, which is why you may not have heard about it before now.

You can find a paper copy of the FAFSA in English here, and in Spanish here.

Why might I consider filling out a paper FAFSA form?

Right now, parents who don’t have a Social Security number cannot add their information to their child’s online application for college financial aid, and in some cases may not be able to obtain login credentials to access the online system.

That’s because of a technical glitch federal officials say they are working to fix. A senior official for the U.S. Department of Education told reporters on Monday that officials are meeting daily to try to resolve the issue, but right now there is no timeline. This problem has prevented thousands of students whose parents are immigrants from completing the FAFSA.

The paper form allows parents and spouses without Social Security numbers to write in all zeroes, as they could in past years online, and to provide an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, if they have one. Parents can fill out the paper form without going through the identity-verification process blocking some from obtaining login credentials online.

If your college, state, or scholarship organization has a hard deadline to submit the FAFSA, and that’s coming up, you may want to consider filling out the paper form as a way to meet that deadline. Once you mail in the paper form, the day the application is received in the mail will be marked as your submission date.

Should I wait for the online form to be fixed instead of filling out the paper form?

If you don’t have a pressing FAFSA submission deadline, it may be a better option to wait for the online form to be fixed, said MorraLee Keller, a senior director at the nonprofit National College Attainment Network.

That’s because paper forms will be processed after online applications, so you risk putting yourself farther back in the processing line if you go the paper route. That matters because some colleges award aid on a first-come, first-served basis.

Federal officials recently announced that they won’t be sharing students’ information from online applications with colleges until March. Already, because of delays in the FAFSA process, colleges have less time to put together financial aid packages and students will have less time to review them and make decisions. If you fill out a paper form, a college may not review your financial aid application until April.

The paper form also leaves more room for mistakes, as the instructions can be more complicated to follow. If you’re considering filling out the paper form, reach out to a college counselor at your school or a college access organization for help, especially if you’ve never filled out a FAFSA before.

“It’s all those families out there who don’t have someone guiding them that there would be potential that they could make mistakes on the paper form, even though there’s pages and pages of instructions,” Keller said. “There’s a lot more guidance in the online form.”

If I fill out the paper form, can I still fill out the online form?

Yes. If you mail in a paper FAFSA and then fill out the online version, the federal government will rely on the online version and treat the paper copy like a duplicate submission.

And if you make a mistake on your FAFSA, don’t worry: There is a process to submit corrections, too.

“We just want to encourage families to stay the course,” Keller said. “Don’t give up on the idea of higher education or going to college because the form is a stumbling block right now.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court will not hear case involving racial diversity at selective high school

2024-02-20T21:56:42+00:00

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The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will not hear a case challenging the constitutionality of a highly selective Virginia high school’s admissions policy on the grounds that it discriminates against Asian American students.

The high court’s decision not to take the case means that last year’s ruling by an appeals court upholding the admissions policy will stand. The case, known as Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, looked at whether the school board was legally allowed to change the entrance criteria for a prestigious magnet high school in Alexandria, Virginia, with the intent of enrolling a more diverse class.

The Supreme Court has long held that school districts can consider race-neutral factors to create more diverse schools. But the plaintiffs in this case alleged the school board used certain criteria as “proxies” for race, with the intent of reducing the share of Asian American students who were admitted to the school.

The case was closely watched because many school districts use similar methods to create diverse student bodies. If the Supreme Court had taken the case, it could have had sweeping consequences for magnet schools and other selective K-12 programs, legal experts say.

Still, observers say it likely won’t be the end of legal challenges to selective K-12 admissions. The same law firm that brought this case, for example, has challenged similar admissions policies for selective schools in Boston, New York City, and New York state.

“I do think given the number of cases that are percolating through different districts and courts of appeals, that it’s probably true that there will be additional attempts to revisit this issue before the Supreme Court,” said Cara McClellan, a practice associate professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, who has written about legal challenges to race-conscious admissions. “It continues to be a hotly contested issue.”

In a Tuesday statement, the chair of the Fairfax County School Board said the decision put to rest a three-year legal battle over the fairness of the admissions policy change.

“We have long believed that the new admissions process is both constitutional and in the best interest of all of our students,” Karl Frisch said. “It guarantees that all qualified students from all neighborhoods in Fairfax County have a fair shot at attending this exceptional high school.”

In a statement, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the libertarian law firm representing the plaintiffs, said by choosing not to hear the case, “the Supreme Court missed an important opportunity to end race-based discrimination in K-12 admissions.”

Admissions policy changed to include student ‘experience factors’

While the Supreme Court has shown a willingness to overturn years of legal precedent in other cases — notably by prohibiting colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in higher education admissions last year — it was apparently not willing to revisit its earlier decisions here. Notably, the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that school districts can take certain steps to racially diversify their student bodies, so long as they do not explicitly consider the race of individual students.

In this case, the Coalition for TJ alleged that the Fairfax County School Board violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution in 2020 when it changed its policy to get into Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a top high school that draws from five Virginia school districts.

Known as TJ, the high school offers advanced math and science classes that put its graduates on the path for elite colleges and careers. Historically, to get in, applicants needed to do well on a series of standardized tests and essays, and obtain high grades and teacher recommendations. Typically, students from just a few middle schools won most of the slots.

In 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd prompted a racial reckoning at many schools, school leaders sought to change the enrollment policy, pointing out that very few Black and Hispanic students gained entrance. During the 2019-20 school year, the school of around 1,800 students was 71% Asian American, 19% white, 5% multiracial, 3% Hispanic, and 2% Black, state data shows.

After months of debate, the Fairfax County School Board approved a new enrollment policy that set aside a certain share of seats at TJ from each middle school in the attendance area.

Students eligible for those seats were evaluated based on their grades, an essay, a description of their skills, and a set of “experience factors,” including whether they came from a low-income family, were an English learner, had a special education plan, or attended a middle school that had historically sent few students to TJ.

In 2021, the Coalition for TJ, which includes parents of students who had applied to TJ or planned to, sued the school board. The group argued that the middle school seat set-aside and experience factors were being used as “proxies” to “racially balance” the school, with the goal of reducing the share of Asian American students.

The appeals court disagreed, and said the school board had used enrollment methods permissible under prior Supreme Court rulings.

According to Fairfax County Public Schools, in the most recent freshman class, which started last fall, Asian American students received 62% of offers to attend TJ, while white students received 19%, Black students received 7% and Hispanic students received 6%. Students from low-income families made up 12% of the incoming class, up from 2% in recent years.

In a dissent issued Tuesday, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said that the Supreme Court should have heard the Coalition for TJ’s case. Letting the appeals court decision stand, he wrote, was akin to agreeing that “intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe.”

“This reasoning is indefensible, and it cries out for correction,” Alito wrote.

Figuring out ‘the goals of public education’

Colleges and universities are still trying to respond to last year’s Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action in higher education admissions. And K-12 schools are evaluating what they can and should do to address high levels of racial and socioeconomic segregation — on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board decision.

“K-12 and higher ed is trying to figure out what to do,” said Erica Frankenberg, a Penn State education professor who studies school segregation. “There’s all of these things for us to really think about: What are the goals of public education in our society, and what [do] we want to allow school districts to take into account?”

Several other school districts with selective schools have come under scrutiny for admitting few students from low-income families or few Black and Hispanic students in recent years. Some of them changed admissions policies — only to face pushback from some parents and others who say those changes are unfair.

Chicago, for example, considers the demographics of the area where a student lives as part of the city’s selective high school admissions process, and takes steps to ensure high-performing students from both affluent and low-income areas have access. The city has taken steps to revamp that process to make it more fair for low-income students — and has signaled a desire to move away from the current selective schools system.

Philadelphia, similarly, overhauled its selective high school process to provide greater access to the city’s most coveted magnet schools, and moved to a lottery system that boosted the share of Black and Latino students who gained admission.

New York City, meanwhile, has come under fire from integration advocates for its selective high school admissions, particularly for eight prestigious high schools where a test is the sole basis for admissions. Some advocates have long criticized the test as a barrier for Black and Latino students. But other families have fought to keep the status quo, and parents in areas that are more affluent and have higher numbers of Asian American students have mobilized around the issue.

The University of Pennsylvania’s McClellan said the Supreme Court’s decision should encourage school districts that use methods like Fairfax County’s to create diverse schools to stay the course, regardless of future court challenges.

“School districts that are committed to diversity and inclusion shouldn’t become overly cautious,” McClellan said, pointing to examples of how colleges have rolled back diversity efforts that go beyond the text of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. “Part of the effect of having ongoing challenges to existing precedent is that there feels like there is a lot of uncertainty — even when the law is clear.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Unaccompanied homeless youth are overlooked. A new book shows what it means to give them support.

2024-02-16T01:00:00+00:00

When Vicki Sokolik first started working with teens experiencing homelessness living on their own without a parent, she would host “lunch and learns” at local high schools.

Her goal was to explain to social workers, assistant principals, and other staff who qualified as an unaccompanied homeless youth, and how schools could refer those students to her nonprofit for housing and other services.

Sixteen years later, Sokolik says there is still a lack of awareness of these students and their particular social, emotional, and educational needs.

“People still — no matter if they’re in the schools, if they’re lawmakers, if their medical professionals — really do not understand what an unaccompanied homeless youth is, or even what to look for,” Sokolik said.

Her new book, “If You See Them: Young, Unhoused, and Alone in America,” details her experience working with these students in Florida’s Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.

The latest federal data show that nearly 111,000 students were identified as unaccompanied homeless youth during the 2021-22 school year — a number many experts and advocates, including Sokolik, say is an under-count. Other estimates that include older teens and youth in their early 20s put the number much higher.

The needs these students have are often great. Many are survivors of rape or sexual assault. Many have experienced suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide. Some were kicked out of their homes because they identify as LGBTQ. Many have had contact with child protective services, but were not removed from their homes. Often they have a juvenile record, sometimes for stealing basic necessities.

Vicki Sokolik's book looks at the particular needs of unaccompanied homeless youth. Shaq, now 27, participated in a program run by Sokolik's nonprofit and shares his experience with students.

It’s also common for these students to be chronically absent from school, and to have undiagnosed learning disabilities. Sokolik recalls one student who entered her nonprofit’s program a few years ago as a 12th grader who could not read. He needed intensive help from a reading coach and a special education plan.

And these students are caught between being treated as children and adults by various legal systems. A student Sokolik worked with lobbied Florida lawmakers to make it easier for youth living on their own to obtain their birth certificate, for example.

Chalkbeat spoke with Sokolik about what she’s learned working with unaccompanied homeless youth through her nonprofit — Starting Right, Now — and what educators should keep in mind.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Why can it be hard for schools to identify students as unaccompanied homeless youth?

This is a very invisible population because the kids actually don’t want to be found. They are so afraid of what will happen if someone figures out that they’re not with their parent or guardian. Will they put them in foster care? What will happen to their siblings? Because of that, they tend to hide.

There’s a lot of shame associated with being a homeless unaccompanied youth. They carry this burden of: They did something wrong. Until they get to the point where they just don’t know what to do anymore, they don’t seek help.

Schools can refer students to Starting Right, Now. What are some of the gaps that your organization is able to fill in that schools can’t?

Unfortunately, schools can’t get to the root of the problem for an unaccompanied homeless youth. The first thing is, obviously, stable housing. So we provide stable housing, we provide food security. We provide academic support, social services support, life-skills training, and then we help the kids plan what their next goal is going to be.

One percent of our kids go to the military, about 9% go to vocational training and the rest go to higher education. And then we provide case management to those kids until they actually get into their career. In addition to that, every single student in our program is matched with their own mentor, so they have this incredibly reliable adult in their life.

You talk in the book about the link between being an unaccompanied homeless youth and chronic absenteeism. What are some of the barriers that prevent the students you work with from attending school regularly?

The kids do what we call couch-hopping, where they’re asking a friend every night: Can I sleep at your house? And a lot of times they’ll get farther and farther away from school. We had a student who was walking six miles each way to get to school. And if it was pouring down rain, she wasn’t going. Transportation becomes a major barrier.

A lot of times, the kids work. And because they have to survive, they end up going to work during school hours. Their employer should not even allow that, but they do. And then the other thing is they don’t have access to laundry facilities. They don’t want to go to school because their clothes are not clean.

The share of students you work with who’ve had a visit from child protective services at some point in their lives is incredibly high. And a lot of them do not have a positive experience with the state. How does that shape the services you provide?

Most of our kids are so afraid of authority, in general, because they’ve watched their parents being taken away. They’ve watched their siblings being taken away. They’ve been taken away.

It shapes everything that we do. When a student walks into our program, we know for sure that they’re not going to trust anything we say or do. And they’re going to probably try to get kicked out because they just know it isn’t going to work out — they already have that in their head.

We have to develop trust by having our actions align with our words, and making sure that when we say we’re going to do something, it’s unquestionably done at the time we say. It takes a long time to build that trust. You have to show up day after day.

We do a lot of activities that require not only them to be vulnerable, but our staff to be vulnerable. We open up with the “Snowballs” activity in the book [which asks staff and students to write down and anonymously share something they’re afraid of, something they’re ashamed of, and something they succeeded at]. When the veil is lifted, I just think that kids realize we’re people, too.

One student in your book writes about feeling like she’s disintegrated, and she’s having these intense feelings of loneliness. How do mental health struggles complicate the lives of the students you’re working with and their education opportunities?

Trauma just creeps into everything. Because [our kids] have been so busy, just trying to survive day to day, their trauma gets a little bit pushed back. But the minute they get stably housed, after about 30 days of being in the house, [they] start having these horrible flashbacks of all different things that have happened to them.

Among the students featured in Vicki Sokolik's book is Taylor, who experienced homelessness as a youth and now works as a school social worker.

It can impact eating, it can impact sleeping — they just want to lay in bed all day. It can impact going to school, even being able to listen to their teacher. That’s usually the moment that we kick in the mental health specialists.

The other thing we see all the time is, because our kids are so angry — and rightfully so, people that should have protected them have let them down — they end up saying things to a teacher that they obviously shouldn’t say. And so they end up getting a [discipline] referral at school, and a lot of times end up being released for the day, when, really, they need help.

It’s so hard to point your finger at the schools and say: “You should be doing this or that,” because they’re doing the best they can with the resources that they have. I think they need more resources.

You try to strike the right balance between providing meaningful guidance and support, and also letting young people advocate for themselves and make their own choices. You write that a lot of times, unaccompanied homeless youth have learned to be incredibly resourceful and resilient, but they also lack basic skills, like cooking for themselves.

It’s hard. The way that I approach everything now — which is not how I did it previously — is that [I say]: I’m trying to look ahead for your future. [For example], every year we do an etiquette class. The majority of our kids have never been to a restaurant, they’ve never ordered off a menu. And we talk about: This isn’t about today. We’re not judging you. We don’t care that you don’t know. However, when you have your first interview over a meal, you’re going to be expected to know this.

It also comes down to: Is my help going to matter in that moment? Or should I back off, because it’s not dire right this second. I find that when I give the kids space, they’re more willing to listen. I let both of us just calm down, and then come back to it, and come up with a strategy that works.

In the book, some students say: There’s this white woman in front of me asking me personal questions, I don’t know if I trust her, I don’t want to be seen as a charity case. How have you learned to navigate some of the racial and socioeconomic divides between yourself and the kids?

I am who I am. I don’t think I try to change that divide.

There was a student in our program who said to me: “You’ll never understand me.” They’re in our program right now. And I said: “Well, try me, is there something going on?” [The student said]: “I can’t tell you, and you’ll never understand me.”

[Then one Saturday, the student called me] and she’s hysterically crying. And I find out that she’s so upset because her mother was investigated again by [Florida’s Department of Children and Families]. We probably were on the phone for an hour, just talking. By the time she hung up, she said to me: “Thank you for answering your phone.” And I said: “I’ll always answer my phone, that isn’t even a question. I’m here for you.”

And that changed everything. I do understand her now, in her eyes.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Can you take algebra in eighth grade? In many cases, the answer is no, national survey finds

2024-02-07T19:00:00+00:00

If you’re an eighth grader who wants to take algebra, can you even take the class?

The answer to that question, it turns out, depends a lot on two things: how your school identifies students for advanced math, and where you live.

According to a new nationally representative survey released Tuesday, 65% of U.S. principals said their elementary or middle school offered algebra in eighth grade, but only to certain students. Meanwhile, just 20% of principals said their school offered the class in eighth grade and that any student could take it.

But that picture differed by state. In California, nearly half of principals said their school offered algebra only to certain eighth graders. But in Florida, more than 80% of principals said the class was restricted. In both states, 18% of principals said any eighth grader could take the class, similar to the national rate.

The findings, based on surveys conducted last spring by the RAND Corporation, shed light on the uneven access students have to advanced math classes in middle school, which can have lasting effects on their higher education and job prospects.

Algebra is often considered a gateway class. Eighth graders who take the course can more easily reach calculus by 12th grade — which can set students up for challenging math classes in college and career paths in science and engineering fields.

“The kids that aren’t in algebra by eighth grade, they can do that still,” said Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at RAND, and the lead author of the report, “but they would have to do something special to get there,” such as doubling up on math or taking a summer class.

The report also details the extent to which students are separated based on their perceived math abilities, starting as young as elementary school.

More than 40% of elementary school principals told RAND researchers that their school grouped kids based on their math levels, mostly within the classroom. But by middle school, nearly 70% of principals said they grouped students in math. Most commonly, students were put into separate math classes on honors or career prep tracks, the report found.

“The amount of achievement-level grouping — that it does start within classrooms in K-5 schools and that by middle school, students are typically grouped by achievement level more often than they’re not in their math classes — that’s something new,” Kaufman said.

The findings come as parents and school leaders across the country engage in fierce debates over whether students should be able to take algebra before high school, and if so, what support students need to do well in the class.

Notably, San Francisco Unified schools, which attracted national attention for a policy that prevented students from taking algebra until ninth grade, are poised to bring algebra back to middle schools following parent pushback. School officials there put the policy in place 10 years ago to help prepare more Black and Latino students and students from low-income families to pass algebra and access higher-level math classes — a goal that hasn’t panned out.

The new survey data doesn’t look at whether tracking helps or hurts students’ math outcomes.

And there are other factors that could affect whether students can access higher-level math classes, the report notes, such as differing teacher certification rules, school funding levels, and state policies. California’s state math guidelines encourage students to take algebra in ninth grade, for example, while New York schools are supposed to offer high school math to eighth graders who want to take it.

But Kaufman says the report does suggest that schools should be looking at the criteria they use to group students in math, and whether it could be fueling racial or socioeconomic disparities.

“We’re not giving a recommendation that nobody should be tracked,” Kaufman said. “But if you are grouping students, I think this report calls for you to consider whether the way students are grouped, and how, is biased. Are a lot of students of color, for example, in the lower track? What’s happening there?”

Schools try various methods to expand algebra access

Nationally, white and Asian American students are more likely than their Black and Hispanic classmates to enroll in and pass algebra in eighth grade, the latest federal data shows. Historically, students from low-income families have had less access to algebra in eighth grade, too.

In Philadelphia, many students are blocked from the city’s most selective high school because their middle schools don’t offer algebra. Making algebra more accessible is part of the superintendent’s curriculum overhaul.

School districts like Chicago have taken steps to expand access to algebra in eighth grade, such as offering the class online and covering costs for educators to get algebra teaching credentials. Historically, fewer students in the city’s predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods have been able to take the class before high school.

The RAND survey found that principals of more-affluent schools were much more likely than leaders of higher-poverty schools to say they considered parent or guardian requests to place students into advanced math classes. That could shortchange kids who don’t have a parent who can step in and do that kind of advocacy, Kaufman noted.

The report urges schools to look at multiple data points to place students into higher-level math classes, and to consider experimenting with the cutoff scores used to identify which students can handle the harder math coursework.

In Oklahoma, Union Public Schools is trying that, The Hechinger Report recently reported. The district, which serves parts of Tulsa and the city’s southeast suburbs, used to offer a pre-algebra placement test in fifth grade, just one time.

But after school officials realized that was mostly funneling kids from elementary schools in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods into the advanced middle and high school math classes, they made changes. The district now allows students to take the fifth-grade placement test multiple times, and teachers can recommend promising students regardless of their score. That’s helped diversify advanced math classes, particularly for Hispanic students.

Union Public Schools also added math tutoring starting in third grade — the kind of support that the RAND report says can be crucial for student success, but that many struggling students aren’t getting.

More than three-quarters of middle school principals told the RAND researchers that less than half of their struggling students participated in math support options offered by their school, such as tutoring, double-dose math classes, or a summer math program for rising middle schoolers.

That could point to the need for schools to universally screen kids for extra math help, or do more to make sure students and parents know about what help is offered. Schools may also need to change how the help is offered, such as moving after-school tutoring to during the school day or providing transportation so more kids can attend.

Those are crucial steps, Kaufman said, at a time when many kids are struggling to close math gaps that cropped up when school was remote or disrupted in other ways by the pandemic.

“I know tutoring is happening in a lot of places, it’s one of the priorities of the White House right now,” she said. But if tutoring is mostly offered to kids and parents who volunteer, “then the tutoring is not going to reach the kids who need it the most.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Many schools want to keep tutoring going when COVID money is gone. How will they pay for it?

2024-02-01T19:21:58+00:00

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As Kelli Bottger works on tutoring programs across Louisiana, she’s been taking state lawmakers on tours, hoping they’ll see what she sees: Tutoring works.

On a visit to an elementary school in East Baton Rouge Parish this past fall, lawmakers took note of how close students had gotten to their tutors. Those relationships had even motivated kids who’d missed a lot of school to attend more regularly.

“It’s one thing for us to explain tutoring, it’s another thing to see it in practice,” said Bottger, who directs the Louisiana Kids Matter Campaign. The organization is piloting reading and math tutoring as part of a $2 million initiative funded by the state and the national nonprofit Accelerate. “They liked the one-on-one attention they were getting with their tutor. They liked being heard and listened to.”

Federal pandemic aid paid for a major expansion of tutoring across the U.S. As the money runs out, education officials and advocates are pushing for state legislators and schools to find a way to keep these programs going. There’s widespread agreement that lots of kids still need academic help, and schools need to provide it.

But the big question is: Where will the money come from?

State lawmakers have lots of funding requests on their plates right now, and not just from schools. Even if some states do come through with extra funds, it will likely be less than what schools had to work with before. That’s left school leaders scrambling to find alternative funding sources and poring over their budgets to figure out what can go so tutoring can stay.

“There is a lot of conversation about what strategic investments districts need to be making, and what should be prioritized,” said Nakia Towns, the chief operating officer for Accelerate, which funds and researches tutoring efforts. “High-dosage tutoring has such an incredible payoff for kids,” she said, that it should be “right at the top of that list.”

Why some states may keep spending on tutoring

Forty states have spent money on tutoring since the pandemic began, according to a recent review conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford University program that researches tutoring.

That’s added up to a huge investment. Last year, the nonprofit Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents state education department heads, estimated that states would spend $700 million of their federal COVID relief dollars to expand tutoring efforts. And local school districts are expected to spend more than $3 billion of their own COVID aid on tutoring, according to an estimate from the Georgetown University think tank FutureEd, based on data compiled by the company Burbio.

Many states also worked to ensure the quality of those tutoring programs. The Stanford review found that 26 states set ground rules so that schools would follow tutoring best practices, such as keeping groups small and holding sessions several times per week. Some say after states did all that legwork, it makes sense not to walk away now.

Already, some states have pledged continued funding — and federal officials have indicated they’d look favorably on state requests for more time to spend pandemic aid if it’s going toward tutoring.

Virginia put an extra $418 million in its state budget for academic recovery this past fall, and plans to spend 70% of that on high-dosage tutoring for students who failed or received low marks on state tests. Michigan set aside $150 million in state funds last year for intensive tutoring under the state’s MI Kids Back on Track program.

Others are working on it. Some Texas districts have asked the state to continue funding tutoring.

In Louisiana, Bottger and State Superintendent Cade Brumley are hopeful the legislature will sign off on putting money for in-school tutoring into the state’s main funding stream for schools. How much money that could be is still under discussion. But it would be in addition to the $5 million request the education department made to add math to the state’s $40 million literacy tutoring voucher program.

As Brumley meets with state officials to talk about more money for tutoring, his message has been: “Please give it serious consideration.”

“Students need to be able to read and do math by the time they exit our elementary schools,” he said.

In New Jersey, Paula White, the executive director of the advocacy group JerseyCAN, is asking the state to keep paying for tutoring, too.

As White tries to win lawmakers’ continued support, her plan is to emphasize the positive results that tutoring has produced and the state’s stagnant test scores — “Are we over the hump? Is the problem solved? And we know the answer to that is ‘no,’” she said.

It helps, she said, that state leaders have already talked publicly about the importance of tutoring, as New Jersey is running a $52 million high-impact tutoring grant program with federal funds. Still, she knows it will be an “uphill battle” with other federal aid drying up, and the state taking in less revenue.

“We just have to be vigilant about making sure that it gets the budgetary attention that it deserves,” White said.

How school districts are trying to fund tutoring themselves

Absent new state funds, many districts will likely be looking for programs to trim or eliminate so they can keep tutoring. That’s what Superintendent Scott Muri and his team are doing now in Ector County, Texas.

During the pandemic, the district launched a virtual tutoring program that’s become a must-keep. Ector County schools budgeted around $5 million a year in COVID funds for the program, which amounts to 1% of the district’s discretionary spending. Now staff are hoping to make up part of the difference by cutting math and reading apps that aren’t working well, or aren’t used much. In the past, teachers or schools could pick their preferred programs, but that resulted in a lot of duplication.

“Choice and options are still important, but we want the most effective options,” Muri said. “Let’s get rid of the good and only keep the great.”

Districts also will be looking for ways they could spend existing federal or state funding meant to help students from low-income families, students with disabilities, or English learners on tutoring programs. States could help by providing school districts with more guidance on how they can combine those pots of money, said Allison Socol, a vice president at The Education Trust, which recently published a guide for making equitable budget decisions as COVID aid runs out.

“One of the things we’ve heard directly from district leaders and school leaders is struggles with rethinking how those dollars are spent,” Socol said. “Status quo is hard to change.”

Some may consider shrinking the size of their tutoring program to focus on kids who most need help, or cutting an after-school tutoring program to focus on tutoring during the school day. That’s considered a better way to reach students, as many kids don’t have transportation or can’t stay after school.

However, tutoring experts are cautioning against making group sizes larger or reducing how often tutoring happens as a way to cut costs.

“Once a week in a small group of 10″ isn’t likely to produce “the outsized positive effects that we expect from high-impact tutoring,” said Nancy Waymack, who directs research partnerships and policy for the National Student Support Accelerator. “We really want to make sure that those groups are kept to a small number, so that students can get individual attention.”

There could be other avenues, too. Some school districts and tutoring programs have used federal work study grants to pay college students to tutor, according to a January report from FutureEd. Federal officials are urging schools to tap that funding source, though it can be a little complicated.

Amy Cohen, an assistant vice provost at the George Washington University, helps recruit and train college students to tutor middle schoolers in DC Public Schools. They’re paid using federal work-study funds through a program called Math Matters.

The college students take a one-credit course to learn about the curriculum they’ll use and how to work with kids, and then Math Matters matches them with schools that want tutors. So far, it’s been a popular work-study job, and the program has placed 84 tutors in schools.

With 30 years of experience working on work-study programs, Cohen says there are a few things to keep in mind.

It’s relatively easy for a college to launch a new work-study job like this, but it can be harder for a school district to know where to start. A staff person who can handle recruitment and oversight is key, Cohen said — but that’s an added cost.

And tutoring sessions backed by work-study dollars have to be planned carefully so college students don’t hit their earning limit too quickly, which would create inconsistency for kids.

“Federal work study is a hugely important and sometimes overlooked asset,” Cohen said. “I really hope that more investment is made in both thinking about how to do it well and in offering supports.”

Parents see benefit of funding tutoring long term

In the meantime, parents like Kezne’ Cook and D’Mekeus Cook of Lafayette, Louisiana would like to see states continue to fund tutoring programs like the one that’s helped their fourth grader over the last two years.

The Cook family got regular updates about their son's progress in reading from the tutoring center he attended after school with the help of a $40 million Louisiana tutoring program.

Their son, who’s also named D’Mekeus, spent part of kindergarten and all of first grade learning remotely during the pandemic. When he entered second grade, his mom could tell he was struggling to understand what they were reading in class, and he no longer wanted to read aloud at school.

The family took D’Mekeus to a tutoring center after school to get extra help, but that started to get pricey. So they were relieved when they found out about the state’s tutoring voucher program, which provides families with $1,000 per eligible child to pay for private tutoring.

As D’Mekeus got more one-on-one help, his dad noticed his son’s confidence returned, and he started doing better in other subjects at school, too. It’s important for programs like this to stick around, the Cooks said, because it takes time for kids to make progress.

“It’s not something that just occurs overnight,” said Kezne’ Cook. “I see the steps it takes to get to where he’s at now.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Millions of kids are newly eligible for free school meals — but many will likely miss out

2023-10-11T17:37:22+00:00

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Dylan Beitz’s ears perked up when federal officials announced last month that a new rule would allow more schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students.

That rule would cover Jefferson County schools, the district in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle where Beitz oversees child nutrition. Before the change, the district fell just below the federal cutoff for offering free meals to all 8,400 of its students as part of a national program meant to help high-poverty schools.

Under the new rule, which takes effect later this month, Jefferson County could go from offering free meals in seven schools to all 16. Beitz knew that could save the district time and labor — no more mailing bills for unpaid meal debt — and give families extra money to spend on other expenses.

“I think it’s something that we want to go to,” Beitz said. But first, the district has to see if it can afford to “bite that bullet” if there are out-of-pocket costs: “We’ve really got to look and see what the financial repercussions are.”

Beitz isn’t the only one crunching the numbers. Recent headlines proclaimed the new rule would grant millions of students access to free school meals. And there’s research indicating that universal free meals may provide academic and other advantages for students. Yet federal officials and school nutrition experts say many kids who could benefit will actually miss out.

That’s because without additional funding from Congress that’s probably not on the horizon, districts that want to participate must weigh the costs and benefits of providing more free meals against other priorities.

“Unless they have additional resources, or the state is able to provide additional resources, a lot of the newly eligible schools will find it difficult financially to implement that,” said Crystal FitzSimons, who oversees school nutrition work for the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center, which advocated for the new cutoff.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school meal programs, said it’s up to districts to opt in and the agency knows not all newly eligible districts will do so.

What is the community eligibility provision?

This federal program allows schools or districts that meet certain criteria to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, regardless of family income. Elsewhere, schools have to collect paperwork from families to determine if they qualify for free or reduced-priced meals. Other students pay full price.

What is changing?

Under a new rule, individual schools or entire districts can participate in the community eligibility provision if at least 25% of students meet certain criteria. These could include participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly known as SNAP — or Medicaid, lacking stable housing, or living in foster care. Under the previous rule, schools or districts had to enroll at least 40% of students who met those criteria.

The change affects a federal program known as the community eligibility provision that allows schools to provide free meals to all students regardless of family income. It has shot up in popularity in recent years, as schools got used to providing free meals to all kids under a temporary pandemic-era policy, and didn’t want to go back to charging them when that expired.

Under a previous rule for that program, individual schools or entire districts could offer free meals to all kids if at least 40% of students met certain criteria that showed they were from low-income backgrounds. The new rule lowers that to 25% of students. Around 3,000 school districts serving some 5 million students are newly eligible, federal officials said. That represents around 10% of all public school students in the U.S.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack touted the change as an important step toward fulfilling the Biden administration’s pledge that it would expand access to free school meals to millions more children in the coming years.

In feedback collected by federal officials, some school staff said the lower threshold would help their districts that didn’t qualify under the old cutoff, “but they know students in their communities experience widespread food insecurity.”

Still, many districts that are newly eligible may choose not to participate because they’d rather spend money on things like classroom activities or staff salaries.

Before the rule change, schools and districts that were just above the old 40% threshold often didn’t participate because it was hard to break even under the formula the federal government uses to reimburse schools for the free meals they serve.

Last school year, two-thirds of schools that served 40% to 50% of students who met the low-income criteria used the community eligibility provision, a 50-state survey conducted by FitzSimons’ organization found. The take-up rate rose as more students were identified as being from low-income families.

That financial calculus is unlikely to change anytime soon. In its most recent budget, the Biden administration proposed raising the federal reimbursement for school meals in a way that would help districts that serve lower shares of students from low-income families provide free meals to all. But Congress would have to agree — and Republican leaders have previously opposed additional spending to make meals free for kids who don’t already qualify.

To decide if the free-meals-for-all route makes financial sense, newly eligible districts should look at whether they’d save money by reducing administrative work, and if there would be “any financial improvements because of economies of scale and increases in breakfast and lunch participation,” FitzSimons said.

Eliminating meal debt, and the need to collect it, could also be a reason to opt in, she said.

School officials want more aid from federal government

The community eligibility provision is different from the temporary universal free school meal programs that all schools were permitted to run during the pandemic, and the permanent state-run programs that eight states adopted after Congress failed to pass a national universal meals program.

Those programs generally offer free meals to all public school students in the state regardless of income, and require additional state spending.

Federal officials and school nutrition experts expect many districts in those eight states will take advantage of the rule change because it will cut down on paperwork and allow for more federal funding. More districts in states that help pay for the cost of participating in the federal program, such as New York and Oregon, may opt in, too.

Districts that want to make this change mid-year will have to work with state education officials to seek a waiver from the federal government. Some, like New York, have already opened an application process.

Kate Dorr, who oversees food services for 16 districts in central New York, is planning to apply to bring on the last three schools in her area that do not yet serve free meals to all students.

She knows it will help many families. Last year, meal debt in her districts spiked from zero to $150,000. Dorr had many painful conversations with families who struggled to afford food, but no longer qualified for free meals.

But without the New York state subsidy, providing free meals to all students would be hard to afford, she said. That’s why she wants federal officials and lawmakers to do more to support school nutrition programs like hers.

“I really feel for states that don’t have this kind of supplemental funding,” Dorr said. “This change from 40% to 25% just feels like way too little, when so much more is needed.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

White House calls for focus on tutoring, summer school, absenteeism as pandemic aid winds down

2024-01-18T00:26:36+00:00

Top White House officials are urging schools to double down on tutoring, extra learning time, and efforts to boost attendance as the spending deadline for pandemic aid nears.

To help, federal officials say states can now seek permission for schools to spend the last and largest pot of COVID relief money on these kinds of efforts over the next two school years. Previously, schools had to spend down their money by January 2025.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced what the Biden administration is calling its Improving Student Achievement Agenda at a White House event Wednesday with governors and state education commissioners. The new push comes at a time when many states have yet to see math and reading scores rebound to pre-pandemic levels and many students are struggling to fill in gaps in their learning.

Federal officials said they had chosen to focus on these strategies because they are proven ways to raise student achievement.

“These three strategies have one central goal: Giving students more time and more support to succeed,” Cardona said. “We must get back to pre-pandemic levels quickly. But also let’s be clear: The bare minimum that we aspire to is to get back to what it was in 2019. 2019 data wasn’t anything to write home about.”

Though the federal government doesn’t have many tools at its disposal to encourage schools to adopt certain attendance or academic strategies, Cardona said the education department would do what it could.

That includes monitoring states to make sure they are spending federal money on evidence-based approaches to improve school performance, a job they have under federal education law. For example, federal officials could look at how states are running their tutoring programs and step in to provide guidance if the model they’re using isn’t as effective as others.

Education officials also plan to prioritize these strategies for competitive grant funding.

Why the White House wants schools to focus on tutoring and chronic absenteeism

As they did throughout the pandemic, federal officials pointed to high-dosage tutoring as a worthy investment for schools. To do that, programs should tutor students one-on-one or in groups of no more than four, for 30 minutes at least three times a week. Sessions should be scheduled during the school day and take place with a trained tutor, White House officials wrote.

Last year, some states and school districts said they had abandoned efforts to tutor kids after school, finding students often missed sessions because they lacked transportation or had schedule conflicts.

The Biden administration lifted up examples of states and districts that have invested heavily in tutoring, including Maryland, which launched a tutoring corps to focus on middle and high school math this past fall, and Washington, D.C, which is tutoring students in math and English language arts.

During the White House event, Christina Grant, D.C.’s state superintendent of education, said a key part of that investment is staffing tutoring managers in the district’s highest-need schools — a finding that’s been echoed by other tutoring programs. Those managers work like an assistant principal who can set up schedules, examine student data, and group students by ability.

“They are the ones saying, ‘No, no, you can’t go to lunch, you have to come sit here,’” Grant said. “We’re making sure that we didn’t just tell teachers and principals: ‘Hey, do this extra thing.”

Absenteeism soared during the pandemic and remains well above 2018-19 levels in most communities. When children miss school, they fall behind academically and are at greater risk of dropping out. When many students in a school frequently miss class, teachers have to decide whether to repeat material for those who missed, boring their classmates, or leave some students behind.

“We simply cannot accept chronic absenteeism as the new normal,” White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden said. “Fortunately, we know what works: engaging parents and families as partners in their children’s education.”

She cited the example of Gompers Elementary-Middle School in northwest Detroit. Chalkbeat chronicled the school’s efforts to keep students in school, including pairing students who were starting to miss too many days with adult mentors and working closely with families.

Family and work obligations, mental health challenges, lack of transportation, and many other factors contribute to children missing too much school.

Federal officials urged schools to make specific commitments to reduce absenteeism, such as increasing calls and texts to parents, doing more home visits, and developing early warning systems. Schools should make sure communication is available in multiple languages.

States also should adopt consistent definitions of chronic absenteeism and incorporate it as a measure in their school accountability system if they haven’t done so already, officials said.

Connecticut Education Commissioner Charlene Tucker-Russell described how the state used data to identify students struggling the most — homeless students, English learners, students with disabilities — and target support. The program trained teachers and community members to do outreach and connect families with shelter, transportation, and mental health resources. An evaluation of the program found a 16% increase in attendance after home visits, Tucker-Russell said.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Luhan Grisholm said she was “embarrassed” about her state’s sky-high rates of chronic absenteeism, including among elementary students. Working with parents is part of the solution, but schools also have to make sure students feel supported and successful so they want to be in school, she said.

“If you aren’t reading at grade level, and you can’t do math at grade level, [school] is not a place you want to be,” she said.

Federal and state officials also emphasized the importance of giving students “more time on task” — both by making sure they are attending school regularly and adding learning time.

That could mean adding time to the school day or year — a strategy many districts have struggled to pull off — or running substantial summer school programs that offer multiple hours of academic instruction per day.

Nearly half of school districts used the largest bucket of COVID relief funds to expand summer school, federal officials said, though already some have made cuts or made plans to do so.

Alabama’s state superintendent, Eric Mackey, said education officials in his state are working with lawmakers and the governor’s office to keep funding summer math and reading camps that have run for the last three years with pandemic aid. The state has provided meals, transportation, and connections to afternoon youth programming to help make it work.

“We’ve built enough momentum that our legislature said: ‘We know we can’t drop this,’” Mackey said. “We have to find a way to continue to fund it and sustain it going forward.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Blizzard of state test scores shows some progress in math, divergence in reading

2023-10-02T09:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

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When it comes to how American students are recovering from the pandemic, it’s a tale of two subjects.

States across the country have made some progress in math over the last two years, while in English language arts some states made gains while others fell further behind.

“In math, almost every state looks pretty similar. There was a large decline between 2019 and 2021. And then everybody is kind of crawling it back,” said Emily Oster, a Brown University economist. “In ELA, it’s all over the map.”

That’s according to recently released results from over 20 state tests, encompassing millions of students, compiled by Oster and colleagues. The scores offer among the most comprehensive national pictures of student learning, pointing to some progress but persistent challenges. With just a handful of exceptions, students in 2023 are less likely to be proficient than in 2019, the year before the pandemic jolted American schools and society.

“Schools are getting back to normal, but kids still have a ways to go,” said Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, a nonprofit that works with states to develop tests. “We’re not getting out of this in two years.”

Oster’s analysis of test data tracks the share of students who were proficient on grades 3-8 math and reading exams before, during, and after the pandemic. Every state showed a significant drop in proficiency between 2019 and 2021, a fact that has been documented on a variety of tests. (Testing was canceled in 2020.)

Prior studies from Oster and others have found that while schools of all stripes saw test scores decline during the pandemic, those that remained virtual for longer experienced deeper setbacks.

The recent state test data offers some good news, though: 2021 was, for the most part, the bottom of the learning loss hole.

In math, all but a couple states experienced improvements between 2021 and 2023. Only two — Iowa and Mississippi — were at or above 2019 levels, though.

In reading, a majority of states have made some progress since 2021 and four have caught up to pre-pandemic levels. However, numerous states experienced no improvement. A handful even continued to regress.

It’s not clear why state trends in math versus reading have differed. After the pandemic hit and closed down schools, math scores fell more quickly and sharply than reading, but now appear to have been faster to recover.

Testing experts say that standardized tests may be better at measuring the discrete skills that students are taught in math. Reading — especially the comprehension of texts — comes through the development of more cumulative knowledge and skills. “Is the test insensitive to what’s really going on in classrooms or are kids just not learning to read better?” said Marion. “That’s the part I can’t quite figure out.”

Oster suspects the adoption of research-aligned reading practices, including phonics, may explain why some states have made a quicker comeback. Mississippi, well known for its early adoption of these practices, is one of four states to have fully recovered in ELA. But more research is needed to understand why some states appear to have bounced back more quickly than others.

“Some people are doing a good job. Some people are not doing as good a job,” said Oster. “Understanding that would tell us something about which kind of policies we might want to favor.”

Some schools look to phonics to boost stagnant reading scores.

In Indiana, which made gains in math but not reading, officials are hoping a suite of recent laws embracing the science of reading will boost scores. In Michigan, which also saw no progress in reading, lawmakers pointed to recent investments in early literacy efforts and tutoring.

At Sherlock Elementary, part of the Cicero 99 school district in Illinois, just west of Chicago, Principal Joanna Lago saw how the pandemic set students back. Students are still climbing out of those holes, she said.

“Our scores are somewhat stagnant,” she said.

But Lago is hopeful a series of new initiatives will lead to gains for her students. This year, her district is adding an extra 30 minutes to every school day so staff can zero in on reading and math skills. This is the second year that teachers within the same grade level are working together more closely to plan lessons and review student performance data.

The district has also adopted a new reading curriculum aligned with the science of reading. Over the last two years, Lago, a former reading teacher herself, and her team got training on using decodable texts to emphasize phonics. Teachers visited each other’s classrooms to observe as they tried out new lessons. Pictures of mouths forming letter sounds now hang on classroom walls, instead of pictures of words.

It’s “a more strategic approach to help reach kids and fill some of the gaps of what they need,” Lago said. “How could this not lead to results? How could this not lead to more kids reading more fluently, having better reading comprehension?”

Educators are confronting persistent learning loss going into the last full school year to spend federal COVID relief money, a chunk of which is earmarked for learning recovery. Some school districts have already begun to wind down tutoring and other support as the money dwindles.

Marion of the Center for Assessment fears this extra programming will vanish too soon. “I’m pessimistic because I’m pessimistic about politicians,” he said.

The state test scores offer a slightly different picture of learning loss than a recent analysis by the testing company NWEA. While NWEA found little evidence of recovery last school year, most state tests showed gains in math proficiency last year.

There could be a number of reasons for this discrepancy, including the fact that some large states — including California and New York — have not released state test data yet, so the picture is still incomplete.

The new test score data comes with a few other caveats. Because states administer their own exams and create different benchmarks for proficiency, results from different states are not directly comparable to each other. Experts also warn that proficiency is an imprecise gauge of learning since it captures only whether a student meets a certain threshold, without considering how far above or below they are.

Plus, each year’s scores are based on different groups of students since regular testing ends in eighth grade. That means students fall out of the data as they progress into high school and some may never have fully recovered academically, even if state average scores have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“There are kids who will forever be behind,” said Oster.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

New federal program puts $12 million toward school integration in a dozen states

2023-10-23T16:13:00+00:00

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School desegregation efforts in a dozen states are getting a $12.5 million infusion from the federal government as part of a new grant program meant to create more diverse schools.

Among the winners are some of the largest districts in the country, including New York City and Chicago, where debates have long raged over how to address the inequities wrought by school segregation. Other winners include a cohort of Maryland districts and the East Baton Rouge Parish in Louisiana, both of which have been home to intense battles over school segregation in recent years.

The grants come as many school communities continue fraught discussions about racial inequities in schools — conversations that ramped up after the murder of George Floyd, but are facing pushback in many states as conservative lawmakers, activists, and some parents fight to end diversity and equity initiatives and curtail teaching about race and racism.

The funding is a small fraction of what the Biden administration initially sought. And there is only so much schools and federal officials can do in the wake of Supreme Court decisions that severely limited desegregation across district lines, and quashed efforts to explicitly take student race into account as part of integration plans.

Still, the grants are the culmination of a years-long effort led by school integration advocates and officials within the Obama and Biden administrations to steer more federal funding to school desegregation. The money is sorely needed, as America’s schools remain highly segregated by race and income but initiatives to fix that often fizzle out.

The result of that isolation, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement on Thursday, is that students of color and students from low-income families disproportionately experience “inadequate resources, lesser access to advanced courses, fewer extracurricular offerings, and other tangible inequities.”

The grants are relatively small: The $12.5 million is being divided among 14 initiatives, ranging from $250,000 to $2.8 million. But integration advocates say start-up money like this is essential because it gives schools funding and political cover to launch complicated planning efforts and community conversations that are necessary for initiatives to stick.

“It’s not going to fully solve it,” said Mohammed Choudhury, the former Maryland schools superintendent who oversaw the state’s application that netted $500,000 for its first year of work. But if the money helps shift some policies, “then it’s a big damn deal.”

Maryland will use its money to work on initiatives in the districts of Anne Arundel, Charles, Frederick, Howard, and Montgomery counties. Howard County, notably, faced parent backlash a few years ago when leaders there tried to deconcentrate the share of students from low-income families who attended certain schools.

Each of the Maryland districts has committed to try at least one of three strategies to create more integrated schools. Those include revamping admissions processes to make selective schools more diverse; ensuring dual language schools are accessible to low-income families whose children are learning English; or finding ways to integrate young children across public and private preschools. Much of the money will be spent on family engagement, Choudhury said.

Expanding access to particular programs may not be as controversial or have as sweeping of an effect as other school desegregation strategies, such as changing school boundaries. But Choudhury, who is now a senior advisor to Maryland’s board of education, expects it won’t be drama-free.

“From opportunity-hoarding type tensions and challenges, to people feeling like they are losing something, to people feeling like they could potentially be pitted against each other — all of those things have to be navigated,” he said. “You’ve still got to win hearts and minds.”

New York City, meanwhile, won $3 million for initiatives in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn that have previously worked to create more integrated middle schools. In Manhattan, officials will work to create a more diverse group of schools serving some 12,000 students, starting with preschool. In Brooklyn, the money will help put middle school integration plans into place, and fund efforts to recruit elementary school families to attend the area’s middle schools.

Recently, some New York City schools have returned to academically screening incoming middle schoolers — a practice integration advocates say fuels segregation. The current mayor and chancellor have shown less interest in school integration than past administrations.

Chicago Public Schools plans to use its $500,000 to hire staff and host community meetings, a spokesperson said. The work is part of several ongoing planning initiatives related to school quality and student admissions, according to a project description.

Fayette County Public Schools in Kentucky plans to use its funding to improve schools in Lexington’s East End, a historically Black community that’s experiencing some gentrification.

“Our aim is to reconnect our East End students with the cultural identity and heritage of their historical neighborhood,” a project description states. “All the while, changing the reputation and perception of East End schools so that they are a source of pride for residents as well as an attractive school choice for more diverse, affluent parents.”

Other winning districts include:

Anchorage School District in Alaska, which plans to use its funding to create more socioeconomically diverse high school programs by expanding access to career and technical education.
Hamilton County Schools in Tennessee, which plans to use its money for community engagement as it seeks to “reimagine” student transportation and school access.
Oakland Unified in California, which will develop an integration plan focused on improving outcomes for students who attend some of the district’s highest-poverty schools.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina, which will analyze enrollment patterns and student assignment policies and potentially change attendance boundaries. The money will help fund sessions for students, families, and staff to provide feedback.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Schools have struggled to add learning time after COVID. Here’s how one district did it.

2023-10-26T22:10:38+00:00

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CICERO, Ill. — It was just after 2:30 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, and the school stage hadn’t yet transformed into a reading room.

Christopher VanderKuyl, an assistant principal in Chicago’s west suburbs, hurriedly dragged brown folding chairs across the wood floor. He made a mental note to figure out who’d rearranged the furniture.

“They can’t do that,” VanderKuyl lamented to his co-teacher, Megan Endre. “We’re using this as a classroom!”

A year ago, school would have been over around this time, and the students at Columbus East Elementary would be walking out the door. But this year, a group of fifth graders were instead sitting on the school’s stage, reading aloud about the life of Rosa Parks as they worked on reading fluency and comprehension. Similar activities were taking place in nearly every corner of the school: In another classroom, students rolled dice to practice two-digit multiplication and huddled close to their teacher to review their work.

What’s happening at Columbus East is one of the rare efforts nationally to give students more instructional time in an attempt to make up for what they lost during the pandemic. Here in Cicero School District 99, students are getting an extra 30 minutes of reading or math instruction every day, which adds up to around three additional weeks of school. School leaders hope that will be enough time to teach students key skills they missed and boost test scores.

“We do a lot of good things for our students, we have many, many resources, but our students need more,” said Aldo Calderin, the district’s superintendent. “There are challenges, I’m not going to sit here and say that there’s not. But I know that we’re doing right by our kids.”

Fifth graders at Columbus East take turns reading aloud as part of an extended-day reading exercise.

The district is about a month into the extra academic lessons, and staff say they’re still working out the kinks. The initiative has added new instructional challenges for Cicero teachers, who were already busy putting a new reading curriculum in place and helping students cope with the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Still, Cicero stands out for making a longer school day a reality. While many schools used COVID relief funding to beef up summer school or add optional after-school tutoring, far fewer added extra time to the school day or year.

In Cicero, a new teachers union contract, extra pay for teachers, and school board support helped make the change happen. Elsewhere, efforts to add instructional time have faced pushback from school board members and teachers who thought the added time would be too costly and disruptive.

Thomas Kane, a Harvard education professor who has studied learning loss during the pandemic, said “it’s great to see” districts like Cicero adding instructional time.

“It obviously depends, though, on how that time is used, especially if it’s coming at the end of the day, when kids or teachers might be tired,” Kane said. “But honestly at this point, more instructional time is what’s needed to help students catch up.”

How Cicero students got a longer school day

Cicero 99, which runs through junior high, serves around 9,200 students in a working-class, mostly Latino suburb of Chicago. About three-quarters of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and more than half of students are learning English.

School leaders floated the idea to lengthen Cicero 99’s school day before COVID hit, but the proposal took on greater urgency when educators saw how the pandemic set students back in reading and math.

The year before the pandemic, 22% of students in the district met or exceeded Illinois’ English language arts standards, while 16% cleared that bar in math. By spring 2021, after students spent nearly a year learning remotely, 10% met state standards in English and 5% met them in math.

At Columbus East, staff recall students who hid under bed covers or pointed their cameras at ceiling fans during remote learning. Others had trouble hearing over blaring TVs, barking dogs, and whirring blenders.

Kane’s research into district-level learning loss found that Cicero students in third to eighth grades lost the equivalent of a third of a year in reading from spring 2019 to 2022, and a little less than half a year in math. The losses were similar to those in other high-poverty Illinois districts, Kane said, but still “substantial.”

“There is a sense of urgency,” said Donata Heppner, the principal at Columbus East, who’s part of the district team that planned for the extended day. “If we don’t grow more than expected, we’re never going to catch up.”

So last year, Calderin, with the school board’s support, negotiated a new contract with the teachers union that included the longer school day.

Students at Columbus East Elementary in Cicero, Ill. are getting an extra 30 minutes of reading or math instruction each day this year.

“At the beginning, we were: No, no, no, no, no,” said Marisa Mills, the president of Cicero’s teachers union and a seventh grade English language arts teacher at Unity Junior High. “And then we really started to get down to the nitty gritty, and started to talk about: Well, what if we did do this?”

Teachers got on board after the district agreed that the extra time would be used only for instruction, Mills said, and that students wouldn’t be tethered to a device during that time. Teachers also got a “very fair” bump in compensation: A 10% raise, and a one-time $5,000 bonus for this school year, paid for with COVID relief dollars. The deal, which runs through 2026, got the support of 70% of teachers.

It helped, Calderin said, that the extra time was well-received by families. Many students’ parents work multiple jobs and struggle to arrange after-school care for their children — an issue somewhat alleviated by a longer day.

Here’s how the longer day works: The district gave students pretests and used those to group students with similar abilities. Students spent the first month of the school year practicing walking their routes to their extended-day groups and getting to know their new teachers.

Now students spend two weeks in a reading group, then two weeks in a math group, or vice versa, and then get reshuffled based on how they’re doing. The district provided lessons and activities for teachers that tie in with the district’s usual curriculum.

But there’s no additional staff working the extended day. So it takes everyone, from paraprofessionals to social workers to principals, to make it work.

On that recent Wednesday at Columbus East, VanderKuyl and Endre circulated among 16 fifth graders as they read. This group spent all of second grade learning remotely and now many struggle to write their letters in a straight line or pay attention when a teacher is talking.

VanderKuyl stopped to help one student pronounce “prejudice,” while Endre urged a distracted student poking her pen in the air to follow along.

“Alright, who would like to share their summary out loud?” Endre asked.

Fifth grade teacher Megan Endre leads a reading activity during Columbus East Elementary’s new extended day.

She pressed her students to elaborate — “Who’s the man you’re talking about?” — and checked to make sure they got the details right: “It wasn’t a school bus right? It was a public bus.” Her goal this year is to boost students’ confidence and help more students read at a fifth grade level on their own.

It’s about “building that independence in reading for them,” Endre said. “Maybe not necessarily ‘Oh, I can read a whole fifth-grade level text myself.’ But can I read and understand a paragraph?”

Longer school day is not without challenges

While it may seem simple, adding 30 minutes to the school day presents plenty of instructional challenges.

Not every adult is a math or reading specialist, so some staff need extra practice and training. The extended-day groups are smaller than students’ usual classes, but are still large enough that it can be challenging for teachers to provide one-on-one attention. Some students are hungry and tired at the end of the day and miss going home earlier.

“My brain is too over-capacitated!” said one fourth grader with dark hair and white-rimmed glasses at nearby Sherlock Elementary.

And some students struggle with the frequent regrouping. Columbus East, for example, has a program for students with emotional disabilities who typically learn in the same classroom all day. Some have found it challenging to be in a new environment with different peers and without their usual teacher.

On that recent Wednesday, a student sitting at the back table in Arlen Villeda’s fifth grade math group sobbed as she struggled with the extended-day lesson. At first, the student loved the extra math lessons, Villeda said later, but as the classes got harder, the student’s frustration started to mount.

“I hate my life!” she cried. “Everyone is done!”

Villeda tried to keep moving forward with the four students seated in front of her, as a classroom aide nudged the crying student to take a break.

Villeda has tried strategies shared by the student’s usual teacher — like walking the student to the familiar calming corner in her classroom when she gets overwhelmed — but Villeda says it can be challenging to know exactly how to help. For some students, she said, “consistency really makes a big difference.”

“Like with anything, we know that change is going to become easier as time goes on,” she said. “But I honestly feel like this is still an adjustment period for us — for the teachers and for the students.”

For now, Heppner, Columbus East’s principal, and others are revisiting how the extended day is going and making changes when needed. Going forward, for example, teachers will have more say over how students are grouped. And teachers can ditch activities that were “a total bomb,” as Heppner put it.

Mills, the union president, said she knows some teachers, especially those who don’t specialize in reading and math, are struggling with extra preparation work. But already she’s seeing glimmers of progress. She feels like she can do more with her seventh graders in the smaller extended-day groups, and some have made strides in their reading.

“It’s going to be a little nuts for the first year, for sure,” Mills said. “But if this is something we really want to do for our students, that’s what it’s going to have to be.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Feds urge schools to protect rights of Jewish, Muslim students following ‘alarming’ rise in incidents

2023-11-08T00:26:26+00:00

Federal officials are urging school leaders to protect Jewish and Muslim students from discrimination following an “alarming rise” in reports of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other incidents of bias at colleges and K-12 schools over the last month.

The letter, shared with U.S. schools and colleges on Tuesday, comes one month after the militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel, killing more than 1,400 people. Israel has responded with airstrikes in Gaza that have killed at least 10,000 people and displaced more than a million others.

The news has shaken many school leaders, educators, and students with ties to Israel and the Gaza Strip, and prompted protests on college campuses nationwide.

Since the start of the conflict on Oct. 7, the Education Department has received at least seven discrimination complaints involving antisemitism and two involving Islamophobia, a department spokesperson told Chalkbeat in an email. Most stemmed from incidents at colleges, but at least one incident happened at a K-12 school.

“The rise of reports of hate incidents on our college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict is deeply traumatic for students,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement on Tuesday. “College and university leaders must be unequivocal about condemning hatred and violence and work harder than ever to ensure all students have the freedom to learn in safe and inclusive campus communities.”

Several incidents have been documented in news reports over the last month. At Cornell University, police were called after online posts threatened Jewish students. The University of Pennsylvania alerted the FBI about antisemitic emails that threatened the campus’ umbrella organization serving Jewish students. A hit-and-run that injured a Muslim student at Stanford University is being investigated as a hate crime. In suburban Denver, students of Palestinian descent reported racist bullying at their high school, while in New Jersey a high schooler had her hijab ripped off.

In the letter, the assistant secretary for civil rights, Catherine Lhamon, noted that schools that receive federal funds are legally required to protect Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students from discrimination. That could include racial or ethnic slurs, stereotypes based on a student’s religious style of dress, or discrimination related to a student’s accent, ancestry, name, or language.

A few days before the Education Department issued its letter, a coalition of three organizations that advocate for the civil rights of Arab Americans and Palestinian people had asked the department to “take urgent special measures to ensure that Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students, or students perceived as such” were protected from discrimination at school. They cited examples of students who’d been doxxed and the recent murder of a 6-year-old in suburban Chicago in what police have described as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

Incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia were on the rise even before the war between Israel and Hamas, according to organizations that track such incidents.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, noted that the education discrimination complaints it received last year had jumped by a “disturbing” 63% to 177 cases. That included instances of Islamophobic school curriculum and failure to accommodate Muslim students’ religious requests. (Bullying at K-12 schools, such as an incident in which a Delaware middle schooler who was told by her teacher she was too skinny to fast during Ramadan, were tracked in a separate category.)

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights and advocacy organization, documented 494 incidents of antisemitism at non-Jewish, K-12 schools last year, a 49% increase over the prior year. Most were incidents of harassment, such as a student taunting a Jewish classmate with a Holocaust joke, or vandalism, such as a swastika drawn on a school wall.

Meanwhile, when Education Week and ProPublica reviewed nearly 500 incidents of hate in schools between January 2015 and December 2017, the news organizations found that incidents targeting Jewish and Muslim students were among the most common.

Kira Simon, the director of curriculum and training for the Anti-Defamation League’s education program, which offers anti-bias training to schools, said that teachers can help combat the kind of harmful rhetoric that can lead to bullying and harassment at school by taking a few key steps.

If teachers regularly lead discussions about current events in their classrooms, she said, they should stop to think about how those conversations could “impact my students who are Jewish, or how might it impact my students who are Muslim or my students who are Palestinian or Arab?” she said. “And not to assume how it would impact them, but to be thoughtful.”

That could mean putting ground rules in place for having a respectful discussion, letting students opt out of the conversation, or giving them an alternative assignment if they’re having a strong emotional reaction. It can also be a good idea to give students advance notice about these conversations, instead of springing it on them.

And if teachers know they have students in the same class with opposing viewpoints on the conflict, they can focus on making sure students feel safe to share when they feel scared or stressed, and know who at the school they can turn to for support.

And while these conversations and questions may feel urgent, it’s OK for teachers to take the time they need to plan a conversation and do their own research, Simon said. That might mean giving students time to write about how they’re feeling while planning for a discussion down the line.

“Something that adults can do that, I think, will help young people to feel a little bit safer and be able to regulate their emotions better, is to tone down the urgency,” Simon said. “If a question comes up, the teacher doesn’t have to have the answer right in the moment.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Sociologist Casey Stockstill explores the segregated lives of preschoolers in new book

2023-11-14T13:00:00+00:00

Casey Stockstill didn’t set out to write a book about preschool segregation.

Initially, the Dartmouth College sociologist wanted to write about the lives of preschoolers. To do that, Stockstill spent two years observing children and staff at a Head Start in Madison, Wisconsin, followed by spending a month at a private preschool on the other side of the city.

Sunshine Head Start enrolled nearly all kids of color, while Great Beginnings was nearly all white. But both were top-rated preschools with experienced staff, a teacher for every six students, and a routine filled with learning and play. So Stockstill expected they’d be pretty similar.

But the stark differences she observed — all of which were rooted in racial and socioeconomic segregation — became the organizing principle of her new book, “False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers.” In it, Stockstill details how segregation shapes everything from how preschoolers spend their time to the kind of instruction and supervision they receive.

That matters because preschool segregation is not only common, but often overlooked. Nationally, two-thirds of preschoolers learn alongside classmates who are either mostly white and affluent, or mostly kids of color from low-income families. And early childhood programs are more racially segregated than K-12 schools.

Chalkbeat spoke with Stockstill about those differences she saw, and how they affect the kind and quality of education preschoolers receive.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On paper, these two high-quality preKs have a lot of similarities. Can you talk about how students spent their time when you were there?

The first thing I noticed was: Wow, their listed routine looks so similar. It says they’re going to come in and say welcome, have breakfast, have circle time on the rug, an hour of open-ended play, go outside, and eat lunch.

Watching them on a daily basis though [was very different]. At Great Beginnings, things are pretty calm and predictable. I went in February to observe, all the kids had been enrolled since September. It was like: We know who is coming every day, and these kids know the routine.

What surprised me was how much the kids read books. One time, I watched the teachers read a book to a group of 4-year-olds for 32 minutes with no major interruptions.

At Head Start, they always tried to read every day, but they often didn’t finish the book. They either had kids that had been enrolled in their class all year, but were having a hard day, because stuff was going on at home. So those kids are running away from the circle, or poking a friend, and they’re having to stop and correct those behaviors.

Or they have this churn in part of their enrollment. Two-thirds of the Head Start class roster was stable. The kids were there in September, they stayed all year. One-third just rotated based on poverty and instability. We had a student, her family got evicted, that left a spot open for a new family to come in. So you’re kind of constantly in orientation mode.

How did segregation affect what was going on in their classrooms?

We have a country that has structural racism, and a country that has pretty harsh conditions of poverty, especially for children. Families of color have higher rates of experiencing things like eviction, having a parent that gets incarcerated, contact with Child Protective Services and foster care. All of those things are more likely to happen to Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous children. Families who are poor, similarly, have higher rates of residential instability.

If we had integrated classrooms, where 20% of preschoolers were poor in every single center, we would spread out those challenges, and we’d force all teachers to think about how they’re going to meet kids’ needs when they have some kids dealing with these instabilities and disruptions to family life. Instead, when we segregate kids, you make a classroom like Sunshine Head Start, where we have a lot of those problems. That allows you to have other classrooms like Great Beginnings, where none of those problems exist.

Can you talk about how the segregated classroom experiences affected whether or not kids could bring things from home?

Sunshine Head Start had a classroom rule that you could not bring personal toys from home. There was no stuffed animal you would bring to nap. This rule made sense to the teachers, because they knew they had kids who were homeless, they had kids getting evicted. They didn’t want to create more moments to underline that kind of scarcity. And the other thing they said was: We have this classroom full of toys.

In that environment, about a third of the kids that I observed tried to sneak in special objects to school. It was mostly boys of color that would bring in a Spider-Man toy, a bouncy ball, a slimy, sticky hand. Boys were likely to get caught with these objects and then they would get disciplined for it. They’d get: ‘You’re not supposed to do that, put it in this bin, I’m going to take it away.’ It became this source of friction and distance between the kids and the teachers.

What I argue in the book is that this sends a message to the whole group of children that you check your personal stuff at the door. School is for playing with the institutional objects that we’re providing for you. For this one-third of kids who snuck things in, and then got in trouble, I see that it can feed into disproportionate discipline. We have statistics on this, that Black preschoolers are suspended and expelled at higher rates than white preschoolers. At Sunshine Head Start, none of the kids got suspended, but they did experience this avenue of discipline.

Then I went to Great Beginnings. They didn’t sneak things in, and it was because they had a weekly show-and-tell with the letter of the week. It might be ‘O’ and you’d bring in your baby owl stuffed animal. They also could bring in a stuffed animal at nap time, and they would play with those things.

At Head Start, they’re dealing with real scarcity among their families. They’re trying to make that not an issue, and so they have this strict policy, but it doesn’t really work. And at Great Beginnings they’re basically celebrating material abundance.

When you saw the kids get their things taken away who’d snuck them in, how did that affect them?

It depended. I focus a lot on a child I call Julian, who was dealing with a lot of family instability. His mom was incarcerated, she was in jail for a month. He just had a lot going on at home. And he would bring in stuff a lot. Sometimes, he was able to hide it from the teachers. Toward the middle of the year, it started getting taken away more often, and he would be upset about that.

But what was interesting was that by the end of the year, he had kind of learned how to bring stuff in and make sure the teachers didn’t see it. He would make plans. That also concerns me. There are kids who are learning not only that the teachers can’t know I’m bringing special things to school, because I’ll get punished, but also now I’m able to practice maneuvering away from the teacher’s gaze.

Another thing you detail in the book are the differences in play time, and who sets the rules for how kids play. Could you talk about that?

You might expect marginalized children, poor children of color, would get less autonomy. It’s kind of the opposite of what I observed.

At Sunshine Head Start, again, those issues of the fluctuating enrollment, the behavior challenges from kids, dealing with family instability — those things occupied teachers’ attention during the indoor playtime. They’re doing this hour of what’s supposed to be open-ended play. And the teachers would pair up with the kids who were acting out, or new to the classroom. Sunshine Head Start had three teachers, two of them were often paired up with kids in this unofficial way, leaving one teacher to supervise the other 15 kids.

So you’d have these pockets of three to seven children, who are playing, and they are being supervised, but the teacher is not involved in what they are doing. They are figuring that out themselves. The classroom rules also gave kids a lot of autonomy. In circle time, they’d say where do you want to play? What’s your plan?

The result of that was that the Sunshine Head Start kids were used to playing and a random classmate wanting to join the game. They would have a lot of problems, and then they would have to solve them themselves.

Then I went to Great Beginnings, where they had what they would call an hour of open-ended playtime. But they exerted more control. They assigned kids to play centers. They’d set a timer for about 15 minutes, and when the timer beeped, you would rotate to a new play area with the same playmate. They don’t deal with this issue of: What if you’re playing a game and two new kids want to join? The teachers were highly involved.

I see downsides to that: Less creativity, less independent problem-solving. But the potential upside is: Now you have kids who are expecting adult attention. There is a lot of sociology work on this in elementary school, about middle-class kids interrupting, raising their hand, just exhibiting more entitlement to teacher attention.

The students who had higher concentrations of poverty in their classrooms experienced higher levels of intrusion into their families’ lives. What was most striking to you about that dynamic?

Because of the experiences that poor families are having outside the classroom of surveillance and fear of Child Protective Services calls — those enter into the classroom with teachers feeling hesitant to ask questions. They told me they feared they would get in trouble if they seemed like they were prying for information about family challenges.

What was interesting to me is: The kids would talk about some of their family events but the teachers didn’t see that as bids to have a bigger conversation. They didn’t feel they could talk openly about a domestic violence dispute or scarcity at home. Kids have to kind of learn that these things happening at home are not acceptable talking points at school.

And at Great Beginnings, those families have disruptions as well, but the ones I saw were kind of upper-middle-class disruptions. There was an occasional divorce or a parent traveling for business. There wasn’t that specter of CPS. So things just felt more open there between families, kids, and teachers.

There has been a movement in the K-12 setting to have more frank conversations with kids about what’s happening in their home lives, what’s happening in the world. Did the preK teachers feel unequipped to have some of those complicated conversations? How could it have been better?

These are early childhood teachers, they understand a lot about children. I just think we have a cultural idea that, especially kids under 5, are so moldable that we can shape their feelings about things, that they’re not going to have their own feelings. So if we avoid bringing up challenging things, they won’t be as real to kids.

There is research showing that kids do notice. They notice class inequality. They notice racial inequality. Some of these things happening in kids’ lives at home, they might cause personal harm, the kids may feel sad about them, but sometimes they are just facts of life to those kids.

The change I’ve love to see is preschool teachers being comfortable — if a kid is bringing something up — at least [talking about] that.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Suspensions and bullying plunged as many students learned remotely, national data shows

2023-11-15T21:52:14+00:00

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The number of students who were suspended or arrested at school fell dramatically during the first full school year of the pandemic, new federal data released Wednesday show.

And though disparities in who got suspended or arrested at school persisted along lines of race and disability, in some cases, those gaps narrowed considerably, especially for Black students.

The data for the 2020-21 school year, released by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, echoes earlier reports from some school districts and states. But it’s the first to fully capture what discipline looked like across America’s schools early in the pandemic, when large shares of students were learning remotely.

“Some of these data are not easy to look at,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told reporters Wednesday. “These data are a reminder that we have a lot of work to do.”

The data come as many schools wrestle with how discipline should look in the wake of a pandemic that left many students with greater social and emotional needs. Some states have considered laws that would give schools broader latitude to suspend students, and some districts have brought back school police following concerns over student behavior and safety.

The report reflects a time when 88% of schools provided a combination of in-person and remote instruction, federal data show, while another 5% offered only remote instruction. The following year, when most students returned to fully in-person learning, many schools reported an uptick in behavioral issues, and some districts suspended a larger-than-usual share of students.

Suspensions and expulsions had been falling for years even before COVID hit, as many schools took steps to curb disciplinary practices that removed students from the classroom. But the declines during the 2020-21 school year were much steeper.

The drops likely reflect a combination of fewer students learning in person and a reticence among educators to remove students from the classroom at a time when many kids craved in-person contact with their teachers and peers. But the data does not capture some of the new or informal disciplinary practices that cropped up during the pandemic, such as removals from a Zoom classroom or requiring a student to learn remotely as a form of punishment.

Around 639,000 K-12 students were suspended from school at least once during the first full year of the pandemic, down from 2.5 million students during the 2017-18 school year, the last period with comparable data.

That represents a staggering 75% decline. (For comparison, suspensions dropped around 11% from the 2013-14 school year to 2017-18 school year.)

Similarly, the number of students who experienced an in-school suspension fell by 70%. The number of students who were referred to law enforcement dropped by 73%. And the number of students who were arrested at school plummeted 84% to around 8,900.

Education department officials cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from an anomalous school year filled with disruptions for both students and the staff who collect this data.

Public school enrollment dropped by 1.7 million students, or 3%, between the 2017-18 and 2020-21 school years. And schools were not required to report whether students who were disciplined were learning in person or remotely. To address that, federal officials are collecting the same data for the 2021-22 school year — the first-ever back-to-back effort.

Still, it’s notable that Black boys and students with disabilities continued to receive a disproportionate share of suspensions from school. Black boys made up 8% of the nation’s K-12 enrollment during the 2020-21 school year, but they received 18% of suspensions from school. Similarly, students with disabilities made up 17% of the nation’s enrollment, but they received 29% of suspensions.

That disparity for Black boys shrank 7 percentage points from the last time this data was collected, but the gap for students with disabilities didn’t budge.

A new disparity, meanwhile, arose regarding white boys. During the 2017-18 school year, white boys were suspended from school at a rate nearly equal to their share of enrollment. But in the first full year of the pandemic, they made up 24% of the nation’s enrollment, and received 36% of suspensions from school — a gap larger than the one for Black boys.

A top education department official said while the cause of that trend is unclear, it represents a notable departure from past data collections that merits investigation.

Black, Hispanic, and Asian students were much more likely to learn remotely during the 2020-21 school year, while white students were more likely to learn in person.

Black students and students with disabilities, meanwhile, continued to be arrested at school at higher rates than their peers, though those disparities did narrow. The gap shrank notably for Black students, who made up 15% of K-12 enrollment, but received 22% of arrests at school.

Three years ago, they made up the same share of enrollment, and experienced 32% of arrests at school.

Still, a top department official said the frequency with which students were arrested at school was deeply concerning.

Reports of bullying and harassment related to a student’s race, sex, or disability also fell notably by 64% — echoing other research that found a drop in online searches related to school bullying during that time. However, Black students were still more than twice as likely as their peers to experience race-based bullying or harassment.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Pete Buttigieg’s education plan highlights broad agreement among Democrats on K-12 policy — though differences on charters remain

2019-12-07T11:00:14+00:00

Pete Buttigieg’s pre-K-12 education plan calls for raising teacher pay, addressing school segregation, and banning for-profit charter schools.

If those ideas sound familiar, that’s because they echo many of the proposals of his top Democratic rivals, who have also released education plans. The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg has risen from obscurity to be a top contender, particularly in early primary states, alongside former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

“My plan will empower teachers,” said Buttigieg, whose husband, Chasten, is a junior high teacher on leave from a private school in Indiana. “I’ve seen up close the incredible challenges that educators across the country face, from late nights grading papers to emptying their own bank accounts to pay for school supplies.”

Buttigieg’s plan highlights how the leading Democratic candidates have converged on many key education policies, with one partial exception — charter schools. His proposal touches on the lightning rod issue only briefly, calling for stronger accountability, but without going nearly as far as his primary rivals, some of whom have called for halting all federal support for new charters. Warren has recently been embroiled in the debate, after being confronted by activists and parents critical of her stance on charter schools.

The campaign did not share whom Buttigieg sought guidance from in crafting the plan. But education activist Diane Ravitch said in a July blog post critical of Buttigieg that the campaign told her it had reached out to former Obama administration officials John King and Jim Shelton, as well as the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who praised the plan in a release Saturday.

You can read Buttigieg’s full plan here. Here are four things to know about it:

In many ways Buttigieg’s education plan matches his Democratic rivals — highlighting consensus on several key issues.

If you read Buttigieg’s or other candidates’ plan with their name blotted out, you would have a hard time knowing which Democrat’s plan it was. For instance, Buttigieg wants to triple Title I funding for schools that serve a high percentage of students from low-income families, which Biden and Sanders have also pledged to do. (Warren would quadruple it.)

Most or all of the major candidates have vowed to increase teacher diversity; raise teacher pay; reduce school segregation; close funding disparities; increase access to preschool programs; oppose vouchers for private school tuition; fully fund IDEA, the federal law for students with disabilities; strongly enforce federal civil rights laws, including reinstating regulations rolled back by the Trump administration; and replace Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

Buttigieg’s plan is no exception on any of these counts, though it varies on the specifics in some cases. For instance, he wants parents to pay for preschool based on how much they earn, with the poorest parents paying nothing — similar to his stance on higher education, which has been met with much debate — whereas others want to offer it for free to everyone.

And the plan also touches on a number of lower-profile issues — like increasing spending on schools for Native American students or expanding access to dual-language curriculum in early years — that some other plans don’t.

Like other candidates, Buttigieg promises to support the teaching profession by raising pay and status. “We need to honor teachers like soldiers, and pay them like doctors,” the plan states. More specifically it says that some of the new infusion of Title I dollars would have to be spent on raising teacher pay to ensure it’s competitive with that of other professionals.

Many of the candidates’ ideas, particularly on civil rights, are in line with those the Obama administration espoused. Notably absent, though, from any of the major candidates’ proposals, including Buttigieg’s, are concepts like more rigorous teacher evaluations and tying teacher pay to performance, which Obama’s Department of Education promoted. Those proved controversial, and the #RedforEd movement has turned focus — and public sympathy — away from performance evaluations and toward stagnant teacher pay.

Buttigieg isn’t promoting charter schools, but takes a less hostile approach than Sanders and Warren.

The plan runs 20 pages, but charter schools get just a single paragraph. Buttigieg seeks to “ban for-profit charter schools and ensure equal accountability for public charter schools.” This is in line with a number of Democrats who largely agree on these points. (We’ll hold aside that it would not be easy for the federal government to ban for-profit schools.)

“He will work with states to ensure that policy innovations from charter programs that benefit students can be subsequently shared to strengthen the traditional public school system,” the plan promises, though it doesn’t explain how. Buttigieg also would “take action” against state and local entities that oversee low-performing charter schools.

Buttigieg is silent on the federal Charter Schools Program, a fund to support new charter schools across the country. Sanders and Warren have called for halting or eliminating it altogether. A spokesperson for Buttigieg said he would stop those dollars from going to for-profit charters. (Federal guidance already prohibits CSP money from going directly to any for-profit entity; it can, however, go to a nonprofit charter that contracts its operations out to a for-profit company, so long as there is an “arm’s length” relationship between the two entities.)

Buttigieg is taking a somewhat more favorable stance towards charters than Warren or Sanders — but a less favorable one than President Obama, who supported the expansion of charter schools.

“I think that the promise of charter schools has been that ideas can be piloted there that will then benefit the overall system and find their way into traditional public schools,” Buttigieg told Education Week in August. “But I’m skeptical that we’re going to gain a lot through expansion of charter schools when we still have such severely underfunded traditional public education.”

The charter issue is fraught politically for Democrats. Recent polling shows support for these schools has declined in the party among white Democrats, but indicates stronger, but still mixed, backing among black and Hispanic Democrats.

Meanwhile, Biden, another leading contender, did not even touch on charter schools in his education plan. But in a recently released interview with the National Education Association, he said, “No privately funded charter school or private charter school would receive a penny of federal money — none,” he said. Asked to clarify, campaign spokesperson told Chalkbeat that Biden would seek to stop federal funding for for-profit charter schools.

Buttigieg plans to tackle school segregation.

Buttigieg offers a number of proposals to address school segregation. He would create a $500 million fund to incentivize “community-led” racial and economic school integration. And he says school districts looking to make major changes to their boundaries would have to first seek clearance from federal officials, who would check to see if those changes would exacerbate racial and economic segregation.

The idea appears to be aimed at preventing so-called “breakaway districts,” in which whiter, more affluent communities establish their own school districts by leaving districts with more students of color from low-income families. (This issue attracted Warren’s attention, too; in her education plan she says the departments of education and justice would monitor attempts to create breakaway districts and possibly take action to stop them.)

Buttigieg also says he would direct the departments of education and housing and urban development to issue guidance to help states integrate their neighborhoods and schools using funds set aside to create more affordable housing in high-performing school districts. Buttigieg plans to reinstate Obama-era guidance that allowed consideration of student race in some circumstances to integrate K-12 schools, which was rescinded by the Trump administration. He would also “immediately remove” restrictions on using federal funds to bus students for desegregation purposes. But those barriers exist in federal law and would require Congress to take action.

These policy ideas come as Buttigieg has faced criticism for saying he “worked for years under the illusion that our schools in my city were integrated, because they had to be, because of a court order.” He added that that was “true within the limits of the South Bend Community School District,” but it wasn’t in the rest of the county. While South Bend’s school district does enroll a much higher percentage of black and Hispanic students from low-income families than the districts that surround it, South Bend has long struggled to fulfill the terms of a desegregation order, and even today some schools are not in compliance with it.

There’s a fund for that.

Buttigieg’s plan calls for large increases in federal spending on education, partially through specific grant programs.

In addition to the $500 million desegregation fund, he’s also calling for a $10 billion “equity fund” for early education. It would go to programs targeting low-income students of color and using “novel teaching methods and materials, targeted support services, school-family partnership programs, communication and personalization technologies, and other innovative strategies.”

There’s also a new grant program of unspecified size that would help school districts adopt new ways to discipline students, instead of suspending or expelling them. Buttigieg also says he would triple funding to $3.5 billion for an existing federal grant program that funds student safety, health, technology, and arts programs. And he would create a fund to help high-poverty districts prepare students for the workforce through apprenticeships.

In total, the campaign estimates that its K-12 education proposals would cost the federal government an extra $425 billion over 10 years — for context, public elementary and high schools got $56 billion from the federal government in a single year, 2016. Buttigieg says he’ll pay for this and other proposals in a variety of ways, including increasing the capital gains tax for top earners and repealing recent corporate tax cuts.

Curious where all the Democratic presidential candidates stand on education? Read Chalkbeat’s tracker.

As schools close across the U.S., districts and families prepare for unprecedented disruption

2020-03-14T15:15:00+00:00

School closures rippled across the country in the wake of the new coronavirus, amounting to one of the most dramatic upheavals of American schooling in a century.

Over a dozen states, including Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, have called school off for a week or more. The nation’s second-largest school district, Los Angeles, is also closed for at least two weeks. As of Friday evening, Education Week estimated that at least 40 percent of students nationwide have been affected by closures.

Holdouts, like leaders in New York City, are facing increased pressure to close schools in hopes of limiting the spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. In some schools that have stayed open, attendance has fallen sharply.

There remains debate on whether closures are warranted to stop the spread of the virus. So far, most confirmed cases have been among adults, and children who’ve tested positive for the virus have had milder symptoms. But they still may play a role in spreading it.

Guidance released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encouraged schools to close in certain circumstances, while acknowledging other countries’ experiences haven’t proved closures would slow the illness.

The guidance says that shorter school closures, of two to four weeks, had not clearly proven effective in limiting the coronavirus spread in other countries. Closures of eight weeks or more, the CDC said, could be more effective.

Meanwhile, congressional leaders and the Trump administration are attempting to iron out a response to the crisis, including efforts to cushion the blow of school closures. “Our legislation protects our children, in particular the tens of millions of little children who rely on the free or reduced-price lunch they receive at schools,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. President Trump declared a state of emergency on Friday afternoon, and the House is expected to vote on a version of the coronavirus relief bill sometime Friday.

How long these school closures will last is difficult to predict, because much is unknown about the virus. “When you have an outbreak like this,” Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Friday, “it’s really impossible to predict the time element of when it’s going to peak and when it’s naturally going to go down.”

The CDC says while it has some data that can help communities decide when to close schools, “there is almost no available data on the right time to re-start schools.”

What is clear is that the mass closures of schools — particularly if they remain shuttered for many weeks — will create a series of cascading academic, economic, and social challenges. Here are some of them.

🔗Lost instruction

A key consequence: kids who aren’t in school aren’t getting instruction, at least not in the traditional way. Research suggests that closing schools for a few days probably won’t hurt students academically, but prolonged closures could affect students’ educational trajectories.

To avoid that, some districts have attempted to put in place “distance learning” structures — including computer programs, assignments sent home, and even a television channel in Los Angeles.

But this is difficult to pull off, and might exacerbate existing inequalities.

Virtual learning is much less effective than face-to-face instruction, studies have shown. Advocates for students with disabilities are particularly concerned. Guidance released by the Department of Education this week reiterated that schools attempting to deliver remote instruction must continue to serve students with disabilities.

“Sure, it could work for some kids, I just have my reservations on saying it’s going to work for all kids,” Jen Cole, who provides assistance to parents of students with disabilities through a Washington-based nonprofit, told Chalkbeat.

Some places, like Washington state, have discouraged schools from attempting distance learning at all. Districts that have tried going remote, like the Northshore School District in Washington, have already heard reports from parents who say their children are having a hard time staying focused.

🔗School meals

Over 30 million American children get meals from the National School Lunch Program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, is offering flexibility for schools that want to continue to offer meals to students even while closed. (States currently must apply for waivers from certain rules, such as one that requires students to eat meals together — which would partially defeat the purpose of closing schools.)

For instance, districts can designate food pick-up locations, at schools or other locations like libraries. In New York City, officials are offering free “grab and go” meals to the handful of schools that have closed so far, offering food like canned fruit, hummus, and cereal. When all of Memphis’ schools closed this week, community agencies quickly began food drives. A guidance document from the USDA says that districts could also consider handing out multiple days’ worth of meals at a time.

“We do think that that would be the best strategy,” said Crystal FitzSimons, of the Food Research and Action Center. “It seems a little silly to be pulling people back into a site to get meals.”

Congress is considering proposals to remove certain regulations that make it harder for districts to continue to offer meals. Currently, districts can’t be reimbursed for offering meals in areas that are not low-income.

“I’ve heard that from a couple schools — we’re just going to get kids meals and we’ll worry about it later,” FitzSimons said.

Carissa Moffat Miller, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said school districts need more flexibility and more money. “CCSSO urges Congress to approve new funding and flexibilities in existing programs, including but not limited to school nutrition, to allow states to operate these programs effectively under unprecedented circumstances,” she said in a statement.

🔗The economy

Closing schools would also have major consequences for the economy, which is already facing huge stress from the pandemic. One estimate suggests that closing all schools and daycares for four weeks would result in a $50 billion hit to the economy, or 0.2% of GDP. When kids are home, many parents miss work, too.

Some have argued that Congress should also expand access to food stamps, particularly for families with children — simultaneously addressing food insecurity and providing an economic boost. This is part of a bill that Congress is considering.

Another question is whether teachers and other staff will continue to be paid while school is out. Cutting off pay would of course harm staff, and could also hurt the economy more broadly.

“A lot of students and families are being thrust into situations they are not prepared for,” said Barbara McPherson, an educator in Washington’s Auburn School District. “Child care is a big issue as well as the unknown status of employment.” Seattle Public Schools, among the first districts to close down, said it will charge teachers three sick days, and then the district will cover up to 14 additional days. Some other districts have not made clear plans.

The full economic impact will depend on the federal government’s response.

🔗Summer school?

If students miss out on a significant amount of the school year, one solution is to expand summer school options.

Doug Harris, a Tulane University economist, has suggested the federal government fund such an effort. He proposed a roughly $8 billion stimulus to hire a third of American teachers to provide summer school over the course of six weeks.

Harris argues that this would also provide an economic boost, both by putting money in teachers’ pockets and allowing more parents to work by providing childcare during the summer.

“Yes, we can use modern technological tools to help students continue learning, at least a little, over the coming months,” Harris wrote. “But sometimes it’s best to fight the old-fashioned way. Summer school seems like one very promising approach to consider.”

Special education advocates have also suggested this would be a good way to make sure that students with disabilities are getting the services they missed while schools were closed.

🔗Testing

State tests are right around the corner, which means they’re likely to butt up against closures. And even if students return in time for tests, they will have lost instruction, raising questions about whether the exams could even provide a fair picture of student learning.

These exams have significant stakes — by federal law, they’re used to determine if schools are low-performing. Many districts also use them to decide whether students move on to the next grade, make admissions decisions for selective schools, and to evaluate teachers.

The U.S. Department of Education said Thursday that it would consider offering a one-year waiver for states and schools affected by closures. In turn, states might be able to get a waiver from the requirement of identifying low-performing schools for extra support. Other consequences would have to be figured out locally and at the state level.

The College Board also announced that it would cancel the administration of the SAT at hundreds of its testing centers.

Thousands of students with disabilities are set to ‘age out’ of school. After a pandemic year, they may get more time to prepare for what’s next.

2021-05-12T17:32:05+00:00

This was supposed to be the year that Jake Smith got a lot of hands-on practice working and doing tasks on his own as he got ready for life after school.

Jake has autism and Down syndrome and is in a life skills program at a high school in Harford County, Maryland. He is one of the thousands of young adults with disabilities in the U.S. who are over 18 but still in school — usually in publicly funded transitional programs that offer hands-on job training or time to learn life skills, like doing laundry or shopping for groceries.

Just before the pandemic hit, Jake’s mother, Tracy Smith, was encouraged by the progress her son made getting to class on his own and learning to vacuum at his job at a local hospice. But when school went virtual and work stopped, a lot of plans went out the window.

Monthly field trips to practice social interactions ended, and Jake’s in-person speech therapy moved to video chat. Through a screen, it was much harder to practice the kinds of social skills Jake needed to work on.

“You can’t teach it virtual,” Smith said. “You have to teach that in a group.”

This month, Jake turned 21. The milestone birthday means he is about to “age out” of his program, a challenge for young adults like him in any year, but made all the more difficult because of the disruption wrought by COVID-19.

Now, lawmakers in at least half a dozen states — Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania — have introduced bills that would give this group of students additional time in school after they would usually age out. Smith is among the parents in Maryland advocating for extra time for their children.

“Another year in the school, especially in the setting he’s familiar with, would have really helped him build that confidence to move forward,” Smith said. “And it would give him those skills that he could take with him.”

It’s unclear how many of the legislative efforts will be successful. But the wave of bills is an acknowledgment that many older students with disabilities didn’t get what they needed during the pandemic, and it points to a larger question: What exactly is owed to the students who went without services while schools were virtual or disrupted for months?

“There is so much thinking about K-12, but it’s really critical that this group of young adults not get lost in all of the other challenges that schools and states are facing,” said Wendy Tucker, the senior director of policy at the nonprofit Center for Learner Equity, which advocates for students with disabilities.

In many states, the cutoff for students with disabilities to receive services is 21 or 22, as federal special education funds can’t pay for services after a student turns 22. States and districts that allow students to stay longer tap into their own money.

Tens of thousands of students nationwide are likely to “age out” of their educational services this year. In the 2018-19 school year, the latest year with federal data available, 55,000 students with disabilities who were 20 or 21 received services across the U.S., though that leaves out some students in states that allow students to stay longer.

In some places, those students have already been told they’re entitled to more.

Virginia set aside money in its budget to pay for students who turned 22 to attend school for another year. New York City has said students set to age out of education services can stay an extra year, and state education officials in New York are “strongly encouraging” school districts to provide extra time this summer or next school year to students turning 21. In Clark County, Nevada, school officials will let students who’ve turned 21 stay an extra year if their special education team says it’s needed.

In Broward County, Florida, schools are letting students who’ve turned 22 stay on for the district’s summer program. Orange County schools in Florida also are letting students who turn 22 this spring attend the district’s extended school year this summer.

But timing is critical. Advocates worry that the longer these efforts take, the harder it becomes to get the word out to families whose children may qualify for additional help, and for districts to hire the staff they need to pull it off. Laws requiring districts to offer students additional time or services, they say, would make it easier to inform families of their rights — instead of directing them through the usual complaint process to get make-up services, which can be difficult to navigate, especially for families who can’t afford private legal help.

“If we have to do it one by one, and case by case, it also means, realistically, that families with more resources are going to be more likely to get the additional time,” said Ashley Grant, who oversees postsecondary readiness for the nonprofit Advocates for Children of New York, which is part of a coalition that’s supporting the New York bill.

So far, the federal government hasn’t officially weighed in. But some advocates, including Tucker’s organization, hope federal officials will encourage states to extend services for students with disabilities and clarify whether schools could use coronavirus relief money to pay for it — which has been a sticking point in some states where legislation has been introduced.

Students who receive transitional services were especially affected by the pandemic. While many schools tried to provide them remotely — using virtual job shadows or teaching students how to grocery shop online — parents say it often paled compared to the hands-on training their children were supposed to receive. Some say their children simply couldn’t access the virtual stand-in.

And even when students went back to school in person, businesses and vocational programs often were closed or not operating at full capacity, making it hard for students to participate in their usual job training.

In Chicago, Merari Olascoaga’s son attended a specialty public high school for young adults with disabilities before turning 22 and aged out in March.

Olascoaga’s son, who has cerebral palsy, had anticipated spending time in the community this year to learn about jobs that might be a good fit for his skills. But while school was remote, that didn’t happen.

Jake Smith cooks at home. During the pandemic, his mother devised exercises to help her son cook, clean, and track events in a day planner.

“It’s really frustrating as a parent to see your child being left out,” said Olascoaga, who is hoping proposed legislation in Illinois will give her son and others more time in school. “It’s not only for my child, it’s for all the kids who are in this situation. Because all of them have dreams, and they dream to find something in the community, be part of it, and be given the opportunity to explore and get the help that they need.”

Many families tried to fill the gap in services by creating their own lessons at home to help their children practice their skills. Smith, for example, devised exercises to help her son cook, clean, and track events in a day planner.

Another critical part of transitional programs is helping students and families understand the complicated web of agencies that manage vocational training and job placement for adults with disabilities and how to apply for services they may qualify for after they age out of school. During the pandemic, many families didn’t get the same support in this area.

“It’s tough enough when you have a team around you,” said Peg Kinsell, the institutional policy director at SPAN, a parent advocacy group in New Jersey. “But when all that’s gone, they’re really left out on their own.”

That happened to Thomas McHale, whose school district in Westchester County, New York, paid for him to attend a private day school from the time he was in kindergarten until he turned 21 last year. McHale, who has autism and a developmental disability, said he felt displaced and abandoned when he was suddenly no longer able to see his classmates and teachers in person.

Instead of the daily therapy he was used to, McHale’s therapist called once a week and sometimes visited in person in the driveway. It helped, but it wasn’t the same, McHale said.

Over the years, school helped him become more social and learn how to cope when he felt angry. But without the hugs and other in-person support he was used to, McHale says he reverted to old behaviors.

“I was punching walls again,” he said. “I was not happy. Basically, my 21-year-old self was put back into a 5-year-old’s mindset.”

Thomas McHale cares for a goat at the local farm where he works in Westchester County, New York.

His mother, Francesca Hagadus-McHale, is among the parents in New York who are working with lawmakers to try to get services extended for students who either aged out last school year, like her son, or those who will age out this year. Though her state encouraged districts to extend those services, her district did not opt to do it.

If the legislation passes, Hagadus-McHale says she’d want to see her son get additional therapy and help planning for life after school. Hagadus-McHale made dozens of phone calls to help secure a part-time job at a local farm where her son feeds and cares for the animals, but she says more could have been done to help prepare him for the transition.

McHale says if he and other students could get back missed services, it would be “extremely helpful,” and he’s supportive of efforts to try to make that happen.

“It felt like I was in limbo,” McHale said. “I think getting back that time with your therapist, or just seeing them more, would help rekindle that bond that you had before it got stripped away.”

U.S. math scores dropped, but reading and science results held steady on key international test

2023-12-05T10:00:00+00:00

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It’s a familiar story, with a few interesting plot twists.

That’s how one top federal official described the 2022 test results for American students on a high-profile international exam that allows for comparisons of what 15-year-olds around the world know and can do in math, reading, and science.

The results released Tuesday from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, showed that math scores dropped significantly last year for 15-year-olds in the U.S. compared with 2018, the last time this test was given. But there was also encouraging news: Reading and science scores held steady over that time. And the nation’s PISA rankings actually rose because other countries’ performance dipped.

“These results are another piece of evidence showing the crisis in mathematics achievement,” said Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the PISA in the U.S. “Only now can we see that it is a global concern.”

The decline in math scores following the pandemic has become a topic of national concern, as scores for fourth and eighth graders dropped significantly on a key national test last year. Students in several states also saw big math declines in COVID’s wake, though there’s been some recent recovery.

Some educators say that’s because math skills build on one another, so students who missed critical lessons earlier in the pandemic may have a hard time filling in those blanks and catching up to their current grade level.

The scores come as officials and educators in several states are weighing the best way to teach students math — and how much classes should focus on real-world uses of math versus more theoretical applications. Others are trying to expand access to higher-level math courses like algebra and calculus. Historically, Black and Latino students have had much less access to these classes than their peers.

“There are a lot of hypotheses about what we need to do differently to move ourselves forward in mathematics,” Carr said. “But clearly we haven’t figured it out.”

Even though American students’ average scores dropped or didn’t change much, the U.S. climbed in the international rankings in all three subjects, as scores declined in other countries that tend to outperform the U.S.

The U.S. improved its rankings even as its students reported that their schools were closed on average for longer periods of time during the pandemic than their peers in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

The relationship between academic performance and the length of school closures was small, Carr said, meaning that the variance in scores was mostly due to other factors. Some OECD countries that reopened for in-person learning more quickly than the U.S. saw steeper drops on the test, she said.

That finding echoes the analysis of a research team released last year that found remote learning was a contributor to score declines, but it wasn’t the primary driver of those academic losses.

Among the 81 international school systems that participated in the PISA last year, the U.S. ranked 26th in math achievement, up from 29th among the same group of school systems in 2018.

Among the 37 members of the OECD that gave the test, most of which are higher-income countries, the U.S. ranked 22nd in math achievement.

Norway, France, Iceland, and Portugal, for example, all scored better than the U.S. in math in 2018, but are now scoring at the same level statistically.

The U.S. ranked sixth in reading and 10th in science among the 81 school systems that gave the PISA last year. In 2018, the U.S. ranked eighth in reading and 11th in science.

The steady reading results among U.S. high schoolers run counter to the significant reading declines observed last year for younger students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Academic recovery in reading has also been uneven. Carr said that could indicate that the NAEP has a higher difficulty level than the PISA.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona pointed to the results as an indicator of the impact of the federal investments made in schools during the pandemic, much of which was spent on academic recovery initiatives, such as tutoring and mental health support for students.

That spending “kept the United States in the game,” Cardona said. Without it, he said, the U.S. would be “in the same boat” as other countries that didn’t spend as much and saw steeper declines.

The PISA was given to around 4,600 students across the U.S. and some 620,000 students around the world.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

To teach about Israel and Palestine, this geography teacher sets ground rules for tough conversations

2023-12-13T15:30:00+00:00

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As a kid, Morgan Patel was good at math and science in school. But she never liked how problems in those classes often had just one answer.

It was the intense, but meaningful, discussions that social studies provoked that drew her in.

“You’re talking with humans about humans and how they interact,” she said. “I just love talking about humans and how they’re imperfect.”

So it’s fitting that Patel, now in her 11th year teaching high school in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools, does that on a daily basis in her Advanced Placement Human Geography class.

It’s a course that delves into where humans live in the world and why, with units examining how that’s shaped everything from culture and religion, to language and politics.

The class can be heavy. Even before this year, Patel taught about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the violent partition of India and Pakistan, the decades of fighting that led to the formation of South Sudan, and the ensuing civil war. The class includes other topics that can be difficult to discuss, too, such as human trafficking, gender-based violence, and food insecurity, including in the U.S.

Patel, who holds a prestigious National Board Certification teaching credential, says it’s her goal to help students wade through polarizing topics — by bringing in historical context, and not leaping to conclusions — so they can do the same when they consume media about these subjects on their own.

“Even though it’s tough to teach this,” she said, “I feel lucky to teach it.”

Patel spoke with Chalkbeat a few days after the most recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended about how she approaches complicated subjects like the Israel-Hamas war, the ground rules she sets for respectful class discussions, and why she asks her students to document their slang each year.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your class teaches about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Before this year, how would students interact with that history?

I teach in a very diverse school. It absolutely has kids with family in one of those places sometimes, or they might be Muslim, Arab, Jewish, or Israeli. I’ve even had both [Muslim and Jewish students] in the same class before.

Even before this year, they would see things on the news or they’d hear from adults that this is a really bad conflict, but they wouldn’t understand why. So I always spend a lot of time on the why.

I use a lot of videos and maps. I show a picture of Jerusalem and I show how it’s divided into quarters. And I show a picture of the mosque, the Western Wall, and the major Christian church, and how they are all literally on top of each other. And then I use maps of the land over time — the Palestinian lands and Israeli land changing, depending on political or cultural events.

History doesn’t always have this visual component. It makes it much easier to grasp what’s going on.

We use a lot of geographic data, like looking at life expectancy or the unemployment rate in Palestine versus Israel. There is also a great video from a series on YouTube called “Middle Ground.” The kids can see both sides and see that there are biases on both sides, but that there are also people who are willing and trying to make this conflict better. Which I think is important for them to see.

AP Human Geography teacher, Morgan Patel, presents during class.

When students better understand this conflict, how does that help inform what you do later in the curriculum?

Once they learn how to read a map, and the data on that map, they understand that the key is picking up on spatial patterns. You look at data of Jerusalem, and who lives there, and you immediately see how diverse it is and that that can cause issues between groups of people who all say that’s their land. And are all not wrong. This conflict is not different from many other ones in that same pattern.

How do you handle discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in class?

More than others, the students who have an opinion [about this conflict] are very set in that opinion. So it’s not like other topics where we might have a discussion or a debate and there is an attempt to convert people to the other side.

We set ground rules, as I always do for a tough conversation. It’s always: Be an active listener. Try not to generalize your experience. You are an ‘I,’ you’re not a ‘we.’ Ask questions when you don’t understand. Make sure you are trying to understand the other side, instead of talking over them or assuming what you know is right.

You don’t have to agree with someone, but you have to respect them. If you can’t be in here, or you can’t be doing this, take a walk, or tell me. I can usually pick up on when it’s getting a little intense for someone.

You don’t have to participate at all. Sitting there and listening is participating. I never force them to talk. This would not be the kind of thing where you should do random calling.

You’re about to teach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in your class this year. Is there anything you’re going to focus on more than in the past?

Something new this year that I’ve never focused on as much is how to consume media. [Students] need to realize that sometimes, for your own mental health, it’s OK to step away from social media. But then, if you are going to be in it, know what you’re getting into and know how to consume it properly so you’re not overwhelmed.

I am more nervous than in past years to talk about this conflict. I usually leave open time for questions, which I will probably do, but I don’t want it to turn into a really contentious discussion. I just feel like it could end badly if I allow an open forum. So maybe we’ll switch to some kind of individual processing [such as writing or drawing]. I think a moment of breathing and thinking through on your own might be great.

[In past years], I always explain to them: I am severely summarizing something way more complicated, and I’m not telling you all the players. But because they’ve now seen the actions taken by Hamas and [the Israel Defense Forces], I think I am going to go more into that, defining who those groups are. I’m going to talk more about the actual current conflict — the attack starting it and the retaliation after that, and then the [temporary] ceasefire. I don’t know yet if I, or they, can handle showing videos.

You said you’re feeling a little bit more nervous to teach this than in the past. As you’re getting ready to teach this unit, how are you thinking about that?

In the past when I taught this, by this point, they would know my thoughts on religion and my own religion. They would know that I am not on either side of this conflict. I am a very unbiased third party is usually what I’d call myself.

But my issue this year, as I’m gearing up to teach this, I’m finding it more and more difficult to stand there and be unbiased. I am not going to shy away from showing the injustices that are happening, especially in Gaza. I’ll just try to go about it as unbiased as I can, but ignoring it is also not unbiased.

I think what might be important, which another teacher showed me, is adjusting the way you think about this. We’re very much taught to be like: OK, this is right, or that is right. When really there is gray area here, and it’s OK to see why both sides are wrong and both sides are right in different ways. We’re not looking to choose sides here. We’re showing injustices that are happening on both sides.

The conflicts you teach often aren’t taught in other classes, so this might be the only time kids are learning about it.

Right, they’ll briefly have it mentioned to them, but it’s never explained. I love that I get to teach a course like that, but it’s also a lot. These are civil wars and genocides. You have to go about it with an open heart and open mind. I know my students very well, but I sometimes have no idea they have a connection to a certain place I’m talking about.

Do you have a favorite lesson that you teach each year?

The culture unit, in general, is my favorite. Within culture, we talk about language, and origins of language, why different languages are where they are. As part of that, we talk about dialects. We talk about code-switching and how most of us change how we speak based on age, race, etc.

I have my students make a teenage slang dictionary as their dialect. I’m putting it together right now. It gives them a chance to be their true selves. I’ve saved it over the years; it’s kind of like a time capsule into how language, and how slang, changes.

Do you show them the old versions?

I was just doing it [a few] days ago. They were like: We don’t say that anymore!

What’s really cool is sometimes it’s the same word, but it’s just changed over time, and they have to redefine it in the 2023 version. It’s very realistic, and they enjoy that.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Schools may lose access to emergency hotel stays, a critical strategy to help homeless students

2023-12-18T10:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

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SAN DIEGO — Each request in Linda Lee Garibay’s inbox offers a tiny glimpse into San Diego County’s housing crisis and its profound effect on kids.

On a Thursday in early November, a family with four children in the San Diego Unified School District had just been evicted. Another San Diego family with a 6-year-old needed to leave the trailer park where they’d been staying. In the Poway Unified district, a family of four needed a respite after sleeping in their car for over a month.

Lee Garibay, a project specialist for the San Diego County education office, reviewed each family’s situation, then helped to reserve them a free room at a Motel 6 close to their child’s school. She’s the engine behind what is likely the country’s largest emergency hotel stay program supporting students experiencing homelessness.

“You spend so much time dealing with families that need help and not having anything to give them,” said Susie Terry, who coordinates homeless education services for San Diego County. “I had homeless liaisons who were just like, ‘This is the first time I feel like I actually have some real help to offer.’”

San Diego’s Project Rest and other programs like it exemplify the way schools are increasingly expanding their work beyond teaching and learning to meet the basic needs of students and their families. Hotel stays have become a crucial strategy for schools seeking to address rising student homelessness and chronic absenteeism. They are also unprecedented: Never before have schools had the money and permission to offer this kind of material aid at such a scale.

School staff and advocates for homeless youth say these programs have been transformative: The stability they provide boosts school attendance and allows kids to focus on their schoolwork. But despite their impact, programs like Project Rest are at risk of disappearing.

That’s because many are funded with federal pandemic aid for homeless students that goes away next school year, and along with it, special spending rules that allow for hotel stays. Federal officials have said schools cannot use the federal funds they typically receive to help homeless students on short-term housing, such as hotel stays.

Terry is searching for funding alternatives, but isn’t hopeful.

“I think it’s a shame,” she said, “because it’s desperately needed.”

Linda Lee Garibay at a park in Chula Vista, California. Lee Garibay is a project specialist for the San Diego County education office who books free short-term hotel stays for families.

Why schools are turning to hotels to help homeless kids

Before the pandemic, Terry got the occasional call from a school liaison asking if the county education office could do anything to help a family that needed a place to stay. All she could do was refer them to other agencies, where families often had to wait for housing. The federal McKinney-Vento program that provides funds for homeless students has a miniscule budget and doesn’t allow for short-term hotel stays.

So when the federal government gave states and schools $800 million in COVID aid to help homeless students — eight times what they’d usually get in a year — plus instructions that they could use that money for short-term housing assistance, Terry decided to hire a staffer and launch the hotel program.

She knew there would be high demand. More than 20,000 homeless students lived in San Diego County during the 2021-22 school year, state data show. That meant 4.3% of students did not have a fixed and adequate place to stay at night, compared with the national average of 2.4%.

But even Terry sorely underestimated the need. Initially, her team expected one or two requests a week. They typically get 10 a day.

“It was shocking,” she said.

Since the program launched 20 months ago, it has housed more than 1,200 families. Together, San Diego County’s education office and a dozen local school districts have spent around $640,000 to run it. On a single day in November, 64 students and their families were staying at hotels through the program.

In the past, schools typically advised families in need of housing to call the county’s social services helpline. But they were unlikely to get into a shelter within a day, or even a week. So parents and kids often slept in their cars or on the street while they waited. Now, through Project Rest, families can check into a hotel room within 24 hours.

Students have needed a hotel stay for all kinds of reasons, Lee Garibay says. Many were staying with family or friends and were asked to leave with little warning.

Some need a break from sleeping in their cars. San Diego’s safe parking program offers security, but no showers, and even those lots have waitlists.

Others are fleeing domestic violence. Some stay with family during the week, but need lodging on weekends. Some saw their homes destroyed by a fire or landslide.

And this fall, Lee Garibay helped a 17-year-old with a 2-week-old baby after they ran out of days at a local shelter and had nowhere else to go.

Many shelters and housing resources cater to single adults, so it can be “transformative” when schools can find housing for families, said Barbara Duffield, the executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of homeless youth.

“It’s a critical intervention at this moment,” she said.

Related: As families struggle to find housing, more schools are hiring staff to help. The clock is ticking.

How hotel stays can help homeless students

A key feature of the program is that families are offered all kinds of support while they stay at the hotel. Families often enroll in CalFresh, which helps low-income families pay for food, and get connected with a housing case manager.

Some families have cried when they found out a person would help them look for housing, Terry said. The county education office doesn’t keep data on how many families find stable housing, but case workers are sometimes successful. In early November, a social worker in the South Bay Union School District wrote to Lee Garibay that a family could check out of their motel room because an agency had found them permanent housing. “That’s what we like to hear!” Lee Garibay exclaimed.

The program can also lead to kids getting more support at school.

Some families who’ve stayed in hotels weren’t identified as homeless by their school before — often because they were afraid to let the staff know — and didn’t realize their child is legally entitled to stay at their school and receive transportation, even if they move.

Julia Sutton, a social worker for the Chula Vista Elementary School District in California, looks over homes and an industrial area near Finney Elementary in late November.

Social workers in the Chula Vista Elementary School District, for example, make sure families staying at a hotel know about other services the district can offer, whether that’s priority access to before- and after-school programs, trauma-informed counseling for their child, or reimbursement for driving to school.

Lee Garibay logs the information of every family who uses the program — how many kids they have, what schools they attend, what help they need — in a giant blue spreadsheet. If a family uses the program for a second time, Lee Garibay looks at which resources they were connected with and tries to figure out what helped — and what didn’t.

“We work in education, we don’t work in housing,” she said. “But at the same time, from my perspective, if we don’t help assist them with housing, how are we going to make sure that they are stable in their education?”

The Chula Vista Elementary School District has become one of the county’s top referrers to the program. They’ve housed 55 families in hotels since the start of the school year.

Located just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the district of 29,000 serves families who live in million-dollar homes and families who sleep in store parking lots. The community has no family shelter or official safe parking program. Depending on traffic, the nearest shelter that accepts children can be over an hour away by car — a trip many families can’t afford in San Diego County, where gas prices are much higher than the national average.

Additionally, the rising cost of food and rent since the pandemic and an increase in asylum-seeking families crossing the border have intensified housing needs, school staff say.

On left, backpacks that social worker Julia Sutton keeps for children who need them at Finney Elementary.

Julia Sutton is one of eight social workers who works with students experiencing homelessness in the district. Academics improve when kids have lights to do their homework, Sutton said, and they’re sleeping on a bed, not crunched up in the car.

Knowing they have a place to stay can put children at ease. Sutton recalls one student who came up to her in early November to excitedly report: “I heard we have more nights at the hotel!” Mothers have told the social workers that when their kids see the Motel 6 has a pool, it helps them feel like they’re not in crisis, if only for a little while.

“It’s only 15 days, but it’s more stable than jumping from place to place each night,” Sutton said. “They’re still in crisis, but at least they’re getting to school every day and there is a deeper sense of community with your school. They feel supported.”

Making sure kids and families feel safe

In San Diego, Project Rest is a partnership between the county education office and San Diego Youth Services, a nonprofit that supports youth experiencing homelessness and has a corporate contract with Motel 6. The streamlined process is easier for service providers to navigate than working with individual hotels, said Gillian Leal, a program manager for the organization.

A family needs a government-issued ID to check in, but doesn’t have to put down a credit card for damages. That arrangement is crucial. For one, many families don’t have a credit card. And there’s no chance that a paperwork glitch will result in a canceled room.

The San Diego program allows families to stay at a hotel for five nights at a time. If their school district is contributing funds, they can stay for up to 15. But elsewhere, school districts have been hesitant to allow hotel stays for that long.

Gillian Leal, program manager for San Diego Youth Services' TAY Academy, sorts through clothing donations meant to support youth experiencing homelessness on Monday, Nov. 27.

When U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona first issued guidance for the $800 million in COVID aid in early 2021, he wrote that the funds could be used for short-term, temporary housing, such as “a few days in a motel.” Many school officials interpreted that to mean two or three days, although Terry said that short time frame can make it hard to get families help in a compassionate way.

This fall, after nearly two dozen education organizations, including SchoolHouse Connection, urged the U.S. Department of Education to explicitly permit longer motel stays, a top official issued a clarification that the length of short-term housing provided could vary based on families’ circumstances and other factors.

Similar programs exist elsewhere. In Ohio, Cincinnati Public Schools partners with a local nonprofit that serves homeless youth to house families at a Quality Inn along a public bus route. They’ve housed more than 220 families at the hotel over the last year and a half.

In central Florida, Gigi Salce, a wraparound services specialist for the School District of Osceola County, has worked with Stayable Suites and Rodeway Inn. The partnership has helped families get off housing wait lists and kept kids from sleeping in Walmart parking lots.

And on California’s Central Coast, the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District has housed 63 families through its partnership with Motel 6 over the last year and a half. Donnie Everett, an assistant superintendent who oversees support services for the district, said the program has boosted attendance and kept students on track for graduation.

But there are some challenges beyond schools’ control.

If the area is a tourism destination, rooms can fill up quickly. In San Diego, for example, the program is harder and more expensive to run during the annual Pride Festival and Comic-Con. Rural areas, like San Diego’s mountainous East County, are less likely to have hotels near schools. And some hotels are deterred by the possibility of damages or last-minute cancellations.

“It was a bit of a struggle to find the right hotel that would accept families,” said Katie Jensen of UpSpring, the nonprofit that books rooms for Cincinnati students. “People don’t necessarily want homeless families on their properties.”

School districts may not be able to afford their hotel stay programs once they exhaust federal COVID relief funds. In an email, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education said those relief dollars could be used for short-term housing because social distancing rules meant shelters weren’t available to many families. That’s no longer the case — and if McKinney-Vento program funds were spent on housing, they would quickly be exhausted, leaving little to provide for students’ educational needs, the spokesperson said.

The McKinney-Vento program, which focuses on making sure homeless students have access to the same educational opportunities as their peers, is around $100 million a year for the whole country, compared with $800 million in pandemic assistance for homeless students.

Everett in Monterey is working to secure private funding for his district’s program. Terry is looking to see if she can tap into county or state funds to keep a smaller version of their program alive.

Some states have decided to step in. Maine started a pilot program this year that gives schools emergency money to prevent student homelessness, and one allowable use is a short-term hotel stay. Since 2016, Washington state has offered grants to provide stability to homeless students that can be used on hotel stays of up to three months.

A school bus outside Finney Elementary on Friday, Nov. 3. The school is part of the Chula Vista Elementary School District, which has housed dozens of families in hotels this year.

Mary Jane Palacios, the assistant manager of a Motel 6 that works with Project Rest, says hotels and motels that partner with schools need to make sure their properties are welcoming, and treat families with empathy and dignity.

At her location in Chula Vista, for example, if a family leaves behind their belongings, the staff will hold items for up to 30 days.

“We know you have a whole life inside of that room,” she said.

Palacios experienced homelessness as a child, and remembers what it felt like to walk out of a hotel with her mother and to be bullied at school.

“I totally get where a lot of the struggling moms are coming from, I totally get where the kids are coming from,” said Palacios, who watches each morning as families fan out in different directions from the Motel 6 parking lot, some running to catch the trolley to go to school.

So while she tells families to remember that their circumstances are temporary, she also stocks the pool chest with floaties for kids to play with. She makes sure the hotel is decked out with spider webs and candy for Halloween. And in December, her staff hands out hot cocoa and decorates a real Christmas tree.

“I like to put that out for the kids,” Palacios said, “because I wish those programs were there for us when we were little.”

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

As families struggle to find housing, more schools are hiring staff to help. The clock is ticking.

2023-12-21T10:00:00+00:00

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CINCINNATI — It was late September when Latoya Singley got the eviction notice saying she and her 6-year-old had seven days to clear out of their apartment.

Singley called Cincinnati’s shelter hotline repeatedly for weeks, but there were no beds available. Singley and her son couldn’t stay long with Singley’s sister, because having guests would jeopardize her sister’s subsidized housing.

Singley worried about her son, who’s autistic and needs specialized support. “It would be different if it was just me,” Singley said. “But I have a child — I can’t be outside.”

Her frequent calls to the hotline yielded results. An intake worker referred Singley’s case to Megan Rahill, a shelter and housing specialist for Cincinnati Public Schools. Rahill flagged the family with a bright orange “EXTREMELY HIGH” priority label and pushed them to the top of shelter waitlists. Just in time, space opened up at Bethany House, the city’s main family shelter.

“It changed so much for us,” Singley said in early December. They felt safe, instead of scared. Her son enrolled in an elementary school where Singley liked the teachers and therapists. And she landed an appointment to check out a two-bedroom apartment.

Latoya Singley at Bethany House, Cincinnati's main family shelter. She's one of many parents who received housing help from Cincinnati Public Schools this year.

Rahill is part of a growing contingent of school staffers whose primary job is to help students and their families navigate housing systems. Many districts have used their share of an unprecedented $800 million in COVID relief funding for homeless students to shrink gaping holes in the social safety net, providing services that didn’t used to be schools’ responsibilities.

Schools have leaned into this type of work in part because research shows housing instability affects everything from attendance to test scores to graduation rates.

Project Connect, Cincinnati Public Schools’ program that supports students and families experiencing homelessness, used to provide mostly educational support. Now, with $1.5 million in COVID aid and more staff, Project Connect ensures fewer families have to sort through a complex web of housing and social service agencies alone.

Against a rising tide of family homelessness, Cincinnati’s housing systems navigators are on track to provide help to twice as many students this school year as last year.

But the looming expiration of pandemic funding means this help could be going away. Rahill’s shelter and housing position, for example, is only funded through June.

“We won’t have the staff, we won’t have the same level of services — unless we find some miracle funding,” said Rebeka Beach, who manages Project Connect.

How housing systems navigators help homeless students

The idea of hiring a navigator started in the health care industry in the 1990s. The American Cancer Society was an early pioneer, deploying navigators who helped patients get screenings, treatment, and family support.

Schools picked up the model at the urging of federal education officials and advocates for homeless youth, who said it made sense for schools because staff were already in contact with families, and often had their trust.

Having a person who specializes in housing has allowed the Cincinnati school district to form closer relationships with local shelters and housing agencies, Rahill said. That’s helped families with kids get priority access to a limited supply of shelter beds and housing vouchers.

Megan Rahill, a shelter and housing specialist for Cincinnati Public Schools, calls a family in her office at Project Connect.

When Rahill was a homeless student liaison supporting 20 Cincinnati elementary schools, she often wished she could do more for families. Parents would tell her, “OK, thank you for the uniforms and transportation, but can you refer me for housing?” she said.

Rahill’s work means more families get help faster. So far this school year, she’s referred 522 children and teens to a shelter, a housing voucher, or another kind of housing support. That’s nearly as many as the district helped all of last school year.

That extra help is coming as student homelessness in Cincinnati is rising. Project Connect has identified nearly 2,700 children and teens as homeless so far this year, an increase of more than 20% compared with this time last year.

School staff say there’s a few reasons for that. The average stay at the main family shelter has stretched to over two months as families struggle to find housing. That creates longer waitlists. Rent has risen in Cincinnati much faster than in other cities, and evictions are up, following the end of pandemic-era protections. And families lucky enough to obtain a housing choice voucher are finding it increasingly difficult to find landlords who will accept the rental subsidy.

Rahill sees how that housing crunch has affected families.

On a Friday in early December, she spoke on the phone with the mother of five elementary-age children who had a month to leave their home of six years. Their heat was broken and a city inspection turned up faulty wiring — a “death trap,” the mother had been told. The landlord wasn’t returning her calls. As the stress mounted, she could tell it was affecting one of her children’s behavior at school.

Rahill made sure the parent knew about her rights to relocation assistance, and shared a list of apartments that may accept housing vouchers. Then she offered to refer her to an agency that could help pay for a security deposit and first month’s rent — a step the mother had tried on her own without success.

“If it comes through me, then you are more likely to hear from them,” Rahill explained. She urged the mother to hang on to her number: “We would definitely make sure that you guys weren’t out on the street.”

Before she hung up, Rahill had one more thing to say. “You were mentioning that you guys weren’t going to be able to have Christmas,” she began. The district was hosting a toy drive, but was at capacity. “Do you mind if I put you on the waiting list and I’ll give you a call if we have leftover toys?”

Later that Friday, Rahill got a message from another mother who was sleeping in her car with her four kids, including a preschooler. She’d applied for a housing voucher with the district’s help, but hadn’t heard back from the housing authority yet.

“I’m really desperate at this point,” the mother said in her voicemail. “I just need somewhere for me and my kids to go.”

Rahill caught her breath as she listened, then dialed the parent’s number. She offered to make a priority shelter referral that would expedite the process.

After she hung up, she highlighted the family in bright orange. Extremely high priority.

Project Connect provides jackets, shoes, uniforms, backpacks, and more for Cincinnati students in need.

Schools can’t clear all the housing hurdles

As part of her work, Rahill made a 10-page guide for families. It has everything from how to apply for a housing voucher to where kids can get a free haircut. She knows a kennel that is willing to take a pet so that a family can move into shelter. And her shelter connections stretch to Indiana.

When the local shelters are full, Rahill can book families a few free nights at a local Quality Inn using COVID relief funds. The hotel owners charge Project Connect a discounted $75 a night, and sometimes extend that rate to families so they can stay longer.

“Our community needs help, and if we can’t step up, who will?” said co-owner Kevin Patel.

Related: Schools may lose access to emergency hotel stays, a critical strategy to help homeless students

But Rahill can’t solve all problems. Perhaps most importantly, Project Connect is still limited by a dearth of affordable housing — a problem that plagues communities nationwide.

Rahill can usually only get families into a shelter when they are sleeping outside or in their car. Yet that situation has become more common in recent months.

Charity Tyne works part time with Project Connect to assist Spanish-speaking families.

Many immigrant families, especially newly arrived families from Venezuela and Nicaragua, don’t qualify for widely used public programs. And without Spanish-speaking case workers, they struggled to access the help that was available.

To address that gap, Project Connect used COVID aid to hire Charity Tyne to work part time with Spanish-speaking families. Before Tyne, Project Connect used interpretation services or Google Translate, but that often failed to detect when families were in need.

“There have been many instances where someone has called a family and has said: ‘Are you OK with housing?’ And they’ll be like ‘Yes, yes.’” Tyne said. “And then if they’re called by someone who speaks Spanish you hear the whole story.”

Because many immigrant families don’t qualify for benefits, Tyne orders them groceries and delivers them herself. She has built up a list of landlords who charge low rents and are willing to be flexible on rental history and employment.

It’s labor-intensive work. Recently, it took Tyne 50 calls to help one family with four children rent an apartment.

More than 100 Spanish-speaking families have Tyne’s cell phone number now.

‘There should be more of a safety net’

As schools across the country have expanded their work to meet students’ basic needs — from providing food to shelter to mental health care — one downside is that families and outside organizations may think schools have the ability to do more than they can.

Rahill distributes housing voucher applications from Cincinnati’s housing authority to families who don’t have a stable mailing address. Now, some parents call Rahill frustrated, mistakenly believing she — and not the housing authority — is processing their application.

“It just shows the gap,” she said. “There should be more of a safety net around people that’s not just some COVID funding through the school district.”

Student homelessness has risen in Cincinnati this year, and school staff say more families are sleeping outside or in their cars.

Many school districts, like Cincinnati, are weighing whether they can afford to keep the staff they hired with one-time COVID relief, said Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab, a research center at Georgetown University that studies school finance.

“That’s the tricky question,” she said. “Are we saying, basically, that when the housing system is supposed to meet the needs of kids first, it’s up to the school system to hold their feet to the fire?”

Some educators say housing and education are too closely linked for schools to just sit back and let someone else handle it.

When Cincinnati teacher Clarice Williams tutors kids in the evenings at Bethany House through Project Connect, she often meets students who have attended three or four elementary schools. Others missed large chunks of school.

Clarice Williams, a reading specialist for Cincinnati Public Schools, tutors children staying at the city's main family shelter through Project Connect.

She’s seen elementary students struggle to understand what they’re reading because they’re sounding out words so slowly, and middle schoolers who never learned crucial grammar and spelling rules.

“They are missing those foundational skills,” she said.

If schools see this work as critical, Roza said, then they have to figure out how to make it sustainable, possibly by training other existing staff to do the work.

Beach has been talking with a county agency and other organizations to see if there is a way to cobble together ongoing funding for the housing and shelter position.

For some families, like the mother and son who faced an eviction in September, a shelter stay is a bridge to permanent housing.

On a Friday in mid-December, Singley watched as her 6-year-old explored the apartment she’d just leased.

After several weeks of sleeping on an unfamiliar bunk bed at the shelter, her son had his own bedroom again. Already, Singley could see where she’d hang posters on his wall and PAW Patrol curtains in his window.

Her son is set to start at his new school after winter break. Singley feels confident about the plan they’ve put together for him, with one-on-one help in his classroom and time with a speech therapist. He’s started to learn a few words: no, shoe, and “eat eat.”

There was just one thing left to do: Call the school district to let them know they’d found an apartment, so they could send the bus.

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Nearly 10 million children won’t get summer food benefits as states opt out of new federal program

2024-01-10T21:02:51+00:00

Across rural North Dakota, many school districts struggle to staff summer meal programs, and families might live 20 miles from the nearest meal site.

So state officials eagerly got on board when they learned the federal government was launching a permanent summer program that gives low-income families $120 for each of their school-aged children. Families can use the money, which comes loaded on a prepaid card, to buy their own food and cook at home.

“In North Dakota, the summer food service program doesn’t meet the needs of a lot of the students,” said Linda Schloer, who directs child nutrition for the state’s Department of Public Instruction. “For a modest effort both financially and personnel-wise, it just makes sense that we would do whatever we can to try to get the program going as soon as possible.”

States had to tell the federal government by Jan. 1 if they planned to run a Summer EBT program in 2024. As of Wednesday, 35 states said they would. Together they are expected to reach more than 20 million school-aged children — a rare example of a pandemic-era assistance program sticking around after the end of the public health emergency.

But another 9.5 million students who would have been eligible will likely go without after their states declined to participate this year. Some states cited cost and administrative burden, while in others governors balked at accepting federal money.

South Dakota, which serves a similar student population as its neighbor to the north, is among those opting out.

“Federal money often comes with strings attached, and more of it is often not a good thing,” Ian Fury, the chief of communications for Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, wrote in an email. He cited low unemployment, the administrative burden of running the program, and South Dakota’s “robust existing food programs.”

That news came as a disappointment to school leaders like Louie Krogman, the superintendent of the White River School District in South Dakota.

The district serves around 400 students, most of whom are Native American and come from low-income families. The district runs a summer meal program in June, but families are on their own until school starts seven weeks later.

“We do have some families that would have definitely benefited from that additional EBT money,” Krogman said.

Timeline and cost keeps some states from offering Summer EBT this year

Summer EBT will work a little differently depending on the state, but generally states will identify which families qualify for the $120 or more in benefits and either mail out EBT cards for the summer, or load the value onto existing benefit cards. Then families can use that money to buy food at their local grocery store.

The newly permanent program will run similarly to the Pandemic Summer EBT program that operated for the previous three summers, as well as a federal pilot program that tested the concept over the last decade. A 2016 review of that program found that offering these summer benefits reduced child food insecurity and helped kids eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.

The extra money is coming at a much-needed time, said Kelsey Boone of the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit that advocates for anti-hunger policies, including Summer EBT.

“In the last year, a lot of the boosts to SNAP benefits ended,” Boone said, referring to the temporary pandemic-era increases to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which ended last spring. Summer EBT “can help offset those cuts,” she said, “especially at a time when food prices are so high.”

In declining to participate, Georgia and Nebraska pointed to their states’ existing summer food programs, while Mississippi said it did not have the funding or staff capacity to run the program. During the pandemic, the federal government covered the full cost of the benefits and running the Summer EBT program, but now states have to split the administrative costs.

Texas said it wasn’t feasible to participate because the final rules and guidance for the program came just days before states had to tell the federal government if they’d be opting in. The state also needs additional funding from the state legislature to run the program, a spokesperson for the state’s health and human services department wrote in an email.

Vermont, too, said the state is working to secure funding and put the necessary IT systems in place. “The goal is to be able to offer this important summer nutrition benefit for eligible children starting in the summer of 2025,” a spokesperson for Vermont’s Department for Children and Families wrote in an email.

Still, in several Republican-led states, the program seemed to get caught in a longstanding political debate over whether the government should provide more publicly funded benefits to families — a debate that’s also raged over whether states should provide free school meals to all students.

Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, for example, issued a statement saying her state opposed participating in Summer EBT because the program didn’t have tight enough restrictions on what foods families could buy and it would cost the state $2.2 million to run — though Iowa students were in line to receive around $29 million in food benefits and the program follows the same nutrition requirements as SNAP.

“Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families,” Reynolds said. “An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”

In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt cited concerns about the program not being “fully vetted.” He also said that it would help relatively few children — though an estimated 403,000 school-aged children would qualify for food benefits in his state.

Three of Oklahoma’s largest Native American tribes are stepping in to run Summer EBT programs on their reservations, an effort that could reach at least 50,000 children.

Florida said it opted out of participating because it already had summer food programs and didn’t want to follow additional federal rules.

“We anticipate that our state’s full approach to serving children will continue to be successful this year without any additional federal programs that inherently always come with some federal strings attached,” Miguel Nevarez, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Children and Families wrote in an email.

But Sky Beard, the Florida director for No Kid Hungry, an initiative of the nonprofit Share Our Strength that advocated for Summer EBT, sees a big need for the additional summer benefits.

Her organization conducted a poll last year that found around a quarter of parents of school-aged children worried their households wouldn’t have enough to eat.

“There are summer meal sites available throughout the state, but there are real challenges with families accessing those,” she said. Existing programs “just don’t reach all children that participate in school meal programs over the school year.”

Some Republican-led states are embracing the program. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for example, issued an enthusiastic statement about her state’s participation in the anti-hunger program.

“We are leveraging every resource at our disposal to fight this crisis, and Summer EBT promises to be an important new tool to give Arkansas children the food and nutrition they need,” she said.

For now, many states are already working to get Summer EBT up and running by the time school lets out in a few months.

In North Dakota, Schloer is focused on making sure the state has up-to-date addresses for eligible students so families can get their EBT cards in the mail.

The state is preparing to send out lots of emails and texts to families, too, to make sure they know about the new program, and whether they might need to fill out some paperwork to get their benefits.

“If we can get a message on that smartphone and from a reliable source, we’re hoping that they will read it,” Schloer said. Schools, too, can play a part by making sure families know: “It’s legitimate, please pay attention!”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Staffing, attendance, behavior: 7 big issues facing schools this year

2022-08-18T19:24:19+00:00

After surviving two school years “completely veiled in the pandemic,” teacher Kathryn Vaughn says this year is off to a different start.

Her stress levels are down. COVID protocols are relaxed. Teachers are feeling hopeful.

“It feels a little lighter this year,” said Vaughn, who teaches elementary school art in Tennessee. “It really feels like we’re just kind of back to business as usual.”

Many students and educators are returning to classrooms this fall with a sense of cautious optimism. But there are still many open questions after last year’s staffing shortages, student absences, and mental health and behavioral challenges interfered with academic recovery efforts.

Here are seven big issues facing schools:

How will schools handle staffing challenges?

Some schools are stepping up efforts to boost student attendance this year.

First, some reassuring news: Despite what you might have heard, there isn’t evidence of an unprecedented teacher shortage nor an exodus of teachers fleeing the profession.

Yet some schools are struggling to staff up — partly for reasons that predate the pandemic. High-poverty schools have long had trouble recruiting and retaining teachers, and the supply of new educators has dwindled over the past decade as fewer people enroll in teacher-prep programs.

But the pandemic also has created new complications. Many districts used federal relief funds to add more positions, including tutors and extra substitutes, creating huge demand for a limited pool of workers. Schools also must compete with other employers for lower-wage workers, such as bus drivers and custodians, spurring some districts to hike their pay and offer bonuses.

Those hiring pressures are bearing down on Paterson Public Schools, a high-needs district in New Jersey. Some 130 teaching positions remain unfilled, or nearly 6% of the total teaching force, about three weeks before students return, said Luis Rojas, Jr., the district official who oversees human resources. While some vacancies are expected, Rojas said the number has surged as teachers take advantage of the tight labor market.

“They understand the demand,” he said, “and folks are jumping around from school district to school district trying to move up the salary ladder and get as much money as they can.”

The causes of the staffing crunch are ultimately less important than the effect on students. Schools that can’t find enough teachers might have to raise class sizes, hire less qualified candidates, assign teachers to subjects in which they have limited training, or rely on long-term substitutes — all of which can get in the way of learning.

“I would tell you that one is too many,” Rojas said, “when you have a vacancy.”

Will student attendance improve?

Chronic absenteeism rates rose last year, as quarantines and COVID infections kept students home for long stretches.

This year, the CDC is no longer recommending that students quarantine after an exposure. Many think that will help stabilize attendance, though it’s possible other factors could persist, such as lingering student disengagement.

In Los Angeles, about half of all students were chronically absent last year. Even without quarantines, 30% of students were chronically absent, up from 19% before the pandemic.

“That is just not acceptable,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said last week as he announced a new campaign to boost attendance by visiting student homes.

In Detroit, 77% of students were chronically absent last year, up from 62% the year before the pandemic began. There, the spike was especially concerning because the district has long worked to raise attendance. Now, officials are stepping up efforts to get kids to school.

Lisa Blackwell, a district attendance agent, is part of that. This summer, she’s been knocking on doors to talk up her elementary school’s new before- and after-school care options, and explaining to parents the COVID precautions her school is taking. She’s also planning incentives to reward students, like bringing an ice cream truck to school.

“I want to focus more so on getting the kids excited to go to school,” Blackwell said. “Maybe that will push parents a little bit more to say: ‘Well, my kid is very excited to be at school, so I as a parent, I’m held accountable to make sure they get there.’”

Can schools meet students’ mental health needs?

Inside classrooms across the country last year, the crisis in young people’s mental health was all too evident. After many months of social isolation and learning by laptop, some students were prone to outbursts, meltdowns, and squabbles.

“These kids are very anxious,” said Aaron Grossman, a fifth grade teacher in Reno, Nevada. “The uptick in behavior is very real.”

The distinct but overlapping challenges of worsening student behavior and mental health were fueled by the pandemic — and the stress, financial hardships, and trauma it caused. Federal survey data from this spring confirmed the twin crises: 70% of public school leaders reported an increase in students seeking mental health services during the pandemic, and 56% said disruptive student misconduct had become more common.

Efforts to address both issues have achieved mixed results. Some schools responded to student misbehavior by leaning into restorative practices, which aim for healing over punishment, but others issued more suspensions than usual. Many schools used federal aid to hire more counselors, social workers, and school psychologists, but not always as many were needed. In an April survey, just over half of school leaders said their schools could provide mental health services to all students who require them.

Nance Roy, the chief clinical officer of The Jed Foundation, which focuses on youth mental health and suicide prevention, says schools should encourage students to reach out for help and connect them with service providers.

“It’s developing a culture of care and compassion in schools,” she said, “where there’s no wrong door to walk through for support.”

What will public school enrollment look like?

U.S. public school enrollment held steady last fall, according to federal data released this week. That came after student head counts dropped 2.8% in the fall of 2020, following years of national enrollment growth.

Last year saw a spike in preschool and kindergarten enrollment, both of which dropped sharply when many districts turned to virtual schooling. The return of full-time in-person learning, declining COVID safety concerns, and additional family outreach likely helped boost those grades. But enrollment continues to fall among students in other elementary and middle school grades, a trend that could spell trouble for some districts as the extra funding from federal COVID relief packages dries up.

The issue weighs especially heavily on school leaders in big cities where the share of small schools has ballooned. Now, some are considering school closures, which can create schools that are less expensive to run and have a wider range of programs, but will mean more disruption for students who’ve faced a lot of it in recent years.

“There are really awful tradeoffs,” Shanthi Gonzales, a former school board member in Oakland, California, told Chalkbeat this summer.

Can schools get extra academic help to students who need it most?

Many schools are offering tutoring and other kinds of academic interventions, but it doesn’t always reach the students who need the most help.

The road to academic recovery is coming into focus as data rolls in. So far, elementary school students seem to be recovering more quickly than middle schoolers, but students of all ages are still significantly behind where they would normally be on reading and math tests.

Katrina Abe, a math teacher in Houston, has seen that. Last year, her eighth graders needed extra help with seventh grade topics like interpreting graphs and understanding rates of change. Those concepts are harder to grasp virtually and without working in groups, which happened if students learned online or missed a lot of class the prior year.

This year’s class is noticeably behind last year’s, she said, likely because half of them had three different math teachers in seventh grade. To help, Abe is planning small-group instruction every day and more turn-and-talk time so students can problem solve together. She’s also going to review some fifth and sixth grade standards.

“We’re going to just take that slow, depending on their level,” she said.

Many schools are offering tutoring and other kinds of academic support, but data on which recovery efforts are working is limited. More than half of public schools said they provided high-dosage tutoring in a recent federal survey — a highly effective strategy — but schools often have trouble staffing and scheduling that support. Some districts have turned to virtual tutoring, but it often doesn’t reach students who need help the most.

Meanwhile, educators are keeping their eyes on the larger crop of teens who are behind in credits needed to graduate.

Will schools ramp up COVID relief spending?

Schools have an unprecedented pot of federal money to spend, but many are still struggling to put it to use. There’s a few reasons for that. In some states, money got stuck in red tape and arrived late. Elsewhere, schools are having a hard time finding staff to fill new positions, or hiring contractors to make building repairs.

Some districts that have been slow to spend say they’re planning to ramp up spending over time. Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, had spent only 10% of its federal COVID aid as of late June, mostly to avoid staff cuts and buy PPE. But the district says it has budgeted all the money, including to tutor more students.

Still, this aid doesn’t always feel like new money. New York City recently gave schools the OK to use $100 million in federal aid that was previously set aside for academic recovery to pay teachers, after announcing $215 million in school budget cuts.

This money also has been difficult to track: School district spending plans vary widely in quality and there’s often limited data at the state and federal levels.

But some trends are apparent. When FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank, looked at spending plans for some 5,000 school districts in June, it found a quarter of federal funds were budgeted for staff, and another quarter were earmarked for academic recovery. Just under a quarter was set aside for facilities and operations, mostly to upgrade heating, ventilation and cooling systems.

How will the culture wars shape what students learn?

America’s latest culture wars are being waged inside schools.

Seventeen states now ban lessons on racism or sexism, six states restrict teaching about sexuality and gender identity, and 18 states don’t allow transgender students to play on sports teams that match their gender.

Peyton, a 12th grader who is part of a support group for Black queer youth in Alabama, said the laws send a clear message to LGBTQ students.

“It’s just enforcing that you’re not normal and society does not want you here,” they said.

In addition to making some students feel less safe, the laws are limiting what they learn.

Some teachers have curtailed class discussions about the oppression of Black people and Native Americans, and some schools are restricting students’ access to books by or about people of color and LGBTQ Americans.

The Biden administration has proposed new rules to protect LGBTQ students, but conservative states are expected to challenge those rules in court. Meanwhile, school districts that run afoul of the new state laws already are facing consequences, and more attacks are likely: Florida’s new law allows parents to file complaints or even sue if they believe their children are taught banned topics.

But for every lesson that is challenged, many more will never be taught as schools seek to avoid sanctions and controversy. In a new survey, 1 in 4 teachers nationally — and nearly 1 in 3 teachers in states with curriculum restrictions — said higher-ups told them to steer clear of contentious topics in the classroom.

As Andrew Kirk, a high school teacher in Texas, told Chalkbeat: “This chilling effect is already happening.”

Jessica Blake contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Menos aprendizaje y dirección tardía: En medio de una pandemia, distritos se esfuerzan para educar a estudiantes aprendiendo inglés

2020-05-22T23:06:28+00:00

Hace unos meses, estudiantes hispanohablantes en el distrito escolar de Adams 14 en las afueras de Denver pasaban 53 minutes cada día en una clase de inglés.

Esas clases pararon cuando las escuelas se cerraron y empezaron a dar clases virtuales. Estudiantes de secundaria que están aprendiendo inglés en Adams 14, un distrito cuyos estudiantes son mayormente hispanos y de bajos recursos, en su lugar recibieron tareas de idioma dos veces a la semana.

En las escuelas primarias, niños recibieron 30 minutos diarios de instrucción virtual en literatura y matemáticas. Aunque maestros deben incorporar lecciones lingüísticas, estudiantes perdieron 55 minutos de instrucción en inglés que reciben cada día antes de la pandemia.

La transicion rapida al aprendizaje remoto causada por la crisis de COVID-19 ha dejado a los 5 millones de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en los EEUU en una situación precaria. Muchos han perdido enseñanza lingüística a medida que distritos buscan un nuevo equilibrio y intentan conectarse con alumnos en sus casas.

Escuelas y distritos no han recibido mucho apoyo para ayudar a sus estudiantes aprendiendo el idioma inglés. Esta semana — dos meses después de que muchas escuelas empezaron clases virtuales — el departamento federal de educación clarificó por primera vez que maestros deben seguir ayudando a sus alumnos no nativohablantes con el idioma “al máximo nivel posible.”

Antes de que se publicó esa clarificación, algunos distritos crearon planes que tomaron en cuenta las necesidades particulares de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés. Pero algunos no.

Los riesgos son altos porque los estudiantes de inglés se arriesgan a perder el aprendizaje por dos frentes. Sin ayuda para el desarrollo del lenguaje, el progreso de los estudiantes hacia el dominio del idioma inglés es más lento, y su capacidad para entender las materias que se les enseñan en inglés también se ve afectada.

“El grado en que los niños no tienen oportunidades de escuchar y hablar el idioma inglés es una gran preocupación,” dijo la subdirectora de los programas de aprendizaje de inglés de New America, un grupo de expertos con inclinaciones hacia la izquierda basada en Washington. “A nivel nacional, la mayoría de lo que he visto es que ha sido un desafío.”

Las barreras que existen en Adams 14

Aproximadamente la mitad de los estudiantes en Adams 14 están aprendiendo inglés como su segunda idioma, una de las proporciones más grandes en Colorado. La mayoría de los residentes de la zona industrial en las afueras de Denver son hispanos, y la mayoría son de bajos recursos.

Como otros distritos que sirven estudiantes con muchas necesidades, no le fue fácil asegurar que sus 6,500 alumnos podrían acceder al internet cuando cerraron las escuelas. En las primeras semanas, los maestros pasaron la mayoría de su tiempo asegurando que todos los estudiantes tuvieran acceso a una computadora y el internet.

“Se ha tratado de, ¿Te puedes conectar? ¿Estás en línea?’” dijo Tonia López, directora de educación e instrucción cultural y lingüísticamente diversa de Adams 14.

Estudiantes latinos, que constan de 80% de los estudiantes aprendiendo inglés nacionalmente, dependen de sus celulares desproporcionadamente para acceder a sus tareas escolares en casa — que puede ser útil en ciertas circunstancias, pero que no funciona para todas las tareas.

Mientras Adams 14 se dirigió a esos problemas técnicos, administradores estaban desarrollando un plan para continuar la instrucción. Crearon un plan con varias fases: Al inicio, estudiantes podían elegir actividades educativas; después, habría más classes en vivo y más tareas requeridas a través del internet. Ese plan priorizo estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés, según un portavoz del distrito.

El distrito no podia equivocarse. Una investigación por la oficina de derechos civiles en el departamento federal de educación concluyó en el 2014 que el distrito había discriminado a empleados y estudiantes hispanohablantes. Adams 14 accedió a un orden federal para mejorar su tratamiento de estudiantes aprendiendo inglés.

El año pasado, Adams 14 también fue el primer distrito en Colorado que tuvo que dejar que una empresa privada tomara control de la administración cotidiana después de años de bajos resultados académicos. Antes de la pandemia, esa empresa, MGT Consulting, ya estaba colaborado con empleados del distrito y la Oficina de Derechos Civiles en un plan comprensivo para educar estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés.

Cuando el virus forzó una transición a instrucción virtual, el distrito busco nuevas maneras de mantenerse en contacto con esos estudiantes. Los maestros y otros miembros del personal han traducido materiales para los padres, y los profesores de alumnos de inglés han estado disponibles para que los estudiantes pidan ayuda por teléfono, vídeo y texto.

Los maestros también están entrenando a profesores de otras clases para asegurar que que las tareas sean comprensibles para los estudiantes hispanohablantes. Todos los maestros del distrito han recibido capacitación a través del año para adaptar sus lecciones y tareas a esos alumnos.

“Hemos asegurado que todos somos conscientes del lenguaje en todas las lecciones que planeamos”, dijo Traci Whitfield, una maestra de cuarto grado en Adams 14. “Para mí, no tendria sentido construir lecciones de otra forma.”

Afirma Whitfield que más de dos tercios de sus 21 alumnos están aprendiendo inglés. Aproximadamente el 85% de sus alumnos están participando diario en lecciones virtuales de alguna manera.

Pero la transición ha sido difícil de todas maneras. María Rodríguez, una madre de tres estudiantes de Adams 14, se dio cuenta recientemente que Jahaira, su alumna de 11º grado, estaba faltando a algunas clases en vivo.

Aprender inglés no ha sido fácil para Jahaira; estaba inscrita en clases de desarrollo del idioma inglés cuando cerraron las escuelas, dijo Rodríguez. Teme que su hija está faltando clases remotas en parte porque está recibiendo menos instrucción en el desarrollo del inglés.

Segun Rodriguez, Jahaira le dijo que a veces no entiende a sus maestras en parte porque están hablando en inglés.

“Es más difícil ahora,” dijo Rodriguez. “Siempre necesitaba que los maestros le explicaban todo, y ahora que es virtual, es más complicado. Es tímida y a veces le da vergüenza para hacer preguntas.”

“No se que mas puedo hacer para ayudarlos,” dijo Rodríguez de sus hijos.

Administradores en Adams 14, como en otros distritos, reconocen que las escuelas están dedicando menos tiempo al desarrollo del lenguaje, tanto como han reducido la duración de todos tipos de instrucción.

“No esperamos que nuestros estudiantes estén en línea por ocho horas al día,” dijo López. “Todos estamos tratando de hacer lo mejor.”

Un panorama nacional complicado

Si bien todos los estudiantes de inglés tienen derecho a ayuda lingüística, no tienen planes de educación con la fuerza de ley como los estudiantes con discapacidades. Su instrucción varía mucho, dependiendo de la ley estatal y las políticas de distrito. Algunos dicen que era difícil cumplir los derechos civiles de los estudiantes de inglés incluso antes del coronavirus.

“Los distritos escolares tienen bastante margen para determinar cómo están sirviendo a sus estudiantes,” dijo García, de Nueva América. “Tenemos todas estas obligaciones legales, pero ¿cómo se están llevando a cabo en este momento?”

La guía federal publicada esta semana aclara que las escuelas deben continuar proporcionando apoyo lingüístico a los estudiantes de inglés a distancia, pero reconoce que quizás no sea posible hacerlo al mismo nivel que antes de la pandemia. Observa que no hay un tiempo estándar que debe dedicarse a los servicios de inglés.

El Departamento advirtió también que los distritos deben vigilar a los alumnos de inglés que demostraron su dominio del idioma antes de que las escuelas cerraron en marzo, ya que es posible que necesitan ayuda adicional cuando se reabran los edificios — un reconocimiento de la pérdida de aprendizaje que muchos estudiantes están enfrentando en este momento.

Los defensores dicen que si los estudiantes de inglés reciben servicios reducidos puede ser difícil comprobar que es una violación de los derechos civiles, dada la amplia gama de instrucción que es permisible en tiempos normales, así como los desafios que enfrentan los distritos durante la pandemia.

Lo que es más, la administración de Trump no tiene un fuerte historial de aplicación. La subsecretaria de Educación Betsy Devos, de la Oficina de Derechos Civiles del Departamento de Educación, ha abierto menos investigaciones sistémicas y ha tenido menos probabilidades de apoyar las denuncias de discriminación contra los estudiantes de ingles que bajo la administración de Obama.

Mirando hacia adelante

La educación pública en la edad de COVID-19 está entrando un nuevo capítulo: Los distritos escolares están preparando para el otoño. Muchos de ellos, incluyendo Adams 14, tendrán una larga lista de tareas pendientes para asegurar de que los estudiantes de inglés obtendrán los servicios que requieren, incluyendo pruebas de dominio del inglés y decidir qué cursos son apropiados.

Las clases terminaron esta semana en Adams 14, y los estudiantes, padres y educadores no saben cómo será la escuela en el otoño.

Varios distritos escolares en la zona metropolitana de Denver, entre ellos Adams 14, están colaborando para encontrar soluciones comunes. Esperan crear un plan unificado, en parte porque hay maestros que tienen hijos asistiendo a clases en otros distritos.

Están considerando un plan híbrido que combina el aprendizaje a distancia con un poco de aprendizaje en persona. La mayoría de los distritos no han dado a conocer detalles de sus planes, y los planes finales probablemente no estarán disponibles hasta finales del verano.

Si el aprendizaje virtual continúa en el otoño, algunos maestros dicen que les gustaría aumentar el tiempo de instrucción para los estudiantes, incluyendo el tiempo de instrucción lingüística para estudiantes aprendiendo inglés.

Padres como Aracely Gómez de Denver piensan que sus hijos beneficiarán de un horario de aprendizaje más normal y de más tiempo aprendiendo el idioma inglés.

Su hija de 6 años está matriculada en un programa que se da principalmente en español al inicio, y luego se transiciona gradualmente al inglés. La instrucción en español continúa desde casa, dijo Gómez. Pero está preocupada por la transición al inglés, especialmente si su hija no ha estado practicando inglés académico en casa.

“Practica con su hermana mayor”, dijo Gómez. “Pero sé que no es lo mismo que el inglés que obtendría en la escuela.”

Koby Levin, reportero de Chalkbeat, ha traducido este reportaje.

Many schools went all in to fight chronic absenteeism. Why are kids still missing so much class?

2023-09-28T11:00:00+00:00

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Last year, Santa Fe schools put in a lot of work to try to get students to show up to school consistently. It was a priority after chronic absenteeism doubled during the 2021-22 school year, compared to before the pandemic.

The New Mexico district hired two additional attendance coaches, for a total of five, to help every school form a team focused on boosting attendance. Those staffers got extra pay and training. And schools used COVID relief funds to reward students who improved their attendance with incentives like a pop-up science exhibit hosted by a local children’s museum.

But despite those efforts, the share of students who missed 10% or more of their school year, the threshold New Mexico and most other states use to define chronic absenteeism, didn’t budge. Just over half were chronically absent — the same as the prior year.

“We know we still have work to do,” said Crystal Ybarra, the district’s chief equity, diversity, and engagement officer, who is overseeing the attendance initiative. “We’re still trying to figure out the steps post-pandemic. Everybody wants to see a quick fix, and that’s just not how initiatives work.”

What happened in Santa Fe highlights multiple challenges schools nationwide are encountering as they try to drive down stubbornly high absence rates. Students’ mindsets about attending school in person every day have shifted, staff say. Families are more likely to keep sick kids home. In some places, more families are experiencing economic hardships and housing instability.

Emerging state data, compiled by Chalkbeat, suggests that the stunning rise in students missing school did not come close to returning to pre-pandemic levels last school year.

Chronic absenteeism worsened in at least 40 states during the 2021-22 school year, according to data compiled by Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor, in partnership with the Associated Press. The needle hasn’t moved much in the handful of states that have released data for last school year so far.

In New Mexico, for example, chronic absenteeism shot up to 40% two school years ago and remained at 39% last year, compared to 18% the year before the pandemic. Similar trends have emerged in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Virginia.

“The consequences of kids being sporadically in school and not fully engaging take a while to really shift,” said Hedy Chang, the executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that focuses on raising school attendance. “It’s definitely not something that happens overnight, and may take longer than we would like.”

Illnesses other than COVID, such as RSV, as well as confusion over when to send sick children to school, likely played a role, school staff and attendance experts said. Many families got in the habit of keeping kids home if they had any symptom of illness. When Los Angeles Unified school officials talked with 9,000 families last year as part of an effort to reduce chronic absenteeism, non-COVID illness was one of the three major themes that came up.

“We went from this place of requiring students to be out for certain symptoms that they might have in the 2021-22 school year,” Ybarra said, “to trying to navigate what was appropriate and what wasn’t this past school year.”

Elevated mental health struggles also likely contributed. Some students feel a lingering disconnect from their school and peers. School refusal seems to have intensified following the pandemic, some parents and educators say. In Santa Fe, many students who missed class or asked to transfer to the GED program last year reported feeling anxious about coming to school, Ybarra said.

Now that more schools provide devices to every student and post assignments online, some students have also come to believe that they can take a few days off and still stay on top of their work.

Greg Moody, a school official in Florida’s Orange County district who oversees attendance, said the ability to do assignments remotely had contributed to a “shift in mindset” about the importance of showing up to class every day. In his district, chronic absenteeism nearly doubled from 21% the year before the pandemic to 40% in the 2021-22 school year.

Amana Levi, who helps Orange County schools address truancy issues, said parents report a variety of reasons their kids stay home. But last year she frequently heard: “Well, my child needed a day off.” Sometimes that stemmed from a mental health issue, she said, and sometimes it didn’t.

In response, Levi is hosting an online training for parents that will talk about why attendance matters — for academic and other reasons — and what parents can do if they get a letter saying their child has missed a lot of school.

“It’s important that we impress upon parents: We get it, we’re all here, we’re all experiencing similar types of things,” Levi said. But her message is: “You’ve got to come to school. We are here to help as much as we can.”

Schools seek more input on attendance struggles

Schools that started attendance initiatives last year that haven’t gotten the results they wanted should try to figure out why that may be, Chang of Attendance Works said. Staff can look at how many students were directly affected by such efforts, and talk with students and families about what worked and what didn’t.

In Santa Fe, Ybarra is hoping to build on some of the positive changes in school culture that she observed last year, while making adjustments to the district’s overall strategy.

Attendance coaches realized that they previously hadn’t taught many staff members to reach out to students about attendance. So this year, they trained entire schools to do it.

With the help of a $500,000 state grant, Santa Fe is sending home letters to recognize students for good attendance and remind families to return after longer school breaks. The district also hired an organization to train high school teams to watch ninth grade attendance — a challenging transition year for many teens — and will pay staff extra to make home visits to freshmen.

School staff are prioritizing chronically absent kids for evaluations to see if they need extra academic help, or support for a disability. The goal is to “try to make them more successful so they feel like they can return,” Ybarra said. In the past, those students were often overlooked.

And last month, school officials met with students from two schools struggling with attendance to listen to some of the barriers that keep them from going to school regularly and what has been helpful to get them back on track.

Students reported getting sick, lacking transportation to school, having family problems, facing mental health issues, and caring for siblings. One middle schooler pointed to the benefits of having a day to do catch-up work when they returned from a long period of absence.

“I didn’t feel so behind when I went back into the classroom,” the student told school staff.

Orange County schools tried something similar this summer by paying a dozen social workers to call the families of students who missed 20 or more days of school last year.

The goal was to figure out what had kept students from attending and offer support “so we could start with a fresh slate,” said Juliane Cross, a senior administrator in the district’s social services department.

Social workers heard many of those families were moving around a lot, struggling to afford stable housing — a common issue in the Orlando area that has intensified in recent years. Other parents worked nights and couldn’t wake their kids up in time for class.

Social workers connected families to housing resources and made sure they knew about the federal program that offers help to students experiencing homelessness. It’s an initiative Cross hopes to repeat.

“Several of the parents were just like ‘Wow, thank you for calling,’ as if they were really surprised that this effort was made to just check on them and try to address that attendance situation,” she said. “They appreciated having that interaction.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

The pandemic is over. But American schools still aren’t the same.

2023-09-20T20:17:22+00:00

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On a recent Friday at Gary Comer Middle School in Chicago, you had to squint to see signs of the pandemic that upended American education just a few years ago.

Only a handful of students wore face masks, and even then, some put them on to cover up pimples, staff said. The hand sanitizer stations outside every classroom mostly went unused, and some were empty. Students stopped to hug in the hallway and ate lunch side by side in the cafeteria.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal as much as it was before,” said 12-year-old Evelyn Harris, an eighth grader at Comer, whose lasting memory of pandemic schooling is that online classes were easier, so she got better grades. “The pandemic didn’t really affect me in a big way.”

Students are released from classes to attend a club sign-up event at Comer Middle School.

But inside Nikhil Bhatia’s classroom, the evidence was on the whiteboard, where the math teacher was shading in slices of a pie to illustrate how to find a common denominator. That day, his seventh graders were working to add and subtract fractions — a skill students usually learn in fourth grade.

Maybe you learned this before, Bhatia began. “Or, during the pandemic, you might have been on Zoom,” — a few students laughed as he dragged out the words — “put your screen on black, went to go play a couple video games. Snap if that sounds familiar?”

Clicking fingers filled the room. “That’s OK!” Bhatia responded. “That’s why we’re going to do the review.”

As the new school year begins at Comer and elsewhere, many students and educators say school is feeling more normal than it has in over three years. COVID health precautions have all but vanished. There’s less social awkwardness. Students say they’re over the novelty of seeing their classmates in person.

But beneath the surface, profound pandemic-era consequences persist. More students are missing school, and educators are scrambling to keep kids engaged in class. Many students remain behind academically, leaving teachers like Bhatia to fill in gaps even while trying to move students forward. Rebuilding students’ shaken confidence in their abilities is especially important right now.

“It’s OK that you don’t know this,” Bhatia tells his students. “It’s normal right now.”

Hands are raised as Nikhil Bhatia teaches a math lesson at Comer Middle School.

Nationally, many students remain far behind in math and reading where they would have been if not for the pandemic. There have been especially steep learning drops at schools that taught virtually for most of the 2020-21 school year, as schools did across Chicago and within the Noble charter network, which includes Comer. It’s an issue that’s even more pressing for older students, who have less time to fill in those holes.

At Comer, 28% of eighth graders met or exceeded Illinois math standards the year before the pandemic, not far off from the state’s average of 33%. But by spring 2022, that had fallen to just 2%, compared with 23% for the state.

In reading, meanwhile, 9% of Comer eighth graders met or exceeded state standards pre-pandemic, and that dipped to 4% in spring 2022, when the state’s average was 30%.

The school made gains they’re proud of last school year, with 10% of eighth graders hitting the state’s bar for math and 22% hitting it for reading, though school leaders say they know there is still work to be done.

“If you don’t have some foundational skills and basic skills, it will be almost impossible to keep up with the curriculum as the kids get older,” said Mary Avalos, a research professor of teaching and learning at the University of Miami, who has studied how COVID affected middle school teachers. “That’s a big issue that needs to be addressed.”

How teachers are addressing pandemic learning gaps

Most of Bhatia’s students missed key skills in fourth and fifth grades — the years that school was remote, then interrupted by waves of COVID — but they mastered more advanced concepts in sixth grade last year.

That’s left Bhatia, like many teachers across the country, with the tricky task of coming up with mini lessons to fill in those elementary gaps, without spending so much time on prior concepts that students fall behind in middle school.

Ja’liyah Pope, 12, listens during a math lesson in Nikhil Bhatia’s class at Comer Middle School.

On a day like Friday, that meant to get students ready to add negative fractions, a seventh grade skill, Bhatia first had to teach a short lesson on adding fractions, a fourth grade skill. At first, some students mistakenly thought they should use the technique for dividing fractions they learned last year.

“They’ll say: ‘Oh is this keep, change, flip’?” Bhatia said. “The gap isn’t exactly what you would expect it to be.”

This kind of teaching happened “once in a while” pre-pandemic, Bhatia said, but “now it’s like day by day I have to be really critical in thinking about: ‘OK what might be the gap that surfaces today?’”

Aubria Myers, who teaches sixth grade English at Comer, sees ways the familiar rhythms of school are just now returning, four months after federal health officials declared an official end to the COVID-19 emergency.

“This year, for me, feels the most normal,” Myers said. Students are saying: “Oh wait, what’s the homework again, can I get another copy?” she said. Last year when she mentioned homework, “they were like: ‘What is that?’”

On that recent Friday, Myers led an activity in her multicultural literature class that would have been impossible two years ago when students had to stay seated in pods of color-coded desks.

Her sixth graders huddled close to one another as they tried to hop across the classroom, an exercise designed to give her fidgety students a chance to move around, while exemplifying the communication and teamwork skills that would be at the center of Seedfolks, the novel they were about to read in class.

Still, Myers had chosen the book, with its short chapters and lines full of metaphors and irony, to meet the needs of this crop of sixth graders, who spent all of third grade learning online. Many, Myers knows, never logged on. They have shorter attention spans and doubts about their reading skills but love class discussions, she said.

“They remember that time in their life when they were stuck talking to only people in their house,” Myers said. “They’re in class wanting to engage with each other.”

Aubria Myers teaches an English lesson at Comer Middle School.

Myers has tried to prevent her students from getting discouraged by their learning gaps. At the start of this school year, for example, she’s pointing out spelling and punctuation errors, but not docking points yet. She wants to make sure her students first have time to learn some of the key skills they missed in earlier grades.

“We have kids who don’t understand how to put a period somewhere in your sentence, or how to put spaces between their words,” Myers said. “I see these very beautifully strung together ideas, these really well thought-out explanations, but they’re missing some of those key mechanics.”

Student mental health and engagement still top of mind

Comer has responded to students’ post-pandemic needs in other ways, too. The school expanded its team of social workers and other staff who work with students to resolve conflicts and address mental health needs, a trend that’s been observed nationwide.

The school has long felt the effects of neighborhood gun violence and student trauma, but staff say having more adults focused on those issues has helped students open up and seek help. Now, more students are requesting verbal mediations to head off physical fights, staff say.

“If you follow us through the building, you’ll see,” said Stephanie Williams, a former reading teacher who now directs Comer’s social and emotional learning team. “Kids will seek you out, or find you, and let you know: ‘Hey, I need this.’”

On left, a student plays chess during a club sign-up event at Comer Middle School. On right, students start their English class with Aubria Myers by reading.

And this is the second year the school has scheduled all core classes earlier in the week, so that students can spend part of Friday practicing math and reading skills on the computer, and the rest of the day taking two special electives. It’s a strategy meant to keep students engaged — and showing up to school.

The school offers classes that pique students’ interests, such as the history of hip hop, hair braiding, and creative writing. Brandon Hall, a seventh grader at Comer, blended his first smoothie in a “foodies” class and bonded with his basketball coach through chess. He came to see similarities between making plays on the court and moving pawns across the board.

“I learned a lot from him,” he said.

On “Freedom Fridays,” attendance is higher and student conflicts are rarer, school officials say. That’s been important as the school, like many others, has seen higher chronic absenteeism rates over the last two years. At Comer, 1 in 3 sixth graders missed 18 or more days of school last year. Before the pandemic, that number sat closer to 1 in 5.

The approach runs counter to the calls some education experts have made for schools to double down on academics and add more instructional time — not take it away.

A recent report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, for example, spells out the numerous ways students are still struggling, and calls for “a greater urgency to address learning gaps before students graduate.” Harvard education researcher Thomas Kane noted that few districts have lengthened the school day or year and warned that, “The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning.”

But JuDonne Hemingway, the principal of Comer, said devoting time to enrichment activities during the school day is worth it to ensure all students have access to them. These classes, she added, are helping students develop interests they may pursue in college or as part of a career.

“They’re not just random experiences for kids,” Hemingway said. “We think they are just as important as any traditional academic class.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Most Americans support giving all kids free breakfast and lunch at school, new poll finds

2023-09-07T19:30:00+00:00

Most Americans think that public schools should provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, regardless of their family income, a new nationally representative poll released this week by YouGov found.

The results come as several states are adopting universal school meal programs, after Congress declined to maintain a pandemic-era policy that provided breakfast and lunch to all students nationally. The apparent popularity of the idea may help bolster the case of state lawmakers and child nutrition advocates lobbying for free school meals for all.

“The pandemic really ushered in a normalization of this policy,” said Danielle Deiseroth, the executive director of Data for Progress, a left-leaning think tank that also found widespread support for universal free school meals among likely U.S. voters in a 2021 poll. “This is a policy that has very strong bipartisan support.”

According to the YouGov poll, conducted in mid-August, 60% of U.S. adults favor providing all students with free lunch at school, and a similar share, 57%, think all students should have access to free breakfast. Most other respondents said that free school meals should only be available to children from low-income families, which is similar to the current federal policy.

Support for universal school meals was especially strong among lower-income adults who earn less than $50,000 a year, and Black and Hispanic adults. Democrats were more supportive, too, with 68% in favor of giving all students free lunch, while 62% of Independents and 47% of Republicans backed that idea.

The 2021 Data for Progress poll found even higher levels of support, with 74% of likely U.S. voters in favor of making breakfast and lunch free for all students on a permanent basis.

Last year, Senate Republicans opposed a proposal backed by Congressional Democrats to keep school meals free, largely due to costs. Nine states are offering free breakfast and lunch this school year, and others are considering proposals to do the same.

The Biden administration took a step in that direction, too, by proposing a rule this spring that would allow more schools to participate in an existing federal program that serves meals to all students in certain higher-poverty schools.

Research has found that universal meals increase access to food at school, including for some low-income students, and reduce grocery budgets for families. There is promising, but mixed evidence on the academic effects.

How states intend to pay for universal free school meals could affect support for the program, though.

So far, one state, Colorado, has adopted universal free school meals after putting the question to voters. There, 57% of voters approved of the measure, which was paired with income tax on individuals who earn over $300,000 a year.

The YouGov poll found that only 24% of U.S. adults would support raising taxes on local residents to pay for schools — suggesting it might be a tough sell to cover the cost of universal meals with higher taxes.

Still, Deiseroth says she could see universal free school meals being part of the national policy conversations ahead of next year’s elections as many families continue to struggle financially.

“Candidates and lawmakers would be politically smart to be embracing policies such as this that can help deliver families relief,” she said. “Keeping kids in school, and engaged, and happy, and healthy is certainly something that many families and parents will be looking for as they’re heading to vote next year.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Hundreds of Las Vegas and Tampa area schools drop Paper’s online tutoring

2023-09-06T16:35:12+00:00

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Hundreds of schools in two of the nation’s largest districts have stopped offering online tutoring through the company Paper following questions about quality and cost.

Hillsborough County schools in Florida dropped Paper altogether, while around 150 schools in Clark County, Nevada decided not to work with Paper this school year, according to district records obtained by Chalkbeat.

“After evaluating usage rates, return on investment, and student achievement data, we decided not to renew the contract,” Tanya Arja, a Hillsborough County schools spokesperson, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat last week.

Paper has lost other major clients recently, including Boston Public Schools, which cut ties with the virtual tutoring company this summer, a year earlier than expected, after a small share of students used the virtual tutoring.

The cutbacks come as many districts are evaluating which academic strategies to keep — and which to toss — as they head into the final full school year to spend billions in federal COVID relief dollars. The decisions indicate that at least some educators have grown disillusioned with Paper and perhaps opt-in virtual tutoring more broadly.

Some districts are instead investing in regularly scheduled virtual or in-person tutoring sessions during the school day, following the high-dosage model backed by research.

Paper’s online tutoring practices under scrutiny

COVID funding helped fuel significant growth for Paper, a company that landed contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to offer virtual tutoring to more than three million students in districts across the U.S. and Canada. Demand for the company’s services soared during the pandemic as many schools looked to get extra help to their students and had new money to spend.

But Paper has come under scrutiny from Chalkbeat and others for often failing to deliver the one-on-one expert help that the company advertises to schools. Some younger kids and struggling students have found the tutoring platform — which looks like a text-based instant messenger with a digital whiteboard — difficult to use. Some districts previously cut ties with Paper after a small share of students logged on for help.

Recently, the company has laid off many of its corporate staffers and tutors, and several top executives are set to depart this month.

In an email, Ava Paydar, a spokesperson for Paper, declined to comment on the changes Hillsborough County and Clark County are making. “We will defer comment to the school districts,” Paydar wrote.

In previous interviews, Paper CEO Philip Cutler defended the quality of Paper’s tutoring, and said the student experience on the Paper platform is always one-on-one because tutors work with students in an individual session — even if tutors are juggling multiple students at once. It’s uncommon for students to be matched with tutors who are unfamiliar with their subject, he added.

Cutler also said that Paper has worked to boost student usage by training teachers and conducting outreach to students and families.

Hillsborough County schools, which serve the area around Tampa, had previously paid Paper around $4 million over the last two years to offer virtual tutoring to 110,000 students in middle and high school. When the district renewed its contract last year, it did so at a reduced price, after raising concerns about low usage. The district had said it would drop Paper if too few students used the tool — and evidently followed through.

Boston school officials cited similar concerns. “For the number of students it was reaching for its cost and our assessment of how it’s been working, Paper has not been worth it,” Max Baker, a spokesperson for the district, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat last month.

Clark County had planned to spend $6.6 million to offer Paper in every school this year, district records show. Schools were told to come up with a plan to get every student in grades 3 to 12 to log on early in the school year.

But the Las Vegas-area district did an about-face shortly after Chalkbeat published an investigation in July that found Paper tutors are often juggling multiple students at the same time and working in subjects they don’t know well — leaving many students frustrated and without needed help. Instead of requiring schools to use Paper, Clark County principals were given the option to keep working with the company or to stop. The schools that opted out serve 102,000 students, or around a third of the district.

Clark County schools appears to have taken public reporting into account while making its decision to cut back on Paper’s services.

The day Chalkbeat published its investigation, a top school official shared the story with Clark County’s superintendent, Jesus Jara, according to emails obtained through an open records request. A few hours later, Jara asked a top academic officer to come see him, then added: “We may need to review this contract and move some funds to FEV Tutors.”

A few weeks later, the school board approved spending $4 million on FEV Tutor, another virtual tutoring company that, like Paper, relies on text-based chat and a digital whiteboard, but has the added feature of live audio for students to speak to their tutors.

In an email, a Clark County schools spokesperson said the district had “reallocated funds previously designated for Paper Tutoring services to include an additional option, FEV Tutor,” but would not say how much the district is now spending on Paper.

Paper also lost a contract with the state of New Mexico earlier this year, after education officials there said the company had failed to get academic help to enough students.

But many other school districts are maintaining their relationship with Paper, which still holds contracts with the states of Mississippi and Tennessee, and several large districts, including Los Angeles Unified and Palm Beach County schools in Florida.

The Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada agreed to pay Paper up to $2 million to offer virtual tutoring to middle and high school students this school year and last year. The district recently cut back on paying teachers to tutor students after school, justifying the move with the addition of Paper.

“With the introduction of Paper on-line tutoring, in-person tutoring has been reduced,” spokesperson Victoria Campbell said in an email.

In Clark County, Spanish teacher Carmen Andrews will continue to have access to Paper at the Nevada Learning Academy, where she teaches students online.

When Andrews tried the tool last year — a district requirement — she found that some of her high schoolers waited a long time to be paired with a tutor, and some were matched with tutors who didn’t speak Spanish but tried to help anyway.

(Paydar, the Paper spokesperson, said the company always has Spanish tutors available, though acknowledged that mismatches can occur. “While very rare, we find that this type of experience can happen when a tutoring session starts with a focus on one area and then crosses over to Spanish as a subject,” Paydar wrote.)

Andrews sees some value in the kind of virtual support that Paper offers, especially for students whose parents work late in the Las Vegas hospitality industry. This year she’s planning to use Paper to give students extra feedback on written assignments in Spanish. But she’s glad the district gave schools the choice to opt out.

“If a school sees no use for it,” she said, “why pay the money for them to have it?”

Matt Barnum contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Students shouldn’t shy away from talking about race in college essays, Biden officials say

2023-08-14T19:05:21+00:00

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High school students shouldn’t shy away from talking about their race or ethnicity in college application essays, according to new guidance issued Monday by the Biden administration.

Similarly, school counselors, mentors, and employers should feel free to mention a student’s race in a college recommendation letter, the guidance states.

“The Supreme Court’s opinion recognized what we know to be true: That race can be relevant to a person’s life or lived experience and may impact one’s development, motivations, academic interests, or personal or professional aspirations,” Vanita Gupta, a top-ranking Justice Department official, told reporters on Monday. “That impact can still be considered in university admissions.”

The guidance package may offer some clarity as many high schoolers and school staff are trying to make sense of how the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down race-based affirmative action affects what they should tell colleges about themselves and whether it’s advantageous — or risky — to talk about race in their applications.

In June, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that college admissions officers could look at how race had affected an applicant’s life “through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

But some high school counselors have expressed concern that the Supreme Court’s decision could be confusing for students of color and lead some to avoid talking about their personal identities.

The new guidance suggests, consistent with the court’s decision, that colleges may consider a student’s individual experience of race or racism, even though they cannot give advantages to students solely because of their race.

The guidance is not legally binding, and what is and isn’t allowed likely will continue to be decided by courts.

Still, the guidance may shape how colleges and students respond to the ruling.

According to the guidance, admissions officers can consider how a student’s experience with racial discrimination or the racial composition of their neighborhood or school affected them and how that may influence what they’d contribute to the college.

For example, one student could write in an essay “about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city’s youth orchestra.” Another student could detail how she overcame “prejudice when she transferred to a rural high school where she was the only student of South Asian descent.” A third applicant might discuss “how learning to cook traditional Hmong dishes from her grandmother sparked her passion for food and nurtured her sense of self.”

And a school counselor could write in their recommendation about “how an applicant conquered her feelings of isolation as a Latina student at an overwhelmingly white high school to join the debate team.”

“Students should feel comfortable presenting their whole selves when applying to college, without fear of stereotyping, bias, or discrimination,” two top Biden administration officials wrote in a letter.

Colleges can still tailor recruitment to reach students of color

Though the Supreme Court’s ruling is about college admissions policies, some states and colleges have interpreted the decision to apply to financial aid. Missouri’s attorney general, for example, said that colleges cannot award scholarships that consider a student’s race or ethnicity, leading the state’s flagship university to eliminate a prestigious diversity award.

That left some education equity advocates worried that officials would point to the Supreme Court ruling to limit a slew of other efforts aimed at increasing racial diversity on college campuses.

The Biden administration’s guidance is silent on scholarships — a top education department official said that was because the Supreme Court decision didn’t address scholarships — but it explicitly states that colleges don’t have to “ignore race” when they are identifying prospective students through recruitment efforts.

Colleges can target their outreach to schools and districts that predominantly serve students of color, the guidance states. They can also recruit from high schools that historically haven’t had many students apply to the college — which could be a strategy for recruiting students of color without considering race directly.

Similarly, colleges and universities can also continue to run mentorship or pipeline programs meant to help prepare students from certain schools to attend that college.

That could look like a summer enrichment camp designed for students who attend public high schools near the college. Colleges are also allowed to set aside slots for students who participate in those pipeline programs, as long as it was open to a broad group of kids — such as all juniors at a certain high school.

“Although this decision changes the landscape for admissions in higher education,” Gupta said, “it should not be used as an excuse to turn away from longstanding efforts to make those institutions more inclusive.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

More students eating for free as growing number of states offer universal school meals

2023-08-10T21:51:28+00:00

The number of kids grabbing free meals from the San Luis Coastal Unified district is rising.

Before the pandemic, the district of 7,700 on California’s Central Coast served breakfast and lunch to around a quarter of its students each day. But that percentage shot up during the pandemic, when schools nationwide could give free meals to all kids. And it rose again last year, when California launched the nation’s first statewide free school meals program.

Today, between 50% and 60% of students in the district eat free breakfast and lunch each day. That includes students whose families could afford to pay before, and some students whose families struggled financially but “may not appear most vulnerable on paper,” said Erin Primer, the district’s director of food and nutritional services.

It’s a huge relief, Primer said, “to know that those families are taken care of, that I don’t have to get a call from the single mom who missed qualifying by $200.”

What’s happening in Primer’s district is likely to play out in many more schools across the country as several states prepare to launch their own universal meals programs this fall. Nine states will offer free breakfast and lunch to all their students this school year — a notable shift given that no state did so before the pandemic.

While lawmakers in several states have pushed back on the idea, arguing the cost is too high and that families who can afford meals should pay for them, more states are considering such proposals.

“There is a tremendous amount of momentum,” said Crystal FitzSimons, who oversees school nutrition work for the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center. “People didn’t want to go back to the way the program operated before, with lots of kids whose families are struggling not being eligible for free meals, unpaid school meal debt, and too much administrative work.”

(Read Chalkbeat’s accompanying coverage on the research on the impacts of universal free school meals.)

Why states are launching universal school meal programs

Before COVID, a growing number of schools offered free breakfast and lunch to all their students through a federal program meant to help high-poverty schools. In 2019, just under 15 million students attended schools that served free meals through this program, or around 30% of public school children.

But when the pandemic hit, federal officials gave all schools permission to serve free breakfast and lunch to all their students, regardless of families’ incomes. Many states found they liked the reduced paperwork for families and school staff, as well as the diminished stigma for students who ate the meals, since no one could tell which children came from low-income families.

There are other benefits. Past research has shown that serving free school meals to all kids can help families save money on grocery bills and reduce school suspensions. In some cases, it’s also been linked to higher student attendance rates and improvements in test scores.

But that federal permission expired last year, driven in part by congressional Republicans’ concerns about its cost. Similarly, some state lawmakers have stressed that schools have limited resources. They’ve also raised philosophical questions.

“Presumably we espouse individual responsibility,” North Dakota Sen. Michael Wobbema, a Republican, said earlier this year as the state debated whether it should cover the reduced-price copay for school meals. “And at what point in time do we just wave that away and make the state responsible?”

In North Carolina, when Marianne Weant has advocated for universal free school meals with the North Carolina Alliance for Health, fiscally conservative lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed similar concerns.

“We hear a lot: We don’t want rich kids to get a free meal,” she said. To that she replies: “Kids are kids, they forget their lunch sometimes.”

Another argument she’s used: Schools don’t charge kids for other essentials, like textbooks and laptops. “No one asks your mom if they make too much to ride the bus,” Weant added.

But the 2022 shift at the federal level prompted other states to pass laws to keep school breakfast and lunch free.

California and Maine were the first to do so, followed by — in chronological order — Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Michigan, and Massachusetts. Colorado, notably, put the question to voters, who overwhelmingly said “yes.” Nevada, meanwhile, will use federal COVID relief funds to offer free meals on a temporary basis again this year.

Others may join them. Lawmakers in Illinois approved a universal school meals program in June that the governor is expected to sign soon.

One of the biggest draws of universal free meal programs is that they often increase the number of students who eat breakfast and lunch.

That seems to be happening in California. Last school year, California schools were on track to serve more breakfasts and lunches than they had the prior year, according to state data through April.

Several big California districts, like Los Angeles and Fresno Unified, saw increases in students eating breakfast and smaller upticks in students eating lunch last year, a recent survey by FitzSimons’ organization found — while large districts in other states without free meals saw declines as they returned to charging students.

Kim Frinzell, who directs nutrition services for California’s education department, said schools have reported that increase has come from both families that could pay, and students who qualified for discounted — but not free — meals in the past.

“You talk to people out in the community and it’s like: It’s so great I don’t have to worry about my child having to have money in their account or packing a lunch,” Frinzell said.

In the Sacramento City Unified district, middle-class parents who didn’t qualify for free meals before have said the money they are saving on groceries has helped them save for emergencies or afford other school activities for their kids, like field trips.

“For them to have two meals per day at school makes a huge difference for me,” Sara Goncalves, a teacher’s aide with two children in the district, told the Sacramento Bee this spring.

When more students eat school meals, districts also get more money back from the federal government. That’s allowed Primer in San Luis Coastal Unified to use higher-quality ingredients and a wider variety of popular foods, from blocks of cheese from a local creamery to short ribs from a nearby ranch.

Teachers and principals have told Primer that’s helped improve school attendance in some cases. At the district’s high school for students who are at risk of not graduating on time, for example, the addition of a chicken tamale dish to the menu motivated one student who struggled to come to school to keep showing up.

Just outside of Portland, Maine, the nutrition services director at Westbrook schools, Mary Emerson, has observed something similar. The uptick in meals her district serves has meant she can afford to offer more Halal options — the district serves many immigrant families from Africa and the Middle East — and higher-quality items that kids love, such as all-Maine fish sticks.

Her cafeteria lines are also running more smoothly, now that elementary schoolers aren’t punching in a five-digit code to get free meals. And she no longer has to spend time calling parents to say “oh, you owe $20.”

“I love it,” Emerson said.

Ultimately, some say a divide between states that do and don’t offer universal free school meals will likely remain unless Congress takes broader action.

“The school nutrition programs are national programs,” FitzSimons said. “Kids in Mississippi and South Dakota should have just as much access to school meals as kids who are in Maine and Colorado and California.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Students worry about fate of some race-based scholarships after end of affirmative action

2023-07-21T20:35:07+00:00

When Royce Griffin weighed his college options two years ago, scholarship offers played a big part in his decision.

Griffin, who is Black and hails from Jackson, Mississippi, chose the University of Missouri in large part because it offered him a scholarship that covered more than $20,000 a year in out-of-state tuition costs. Known as the Diversity Award, it’s a scholarship given to high-achieving students from racial or ethnic backgrounds that are underrepresented at the university.

But last month, after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote in a letter that colleges there had to adopt race-blind criteria for scholarships following the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down affirmative action, the university announced it would not offer scholarships like the Diversity Award to future applicants. When Griffin found out about that decision, he worried it could limit opportunities for students of color.

“It’s a really important scholarship for us,” said Griffin, a rising junior studying in the university’s top-rated journalism program. Without that aid, he said, he couldn’t have afforded to go to college outside of Mississippi: “It puts us on that same playing field as our white counterparts.”

The text of the Supreme Court’s ruling, released last month, is limited to college admissions and says nothing directly about scholarships. But some state officials and college leaders have interpreted the decision to include scholarships that consider a student’s race, too — a view some legal experts say could hold up in court.

Officials with organizations that represent financial aid administrators and diversity officers in higher education are cautioning colleges to take their time in deciding whether the ruling applies to scholarships, and to wait for forthcoming guidance from the federal government. That guidance, slated to be released by mid-August, is expected to outline which admissions practices and student programs remain lawful in the Biden administration’s view.

Meanwhile, there’s uncertainty and confusion as many high schoolers gear up to apply to colleges and scholarships this fall and counselors try to help them figure out their options.

“Programs like that — they benefit our students all the time,” said Vanessa Lee, a Chicago teacher who spent the last eight years advising students on their postsecondary options at Back of the Yards College Prep, a high school that serves mostly Latino students from low-income families.

One state university comes to the high school to recruit aspiring Latino engineers, she said, while another local university recently gave a student a scholarship for Black women pursuing careers in fields like science and math. If programs like those went away, Lee said, “our students would not have as many opportunities.”

Scholarships that consider race are in limbo

So far, the number of colleges that have announced concrete changes to their scholarship offerings has been small, though some legal experts and college officials expect more to follow.

In states that previously banned affirmative action, college administrators and attorneys often interpreted state law more broadly to include financial aid, noted Wil Del Pilar, the senior vice president at The Education Trust, an education civil rights group.

“There was this kind of chilling effect on using race as institutional administrators, one, were afraid of political backlash, and second, they were afraid of legal action,” he said. “We’re really watching that.”

Already, the University of Missouri system, which includes the flagship university commonly known as Mizzou and three other universities, has said it would no longer offer scholarships that take a student’s race or ethnicity into consideration, though it will honor awards it gave previously to incoming and existing students, like Griffin. The Diversity Award, for example, is no longer listed on Mizzou’s scholarships page.

The university system has notified 1,600 students that their previously awarded scholarships or grants that had racial requirements or preferences would be upheld, wrote Christian Basi, a spokesperson for the system, in an email to Chalkbeat.

Griffin was relieved to find out his own scholarship was safe. But he saw the university’s quick move to end race-conscious scholarships, while other Missouri colleges took time to deliberate as another example of how the university was failing to support Black students like him. Already, he said, some students have shared on social media that the decision made them feel less welcome and more like “Mizzou might not be the place for them.”

In an email, Basi said the university system made a speedy announcement because “we knew we would be getting questions and calls from students and parents immediately following the ruling” and officials wanted to let incoming students know their financial aid wouldn’t change “as quickly as possible.”

The university system’s statement about the scholarship changes, he added, “specifically talked about how ‘contributions from individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives….’ lead to making our university a ‘better place to work, learn and innovate.’”

The University of Kentucky, meanwhile, has yet to notify students that it will honor previously awarded scholarships that took race into account, after the university’s president said it appeared that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling applied to both admissions and scholarships.

“We are discussing that process and how best to do that in the near future,” Jay Blanton, a spokesperson for the university, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat. Officials are reviewing whether to make changes to scholarship programs going forward.

For now, the university’s diversity scholarship is still listed on its website.

End of scholarships, even small ones, could derail students

Given the current political climate — with ongoing efforts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in colleges and schools, and new laws restricting what schools can teach about race and gender — Del Pilar said there could be “a slew of bills” that target the use of race in colleges beyond admissions.

Two years ago, a conservative law firm sued the Wisconsin agency that oversees the state’s financial aid system, arguing the grants it offered to Black, Native American, Hispanic, and some Southeast Asian students were discriminatory and unconstitutional. That case was dismissed last year. But the president of the law firm that filed the lawsuit, Rick Esenberg, has said he thinks the Supreme Court’s latest ruling would bolster their argument.

“It’s very difficult to see how the state wins that case now,” Esenberg told Inside Higher Ed.

The Republican speaker of Wisconsin’s state assembly, Robin Vos, has said he plans to introduce a bill this fall “to correct the discriminatory laws” that created those grants in 1985.

For now, private scholarships that consider race and ethnicity haven’t faced the same kind of pushback. The University of Missouri system, for example, said it will continue to accept scholarships from private organizations that consider a student’s race — so long as the university was not involved in the selection process.

Angelique Albert, the CEO of Native Forward, a nonprofit that awards private scholarships to Native students, said her organization has been reassuring donors in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that their donations will still reach Native students.

Her organization has also been reaching out to colleges to make sure they’re aware that their scholarships are based on tribal citizenship, not race.

Still, she is worried about what will happen if students lose access to scholarships that consider their Native identity.

“The need is so high,” Albert said. “As Native people in this country, we have not had generational access to education, we haven’t had generational wealth.”

Corri Tate Ravare, the executive director of a charter school in central New Jersey that’s part of the College Achieve Public Schools network, said for her students, even smaller scholarships of $500 to $1,000 that consider race or ethnicity can be the difference between a student being able to attend a college, or not. Many of the students at her school are of Puerto Rican or Dominican descent.

Scholarships often cover tuition, she said, but families still need help paying for housing costs or fees for things like on-campus health care.

If her staff sees colleges getting rid of certain scholarships, she said, they’ll likely start preparing students to apply for private scholarships earlier in their high school career.

“We don’t want any student to not go to their college of choice because of a small financial gap,” Ravare said. “We just sort of have to wait and see.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

This online tutoring company says it offers expert one-on-one help. Students often get neither.

2023-07-17T11:00:00+00:00

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Lauren Williams took a job with Paper, one of the biggest virtual tutoring companies used by U.S. schools, because she wanted to help kids.

Williams, a self-described English and history buff who lives just south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, liked the work at first. As she helped students with their writing, it felt like students were getting personal attention they badly needed.

But as Paper ratcheted up the pace and volume of her tutoring assignments last year, Williams grew alarmed.

By this spring, she was routinely working with five students at once on the company’s online platform, which resembles a text-based instant messenger. She found herself toggling between kindergarteners learning to read and high-schoolers writing college essays, frantically trying to respond to each student’s message within Paper’s 50-second time limit.

Her breaking point came as Paper put new pressure on tutors to review essays faster — in part by recycling comments they’d written before.

“I was like: ‘No, I can’t do this,’” said Williams, who quit in March. That kind of help, she concluded, is “not doing what’s right by the kids.”

Lauren Williams

Tapping into the federal government’s historic investment in helping students recover from the pandemic, Paper has won contracts worth tens of millions of dollars telling schools it offers one-on-one tutoring with subject experts.

But the company often fails to deliver that basic service to students, a Chalkbeat investigation has found. In fact, tutors often juggle multiple students at once — a setup other virtual tutoring companies avoid — sometimes in subjects they don’t know well.

Paper argues that a student’s experience is always one-on-one, since students typically aren’t aware their tutor is working with others.

But the company’s practices and internal messaging suggest top officials know multi-tasking can be a challenge for tutors. It has even paid tutors “surge” bonuses of two to three times their normal pay rate for every minute they work with four or more students at once.

“At least when you’re in that stressful experience of having four kids in your classroom you know that you’re making double pay,” said Julia Drury, Paper’s senior director of operations, at a virtual company meeting last summer. “If you’re doing the work of two tutors, then you should be paid for the work of two tutors.”

School districts and state education agencies, meanwhile, are investing millions of COVID relief dollars in Paper’s services, sometimes none the wiser.

To report this story, Chalkbeat interviewed more than a dozen current and former Paper employees and reviewed hundreds of pages of company documents, including screenshots of internal conversations among employees.

In an interview, Paper’s CEO, Philip Cutler, did not dispute Chalkbeat’s findings that tutors are often working with more than one student at a time and that tutors sometimes work with students on unfamiliar subjects.

But he maintains that Paper is delivering one-on-one tutoring because tutors who work with multiple students do so in separate, individual sessions.

“The student’s experience is one-on-one,” Cutler told Chalkbeat in June. “The tutor can be supporting multiple people. The idea is that the attention I’m getting is dedicated to me.”

Several school officials said they were not aware that Paper tutors were often working with multiple students at once until Chalkbeat told them.

“The department will follow up with Paper about this and continue to monitor, throughout the upcoming school year, if this practice has any impact on student engagement and/or satisfaction of services,” wrote Jean Cook, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Education, one of Paper’s largest clients, in an email to Chalkbeat.

Paper tutors juggle multiple students at once

As students fell behind during the pandemic, many researchers and education officials encouraged schools to tutor their students. That recommendation was backed by years of research that has found tutoring can deliver positive academic results, especially when kids get one-on-one help.

Amid staffing shortages, many school districts struggled to find and hire in-person tutors. That’s why many schools were drawn to Paper, which relies on 2,000 mostly part-time tutors who typically log on virtually from their homes across the U.S. and Canada.

Today the nine-year-old, Montreal-based company holds contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to tutor more than three million students in 600 districts across the U.S. and Canada. Much of that is backed by federal COVID relief money.

Chalkbeat previously found that Paper’s tutoring often goes unused, particularly by students who most need help. The company lost a contract earlier this year with the state of New Mexico, after officials there said Paper had failed to meet students’ needs.

Paper has told potential clients, like New Mexico, that it provides “a 1:1 student-tutor ratio.”

“We tailor instruction for each student,” Paper wrote to New Mexico education officials last fall in a proposal to work with the state. “With our 1:1 support, your students will receive the personalized attention they need.”

Paper issued this guidance to tutors to help them manage multiple students at once.

But Paper tutors often can’t do that, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Paper tutors. The company’s employee handbook tells tutors they should be able to work comfortably with three students at once.

“We’ve found this to usually be manageable without sacrificing quality,” the handbook states. It adds: “there is no maximum number of students a tutor can be matched with simultaneously.”

Paper offers tipsheets for tutors meant to help them work with multiple students at once. One guide obtained by Chalkbeat tells tutors to ask students questions about what they want to work on to “buy you some buffer time to navigate between students.” Tutors can also “LET STUDENTS TAKE THE LEAD!” to make it “easier” to toggle between sessions.

Cutler said it’s rare for tutors to work with more than three students at once and that it only happens for short bursts of times, or “surges.”

Paper’s own data, provided to Chalkbeat by the company, shows that tutors spent 33% of their working hours over the last school year helping two students at once, 10% of their time helping three students at once, and just under 2% of their time helping four or more students. The rest of the time, tutors worked with one or no students.

But several tutors said those rates don’t accurately reflect their workload, which spikes in the mornings and afternoons. Internally, Paper has acknowledged that tutors who work in high-demand subjects like math experience surges of four or more students “on kind of an ongoing basis,” as Drury said at the virtual company meeting last summer.

One math and science tutor told Chalkbeat he’d helped a dozen students at once. Another math and science tutor said she’d gotten 10 students during a surge.

“You just keep switching tabs,” the tutor said. “I feel bad for some of these kids who are using the platform.”

Paper has resisted making changes that could cut down on tutor multitasking, such as adding a waiting room or scheduling option, because they could result in fewer students using Paper, according to a former manager who left Paper last year after several years with the company.

“The response to it was just like: ‘We don’t want to turn students away,’” said the former manager, who asked not to be named because they signed a confidentiality agreement with Paper that prohibits sharing details about the company’s internal operations. “The quality of the service was always secondary.”

Cutler said “that’s certainly not the case” and that Paper has been “very focused on delivering a high level of quality over cost.”

This kind of juggling is not the industry standard. Many other virtual tutoring companies offer intentional group sessions where students work together on similar assignments. Others conduct tutoring sessions over live audio or live video, which makes toggling between students nearly impossible. Paper does neither.

And other companies that offer text-based tutoring limit the number of students a tutor has at once.

TutorMe, for example, said its platform allows tutors to conduct only one session at a time. Varsity Tutors said when a student requests an on-demand tutor, a tutor can’t get another student “until the session is resolved.” Tutor.com said the maximum number of students a tutor can have at once is two, and that happens in only 2% of sessions.

“We NEVER work with multiple students in DIFFERENT individual sessions at the same time,” Mike Cohen, the CEO of Cignition, a California-based company that contracts with the Denver, Los Angeles, and Baltimore school districts, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat.

Figuring out how to run a tutoring program that delivers quality help to a significant number of students without breaking the bank remains a huge challenge for schools, especially as COVID relief funds dwindle. One of Paper’s biggest selling points is that districts can offer unlimited virtual tutoring to all their students at a fixed price. If lots of students use it, it can be less expensive than pricey in-person tutoring programs.

Experts say they understand how those competing needs drove some districts to select on-demand homework help, like the kind Paper offers, even though it does not have many of the hallmarks of effective tutoring.

“It’s easy to implement,” said Jennifer Krajewski, who helps schools choose evidence-based tutoring programs through a Johns Hopkins University initiative called ProvenTutoring. “And it doesn’t necessarily require shifts in schedules. Those are real challenges that schools are facing.”

But when districts express interest in virtual, on-demand tutoring, Krajewski said she cautions school leaders to ask about how many students tutors will work with at once, and what kind of relationship students will build with tutors. Several companies, including Paper, match students with a new virtual tutor every time they log on.

“A big part of why tutoring is so powerful is that human connection with somebody who cares about you,” said Amanda Neitzel, a Johns Hopkins assistant research scientist who works with schools through ProvenTutoring. “If you are doing a virtual model with somebody who is juggling two other kids, even in the best-case scenario, how much are you actually doing that?”

Some schools left in dark about Paper’s tutoring practices

Tutors have repeatedly told Paper that they worry the company’s advertising is misleading schools, internal records and interviews show. In March, one tutor asked on Slack, the company’s internal messaging platform, if Paper would stop saying it offers one-on-one tutoring on its website because “it has not been that way, according to many tutors.” A top manager defended the description.

“You are working with a student in an individual session!” Caroline Schwim, Paper’s senior manager of teaching and learning, wrote in response. “We are open with our districts about tutors working with multiple sessions which helps us remain affordable for them!”

Cutler says school districts are informed that tutors may be working with multiple students at once “through the sales process” and that “districts are fine with that.”

But the Mississippi Department of Education, which is paying Paper $10.7 million to tutor up to 350,000 students across the state, told Chalkbeat it did not know. A state official there said the department would talk with Paper about this practice and monitor whether it was affecting student engagement or satisfaction with tutoring.

Clarissa Trejo, a spokesperson for Fontana Unified schools in California, said the district “has never had a conversation regarding how many students a tutor would be helping at a time.” The district, which has paid Paper $1.9 million to tutor some 38,000 students, had no concerns about the quality of Paper’s tutoring, Trejo added.

Meanwhile, officials with Arlington Public Schools in Virginia and Los Angeles Unified told Chalkbeat they didn’t learn that tutors may help multiple students at once until after they had agreed to work with Paper and were putting the program in place. Still, a Los Angeles schools spokesperson said Paper is “an essential component” of the district’s plan for giving students “individualized instruction.”

Other school officials said they were aware before they hired Paper. Clark County schools in Nevada, which is paying Paper nearly $13 million to tutor 302,000 students, said the district found out in its initial conversations with Paper that tutors “may conduct simultaneous one-on-one learning sessions with multiple students.”

The Tennessee Department of Education, which has a contract with Paper worth up to $1.3 million, said its contract permits Paper tutors to work with up to three students at a time — a limit that doesn’t typically appear in other Paper contracts.

“We have received no complaints or evidence that Paper is violating their contract,” wrote Brian Blackley, a spokesperson for the state, in an email.

Paper tells tutors to Google their way through sessions

When students log on to Paper’s platform, they expect to be matched with a tutor who knows something about the subject they need help with. Paper says it employs “experts across K-12 subject areas” on its website, and that it gives tutors aptitude tests to vet their knowledge.

But in practice, several current Paper tutors said they are routinely matched with students who need help with subjects they don’t know. Tutors who feel stuck can transfer a student to a colleague with more expertise, but they can be fired if they do that too often.

Paper advises tutors to consult Google for help when they are paired with a student in a subject they don’t know well.

Paper has told uncertain tutors to buy time by asking the student a question while they essentially Google their way through the session.

“Even if you’re uncertain, give it a go,” Schwim told tutors last fall during a video training, according to a screenshot viewed by Chalkbeat.

The result looks something like what happened to Shannon Dickinson’s daughter, a high school junior in Las Vegas. Dickinson, a kindergarten teacher, had heard Clark County schools was offering tutoring through Paper, and she urged her daughter to give it a try when she was struggling with her pre-calculus class in January.

But each time the 11th grader logged on and showed a Paper tutor her math problem, she waited for a long time only to find out the tutor couldn’t help.

“It would be like 45 minutes later: ‘Sorry I can’t help you, I’m going to transfer you to someone else,’” Dickinson recalled. “Then she’d have to do the process again.” After several failed attempts to get help, Dickinson’s daughter told her: “This is not worth my time.”

When Chalkbeat told Dickinson that Paper’s tutors are told to Google their way through sessions when they’re stuck, she was stunned.

“Oh geez,” she replied. “Well, high schoolers can do that too!”

Wendi Dunlap, who worked for Paper for just over a year before she quit in March, has seen this play out from the tutor’s side. Earlier this year, Dunlap, an English and history tutor, got paired with a middle schooler with a math question. Dunlap tried to help anyway, following the company’s protocols. But when the student checked the work they’d done against an answer key, she reported back: “That’s completely wrong.”

Dunlap apologized and scrambled to transfer the student to a math tutor, but it was too late. The student had signed off.

“I felt so horrible,” Dunlap said. “It wasn’t fair to her.”

A math and economics tutor who’s been with Paper for four years said she once spent 45 minutes trying to convince her manager over Slack that she needed to transfer a high school student with a chemistry question that she had “zero clue” how to solve. To stall for time, she asked the student for their notes. Essentially, though, the student spent that time “doing nothing,” the tutor said.

“It’s just leading to the student getting more frustrated,” the tutor said. “This is not right.”

Cutler said scenarios like those are uncommon. The guidance Paper has given to tutors, he added, is similar to what teachers are expected to do if a student asks a question the teacher doesn’t know how to answer.

“I don’t dismiss the student, I say: ‘Let’s figure it out,’” Cutler said. “‘Let’s pull up the internet.’”

Paper advertises that it offers one-on-one virtual tutoring with subject experts on its website.

Paper also puts pressure on tutors to work quickly. Tutors are expected to respond to students within 50 seconds, internal records show, regardless of how many students they have at once or how complicated the student’s question is. Tutors who review essays are told to spend no more than 30 minutes per assignment, no matter how long it is. To do that, several tutors said they copy and paste pre-written feedback.

When tutors miss those targets, managers tell them to speed up. Tutors have been fired for failing to meet their marks, internal records show.

Internally, Paper officials have justified the time limits by saying they allow the company to charge less “so that even underfunded districts (those who need us the most!) can afford us,” Schwim wrote to employees in March, according to a screenshot viewed by Chalkbeat. The company has marketed its tutoring as a way to address inequities among students, “especially those from marginalized groups.”

Several tutors said the breakneck pace makes it harder to help students. One tutor, who left the company in January, said they got a urinary tract infection from skipping bathroom breaks as they tried to keep up with students. Two other tutors said they carried their laptops into the bathroom so they could keep working on the toilet.

“You couldn’t take your hands off the keyboard,” said the tutor who got the UTI, who asked not to be identified because they signed a non-disparagement agreement with Paper, a copy of which Chalkbeat viewed.

Cutler said tutors have told Paper that they take their computers into the bathroom to keep working, but that the company doesn’t “encourage” this practice. Paper recently instituted a “chime” to remind tutors to take their break, he added.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Dickinson figured out a way to get her daughter the math help she needed.

She dipped into her own pocket to pay for private tutoring.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Biden says Supreme Court ruling should not deter colleges from efforts to diversify their campuses

2023-06-29T22:45:09+00:00

President Joe Biden, responding to the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday that severely restricts how colleges can consider a student’s race in the admissions process, called on colleges and universities to find alternative ways to create racially diverse student bodies.

“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” Biden said in a Thursday news conference. “We cannot let this decision be the last word.”

In lieu of considering race, Biden urged colleges to give strong consideration to the adversities students have faced, such as whether they overcame hardship or racial discrimination and whether they come from a low-income family. Colleges could also consider where a student grew up and where they attended high school, Biden said.

Already, some college recruitment programs zero in on communities where many low-income Black and Latino students live as part of their efforts to boost student diversity on campuses. Biden’s comments appeared to be aimed at preserving those efforts.

Colleges “should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies are of diverse backgrounds and experiences that reflect all of America,” Biden said.

While colleges can no longer explicitly consider a student’s race as part of a holistic admissions review, the court’s opinion does allow colleges to look at how race affected a student’s life, so long as it’s tied to a unique skill or character they’d bring to the school. Discussions like that typically come up in an applicant’s personal essay.

In a fact sheet, White House officials said the Education and Justice departments would issue guidance within the next 45 days to help colleges and universities navigate which admissions practices and student support programs “remain lawful.” That will likely involve poring over the Supreme Court’s most recent and past decisions on affirmative action, and looking for any wiggle room.

In his 6-3 opinion for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s race-conscious admissions policies were unconstitutional because they did not have “sufficiently focused and measurable objectives” that warranted the use of race; they used race in a “negative manner” that involved racial stereotyping; and their policies did not have “meaningful end points.”

“That is a list of faults with the UNC and Harvard programs, but it could be read as a blueprint for what would pass muster in some subsequent lawsuit,” said Anthony S. Chen, an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University, who is publishing a book on the history of affirmative action next year.

But the ruling “doesn’t tell us specifically, well, what does a ‘sufficiently focused and measurable objective’ look like?” Chen added.

Federal guidance — and potentially future litigation — could help fill in that gap.

Some university officials say they will be looking for workarounds.

At the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, which regularly gets 10,000 applications for 184 spots, that could include putting more weight on essays and responses to questions about past experiences, advocacy work, and personal attributes, said Shanta Zimmer, the senior associate dean for education.

Those questions can help illuminate whether an applicant speaks another language, whether they’ve had to seek primary care in an emergency room, whether they are the first in their family to go to college, or whether they have worked with community groups to improve health outcomes for marginalized communities, Zimmer said.

Given the correlation between patient health outcomes and the race and ethnicity of health care providers, admitting diverse medical students is “not just about what the class looks like,” Zimmer said. “It’s about how patients get healthy and how they survive, literally.”

Notably, the Supreme Court carved out an exemption that allows military academies, such as West Point, to continue to consider race in admissions, citing their “potentially distinct interests.” In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the exemption was too narrow, given that civilian universities could also have national security interests in maintaining racial diversity.

In his speech, Biden directed the Education Department to analyze which admissions practices are likely to produce a more inclusive and diverse student body, and which practices “expand privilege instead of opportunity,” such as “legacy” admissions policies that favor the children of alumni.

The Education Department will release a report in September, White House officials said, that will lay out strategies for how to boost diversity and use student adversity as a factor in admissions. The report will also detail practices that hurt the admissions chances of students from “underserved communities,” and explain how to run outreach and recruitment programs so they still create diverse applicant pools.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, several school leaders and education equity advocates called on colleges to get rid of legacy admissions that tend to favor wealthier, white students as a first step.

Opponents of legacy admissions include Shavar Jeffries, a civil rights lawyer who heads the KIPP charter school network, which enrolls some 120,000 students nationwide, most of whom are Black and Hispanic students from low-income families.

“Legacy admissions transfer privilege across generations, disfavoring first-generation KIPP students,” Jeffries said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision should be a wake-up call for colleges to reimagine their admissions practices.”

Erica Meltzer contributed reporting to this article.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court rules against affirmative action; racial diversity in colleges likely to suffer

2023-06-29T14:44:04+00:00

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The nation’s top colleges are likely to enroll fewer Black, Latino, and Native American students after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that colleges and universities essentially cannot consider race as a factor in the admissions process.

The ruling severely restricts colleges’ ability to use affirmative action to create more racially diverse campuses, and will likely curtail broader efforts to fight for racial equity in higher education.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s race-conscious admissions programs had violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars discrimination, because they “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote.

That bar will make it exceedingly difficult for colleges and universities to consider race as part of their admissions process going forward.

Roberts’ majority opinion did leave open a small window for how colleges could consider race in admissions. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” the chief justice wrote.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor described this as a meaningless concession — “nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig.”

“The Court’s opinion circumscribes universities’ ability to consider race in any form by meticulously gutting respondents’ asserted diversity interests,” wrote Sotomayor. “Yet, because the Court cannot escape the inevitable truth that race matters in students’ lives, it announces a false promise to save face and appear attuned to reality. No one is fooled.”

Nine states — including California, Florida, Michigan, and Washington — already ban affirmative action at public colleges and universities.

This decision stems from two cases that were brought before the court by Students for Fair Admissions, an organization headed by Edward Blum, who has spent years fighting affirmative action.

Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard and the University of North Carolina over their race-conscious admissions policies, arguing that they were unfair and discriminatory. The group alleged that Harvard’s policies, in particular, discriminated against Asian American applicants. The universities countered that they needed to take race into account to build a diverse student body, which brings educational benefits to the schools.

The decision has big implications for students looking to attend the nation’s most competitive colleges, which are more likely to consider race as a factor in admissions.

“We know that Hispanic and Black students are less college-going than their white counterparts. We know that they’re coming from less-resourced secondary schools,” said Kate Peltz, a college counselor who’s written about how ending affirmative action could affect students of color. “The process is already harder for kids from underrepresented backgrounds, and it’s about to become more so.”

But the ruling likely will have little effect on the vast majority of college students who attend less selective schools, such as community colleges, which accept most students who apply.

Here are three major ways the ruling is likely to affect students who are applying to college:

Black, Latino, and Native students will be less likely to get into top colleges

Officials at several selective colleges have said they expect the numbers of Black and Latino students, in particular, to decline if colleges are essentially no longer permitted to consider student race as part of a holistic admissions review.

An expert working on behalf of Harvard, for example, estimated that getting rid of race-conscious admissions would cause Black enrollment in Harvard’s freshman class to fall from 14% to 6%, and Hispanic enrollment to drop from 14% to 9%. White and Asian American enrollment, meanwhile, would grow.

Data from states that previously banned affirmative action also provide a look at what may happen nationwide. After California and Michigan got rid of affirmative action, the share of Black, Latino, and Indigenous students at several of the most selective colleges fell sharply. Those figures tended to tick back up with time, but never fully rebounded — and they still fail to represent the racial diversity of high school graduates in those states, the Boston Globe reported.

When colleges become less racially diverse, students of color often feel the schools are less welcoming — which could further depress the number of Black and Latino students on campus. That matters because Black and Latino students are more likely to benefit from the social capital that comes from attending a top college.

Colleges in states that axed affirmative action have tried alternatives to create racially diverse classes. That includes accepting a certain percentage of top high school graduates, recruiting from high schools that enroll large shares of underrepresented students, and giving preference to students from low-income families. But researchers and many college officials say those methods don’t work as well as explicitly taking race into account.

“There is no race-neutral alternative to being able to consider race,” Femi Ogundele, an official at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Los Angeles Times recently.

On top of that, colleges may not want to take new steps to ensure racial diversity for fear of violating the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.

“I think people imagine that we’ll find creative ways of working around the court’s decision, like using an applicant’s ZIP code as a stand-in for their race. But we won’t,” said Lee Bollinger, the outgoing president of Columbia University who was a defendant in a previous landmark Supreme Court case that upheld affirmative action. “We can’t knowingly violate the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. We’ll have to abide by it, no matter how painful.”

Students, and their school counselors, will have to navigate a new college admissions terrain

The Supreme Court’s ruling will have the biggest effects on high-achieving high schoolers who are applying to highly selective colleges, as those institutions are more likely to use race as a factor in admissions.

A quarter of colleges considered race in admissions to some degree, according to a 2019 survey from the National Association for College Admission Counseling that was cited in the court case. But 60% of the most selective colleges — those that accept 4 in 10 applicants or less — considered an applicant’s race, according to a 2015 survey from the American Council on Education.

Those colleges serve a small slice of the nation’s undergraduates. This fall, colleges that admitted half of their students or less enrolled just 10% of U.S. undergraduates, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

For those students, this ruling may change which colleges they apply to and what information they share on their applications.

That’s left many school counselors and college coaches worried about whether they’ll have time to research and advise students on changing admissions policies. Many low-income students of color — whose school counselors tend to have higher student caseloads — won’t have someone to provide that kind of hands-on help.

“It’s already a complicated job that’s underresourced,” said Austin Buchan, a senior vice president at College Possible, a nonprofit organization that helps students from low-income families apply to college. “And this is just not going to do us any favors.”

Personal essays, which often ask students about their identity, values, and how they’d contribute to campus life, are likely to be especially fraught.

During both sets of oral arguments, several justices asked whether students would still be permitted to talk about certain personal experiences, such as overcoming racial discrimination or taking pride in their family’s cultural traditions, if race could not be considered.

A lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions said “culture, tradition, heritage are all not off limits for students to talk about and for universities to consider” so long as the college awarded credit for “something unique and individual in what they actually wrote, not race itself.” Some justices noted that distinction could be hard for colleges to make.

For that reason, some college access coaches and school counselors worry that students will avoid talking about anything that could hint at their race, even if it could enhance their application.

“Students might self-censor,” said Marie Bigham, the executive director of ACCEPT, a nonprofit that advocates for racial equity in college admissions. “Racial identities and experiences are just so interwoven with our lives in the United States. How do you pull that apart effectively in a way that’s not going to be constantly scrutinized?”

Some students of color may lower their college ambitions

School counselors and college coaches say Black and Latino students already hold off on applying to the nation’s top colleges, or worry they don’t deserve their spots when they get accepted. The latest Supreme Court ruling, they said, could cause more students to question their abilities and whether they want to pursue higher education — at a time when there’s already been a spike in students skipping college.

“It’s compounding a narrative that many students feel reinforced at each step of the process,” said Buchan, of College Possible. He worries the ruling will cause more students to think: “See, I told you higher ed isn’t for me.”

Some research also supports the idea that student motivation suffers when affirmative action is off the table. Natalie Bau, an economics professor at UCLA, looked at what happened when Texas lifted its ban on considering race in college admissions.

She and her colleagues found that Black and Latino high schoolers had better school attendance, higher SAT scores, higher grades, and applied to more colleges — and the effects were greatest for students with the highest test scores.

The thinking is “before it seemed too hard” to get into a more selective college, and “now it becomes attainable, so it makes sense to put in that extra effort,” Bau said. With a nationwide ban on affirmative action, Bau said, student motivation may slip.

“Underrepresented minority students might reduce their effort in high school and that might result in lower test scores, lower grades, lower attendance, and fewer applications to selective institutions,” Bau said. “That might make this under-application problem worse.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Many teacher prep programs include debunked methods to teach kids to read, new report finds

2023-06-13T23:20:00+00:00

Thousands of aspiring teachers are graduating from educator prep programs each year unprepared to teach children how to read, or worse, armed with debunked strategies that can actually make it harder for kids to become proficient readers.

That’s one of the most “sobering” findings of a new national report released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit that uses data to evaluate teacher prep programs.

But there is some good news: Several states, like Colorado and Arizona, have made significant strides in recent years in how they train teachers to teach reading, following statewide efforts to boost early literacy.

“On the whole — when it comes to teaching teachers how to teach children to read aligned to the science of reading — I’m optimistic,” said Heather Peske, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. “And we have a lot of work to do.”

The report comes amid an ongoing national debate about how children best learn to read, and how much emphasis schools should place on explicitly teaching certain key components of literacy, such as phonics.

Dozens of states have passed laws in recent years, according to a tracker maintained by Education Week, that require schools to use materials in line with the long-standing body of evidence on how children learn to read, often called the “science of reading.” Many of these laws also aim to improve teacher training.

To conduct its analysis, the National Council on Teacher Quality looked at course syllabi and materials, such as lecture notes and textbooks, from nearly 700 teacher prep programs across the U.S. The sample is fairly large: Together, those programs produce around two-thirds of all elementary school teacher candidates annually.

Around 1,150 teacher prep programs met the criteria to be reviewed, based on the number of elementary teachers they graduated each year. But some 440 programs declined to provide materials, so they were not reviewed.

The organization also did not rate alternative teacher certification programs, which account for six of the 10 largest teacher prep programs in the nation, based on their number of graduates. The council wasn’t able to obtain materials from several of those programs, which tend to be shorter than traditional prep programs. A council spokesperson likened them to “a black box.”

“It begs the question of: To what extent are they aligning their preparation with the science of reading?” Peske said.

Some 260 programs earned an F grade from the council. Together, they produce upwards of 15,000 elementary teacher candidates a year, the council estimated. (Nationally, prep programs of all kinds graduated around 162,000 teacher candidates in spring 2021, the latest federal data shows, though that included teachers for all grades and subjects.)

Many programs fail to teach key literacy components

One major problem, according to the council’s report, is that around a quarter of the programs the council reviewed fail to adequately teach all five of the key components of literacy. Those are the skills researchers agree are crucial to how children learn to read: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

Among those skills, phonemic awareness gets the least attention. Four out of 5 programs failed to offer at least seven hours of instructional time on that skill, the bar the council set for adequate coverage. The finding was echoed in similar council evaluations in 2020 and 2016.

That matters because phonemic awareness — which involves working with the individual sounds in words, such as the C-A-T sounds in “cat” — prepares kids to develop phonics skills, which in turn helps them connect the sounds they hear to the letters on the page.

“Because of the interconnectivity of these components, a teacher who lacks an understanding of one will be less effective teaching the others,” the report warns, “and students who miss instruction on one component may struggle to become fully literate.”

Another big issue: Dozens of teacher prep programs are still teaching debunked methods, such as the three-cueing system, which encourages children to guess words they do not know by looking at a picture or the first letter of the word.

Nearly 100 programs were still using a popular curriculum developed by Lucy Calkins, of Columbia University’s Teachers College, which has been criticized by experts for failing to explicitly teach the key components of literacy. Calkins recently revised the curriculum to address those concerns.

Still other programs are teaching a mix of research-backed and non-research-based strategies.

“It reminds me a little of sedimentary rock,” Peske said. “Somehow there is a layer of debunked practices that’s embedded in the program that needs to be extracted.”

Some programs overhauled reading lessons to improve

Several states earned top marks from NCTQ after undertaking a major overhaul of their approach to reading instruction.

Colorado, for example, climbed to the top spot in the nation after a yearslong, statewide campaign that included banning discredited elementary reading curriculum and requiring teacher training that follows the science of reading. Three years ago, the state was in the middle of the pack.

Arizona jumped from near the bottom to the ninth spot over that same period, following similar efforts to improve reading instruction in that state.

Teacher prep programs have put in a lot of work to make that happen.

At Arizona State University, for example, which has one of the largest teacher prep programs in the country, faculty members put in hundreds of hours of work to create a new course that focuses solely on the five key components of literacy. It replaced another class that didn’t dive as deeply into those five skills.

The university’s graduate and undergraduate teacher prep programs earned As on the council’s report.

“This class has a lot of content in it that helps students when they get to the next course, which is more application of their knowledge,” said Carlyn Ludlow, an associate director at ASU’s program who was involved in revamping the courses. “We felt like it was incredibly foundational.”

Next year, the university also is changing an internship so teachers-in-training have a full semester to practice teaching reading in a school.

Some programs are getting outside support to overhaul their work on literacy instruction. Last year, the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment pledged $25 million to support phonics-based instruction for undergraduate teacher prep programs in Indiana’s colleges and universities.

The teacher prep program at Texas A&M University-Texarkana earned an A+ from the council after Carol Cordray, an assistant professor of education, tore up the university’s old approach to teaching reading and started over.

“It was a 100% revamp,” Cordray said. “I don’t know that anything is left of the courses as they were four years ago.”

One of the classes that got a full overhaul focuses on how to assess children in reading. Now teachers-in-training go through a series of case studies, learning how to gather data and make decisions about which interventions to use.

“I’ve had several of my students come back and just say: ‘I’m so grateful for all we learned in your courses because I was right ready to walk in and do what I needed to do,’” Cordray said. “That’s the very best thanks you can get: A prepared teacher.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Many young kids missed early special ed services due to COVID, compounding work for schools

2023-05-24T23:46:37+00:00

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Tens of thousands of young children with developmental delays went without critical services early in the pandemic, a new report finds, suggesting many preschools and elementary schools are now serving students with greater needs.

Federal officials characterized the report’s findings as “disturbing” though not unexpected, given the disruptions COVID caused to places that typically refer children for these services, such as doctor’s offices, social service agencies, and child care programs.

Nationally, 77,000 fewer 3- and 4-year-olds received early childhood special education services in fall 2020, representing a steep 16% drop from the prior year, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. Similarly, 63,000 fewer infants and toddlers received early intervention services during that time, a 15% decline.

The latest federal data from fall 2021 point to a rebound among children 3 and under getting early intervention and special education services, though the share of 4-year-olds who got that extra support dropped further.

Taken together, it’s a worrying indicator that many children who missed crucial services are entering school further behind in their skills — leaving already stressed early childhood and elementary educators to fill in the gaps.

“We know that there’s a very good likelihood that those children are going to show up either on the first day of preschool or on the first day of kindergarten needing more services than they otherwise would have needed,” said Katherine Neas, a deputy assistant secretary for the federal education department who helps oversee special education. “We really encourage states to look at what additional supports they can and should give students with disabilities.”

Early intervention services are provided to infants and toddlers who have developmental delays or are likely to develop them due to a physical or medical condition. In some states, kids also qualify if they’re at risk of a delay due to factors like premature birth, low birth weight, prenatal drug exposure, or an infection.

Children aged 3 to 5 with certain disabilities are eligible for early childhood special education. A little less than half of kids who get these services have a developmental delay, while just over a third have a speech or language disability. Another 1 in 10 have autism.

Services can include things like physical therapy, speech therapy, counseling, or sign language. Families also get important training and support that can make it easier for them to navigate the K-12 system. Getting help to kids early matters a lot: It can help improve school readiness and academic outcomes and reduce the need for special education later.

Of particular concern, the report’s authors said, was the “striking” 23% drop in Black children who received early childhood special education services, as those students were already much less likely than their peers to get this kind of extra help. By comparison, 18% fewer white children and 3% fewer Hispanic and Asian American children were placed in early childhood special education.

Meanwhile, Asian American infants and toddlers saw the biggest dip in early intervention services — down 21% — though the declines for the youngest children were more similar across race and ethnicity than they were for the older children.

Steven Barnett, a Rutgers professor who co-authored the report, said those racial disparities “are not just unfair, they’re harmful.”

“Early intervention and early childhood special education are vital supports for younger children with special needs and their families,” he said.

Many school districts across the country also struggled to identify K-12 students with disabilities during the pandemic, as some children learned remotely and school staff scrambled to process a backlog of evaluations.

There is some evidence that students who were not identified during this time were missed permanently. A team of researchers released a working paper this week analyzing data from Michigan schools that found significant dips in students being identified for special education in the early elementary grades during the 2020-21 school year, but not enough of a rebound the following year to suggest schools had caught many of the children who fell through the cracks earlier.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Feds launch $10 million school desegregation program after stops and starts

2023-05-18T23:00:00+00:00

In a surprising move, federal education officials announced last week that they had created a new $10 million grant program to fund school integration efforts.

The funding is a small fraction of the $100 million that President Biden has tried to get Congress to put toward this program since he was elected. But it represents a noteworthy, if small, win for integration advocates who’ve spent years lobbying the federal government to take a bigger role in supporting school desegregation.

“This is a relatively small grant program, but it’s part of a larger, multi-year movement,” said Philip Tegeler, the head of a civil rights organization, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, who spoke at an event about the program this week. “The response to this program from local educational agencies and states is going to determine what happens in the future.”

Advocates hope that if the program attracts interest from many school districts, it could help build the case to boost spending down the line.

But it’s unclear how many school districts will want to take on the politically fraught and logistically complicated work of desegregating schools at a time when many communities are fighting over how to teach about race and racism in school, and some states and districts are retreating from the racial equity work they started in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Eighteen states now have laws or other restrictions limiting how schools can teach about racism and sexism, according to a tracker compiled by Education Week, and several school districts have brought back school police after removing them over concerns that they disproportionately arrested Black students. Many educators also are bracing for a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that’s expected to prevent colleges from considering a student’s race in the admissions process.

Still, dozens of school districts, including some of the nation’s largest, have expressed interest in integrating schools in recent years and could be prime candidates for this new funding.

Notably, the new grant program prioritizes initiatives that would integrate students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, though prior versions of this program floated by Biden and others have included preferences for integration by both family income and student race. Federal officials say districts could still use this money to create more racially diverse schools, though that’s not the main focus.

Supreme Court rulings have made it very difficult for school districts to consider student race in desegregation plans and to create integration plans that cross school district boundaries, where most school segregation exists.

The roots of this program go back to 2016, when former Education Secretary John King tried to launch a similar initiative in the final days of the Obama presidency. The education department created a $12 million grant program and received applications from dozens of school districts that wanted to participate. But the Trump administration killed the program before it started.

“This very similar program was started in 2016, but folks never got awards,” said Kayla Patrick, a special assistant in the education department’s planning and policy development office. “We are really excited to have this opportunity to actually see the entire program through. Our hope is that this is just step one and we can get to the place where we’re scaling up.”

This time around, the education department is using existing funding through a federal program that’s meant to create safe and healthy schools and provide students with access to a well-rounded education.

“Research suggests that income segregation is increasing and that students in socioeconomically isolated schools (i.e., schools overwhelmingly composed of children from low-income backgrounds) have less access to the critical resources and funding that are necessary for high-quality educational experiences,” a notice for the grant states. “This disparity can ultimately have detrimental effects on the individual lives of students and the foundation of democracy.”

Federal officials expect to award four to eight grants to school districts that are in the planning stages of integrating their schools and one to three larger grants to districts that are putting their integration plans into action. The timeline is relatively short: Applications are due in July and work could begin as soon as the fall.

Some integration advocates say that even in the face of legal limitations, the federal government can do more than start a competitive grant program. That approach only appeals to districts that already want to do this work, but doesn’t touch the many places where there is little appetite for change.

“I think students deserve access to diverse learning environments in whatever communities they are,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank that supports school integration, “even if those are communities that have a long way to go in terms of recognizing the need for integration.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

High-dosage tutoring is still hard. Here’s what schools have learned.

2023-05-17T16:40:31+00:00

Christy Borders is frank about the “pain points” Illinois has faced while working to get an intensive tutoring initiative up and running.

Officials underestimated how much they’d have to pay tutors. Some schools offered tutoring after school, but few students attended. Even with training, tutors didn’t always use the tried-and-true strategies for helping students.

To course-correct, state officials boosted pay to $50 an hour, helped schools redesign their programs to offer tutoring during the school day, and coached tutors who needed support.

“The truth is that there are a lot of scabbed knees and bruises in this work,” Borders, who oversees the state’s tutoring effort, said at a conference held last week at Stanford University about the future of tutoring. “Not going to sugar coat this, guys. It’s hard work.”

Early in the pandemic, experts identified high-dosage tutoring — the kind that’s offered multiple times per week, in small groups, with a consistent tutor — as a potentially successful strategy for helping students plug learning gaps. But more than two years into a national push to expand the reach of tutoring, many schools are still struggling with basics, like how to staff and schedule their programs.

Now, as COVID relief funds dwindle, some big questions remain, including: What are the best ways to get high-dosage tutoring to more students? And how can schools keep their programs going when those federal dollars are gone?

A key group of researchers, school leaders, and tutoring organizations attempted to answer some of those questions at the recent convening hosted by the National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford program that shares research and helps schools launch tutoring programs.

Here are some of the major takeaways from that event:

Some schools are ditching after-school tutoring

School leaders from New Mexico, Tennessee, Texas, and elsewhere said they tried to tutor students outside of regular school hours, but attendance was lackluster. As a result, some schools are changing their programs to offer extra help during the day — which typically involves overhauling school schedules.

“You have to blank slate it, start over, and redesign based on what is necessary for students,” said Penny Schwinn, the outgoing Tennessee education commissioner, who has overseen a statewide tutoring initiative that involves 87 districts and some 200,000 students. “For us, it is: Do the tutoring during the school day. That’s the only thing that has worked.”

In Tennessee, many schools are making that work by using academic intervention time that was set aside before the pandemic. Schools also are leaning on full-time tutors, who can make it easier to reach more students during school hours, Schwinn said.

Some districts had success changing elementary school schedules, but got tripped up trying to create classes for middle and high schoolers. In Ector County, Texas, school leaders slotted in virtual tutoring time at one middle school this school year and will be working that into the master schedules of more middle and high schools this fall. Doing that work in advance is key, educators said.

“We’ll hopefully have better attendance,” said Carina Escajeda, who oversees virtual tutoring for the district. “Those have been tough schools to really reach the students.”

There’s a push to use AI, but it’s unclear how much

Several researchers pointed to emerging evidence that has found schools can pair human tutors with software that uses artificial intelligence and still get strong results for students. That’s good news, they say, because it means schools could potentially offer tutoring to more students at a lower price.

In one recent study, for example, researchers found that ninth graders in Chicago and New York City who got daily math tutoring could spend about half their time with a tutor and the other half using a computer program and see results similar to students who spent an entire class with a live tutor. But there’s no consensus yet on exactly how much time students need to spend with a human tutor for it to remain effective.

“If we go too far it’s not going to be great,” said Jonathan Guryan, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University who was involved in that research.

Research is underway to see what the right balance may be. Though there’s broad agreement that students will still need a human connection.

“AI can support high-impact tutoring by making materials better, by giving tutors really good information on students,” said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford education professor who’s involved in numerous tutoring studies. “Most students are still likely to need relationships to get them to work on the AI platforms and to help them thrive more broadly.”

Schools are measuring effects of tutoring in different ways

While some state and district leaders are working with researchers to rigorously study their tutoring programs, others say that’s not practical and are turning to things like attendance data, test scores, and student surveys to see if tutoring has moved the needle for students.

Experts say while that kind of descriptive data can be helpful, it won’t show whether it was the tutoring that made a difference, or not.

“If you don’t have the data, you can’t say if it’s not working,” said Shanitah Young, a director with the North Carolina Education Corps, which recruits and trains tutors to work in schools across the state. The organization’s program is being evaluated by Duke and North Carolina State universities. “It’s allowing us to say ‘Yes, these students have grown through tutoring,’ or ‘No, they have not.’”

There are several studies that are expected to be published this summer and fall that could help school districts make their programs more effective. That includes two gold-standard experiments looking at whether the tutor’s race or gender affect academic outcomes for students, and another rigorous study looking at whether student group size affects the quality of live virtual tutoring in reading.

Schools are preparing for the fiscal cliff

Schools and states had to set aside a large chunk of their COVID relief funds to address pandemic learning losses, and many put that toward tutoring. Still, by some estimates, only 1 in 10 students or fewer are getting that extra help.

Now, as those funds run out, school districts are looking for alternate ways to pay for their tutoring programs, or planning for cuts — raising questions about how many more students schools will be able to reach.

Some states, like Tennessee, have budgeted money to continue paying for high-dosage tutoring after federal COVID funds expire, while others, like Connecticut, are ramping up data collection to lobby state lawmakers for ongoing tutoring dollars.

Meanwhile, some school districts, like Texas’ Ector County, will be deciding whether they should cut ties with some of their more expensive tutoring providers, while other districts, like Guilford County, North Carolina, are taking on some longer-term costs by staffing a four-person department to oversee their tutoring work.

“Money is about to get very, very tight,” said Robin Lake, who heads the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which has been tracking district academic recovery plans. “What we’re hearing from districts is they are overwhelmed by the challenge of core instruction. They can’t even get their heads around the idea of interventions and standing up new tutoring programs.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

COVID learning loss driven more by school and community factors than household ones, research finds

2023-05-12T21:05:00+00:00

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Just as COVID hit some communities much harder than others, schools across the U.S. suffered disparate academic losses in the wake of the pandemic.

But new research points to a surprising finding: Students within the same district seemed to experience similar academic setbacks, regardless of their background. In the average district, white and more affluent students lost about the same amount of ground in reading and math as Black and Hispanic students and students from low-income families.

To researchers, that suggests that factors at the school district and community level — like whether students received quality remote instruction and whether communities experienced a strict lockdown — were bigger causes of test score declines than what was going on in students’ homes.

“Where children lived during the pandemic mattered more to their academic progress than their family background, income, or internet speed,” a team of researchers wrote in a report released Thursday.

The report offers some insight into why school districts experienced a wide range of academic losses during the pandemic. Citing pre-pandemic evidence that learning loss can persist for years without major interventions beyond normal instruction, it also points to the need for more intensive academic recovery efforts in some places. Those findings come as many schools are under pressure to reach more students with extra help like tutoring, and school leaders are trying to figure out the best ways to spend the limited COVID relief funding they have left.

But the report doesn’t get much closer to providing an answer to a key question that has evaded researchers: Why did school districts that stayed remote for similar lengths of time experience very different academic losses?

Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor of education and economics who co-authored the study, says that’s likely because researchers haven’t found a way to reliably measure factors that may have had a big impact, such as the quality of instruction students received.

“It’s like the suspect that we couldn’t find and question,” he said.

The team included researchers from Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Johns Hopkins universities, as well as the testing group NWEA. Together, they looked at data from 7,800 school districts in 40 states, focusing on reading and math scores from state and federal tests for students in third to eighth grades.

Then the team looked to build on earlier research released last fall that found academic losses were steeper in districts that served larger shares of Black and Hispanic students and students from low-income families, and in districts that stayed remote or offered a mix of in-person and virtual instruction for longer.

This time, the researchers looked at several more factors that they thought could have had an effect on student’s math and reading scores during the pandemic.

These included whether students had access to the internet and a device at home; school staffing levels; whether residents had trust in their local institutions, like schools; employment rates; COVID death rates; anxiety and depression rates; and the degree to which COVID caused social and economic disruptions in a community. (To identify those disruptions, the research team looked at how often people did activities such as shop for groceries, eat at a restaurant, or socialize with people outside their home, using a combination of cell phone, Google, and Facebook survey data.)

The team found that student test scores fell more, especially in math, in places where families saw their daily routines more significantly restricted — a finding that held true even in places where schools closed only for a short time. Math losses also were greater in counties that had higher death rates from COVID.

Meanwhile, learning losses associated with remote instruction were smaller in places that reported greater trust in their local institutions, perhaps because parents supported their local school district’s pandemic decision-making.

Math learning losses stemming from virtual learning were bigger in places where adults reported higher levels of anxiety and depression, and in communities that had higher employment rates. In those cases, researchers wrote, parents may not have been as able to support their kids when they were learning from home.

‘Extraordinary’ measures needed to help students recover academically

Still, the additional factors explain only a “little bit” of why academic losses varied so much in places that stayed remote longer, Kane said. And they don’t explain why high-poverty school districts that serve more students of color lost more academic ground when they stayed remote for longer.

That may be because researchers haven’t yet found a way to measure some of the most important factors. The team wasn’t able to look at community COVID hospitalization rates, for example. They also couldn’t take into account the quality of remote instruction students received, or what policies districts set for student attendance and engagement during remote learning.

Remote instruction varied widely, especially early in the pandemic. Some schools required students to attend classes on live video for several hours a day, while others gave students more independent work.

In some places, teachers received little training on how to teach students virtually. In other places, teachers had to juggle students who were both at home and in front of them — a setup that often left parents and students more dissatisfied with the instructional quality.

“In some schools remote instruction was a watered-down version of in-person instruction,” Kane said. “In other places, there was just much less of an expectation that classes would be covering the usual grade-level standards online. We just don’t have a direct measure of the quality of remote/hybrid instruction and the level of expectations.”

The researchers also found evidence that in the decade leading up to the pandemic, when districts saw big dips in test scores — perhaps because there was a strong flu season, or a weak teaching team that year — their students tended not to recover as they progressed through later grades.

That suggests, according to the researchers, that it will be difficult for students to recover from the pandemic unless their schools take “extraordinary” measures, like expanding summer school and tutoring many more students. Chalkbeat previously reported that in many of the nation’s largest districts, fewer than 1 in 10 students got any kind of tutoring earlier this school year.

“When there is a disruption, it’s not like they know how to hurry up,” Kane said. “They will proceed with their lesson plans and instruction. It’s easy to resume learning — it’s very hard to accelerate it.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

National history scores continue to fall, while civics scores drop for first time

2023-05-03T04:01:00+00:00

Eighth graders scored lower on U.S. history and civics exams last spring than they did four years earlier, according to national data released Wednesday.

U.S. history scores fell by 5 points, on average, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a test that’s considered to be “the nation’s report card” — continuing a nearly decade-long decline in that subject. Civics scores, meanwhile, dropped an average of 2 points. That marked the first decline in that subject since the NAEP civics test began in 1998.

Federal officials and educators said the declines were a cause for national concern and should prompt schools to put a heavier emphasis on social studies — at a time when many schools are laser-focused on reading and math recovery. But many educators are dealing with new restrictions that affect how they can teach about the nation’s history, particularly topics involving racism, sexism, and LGBTQ issues.

“Too many students are struggling to understand and explain the impact of civic participation, and how our government works, and the historical significance of events,” said Peggy Carr, the commissioner for the National Center on Education Statistics, which administered the history and civics tests to a nationally representative sample of nearly 16,000 eighth graders.

Of particular concern, Carr said, is the growing share of students who are scoring at the lowest level on these tests. Last spring, 40% of eighth graders fell into that category on the U.S. history test, for example, up from 34% in 2018. That means more students could not point out simple historical concepts in primary documents, such as being able to explain that soldiers died during the Civil War after reading the Gettysburg Address.

The history and civics declines follow a steep drop in math scores and a dip in reading scores last fall on those NAEP exams. Those declines were attributed in large part to disruptions caused by the pandemic and launched a national conversation about how schools should be working to get students caught up — and spending their pandemic relief funds to do it.

Federal officials said while COVID likely played some role in the history and civics declines — students may have been asked to focus more on other subjects, for example — there is likely something bigger at play. That’s especially true for U.S. history, in which student scores have dropped 9 points since 2014.

The U.S. history score declines last spring were pervasive: white, Black, and Hispanic students all saw drops, and all but the highest-achieving students saw their average scores fall compared with students from four years prior. (The NAEP history test is scored on a 500-point scale, while the civics test is on a 300-point scale.)

Patrick Kelly, a U.S. government teacher in South Carolina who sits on the governing board for the NAEP, said these history and civics results should spark “a national conversation around the need for urgency and supporting this group of learners” just as last fall’s math and reading scores did.

“The students who took this test are right now finishing up their freshman year of high school,” said Kelly, noting those ninth graders will be eligible to vote, run for office, and serve in the military in three years. “This isn’t something that we can say ‘well, our 20-year plan for this is…’ We need a right-now plan.”

Declines coincide with new limits on teaching U.S. history

The declines come as state lawmakers, teachers, and families across the U.S. are engaged in fraught debates about what and how students should learn about the history of the country — especially the more painful parts about it.

Over the last two years, nearly every state has considered a bill that would limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism in their classrooms, and 18 states have bans or other restrictions in place, according to a tracker compiled by Education Week.

About 1 in 4 teachers reported that they’d been told by a school or district leader to limit what they said about political and social issues in class, a RAND Corporation survey released last year found. Teachers in states with these bans have reported cutting short conversations about topics such as slavery, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and women’s rights.

At the same time, some states have expanded what students are expected to learn about Black, Latino, Asian American, and Native American history and culture.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona drew a connection between the history and civics score drops and the legislative efforts in many Republican-led states to restrict classroom conversations.

Those results indicate that it’s not “the time to limit what students learn in U.S. history and civics classes,” Cardona said in a written statement. “Banning history books and censoring educators from teaching these important subjects does our students a disservice.”

Federal officials don’t know whether efforts to restrict what students learn had an effect on the history and civics scores, Carr said. But Martin West, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a member of NAEP’s governing board, said “one possible explanation here is that debates over how to teach history could be getting in the way of actually doing it.”

Schools that want to help high schoolers struggling in history and civics should focus on giving them more time with the subjects, Carr said. That could be in either a stand-alone social studies class or by weaving the material into other places in their schedule. In the long run, schools may also have to revisit how they teach history and government in younger grades, too.

“The history and civics content that students receive in elementary schools is often haphazard,” West said. “There are major gaps in coverage that make it harder for students to develop a systematic understanding of U.S. history.”

The NAEP U.S. history exam tests students’ knowledge of major periods, including colonization, the American Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and both World Wars. Students are expected to identify key ideas and differing perspectives from those times. The civics test, meanwhile, looks at students’ knowledge of the U.S. government and their ability to participate in civic activities.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

It’s often hard to tutor students during the school day. A new initiative seeks to change that

2023-04-26T14:00:00+00:00

Many schools want to tutor students during the school day, when research shows they are more likely to benefit from the extra help.

But one roadblock continues to stymie school leaders: Students often can’t squeeze tutoring into their schedule.

A new $10 million initiative announced on Wednesday aims to change that by tapping five states to set up tutoring programs and develop model policies other states could copy.

The goal is to make it easier for schools across the country to get help to kids during the school day — at a critical time when COVID funds are winding down and many tutoring programs have reached only a small fraction of students.

“What we’ve seen is evidence showing that out-of-school tutoring just doesn’t have as high of an uptake,” said Kevin Huffman, the head of the nonprofit Accelerate, which awarded $5 million in grants to the states. “If you’re going to serve the highest-need kids, you have to figure out how to embed it during the school day.”

Each of the states that were chosen for the initiative — Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, and Ohio — will spend $1 million of their own money and receive another $1 million from Accelerate, which was launched last year by the nonprofit America Achieves with the help of $65 million in private philanthropy. (That included money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds Chalkbeat.)

Accelerate also is involved in two sweeping research efforts announced last year that are looking at tutoring initiatives across the country to identify programs that are worth schools’ time and money.

States in the newly announced initiative will tackle similar work.

That could include providing districts with advice on how to set up a school day to fit in tutoring for more students without running afoul of any state or federal rules. Or it could mean setting up better systems to track which students are getting tutored, how often, and whether the tutoring helped.

States may also assemble lists of companies that can back up their tutoring with research for districts to consult, and help districts draft contracts that require tutoring companies to demonstrate how they’ve helped students before they can get paid.

Some districts and states have cut ties with virtual tutoring companies that provide on-demand help, for example, after paying them millions in COVID relief funds only to find few students used the service.

“There are some programs and providers that haven’t delivered the kinds of results that they said they were going to deliver, whether that’s dosage, or attendance, or impact,” Huffman said. And some programs haven’t collected good data. “It’s really difficult for a district, especially a smaller district, to know who is good, and who is not good.”

The five states also will work with school districts to launch tutoring programs for elementary and middle schoolers in reading and math for the upcoming school year. It will be up to the school districts to decide who will staff those programs — Arkansas, for example, plans to use adults from the state’s tutor corps — but Huffman expects much of the tutoring work will be done in person.

The $10 million initiative may seem small compared to the billions schools received in federal funding during the pandemic, Huffman said, but Accelerate chose these states with an eye for coming up with policies that will support tutoring in the long run.

“Everybody is trying to figure out” what to do after the COVID relief funding runs out, he said. “Our hope is that, collectively, these five states working together will help figure out answers to some of these questions.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Math can be intimidating. Here’s how the National Teacher of the Year shares stories to reach students.

2023-04-19T22:25:15+00:00

Six years ago, teacher Rebecka Peterson started spending a lot of extra time sitting and listening to her students.

Peterson, who teaches math at Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was named the National Teacher of the Year on Wednesday, starts off the school year by sharing personal successes and struggles with her students. That includes what it was like to grow up as an immigrant of Swedish-Iranian descent who moved around a lot as a kid and got teased when she was learning to speak English.

Then she meets with each of her students over the course of several weeks, inviting them to tell her about whatever they’d like for at least 15 minutes. Peterson credits the exercise with helping more students pass her calculus class.

“I learned to show up, to receive whatever they entrusted to me,” Peterson wrote in her Teacher of the Year application. “Their stories brought me to my knees — nearly every student had undergone some form of adversity or trauma, often more monumental than anyone realized.”

Like many math teachers, Peterson knows what it’s like to fill in gaps for her students who missed out on instruction during the pandemic. But COVID teaching has stuck around in other ways for her, too.

When many of her calculus students were learning virtually in fall of 2020, Peterson created over 100 video lessons that allowed students to watch her solve problems, then stop to answer problems on their own. Before she went on sabbatical this year, Peterson was still assigning her students those videos to watch at home so they could spend more time in class working on problems together.

“I do math with them, not at them,” she wrote.

After news of her award broke, Chalkbeat spoke with Peterson about why math gets a “bad rap,” how she checks in on her students’ mental health, and why knowing more about her students helps her be a more patient teacher.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

I wanted to start by asking you about what it means to be honored as a high school math teacher. Math has been getting so much attention in the news right now as being something a lot of kids are struggling with. How might you add to the conversation, especially at a time when the country is paying close attention to how high schoolers are doing in math?

Math can get kind of a bad rap sometimes. For me, and every mathematician I know, mathematics is so beautiful. When we really get into the rhythm of it, we’re transported. But I think, oftentimes, there is so much content to teach, and our kids don’t get to feel that. That’s a conversation that I think we need to be having, about making sure that our teachers have the time and space to be able to showcase what math really is all about — which is creativity and collaboration and problem-solving.

The Gates Foundation, for example, did this study that showed a lot of folks think that math needs to be more relevant and tied to what students can see in the real world. [The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat.] As a calculus teacher, do you feel like you need to make your math more relevant for your students?

The beautiful thing about calculus is it is so ubiquitous. We use it to figure out the average value of a Bitcoin over the last month, or model population growth, or if I’m drinking a cup of coffee right now, with my caffeine tolerance, when will my body allow me to fall asleep? I’m very lucky in that calc is already so applicable.

But I’m all for creating more pathways for our students to be able to see that application earlier on. We’ve had this track of Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, since I think 1892. It’s time to explore some more math pathways for our students so that they truly all feel like they are mathematicians. Because that is what I believe to my core — that every person is a math person.

You teach at a large urban high school, and many of your students come from low-income backgrounds. In your own math classrooms, how has the pandemic affected what you need to do for them and what they may be struggling with?

Kids have changed since the pandemic. There is this fascinating study out of Stanford. It suggests that perhaps we are now teaching an entire generation of students whose brains have been rewired a bit. And I think that we can’t ignore that.

For me, it’s really important that I connect to my students, that my students feel connected to me, and they feel connected to each other. That looks like teaching my students breathing techniques so they have that in their toolkit when they start to feel dysregulated. Doing gratitude journaling, helping them be the author of their own stories, and doing mental health check-ins — these small daily acts we do as teachers to open space for our students to be vulnerable allows them to know that we’re on their side and that we have been through a lot.

One of your teaching approaches is that you often ask students to share more about their backgrounds with you so that you can create that connection. Can you tell me more about why that’s been an effective tool for you in math?

With math, it can be a very intimidating subject for students. I have to push them pretty hard to do some really quite rigorous mathematics. If I am going to be able to do that, then they have to trust me. They have to know that I am on their side, that I’m not going to ask them to do something that they can’t eventually accomplish. That starts with being real and being vulnerable with them.

The first day of school, I share stories — both joys and sorrows — of my life. I think every single high schooler, at some point, has felt like an outsider. For me, it’s important to share those moments where I felt like an outsider, so that they understand that I know what that’s like, and I don’t want them to ever feel that in our space.

Then I just welcome them to come share their story. They’re invited to sign up for 15-minute time slots — before school, after school, during lunch — to tell me whatever they want. We talk about their family, their pets, their jobs, their clubs, their background with math and with school. Especially post-pandemic, those are heavy weeks. It’s a lot to sit with over 100 stories one-on-one. And it takes about 10 weeks to sit with every student, but once those 10 weeks are over, there is just this palpable change in the classroom.

Can you say more about that?

When I learn their story, I’m softened, and it empowers me to elevate their voice, and it empowers me to work even harder on their behalf because I know where they’re coming from. I think it makes me more patient. I come to the understanding that oftentimes a behavior that I’m not in love with in the moment is because there is a deeper story going on.

When you share things about yourself, what do students most connect with?

I think what really resonates is that I’m an immigrant, I’m the daughter of medical missionaries, so I moved a lot growing up. And not just to another state, we moved continent to continent. Moving that much, you feel like an outsider looking in. A lot of my students are immigrants, they are first-generation Americans, but even those that aren’t, they know what it’s like to be an outsider.

Every high schooler knows what it’s like to feel like they have to perform, they have to act, they have to earn their spot. That’s how I felt, oftentimes, growing up. And that’s exactly how I do not want them to feel in my classroom.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Student access to teletherapy skyrockets as schools combat youth mental health crisis

2023-04-19T09:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

Kirstin Smith was worried after her 5-year-old had a traumatic interaction with another student at school this past fall.

Her daughter’s behavior had changed — she was hiding under desks at school and waking up scared from her nightmares. Smith wanted to get her some help.

A couple months later, the kindergartner was sitting cross-legged on her mother’s bed, chatting with “her lady” on a laptop screen while Smith stirred macaroni in the kitchen. Every so often, Smith pressed her ear to the bedroom door or cracked it open to check in.

The virtual therapist met weekly with Smith’s daughter for the next three months, teaching her how to breathe deeply to stay calm and when to seek help from a trusted adult.

“I am happy that she was able to build that relationship with her therapist remotely,” Smith said. “When she gets overwhelmed, she knows that she’s overwhelmed, versus her feeling like she did something wrong or something is wrong with her.”

The number of U.S. students with access to virtual mental health support has skyrocketed over the last year. Thirteen of the nation’s 20 largest districts have added teletherapy since the pandemic began, expanding access to hundreds of thousands of students, a Chalkbeat review found. That includes Clark County schools in Nevada, where Smith’s daughter attends school. Two more big districts plan to add the service later this year.

The rise of teletherapy is a reflection of the intense pressure schools are under to address a youth mental health crisis that shows no sign of waning. The services offer a way to reach more students without bringing on full-time staff that are often difficult and expensive to recruit. And while some educators and parents have been skeptical of the virtual setup, many say they’ve since been won over.

“This does eliminate barriers,” said Nirmita Panchal, who’s written about the growth of tele-mental health in schools for the nonprofit KFF, which conducts health policy research. “There are definitely some challenges, but big picture, we do see the advantages in linking students who otherwise wouldn’t have care into care.”

Schools see benefits to teletherapy

School leaders say the wait time to see a therapist virtually is often days, instead of weeks or months. Teletherapy can get help to more kids with moderate needs, who often don’t get seen at school because staffers are focused on kids in crisis. It can also bring some relief to kids with bigger challenges while they wait for more intensive in-person care.

And it’s often easier to match a student with someone who speaks their family’s language or is of a particular race, gender, or cultural background when schools have access to a larger national pool of therapists.

That helped persuade Ellen Wingard, who oversees student support services for the schools in Salem, Massachusetts. Her district started offering teletherapy through a local mental health center and the company Cartwheel in January. Initially, she worried it would be “a waste of time.”

“I was very hesitant,” she said. “I was like: ‘Our kids do not want to do that.’”

But she’s been impressed by how the teletherapy has reached students who never got past a referral from their school counselor to seek help outside their school before. School staff have come to her in surprise, saying: “Wait, they what? They found a male counselor?” Wingard said.

Another upside is that schools can offer teletherapy to students at home or on campus. Some families like that they can easily supervise their child and check in with them after a session at home. At school, students typically go to a private space where they can slip on headphones and talk with a therapist on an iPad while a nurse or counselor supervises nearby. Then they can return to class without much disruption to their day.

“It’s not for everybody, but for those students and parents who want that, it’s been fantastic,” said JaMaiia Bond, who oversees student mental health services for Compton’s schools in California, which started offering teletherapy through Hazel Health this school year.

At Compton Unified schools, students can meet virtually with a therapist in a private room in their school’s wellness center.

The San Francisco-based company has become the top player in providing teletherapy to the nation’s largest school systems. By this fall, Hazel will be working with half of the country’s 20 biggest districts.

Nationally, since Hazel launched its tele-mental health service last school year, the number of students who can access teletherapy through the company has shot up from just under a million students at 20 districts to more than 2 million students at 70 districts, according to a Hazel spokesperson — a figure that does not yet include a new $24 million teletherapy initiative for students across Los Angeles County.

Schools spend millions on virtual mental health support

Among Hazel’s clients are Clark County schools in the Las Vegas area, which spent $2.6 million on teletherapy over the last two school years, records obtained by Chalkbeat show. Hawaii is spending $3.8 million on Hazel’s virtual therapy over three years, while the Houston school district set aside $5 million for teletherapy and virtual primary care services over the next five years. Fairfax County schools in Virginia are expected to spend nearly $700,000 on Hazel’s teletherapy. And Hillsborough County schools in Florida are launching a two-year $2 million teletherapy initiative through Hazel this fall.

Others have stayed local. Some Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools offer teletherapy through a local hospital funded by a $10 million donation. And Mississippi is offering teletherapy statewide through the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The initiative is funded by $17.6 million in federal COVID relief dollars.

That money helps cover equipment, training for school staff, fees, and in some cases, the therapy. Mississippi, for example, is covering the full cost of students’ sessions to avoid insurance headaches for families.

There are some drawbacks and limitations. Younger children and some students with disabilities may find the technology difficult to use, educators say. In Mississippi, some districts decided not to offer teletherapy because they were worried about overburdening their few school nurses. And some districts prefer to connect students to local mental health professionals.

“They understand the community,” said BJ Wilson, the interim special services director for Grandview School District in Washington, which is weighing whether it wants to hire Hazel to offer teletherapy. “That’s really important to say: ‘I live three blocks from you, I know exactly what you’re talking about.’”

Some also worry that expanded access to teletherapy could reduce the urgency to offer students in-person care, which many kids need or prefer. That’s especially true for families that lack a stable internet connection at home, or don’t have a quiet, private space for kids to meet virtually with a mental health professional.

Getting families on board can also take work. Generally, schools must obtain consent from a legal guardian to offer teletherapy to students, though in some states students can consent to mental health treatment themselves.

In Houston, Diego Linares has been hosting “coffee with the principal” events so he can show families how to sign up for his high school’s new teletherapy offering through Hazel. He makes sure parents know the teletherapy is always free to their children and that immigration officials won’t see anything they share.

“When your immigration status is important for you and you worry about it, you don’t want to put your name on things that may get you in trouble,” Linares said. “This is important for them to understand that this is really for the benefit of the students.”

Will teletherapy disappear when COVID funds run out?

Whether schools will offer teletherapy long term remains an open question. Some in Congress want to create more permanent funding, but right now many school districts are relying on temporary COVID relief funds.

Student usage will likely be a determining factor. Right now, numbers tend to be small as many programs are just getting started.

Hawaii’s schools referred almost 1,000 students for virtual mental health support between last August and mid-March, said Fern Yoshida, who oversees the teletherapy initiative for the state education department. That’s less than 1% of Hawaii’s students, but Yoshida said they’re comfortable with that number for now, since it represents students who otherwise may not have gotten help.

“We’re going to evaluate to see how this goes,” Yoshida said. “But we’ve been finding that this has really fit.”

Some students who’ve turned to teletherapy see promise in the service.

Eighteen-year-old Fatima Magallon found out that her Las Vegas high school was offering teletherapy when Hazel paid students there a small stipend for their ideas on how to improve the company’s service.

Not long after, Magallon’s grandmother died. Magallon’s grades started dropping, and when a school counselor told the senior she may not graduate on time, she decided to give the teletherapy a try.

The initial sessions were awkward, Magallon said, but eventually she felt like she could open up. It was especially helpful when the therapist tried to make it feel like they were together in person.

“She would open her blinds and I would open mine,” said Magallon, who graduated last June. “Seeing light through the Zoom, it actually helped a lot.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Schools could limit transgender students’ sports participation under Biden admin proposal

2023-04-06T21:40:35+00:00

The Biden administration on Thursday proposed a rule that would allow schools to place some restrictions on transgender athletes, particularly in competitive high school and college sports.

In a long-awaited proposal, federal education officials said that K-12 schools and colleges cannot establish across-the-board bans on transgender students participating on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity — a direct challenge to laws in several states. But the proposal would allow schools to keep transgender students off certain teams in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury,” according to an education department fact sheet.

That language echoes complaints by critics, including Republican lawmakers, who say that allowing transgender girls to compete in girls sports gives them an unfair advantage and poses potential safety risks.

Under the proposed rule, schools would violate federal civil rights law if they enact “categorical bans” on transgender athletes “just because of who they are,” the fact sheet said.

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

The proposed rule would codify the administration’s position that transgender students are protected by federal anti-discrimination laws. Still, the proposal is likely to face criticism that it still allows schools to exclude trans athletes, and is sure to be challenged in court by Republican-led states that have passed laws barring transgender girls from joining girls sports teams.

If a school chooses to restrict participation based on sex, education department officials said, it would have to consider the individual sport, the age of the students participating, and how competitive the team is.

Officials said they expected most elementary school students would be able to participate on a sports team corresponding with their gender identity and that it would be particularly difficult for schools to exclude them. But schools would be permitted to adopt policies that limit the participation of transgender students in high school and college, especially in more competitive sports.

“It seems like there would be some clarity on the elementary school level, like let’s not ban third graders from playing on a soccer team,” said Suzanne Eckes, a professor of education law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has followed lawsuits over trans student athletes. “At the high school level, we’ll have to see how that plays out.”

Less than 2% of high school students identify as transgender, according to a 2017 CDC survey of 10 states and several large districts, and only a fraction of those students participate in school sports.

Many states have passed laws restricting transgender athletes

Still, at least 20 states have passed laws that ban transgender athletes from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that tracks policies affecting LGBTQ people.

On Wednesday, Kansas became the latest state to enact such a ban, passing a law that bars transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams. The law targets a minuscule number of students: Out of 106,000 student athletes in the Kansas State High School Activities Association, only three are transgender girls, a spokesperson told KCUR.

A number of states that restrict transgender athletes have already sued the Biden administration, arguing that guidance saying federal anti-discrimination laws protect transgender people infringes on states’ rights.

Last June, federal education officials put forward another rule stating that LGBTQ students are protected from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination at school. (That rule is not yet final, but education department officials expect it will be in May.)

At the time, the Biden administration announced it would undertake a separate rule-making process regarding participation on school sports teams — a move that disappointed many advocates for LGBTQ students, who wanted federal officials to move faster to protect the rights of transgender student athletes.

This new proposal wades into that more contentious political territory, though it remains to be seen how strongly the education department would enforce such a rule.

The education department could conduct investigations into whether a school had improperly excluded a trans student from a sports team, a senior department official said. In those cases, officials could withhold federal funding from schools to urge compliance, though no school has ever lost money for violating Title IX.

Trans students have already gone to court in several states to challenge laws that restrict their participation in school sports. In West Virginia, a federal judge temporarily halted that state’s law after advocates sued on behalf of an 11-year-old transgender girl who was stopped from joining girls cross country and track teams.

“The right not to be discriminated against by the government belongs to all of us in equal measure,” the judge wrote in his 2021 decision. However, the same judge reversed his decision earlier this year, ruling that the law did not violate Title IX.

Advocates for the student appealed that decision, and a federal appeals court reinstated the temporary pause on the law. Last month, West Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and allow the law to take effect. On Thursday, the court denied the state’s request, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

Republicans say they are protecting cisgender girls

Like other Republicans, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the law is meant to defend cisgender girls.

“Our case is simple: It’s about protecting opportunities for women and girls in sports,” he told CNN. Critics say such statements intentionally exclude transgender girls.

Republicans at both the state and national level have vowed to oppose the Biden administration’s Title IX rules, saying they will fight to keep transgender girls out of girls sports.

Last month, Congressional Republicans advanced a bill to revise Title IX’s definition of sex to be based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth. While the bill is unlikely to pass in the Democrat-controlled Senate, Republicans have made the issue a key talking point. In his policy agenda, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Republicans will ensure “that only women can compete in women’s sports.”

At the state level, 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit in 2021 to block the Biden administration’s guidance extending anti-discrimination protections to transgender students. Last July, a Trump-appointed federal judge agreed to temporarily halt enforcement of the guidance in those states. The administration appealed the decision.

A group of conservative attorneys general also sent a letter to the U.S. education secretary last year that said using Title IX to protect transgender people from discrimination “is an attack on the rights of girls and women.”

“[W]e will fight your proposed changes to Title IX with every available tool in our arsenal,” they wrote.

To Eckes, the matter likely won’t be settled until the Supreme Court weighs in.

“It’s not the end of the conversation,” she said.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org. Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Denver schools are bringing back police. Other places in the U.S. already have.

2023-03-23T23:29:35+00:00

When a Denver teen shot and injured two school administrators on Wednesday, it marked the third time this year that gun violence had rocked East High, the city’s largest high school.

For the schools superintendent, it signaled the need for a dramatic shift in district policy: the return of police at comprehensive high schools for the remainder of the school year.

“I can no longer stand on the sidelines,” Alex Marrero wrote in a letter to the school board, which voted in 2020 to remove police from schools. The city’s mayor quickly backed the decision, and even a local group long opposed to police in schools acknowledged that acts of violence “force hard conversations.” On Thursday, the school board agreed to temporarily lift its ban on school police.

The turnabout in Denver echoes recent decisions to bring back school police by a few other districts across the U.S. In some cases, as in Denver, these debates are coming to a head after a shooting or other act of violence on campus erodes support.

Many other districts have stayed the course. But with more communities nationwide facing upticks in gun violence, and in a moment with far less political attention being paid to racism and policing, it remains unclear if changes elsewhere will be walked back.

“It makes sense that communities are really struggling following incidents like this — they are traumatic and scary,” said Katherine Dunn of The Advancement Project, a nonprofit that has advocated for the removal of police from schools. Bringing back police can be a quick, visible way for school leaders to demonstrate they are being reactive in a moment of crisis. “Every time this happens,” she said, policing is “the one thing that we know to go back to and try again.”

School leaders, families, students, and community groups have long wrestled with what role police should play in schools.

School shootings have prompted schools to add guards and police in an effort to stop future violence, though their track record is mixed. By 2019, just over half of U.S. schools had at least one armed officer present, according to a federal survey. But having police in school has also been shown to increase arrests and suspensions, with Black students most likely to be arrested at school and less likely to feel safer when police were around.

According to a tracker compiled by Education Week, at least 50 school districts eliminated school police or significantly reduced their school policing budgets from May 2020 through June 2022, following the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing racial justice protests of 2020.

Denver was one of several school districts that removed or scaled back the presence of school police during that period. The district canceled its contract with the city’s police department and officers were removed from schools by June 2021.

Eight districts ended up bringing back school police, EdWeek found, at least three of which reversed course in response to shootings or the presence of weapons at or near schools.

These debates are often complicated and play out differently depending on the community.

Some in Denver were questioning whether the school district should revisit its relationship with the police even before this week’s tragedy.

In Portland, Oregon, where the school district removed police from schools in 2020, the mayor said in December that talks were in the works to possibly bring officers back after students were shot outside two different high schools.

Montgomery County schools in Maryland brought back police following a shooting at a high school in January 2022 that injured a student.

And Alexandria City schools in Virginia temporarily reinstated police following several student fights and an incident in which a student had a handgun outside the city’s high school. The debate continued after a student was stabbed to death outside the same school. In January, an advisory group ultimately recommended that the district keep police in schools, in part to show families the district was taking those violent incidents seriously.

In those cases, police returned with some new requirements in place. Montgomery County, for example, limited which incidents police could get involved in, while Alexandria is poised to require that school police receive de-escalation training.

Elsewhere, changes have stuck. In Los Angeles, the district cut its policing budget by more than a third and reinvested that money into an initiative to boost Black student achievement. That includes hiring hundreds of new social workers, counselors, and other staff for schools that enroll large percentages of Black students. Some students have reported feeling more relaxed seeing those mental health staffers on campus instead of police.

“I feel like a big part of their purpose is to help you feel comfortable in your skin,” one 16-year-old student told Capital B.

Still, conversations about the future of school police are ongoing in lots of places. In Washington D.C., where the city has been shrinking its school police force, the mayor tried and failed to reverse the measure last year and is set to try again. In Chicago, decisions are being made at the school level, and 40 schools will decide whether to continue having police on campus in the next few months.

In Denver, the board suspended its policy prohibiting police in schools through the end of June. It also directed the superintendent to engage with students, families, and teachers, and to seek funding for additional mental health staff.

Dunn says while many schools have experimented with removing police, they have a longer way to go to figure out how to staff and fund alternatives to police.

“The systems transformation that is required to actually have schools be safe places — I don’t really see that happening,” she said.

Sarah Darville contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Online tutoring company Paper loses statewide contract in New Mexico

2023-03-17T17:45:27+00:00

In a swift reversal, New Mexico will no longer offer students virtual tutoring through Paper after state education officials said the company had failed to get enough students the academic help they needed.

New Mexico hired Paper last fall to provide on-demand virtual tutoring to students who attend high-poverty elementary and middle schools across the state. But Chalkbeat has learned that top officials at the Public Education Department, or PED, canceled the state’s contract after just three months, citing issues with how quickly Paper was able to enroll students in tutoring and how often students used those services.

“It is clear to the PED that this service is not providing the results in terms of engagement, support, or delivery of service to the State’s students,” New Mexico’s then-interim secretary of education, Mariana Padilla, wrote to Paper in a Feb. 20 letter terminating the state’s contract.

It’s unclear how many students Paper enrolled in tutoring, and the company did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

New Mexico plans to replace the company with in-person tutoring, but has yet to get that up and running — leaving many students with a gap in support at a critical time for academic recovery. The about-face marks one of the highest-profile examples yet of a retreat from on-demand virtual tutoring, a model that exploded in popularity during the pandemic as schools found it challenging to staff and schedule tutoring sessions in person.

Paper, in particular, became a go-to provider for many of the nation’s largest school districts, including in Los Angeles, Boston, and the Las Vegas area, as well as the states of Mississippi and Tennessee. But reporting by Chalkbeat and other news outlets has raised questions about the utility of Paper’s virtual tutoring — which is primarily conducted over text-based chat and does not include video or live audio — especially for younger children, English language learners, and struggling readers.

In earlier interviews with Chalkbeat, Paper’s CEO Philip Cutler said his company was aware of some districts’ concerns and had stepped up outreach and added ways for students to communicate with tutors. Paper’s promise, he argued, remained its ability to serve large numbers of students.

New Mexico’s decision suggests that hadn’t yet happened. Allison Socol, a vice president at The Education Trust, an education civil rights group, said it’s commendable that officials made a change if they realized the on-demand virtual help wasn’t working.

“That doesn’t always happen,” Socol said. “This is a good moment to take stock of the interventions that districts and schools put in place in a moment of crisis and urgency and whether those are the right things.”

As COVID relief funds dwindle, education leaders should be looking at what’s working, Socol said, as well as “what isn’t working and what should we disinvest from so that those dollars can be allocated to things that will actually make a difference for kids.”

New Mexico signed a contract in late November with Paper worth up to $3.3 million funded by federal COVID relief funds. The state asked Paper to focus on the some 220,000 students in preschool to eighth grade who attend Title I schools, which serve higher concentrations of children from low-income families.

The contract set modest goals for the company, asking Paper to enroll at least 2,200 students in tutoring by the end of this month and to tutor at least 11,000 students by the end of the contract in September 2024. The state wanted each of those students to receive at least 20 hours of tutoring.

State officials wouldn’t say how far off Paper was from meeting those targets. A spokesperson for New Mexico’s education department, Kelly Pearce, said in a statement that the “PED’s partnership with Paper did not meet the needs of New Mexico’s students. As soon as this was determined, the contract was closed.”

It’s also unclear how much money the state spent on services it now says were inadequate. Pearce declined to answer questions about how much New Mexico has paid out to Paper. In her termination letter, Padilla indicated that Paper’s performance had been an issue since the beginning of the contract and that the state had previously expressed concerns. (Leadership at the education department had also been in flux during that period.)

Elsewhere, school leaders have had similar issues. In Hillsborough County, Florida, for example, the school district got a more than $500,000 refund from Paper after the company reached only a fraction of the students it had projected.

That hasn’t been the case everywhere, though. The Mississippi education department’s contract with Paper is still in effect and the state hasn’t had any concerns about the company’s performance, spokesperson Jean Cook said in an email.

In New Mexico, Paper beat out 17 other tutoring companies to win the state contract as part of a months-long competitive process. The state said it was open to a range of tutoring providers — including in-person, virtual, or a combination of the two — but Paper edged out its competitors in large part because it said it could do the job for the lowest price.

Some observers question why New Mexico officials thought opt-in online tutoring would be a good fit in a state where internet access has improved but is still limited, and where schools serve large shares of English learners, who often have trouble using Paper’s text-based platform.

Emily Wildau, a research and policy analyst at the nonprofit New Mexico Voices for Children, says that after chronic absenteeism shot up in the state during the pandemic, many students would benefit from more consistent tutoring that’s part of their school day.

“That kind of opt-in tutoring model is really good for the kids who are already doing pretty well,” Wildau said. “It’s not going to help the kids that are the farthest behind, who need the most attention in our state and who need to be re-engaged.”

In the meantime, students and families don’t have access to any tutoring through the state’s initiative. (Though the state continues to run a separate virtual tutoring program taught by New Mexico teachers for some 375 students in algebra I.)

In January, Lisa-Ashley Dionne signed up to get tutoring through Paper for her two daughters, who attend a Title I elementary school that was eligible for the extra help. But the service went away before her kids could use it.

Dionne wanted her fourth grader, who spent her entire second grade year online, to be able to work with a tutor on her Spanish conversation skills, since she attends a dual language school. She’s hoping Paper’s replacement will be more interactive.

“I’m just hoping for more of that conversation — just the back and forth interaction where they can engage more with the tutor,” she said.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Online tutoring company Paper loses statewide contract in New Mexico

2023-03-17T17:45:27+00:00

It’s unclear how many students Paper enrolled in tutoring, and the company did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“I’m just hoping for more of that conversation — just the back and forth interaction where they can engage more with the tutor,” she said.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

School psychologist, counselor hiring lags nationwide even as student mental health needs soar

2022-11-18T12:00:00+00:00

This story is a partnership with The Associated Press.

Mira Ugwuadu felt anxious and depressed when she returned to her high school in Cobb County, Georgia, last fall after months of remote learning, so she sought help. But her school counselor kept rescheduling their meetings because she had so many students to see.

“I felt helpless and alone,” the 12th grader later said.

Despite an influx of COVID-19 relief money, school districts across the country have struggled to staff up to address students’ mental health needs that have only grown since the pandemic hit.

Among 18 of the country’s largest school districts, 12 started this school year with fewer counselors or psychologists than they had in fall 2019, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat. As a result, many school mental health professionals have caseloads that far exceed recommended limits, according to experts and advocates, and students must wait for urgently needed help.

Some of the extra need for support has been absorbed by social workers — their ranks have grown by nearly 50% since before the pandemic, federal data shows — but they have different training from other mental health professionals and many other duties, including helping families. Districts included in the analysis, which serve a combined 3 million students, started the year with nearly 1,000 unfilled mental health positions.

Hiring challenges are largely to blame, but some school systems have invested relief money in other priorities. The Cobb County district, for one, has not added any new counselors.

“They have so many students that they’re dealing with,” said Mira, 17. “I personally don’t want to blame them. But I also deserve care and support, too.”

A spokesperson for Cobb County Public Schools said school counselor positions are based on a state funding formula, and the district strongly supports more funding.

The Chalkbeat analysis is based on school staffing and vacancy data obtained through open records requests. The 31 largest districts in the U.S. were surveyed, but some did not track or provide data.

Some school systems used federal relief money to add mental health staff, but others did not because they worried about affording them once the aid runs out. Districts have limited time to spend the nearly $190 billion allocated for recovery.

“Here’s this conundrum that we’re in,” said Christy McCoy, the president of the School Social Work Association of America. “It’s like we are trying to put a Band-Aid on something that needs a more comprehensive and integrated approach.”

Hiring challenges for psychologists, counselors

Many of the schools that have wanted to hire more mental health workers simply can’t find them. School psychologist positions have been particularly hard to fill.

Chicago, for example, added 32 school psychologist positions since fall 2019 but ended up with just one additional psychologist on staff this fall. Dozens of positions couldn’t be filled.

Schools in Hillsborough County, Florida eliminated dozens of unfilled psychologist positions, leaving schools with 33 fewer psychologists this fall than pre-pandemic. Houston schools also cut more than a dozen psychologist roles it couldn’t fill before the pandemic. Instead, the district used the money to pay outside providers and hire psychologist interns.

With their extended training, school psychologists are relied upon to provide intensive one-on-one counseling and help determine whether students are at risk for suicide.

In Maryland, a shortage of psychologists at Montgomery County Public Schools has kept the short-staffed department focused on crisis intervention and providing legally mandated services like special education assessments, said Christina Connolly-Chester, director of psychological services. That has meant they cannot keep up with other, less urgent counseling services.

“If that psychologist has more schools because there are vacancies and they’re not able to spend as much time in their assigned schools, then things like counseling go away,” she said.

The district sought to hire staff to address increased student needs such as anxiety, depression and struggles with conflict management, but still had 30 vacant psychologist positions, a district official said this month.

Even before the pandemic, some schools struggled to find psychologists. New practitioners have not been entering the field fast enough, and others have been switching to telehealth or private practices with higher pay and often better working conditions.

“We can’t afford to pay professionals enough to make it a desirable position,” said Sharon Hoover, a psychologist who co-directs the National Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland.

Counselor staffing has been a challenge for some districts, too, with nine of the large districts down counselors this year, while another nine saw increases.

Where hiring has been toughest, schools have turned to alternatives. In Hawaii, which had 31 vacant counselor positions and 20 vacant psychologist roles at the start of the year, the state has trained educators to spot signs that a student is in distress — an increasingly common practice — and pays a private company to provide tele-mental health services.

To help with student counseling, the state also employs about 300 behavioral health specialists — a position created before the pandemic partly in response to a longstanding school psychologist shortage, said Annie Kalama, the department official who oversees student support services.

“We’re trying to attack it from every angle,” she said.

It isn’t just hiring challenges that have led to smaller-than-expected staffing increases. Some school systems spent most of their federal aid on more lasting investments, such as technology or building repairs. And many opted not to add new mental health workers at all.

In the Chalkbeat analysis, half of the 18 large districts budgeted for fewer counselor or psychologist positions this school year than they did in fall 2019.

In April, just 4 in 10 districts reported hiring new staffers to address students’ mental health needs, according to a national survey.

“For all the talk about mental health, the actual money they’re spending on it is not that high,” said Phyllis Jordan, associate director of FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University that tracks school spending. School districts only planned to spend about 2% of the largest round of federal COVID aid on mental health hiring, according to the group’s analysis of more than 5,000 district spending plans.

Schools have added social workers

One bright spot in the school mental health landscape, though, is the increase in social workers.

Montgomery County in Maryland, Gwinnett County in Georgia, and Orange, Broward, and Palm Beach counties in Florida all started the year with dozens more social workers than they had in fall 2019. Chicago added the most — nearly 150 additional social workers — in part due to staffing promises in the latest teachers union contract.

The Chalkbeat analysis echoes national data collected by the White House that show the number of school social workers was up 48% this fall compared with before the pandemic, while the number of school counselors was up a more modest 12% and the count of school psychologists inched up 4%.

In Houston, staffing increases meant nearly every school started this fall with a counselor or social worker.

Newly hired social worker Natalie Rincon is able to meet one-on-one with students who are in crisis and teach other students calming strategies, such as tracing their hand with a finger while breathing.

Still, need often outstrips capacity at Rincon’s school, where many students are refugees or recent immigrants coping with trauma. She often has to prioritize helping students with urgent issues, leaving less time to check in on others.

Natalie Rincon, a social worker, has seen the benefits of having a fuller mental health team at her Houston elementary school.

“I want to be able to meet with a kindergartner just to talk about how they’re feeling,” Rincon said. “Those are the kind of things that I think slip through the cracks.”

And in some schools, the social worker doesn’t have any backup.

As the sole mental health professional at a charter school in Buffalo, New York, social worker Danielle Dylik provides counseling to more than 40 students most weeks. She also assists with discipline issues and is setting up a food pantry and clothes bank for families.

But as just one person, she knows she can’t help every student who needs it.

“There’s just not enough hours in the school day,” she said.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Annie Ma is a reporter for The Associated Press.

Schools across the U.S. have turned to Paper’s online tutoring. Some worry it’s falling short.

2022-11-17T16:45:15+00:00

Officials in Columbus City Schools were looking for a solution last year to some of the educational fallout of the pandemic — and they thought they found it in Paper, a popular virtual tutoring company that says it offers high-quality support for students at a lower price point.

The district spent $913,000 in COVID relief funds for Paper to provide its middle and high school students with access to 24/7, on-demand tutoring.

But Columbus quietly cut ties with the company in September because too few students were using the tool. District records obtained by Chalkbeat show that less than 8% of students with access logged on last school year. Half of those students used it just once. In some schools, not a single student logged on.

“I’ve had personal experience with it with my student,” school board president Jennifer Adair said of her rising seventh grader at a June meeting. “It was frustrating, and annoying, and she didn’t want to use it again.”

School districts across the country have spent millions in COVID relief dollars to purchase services from virtual tutoring companies to try to plug pandemic learning gaps. Paper, an eight-year-old company based in Montreal, has emerged as one of the most popular players in the market. It holds multi-million dollar contracts with some of the nation’s largest school districts and has splashy billboards in cities like Tampa and Chicago.

But educators and officials in districts that were among the first to contract with Paper say its text-based tutoring service often frustrates the students who need the most help, isn’t easily used by the youngest students, and can go unused altogether.

Philip Cutler, the co-founder and CEO of Paper, says the company has made several changes to respond to student and district feedback, with more in the works. Paper is piloting a voice notes feature aimed at helping younger children and English learners more easily use the platform. And the company has taken several steps to try to boost usage.

At a time when many students need academic help, Cutler says his company has proven it can deliver that on a large scale.

“It would be fantastic if we could have a tutor who sits next to a student for eight hours a day while they’re in class and helps re-explain everything to them,” Cutler said in a November interview. “Are we able to do that for 60 million students? I don’t think so. We need to make sure that there is something that actually can be applied to millions of students, that they can take advantage of.”

Still, schools’ reliance on programs like Paper worries observers like Allison Socol, a vice president at the education civil rights group The Education Trust who wrote a guide to spotting quality tutoring programs. Even with staffing challenges, she says, schools can do better.

“I am purposely not going to call it tutoring, because it’s not,” said Socol, of on-demand virtual help. “It doesn’t mean it’s not useful to some students. But is it useful at the scale that we need, and is it worth the amount of money that a lot of districts are spending? My gut says no, and a lot of the emerging data also says no.”

Why on-demand tutoring, and Paper, took off during pandemic

Paper traces its origins back to when Cutler saw firsthand how private tutoring can fuel academic inequities. While attending a teaching program at McGill University, Cutler ran a tutoring business that catered to children of wealthy families. “The other 90% needed the help the most but didn’t have the resources at home,” he said in an interview last year, “and no one was serving that side of the market.”

Cutler co-founded Paper in 2014, shortly after he graduated, and within four years the company had some district clients. But Paper really took off during the pandemic.

Schools, flush with COVID cash, wanted to offer tutoring to their students, but often struggled to staff and schedule those programs. Many districts couldn’t find enough teachers, who were often too exhausted and stressed to tutor for extra pay. And in a tight labor market, other adults were hard to recruit, too.

Paper offered a solution: It found and hired the tutors, and connected them to students whenever they needed help. Paper said its on-demand model could help schools reach struggling students who had to work or care for siblings after school, or who didn’t have a parent at home to help them with assignments.

“Paper aims to address the inequities facing all students, especially those from marginalized groups,” the company said.

Paper says it now works with 400 districts across the U.S. and Canada. Among its clients are four of the nation’s 10 largest districts: Los Angeles Unified, Clark County in Nevada, and Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties in Florida. Other big clients include the school districts in Boston; Prince William County, Virginia; and Jefferson County, Kentucky. Together, those contracts are worth $24 million and counting, records obtained by Chalkbeat show. (Los Angeles’ contract has yet to be finalized, Cutler said.)

Paper also holds statewide contracts worth $12 million total to provide virtual tutoring to students in grades 3-12 across Mississippi and to high schoolers in Tennessee.

Here’s how the service works: Students log on to Paper, type in a question, and get matched with a tutor. Students chat with the tutor over text message, and they can draw a problem on a virtual whiteboard. But the student can’t see or hear the tutor in real time, since there’s no live audio or video.

Even Paper’s marketing materials illustrate why that setup can be hard for some kids.

In transcripts of real tutoring sessions Paper provides to potential clients as “exemplary,” the company includes a session in which an elementary schooler needs help with basic math.

“I need help taking away,” the student types.

The tutor asks if the student knows why they’re having a hard time with subtraction.

“10000 - 0872,” the child responds. Drawing on the virtual whiteboard, the student reaches an incorrect answer: 2666.

“Can you explain what you did on the top with the 0’s?” the tutor asks. The student struggles to explain, starting with, “well I crossed it out.”

“Yeah! Do you know why you had to do that?” the tutor asked.

The student then left the session before getting guidance. But Paper noted they “left a glowing review for the tutor.”

Lucetta Holbert with her 14-year-old son, Zion Holbert, inside Berwick Alternative K-8 School in Columbus. Zion used Paper last year to get feedback on a writing assignment, but did not use it again.

Costs balloon when few students use Paper’s online tutoring

In Columbus, 14-year-old Zion Holbert used Paper last year to get feedback on a writing assignment comparing themes in “The Hunger Games” books to historical events. He found the site confusing at first, but eventually he figured out how to upload his work and he took some of the tutor’s editing suggestions.

His mother, Lucetta Holbert, appreciated how quickly the feedback came in. “It was really nice because I’m not a really good writer,” she said, “so that took the pressure off me to try to figure out how to do all this comparing and contrasting.”

But Zion never tried Paper again, though he was struggling with some math concepts, like fractions, that he learned when school was remote. When he wanted math help, he’d stay after school to review problems with his homeroom teacher or visit the library to work with a volunteer tutor.

His advice to other students? Paper can be helpful for English class, “if you’re stuck and you got work you want someone to read and you’re at home.” But if you have a more complicated question, seek out a teacher at school. “In person, you can just show them and they can help you,” Zion said.

One of Paper’s biggest selling points is that districts can offer unlimited virtual tutoring to many students at a fixed price. A Chalkbeat review of 13 recent district contracts show the cost per student can range from $21 to $183, though the median price was around $40. (Cutler says rates vary based on district size, contract length, and how much help the district needs to get started.)

But when students like Zion don’t return to the service or don’t use Paper at all, the true per-student cost is much higher.

Zion Holbert, 14, studies at Berwick Alternative K-8 School in Columbus.

Paper charged Columbus schools $38 per student for tutoring access, but district officials noted that the cost ballooned to $446 per student who actually used the service.

Santa Ana Unified in California paid Paper over $1.1 million last year to provide access to nearly 41,000 students. But just over 1,000 students logged on for tutoring or essay help from December 2021 to May, district records show, ultimately costing the district nearly $1,100 per child. (The district is no longer using Paper.)

Cutler says he believes Paper’s product is worth the cost when the number of help sessions roughly equals the number of students with access to the tool. Even by that generous standard — which can count the same student multiple times — the company often falls short.

In Hillsborough County, Florida, around 16,000 students used Paper from September 2021 to this September, or just under 14% of the middle and high schoolers with access. Those students logged around 47,000 tutoring sessions and essay reviews, district officials said — less than half of what Paper had projected. The usage was so off that the company ended up owing the school district over half a million dollars.

Usage looked similar in Palm Beach County, Florida. Some 104,000 middle and high schoolers had access to Paper, and they completed around 53,000 tutoring and essay review sessions last school year, district records show. That was within the projection in the district’s contract, but under what the company considers a good deal.

But school board members there had another concern: students from high-poverty schools used Paper less than their peers at more affluent schools.

Paper says usage rates improve when the company and district make concerted efforts to reach out to teachers, students, and families to tell them about the service. But others say the numbers reflect a problem baked into Paper’s opt-in model.

“It’s not necessarily the virtual part of it,” said Socol of The Education Trust. “Online homework help puts the responsibility on the student to say: ‘I don’t understand this individual question on my homework, let me reach out to a potentially random adult who I don’t have a relationship with.’”

Research released last month seems to back that up. In California’s Aspire charter school network, only 1 in 5 of the middle and high school students in the study used Paper in spring 2021. But higher-achieving students were almost twice as likely to use the platform as students who’d gotten at least one D or F the prior semester — the exact students the charter network had hired Paper to help.

More struggling students did try Paper when school leaders urged them and their parents to do so, but “take-up remained low,” the researchers wrote.

“If you expect them to bring their questions to the tutoring, that’s very difficult, too, because many students don’t quite know what they understand or don’t,” said Susanna Loeb, an education professor at Brown University who co-authored the study. “As a strategy for supporting students in need, it’s not a good strategy.”

Jillian Eichenauer, a middle school math teacher at an Aspire school just south of Los Angeles, has seen that in her classroom. Last year, she had her eighth graders redo problems they got wrong on their tests with Paper, but she didn’t turn to the tool if they were struggling with a concept, like writing an equation.

“I usually try to direct them to do that when it’s like a check for your answer, rather than get help,” Eichenauer said. “Some of them require re-teaching, which Paper is not very beneficial for.”

Paper’s shortcomings for young kids, English learners

Young students and students learning English as a new language have an especially hard time using Paper, educators say, though the company markets itself as being accessible to both. Paper employs tutors who can speak Spanish, French, and Mandarin, which has been a draw for many district clients.

But in several places, usage was especially low for those two groups of students. In Santa Ana Unified, a mostly Latino district where 40% of students are English learners, just four students used Paper in Spanish, data provided by the district for last school year show. No first or second graders logged on, and only two third graders did.

In Palm Beach County, only about 1% of tutoring and essay help sessions were conducted in a language other than English last school year, though 11% of students who had access were English learners.

Several districts, including Boston, Clark County, and Los Angeles, are paying Paper to use with children as young as 5, though experts in early literacy say kindergartners and first graders typically aren’t able to read and respond to a virtual tutor over text-based chat. Struggling readers in second grade are likely to have trouble, too.

Amanda Samples, the executive director of academic support and school improvement for DeSoto County schools in Mississippi, which uses Paper in grades 3-12 through the state’s initiative, says that when she reviews tutoring session logs, she can tell some younger students don’t realize the virtual tutor is a real person.

A student “might say: ‘I need help with vocabulary,’ and so the tutor will ask a question back, and then they may just not respond,” Samples said.

In Chicago’s west suburbs, middle school teacher Hannah Nolan-Spohn has used Paper to help English learners practice their conversation skills. But some have found the platform challenging without a voice option. The speech-to-text feature hasn’t helped much, either.

“The bot doesn’t always understand what it is that they’re trying to say,” Nolan-Spohn said, “and then they get frustrated.”

Paper officials have acknowledged the challenges English learners and younger students might face with the platform.

Paper makes changes as more schools seek online tutoring

Paper has acknowledged some of its shortcomings and says it’s working to improve.

“We realized for the younger students, in particular, they don’t necessarily have the ability to sit in a live chat,” Cutler told Chalkbeat earlier this summer, acknowledging that setup can be challenging for students with disabilities and English learners, too. “They’re just learning a language.”

As a fix, the company introduced a voice notes feature in Los Angeles’ schools this fall. It allows students to upload a recording of themselves speaking, but they still can’t have a live two-way conversation with a tutor. Cutler said it’s shown promise so far, and students who use the voice memos are more likely to return to the service. Paper intends to test it out in Boston before making it widely available next year.

Many virtual tutoring competitors now have live audio and video options, but Cutler says Paper doesn’t plan to change that part of its model because student focus groups haven’t shown a demand for that.

The company says it’s also stepped up efforts to make students and families aware of its services, running contests with prizes for schools that use Paper a lot and hiring staff who train teachers and demonstrate the tool for students.

Asked why students from high-poverty schools used Paper less, Cutler said that challenge is not unique to Paper. The company has worked with some districts, such as Clark County, to launch virtual tutoring in high-need schools first.

“What we need to do, and we are doing, is really focusing a lot of the messaging on: How do you support students who don’t really trust the system?” Cutler said this summer. “They are not the first ones to say, ‘Hey I think this is going to help me.’”

In the meantime, school districts are deciding how long they should give Paper to prove its worth as the deadline for spending federal COVID funds looms. Earlier this month, for example, the Hillsborough County school board renewed its contract for 10 months at a significantly reduced rate after raising concerns about low usage rates. District officials said they’d drop Paper if the plan to get more students logging on didn’t work.

“This is a lot of money,” Superintendent Addison Davis said, adding he wanted “to make certain that we’re getting the return on investment.”

How effective Paper is at helping students also remains an open question. The Aspire study found that when students and families got extra nudges to use Paper, and did, those students were 4 percentage points more likely to pass all their classes. Paper is involved in other ongoing research, but there’s not much else to go on for now.

Cutler maintains that Paper is “a critical piece to recovery.”

“I would 100% disagree with the fact that it’s not a solution that can address learning losses,” he said. “It absolutely is. And it’s being used that way by districts across the country.”

Leaders in districts like Mississippi’s Jefferson County schools are banking on it. Superintendent Adrian Hammitte jumped on the chance to use Paper through the state’s initiative.

“Coming from a school district with not many resources,” he said, “with it being free and offering 24/7 support, I was pretty much sold.”

Elsewhere in Mississippi, districts are using Paper to approximate “high-dosage tutoring” — a highly effective strategy in which students attend multiple tutoring sessions per week, during the school day. Cutler and the company’s marketing materials say Paper can be used in a high-dosage way, though its model is missing key components of that research-backed strategy, such as providing students with a consistent tutor.

Others say the kind of help Paper offers isn’t enough to catch up struggling students — and the fact that so many districts have turned to it raises questions about the country’s capacity to truly help the students who need it most.

Tony Solina, who oversees 16 Aspire schools in California, says it’s unrealistic to think Paper is going to “close the learning loss gap” the way most schools use it. His strategy to do that was to make sure the schools he manages had an after-school program staffed by educators who build relationships with students and their teachers.

“That’s, to me, the gold standard,” he said. “I don’t believe any online system is going to do better than or trump that.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Remote learning not ‘primary’ driver of academic losses, new analysis suggests

2022-10-28T23:15:06+00:00

Exactly how much did remote learning contribute to students’ academic losses during the pandemic?

A new analysis released Friday inches us closer to a complicated answer.

Using the latest national and state test score data, a team of researchers found that districts that stayed remote during the 2020-21 school year did see bigger declines in elementary and middle school math, and to some degree in reading, than other districts in their state.

But the losses varied widely — and many districts that went back in person had bigger losses than districts that stayed remote. The pattern is inconsistent enough that school closures, it seems, were not the primary driver of those drops in achievement.

“Based on the discussion before these results came out, you’d think that the only thing driving achievement losses would be remote learning, but actually that does not seem to be the case,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor of education and economics who co-led the research. “I was really surprised by these results.”

Earlier research by Kane and others found a strong tie between declines in academic performance and remote learning, which posed huge challenges for students and families nationwide.

The new analysis is the first to look at how the pandemic affected math and reading achievement in many individual school districts. The team relied on testing data for 29 states, spanning around 4,000 school districts that serve some 12 million students in third to eighth grades — or around half of the U.S. student population for those age groups.

Researchers then combined that information with scores released this week from a key national test known as NAEP, which allowed them to compare student performance in spring 2019 and spring 2022. They found that, this year, the students in the median school district had learned about half a grade level less in math and about a quarter of a grade level less in reading, compared with their pre-pandemic peers. (Those conversions of scores to time are inexact, but the researchers say they offer the clearest picture for parents.)

There were drastic differences in performance among districts in each state, they found, with a number of districts actually doing better since the pandemic, a small number doing much worse, and most seeing some declines.

“The pandemic was like a band of tornadoes, leaving devastating learning losses in some districts, while leaving many other districts untouched,” Kane said. “But until now, that damage has been hard to see.”

The research team also found that high-poverty districts suffered greater academic losses, offering a more sobering picture than the national NAEP results did and echoing some earlier pandemic research.

The differences in lost learning between low- and high-poverty districts weren’t large, but were noteworthy, particularly in math. The trend held for reading, though the differences were smaller.

Researchers said math was likely more affected than reading in high-poverty districts — a trend in that subject that’s been widely observed — because school plays a bigger role in how students learn to do math.

These findings, Reardon said, should prompt federal and state leaders to make sure high-poverty schools have the funding and mental health support they need long-term, “so that we don’t end up with a permanently larger amount of inequality than we had before the pandemic.”

How remote learning affected academics

The researchers cautioned that their analysis can’t disentangle the effects of remote learning from other factors. It’s possible the districts that stayed remote longer differed in other meaningful ways from districts that reopened quickly, Reardon said, so researchers will have to do more digging “to really tease out” what happened.

The team will be adding data from more states as it becomes available. Some states that haven’t yet been analyzed, such as Maryland and New Jersey, saw high rates of school closures and big drops in student achievement.

In the coming weeks, the team plans to look at how COVID death rates, internet access, and parent job losses may have contributed to score declines.

“All of those things affected children’s ability to be able to learn,” Reardon said. “So while the remote learning is probably a piece of the story, it’s probably a small piece of all the ways the pandemic affected children’s outcomes.”

The uneven quality of remote instruction likely contributed to the variation in student performance, too.

Some students had access to daily live instruction with their teachers, while others spent large chunks of time working on their own, or doing work in paper packets. Students with spotty internet access often weren’t able to watch live lessons and teachers reported that some students logged on while they were working or caring for siblings. Others stopped attending virtual class altogether.

Kane said he hoped their data would urge school districts to beef up their academic recovery plans this spring and summer with strategies like tutoring and extra instruction during vacations — while schools still have time to spend their COVID relief dollars. Too many districts have put smaller efforts in place, he said, that won’t be sufficient to tackle the losses his team found.

“The average kid missed half a year of learning in math, and we’re not going to make up for half a year of learning with a few extra days of instruction or by providing tutors to 5% to 10% of kids,” Kane said.

What he doesn’t want to see is schools waiting to make changes until spring 2023 test results come in sometime next year when they may find: “Wow, kids are still way far behind.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Sweeping research effort tackles big question: How to get tutoring that works to more kids

2022-10-27T18:05:14+00:00

Tutoring is one of the most popular strategies for helping students catch up in the wake of the pandemic. But cost, staffing, and scheduling challenges often make it hard for schools to get these programs off the ground.

A sweeping $10 million research effort announced Thursday aims to tackle that problem by studying 31 different tutoring initiatives across the country this school year. The goal is to answer some of the biggest open questions about how schools can put successful tutoring programs in place for more students — and then figure out if they worked.

“It feels like out in the education ecosphere people are sort of yelling at districts and saying: ‘Why aren’t you doing more?’” said Kevin Huffman, the head of Accelerate, a nonprofit that awarded the grants. Districts are trying, he said, but it’s been complicated to staff in-person programs and difficult to vet tutoring services run by outside companies.

The research has the potential to help schools know which tutoring efforts are worth their time and money — before their COVID relief funding runs out.

“I think we’ve delivered the message collectively to the field that tutoring benefits all students, which is true based on the research, but it’s not a useful message when it comes to implementation,” Huffman added. “It’s just too broad and overwhelming, and I think the more we can help people narrow the scope on how to get started, the more likely we are to get traction.”

The research will look at tutoring efforts that are in-person, virtual, and a combination of the two. Accelerate expects some of the research will be available as early as next summer, while other studies will take more time.

Some of the research efforts are large, high-profile initiatives, such as the partnership between Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, the American Institutes for Research, and NWEA, which is studying the effects of tutoring and other academic recovery strategies on some 700,000 students across six states. Other studies will look at smaller efforts, like a student-launched virtual tutoring program called Tutor Teens that will partner with four high schools in the Cincinnati area.

Accelerate was launched earlier this year by the nonprofit America Achieves, which initially raised $65 million for the effort from private philanthropy — Arnold Ventures; the head of Citadel, Kenneth C. Griffin; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the Overdeck Family Foundation. (Chalkbeat also receives funding from the Gates Foundation.)

The nonprofit received more than 200 interested applicants, and tried to choose initiatives that were different from each other so the research would cover lots of ground. Accelerate also looked for efforts that zeroed in on specific student groups, such as English learners and struggling readers.

Some winners already have a proven track record, while others are start-ups that showed promise, Huffman said. The grants range in size from $100,000 to $800,000.

“A lot of these groups and organizations are taking first stabs at things that will need to be studied more,” Huffman said. “But our hope is that we’re starting down this path where instead of simply asking the question of whether tutoring works, we’re getting at the question of what are practical solutions” for getting that help to many more students.

The programs being studied include:

Amira Learning, a company that uses artificial intelligence to help students with literacy. The research will look at the effectiveness of pairing Amira’s virtual platform with in-person reading tutoring provided by young adults in California’s Central Valley to struggling elementary schoolers.
Amplify, a literacy tutoring company. The research will look at how a student’s race, gender, and language can affect the quality of a student-tutor match.
Deans for Impact, a nonprofit focused on teacher training, which will work with teacher prep programs to train and pair aspiring teachers with students who need tutoring, with a focus on math.
Guilford County Schools in North Carolina, which has an in-person tutoring program that targets high-need students in math, reading, and science. The research will look at how providing extra support to tutors can affect their relationships with students and student performance.
Great Oaks Foundation, which will recruit and train young people to be placed in schools for a year to tutor students in math and reading through AmeriCorps.
Green Dot Public Schools, a charter network in California, which will expand its math tutoring program for middle and early high schoolers and work with the company Saga Education to provide tutors with more feedback on their work.
Matheka, a math tutoring company, which will recruit and train bilingual tutors from Latin America to provide English learners who speak Spanish with virtual tutoring in elementary school. The research will look at the effects on their math scores.
OnYourMarkEducation, a virtual literacy tutoring program, will work with the National Student Support Accelerator to conduct randomized control trial studies looking at whether different tutor-to-student ratios affect student performance.
Reading Partners, a nonprofit that’s been shown to provide effective literacy tutoring, will conduct a randomized control trial of the virtual version of its in-person program.
Teach for America will look at the effects of its program that uses college students to provide virtual tutoring to elementary schoolers in reading and middle schoolers in math.
Zearn, a virtual math tutoring company being used by the Tennessee education department to offer tutoring to half the state’s elementary and middle school students, will use preliminary data to look at student outcomes.

Huffman hopes the research will help show whether it’s possible to train high schoolers, parents, college students, and pre-service teachers to effectively tutor students in large numbers. Many schools would prefer to offer tutoring in person, but have faced major challenges finding enough staff locally.

There are a few other trends, too. As more schools look to put programs in place that follow the science of reading, several grantees are looking at the effectiveness of virtual early literacy tutoring.

Other research efforts aim to determine the right balance between in-person and virtual support.

“Broadly, we don’t have a great handle across the country yet on: What happens if you go from in person to Zoom?” Huffman said. “What are the ways that reduce the lift on in-person? Can you find those things without reducing the statistically significant impacts that tutoring in-person shows?”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Why are students missing so much school? The answer may lie in the chronic absenteeism ‘black box’

2022-10-13T20:45:00+00:00

Alarms are going off nationwide about absenteeism.

Many more students than usual missed big chunks of school during the pandemic, with some school districts seeing their chronic absenteeism rates double.

That metric, which looks at the share of students who missed 10% or more of the school year, is an important one. But it doesn’t offer any insight into why a student missed so much class — especially important in a period when students were often told to quarantine — or how best to help them.

Research released this month suggests that if schools want to answer those questions, they’ll have to open the “black box” of that chronically absent label.

“Because it’s super simplified, it’s hiding a lot of nuances,” said Jing Liu, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Education. “We need to differentiate the reason behind absences to know how to help an individual kid.”

That’s what Liu and a colleague set out to do when they examined daily, class-level attendance data for nearly 40,000 middle and high school students in a big-city California district from the 2015-16 to 2017-18 school years.

A few patterns jumped out: Unexcused absences spiked as the year progressed, while excused absences held steady. Black and Hispanic students and students from low-income neighborhoods racked up unexcused absences faster than their white and more affluent peers. And when students missed a lot of class at the start of the year, their absences stacked up at a faster rate, too.

With that level of detail, Liu said, “you can intervene in a much more timely manner.”

Together, the findings underscore the power of detailed attendance data as schools try to re-engage students and curtail absenteeism. And though more districts are beefing up their tracking efforts with the help of COVID relief funds, many lack the details that would tell them what last year’s absences truly mean or offer clues about how to prevent students from missing class in the future.

“In most cases,” Liu said, “a sufficient system is not in place.”

How the pandemic complicated attendance tracking

Over the last decade, schools have begun paying closer attention to absenteeism, as the federal education department required schools to report this data and several states tied the metric to school ratings. The stakes are high: chronic absenteeism has been linked to higher dropout rates, lower academic achievement in reading and math, and school disengagement.

Nationally, about one in five students was chronically absent during the first full pandemic school year — an increase of 2 million students, according to newly released federal data analyzed by researchers at the nonprofit Attendance Works and Johns Hopkins University.

National data isn’t yet available for last school year, but several places have reported eye-popping increases. In New York City, 41% of students were chronically absent last year, up from around 27% the year before the pandemic began. In the Las Vegas area, the rate skyrocketed to 40% from 22% over that time. In Connecticut, 24% of students were chronically absent last year, up from 10% before COVID hit. And in Ohio, the rate soared to 30% from 17%.

As a result, districts are hiring more attendance staff, visiting students at home, or offering students gift cards for improved attendance. San Antonio’s district foundation is even hosting a car giveaway.

But figuring out exactly why chronic absenteeism is up can be tricky, especially since required quarantines, and COVID itself, kept lots of students out of school for stretches of time. Some districts tried to gather more details about these types of absences, but there wasn’t much consistency.

“There just got to be a lot of confusion,” said Hedy Chang, the executive director of Attendance Works.

A few districts, like Los Angeles Unified, gathered enough details to pinpoint COVID’s effect. There, about half of all students were chronically absent last year, up from 19% before the pandemic. Quarantines accounted for 20 percentage points of that increase, district officials said, but another 11 points were due to other factors.

Others tried to untangle the various causes, but data issues ultimately left them in the dark.

In Fargo, North Dakota, for example, when attendance specialists followed up with parents who frequently reported their child was home with COVID or in quarantine, they sometimes found out the real reason was that the child had anxiety about coming to school, was being bullied, or felt they had fallen behind in a certain class.

“A lot of times though, parents are very keen to kind of hide what’s going on in their lives from you,” said Gabe Whitney, a district attendance specialist. “That’s the difficulty of our roles, is trying to figure out exactly why the students are gone.”

New Mexico’s Santa Fe schools created a special ‘Q’ code — which didn’t count as an absence — to indicate when a student tested positive for COVID or had been sent home with COVID symptoms. But officials think the code was underused and some students who should have been marked as ‘Q’ racked up absences.

What schools are most worried about is students missing school because they are uninterested or unwilling to attend. But the line between the disengagement and COVID issues isn’t always clear either, Chang noted.

“Let’s imagine a child, they’re quarantined for 10 days,” she said. “They were in chemistry, and now they don’t come back because they feel so far behind. Was that due to quarantine, or not?”

Districts look for better data to understand absenteeism

Some districts are moving toward collecting the kind of data that notes why students are absent and who most needs extra outreach.

Santa Fe schools purchased a new attendance-tracking system that makes it easier to spot racial or other disparities.

Schools in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg County are launching a new system this month that will flag students trending toward chronic absenteeism — but if a student is simply out sick, that label will drop off once they’ve returned to school for a bit.

And Fargo is using a new system that sorts students into different tiers based on attendance data that updates daily.

“We’re able to click a button and get real-time data,” said Tamara Uselman, Fargo’s director of equity and inclusion. “We also know for whom the system is working well, and for whom we need to make some changes.”

With that detailed data in hand, school officials say they’re more quickly able to get support to students missing the most class time.

In Santa Fe, after a student is gone a few days, a teacher calls home to check in. But when absences start piling up, school attendance teams and an expanded team of attendance coaches step in with strategies like family meetings and home visits.

“We are going to the home and saying: ‘Hey, we haven’t seen you in a while and we’re really worried about you and want you back in school,’” said Crystal Ybarra, the district’s chief equity, diversity, and engagement officer, who is overseeing the attendance initiative. Staff are also trying to figure out: “What is happening that has prevented you from going, and let’s see if we can get some ideas for how to fix this.”

Other findings in the research conducted by Liu and Monica Lee, of Brown University, suggest that efforts to improve school climate and culture could be a promising way to combat absenteeism.

By combining attendance and student survey data, Liu and Lee found that students who accumulated unexcused absences more quickly were also more likely to feel like they didn’t belong at school and were getting less academic help than their peers.

Chang has noticed more districts paying attention to those dynamics and helping students build nurturing relationships with adults as part of their attendance initiatives.

In Fargo, where the chronic absenteeism rate shot up to 30% last year — nearly three times higher than pre-pandemic — staff noticed even higher rates of absenteeism for Native American and Black students. To Uselman, that disparity signaled the need to improve school culture.

So with the help of COVID funds, the district hired a cultural specialist who works with teachers to make sure Native history is taught accurately and that Native perspectives are regularly included in lessons. And the district added a writers workshop run by two Black instructors that’s been popular with Black students.

The district’s two attendance specialists are also meeting with students who’ve missed a lot of class time to ask how their school could help.

“A lot of kids that are absent in school, they may be behind in the class, really feel like they don’t have a place in the class, or the teacher doesn’t understand them or respect them as the person they are. And that creates issues where they don’t want to be in those classes,” said Nick Hawkins, one of Fargo’s specialists. “It all begins with respect and feeling welcomed and feeling understood.”

Sarah Darville contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

With COVID aid, schools try something new: giving students jobs

2022-09-27T11:00:00+00:00

Kelly King was able to do something this summer she’d never been able to before: pay students to help others.

King, who works for the school district on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, used federal COVID aid to hire three rising high school seniors to staff a booth at a riverside park. There, as crowds flocked to a farmers market and free concerts, the students told residents how local schools could help families experiencing homelessness and offer other kinds of support.

The high schoolers, each of whom had experienced homelessness themselves, earned just over $10 an hour for the community engagement work. For two of the teens, it was their first paid job.

“We were very intentional about doing things that had not been done before,” King said. She noticed that the work taught the students customer service and financial skills, and when students reflected on their experience, they said it boosted their confidence, too. The paid job “made them think more positively about what was possible for their futures,” King said.

Across the U.S., schools are using their influx of COVID relief money in an innovative but overlooked way: to offer paying jobs to students. Programs like the one in Alaska are an example of how the funding is allowing schools to get creative with how they offer direct help to young people and expose them to new career paths — benefiting both teens looking for work and schools in need of staff.

“More career preparation, or even thinking about careers, is quite a good thing at early ages,” said Mary Elizabeth Collins, a professor at Boston University who has studied workforce development for vulnerable youth. “There are a lot of potential career pathways available to young people, and we as a society don’t do a great job of letting them know the range of things that they could go for, and what they need to get there.”

School leaders say the money is especially helpful for teens who can’t afford an unpaid internship, or who are struggling to balance their schoolwork with a late-night part-time job. If teens are working as tutors or mentors, the jobs also provide an academic and emotional boost for students’ younger peers. To work best, programs should offer students plenty of adult guidance, especially if they are working with younger children, Collins said.

When the Houston school district launched a peer tutoring initiative with iEducate, a local nonprofit, officials there specifically targeted students interested in education. Using COVID relief funds, the district is paying its high schoolers and local college students, many of whom are recent graduates, $14 an hour or more to tutor elementary schoolers.

It gives tutors “an opportunity to build those relationships with our scholars, to help with that learning loss from COVID in our schools,” said Joseph Williams, a district administrator who oversees the tutoring initiative. “It also gives them that experience to see what teaching is about, and hopefully build a pipeline of future teachers.”

The district has hired student tutors in the past, but the new funding dramatically expanded the support the district could offer. This summer, high schoolers and recent grads worked with 21,000 elementary schoolers, and the tutors are getting ongoing training in skills like managing a classroom and lesson-planning.

So far Houston schools have paid $560,000 to their student tutors, and officials budgeted another $2 million for the upcoming school year. Some 200 tutors will be working in schools as of next week, and the district is still looking for several hundred more.

In Tacoma, Washington, the district is spending $450,000 in federal relief on a jobs program that pays teens to coach elementary school sports and to tutor their younger peers.

Before the pandemic, students could volunteer to coach, but now high schoolers can be paid $1,000 for six weeks of work, with the district and city splitting the cost. That’s opening up the job to students who wanted to coach before but couldn’t afford an unpaid role.

The district also is paying high schoolers a $500 stipend to tutor elementary schoolers in math and English after school. Officials piloted the initiative with 34 student tutors last year, and plan to expand it this year. Tutors get specific training on how to help younger students with their homework in those areas.

“We’re not just dropping students in and saying ‘OK, go tutor,’” said Kathryn McCarthy, a spokesperson for Tacoma schools. “Our goal was just to think about: What can we do to help students who are interested in the profession of teaching gain some depth of knowledge? So really focusing on how to provide some instruction.”

Not all new jobs initiatives have that educational component. Faced with staffing shortages, some schools have started hiring students to work in cafeterias or maintain school grounds, NBC News reported last month — jobs typically held by adults that some educators fear are less likely to serve students’ career ambitions.

“Rather than treating it as low-paid labor,” said Jake Leos-Urbel, who has researched New York City’s summer youth jobs program, schools should be “treating it as an educational, youth development experience, and thinking about the adults who are going to mentor and support youth in that work.”

That’s the approach being taken by Memphis-Shelby County schools, where officials are using federal COVID money to offer students paid internships within the district and at local businesses.

Lori Phillips, who heads the district’s student, family, and community affairs work, said the initiative helps fill several gaps. While there are several summer work programs in the area, few offer job exposure during the school year. And at $15 an hour, the program also pays more than the fast food jobs many teens have, without any late-night schedules — so students can stay on top of their homework and participate in extracurricular activities.

The initiative also includes Saturday training sessions where students dress up in business clothes and work in small groups with local leaders on skills like interviewing and setting up a bank account.

The district had wanted to launch something like this for some time, but the federal COVID money sped up the work, and made it more equitable, too.

“You may have some businesses that are interested in hosting two or three students, but they may not be financially equipped to be able to pay those students,” Phillips said. “We wanted to make sure that regardless of where you are, all students are getting paid the same amount.”

The district spent about $360,000 to pilot the program last school year and this summer — employing more than 1,000 students — and has set aside at least $1 million to expand the initiative this year. Phillips hopes 1,000 students can get internships each of the fall, winter, and spring sessions.

The federal funds have also meant that schools can pay students for their expertise.

In Virginia’s Roanoke City Public Schools, Malora Horn set aside COVID relief money to hire a peer support specialist to work in the district office that supports homeless students and families. The specialist, who experienced homelessness as a young person, will recruit students to serve on a new homeless youth advisory council. Often these kinds of roles are unpaid, but Horn plans to offer students a stipend or gift cards to participate.

“This gives them a safe place to have them share their thoughts and ideas of other services that they may be needing, or challenges that they’re having that maybe we haven’t thought of,” Horn said.

Teens who’ve gotten to participate in these programs say they’re grateful for hands-on work experience.

As part of Houston’s program, 19-year-old Leonardo Cuellar has been tutoring students at an elementary school not far from where he grew up, while balancing college classes. It’s been a chance to test out teaching with a safety net, since he’s partnered with a classroom teacher.

Over the last year, he’s worked with small groups of students on their math and reading skills in both English and Spanish. When his struggling second graders improved in math, his partner teacher told him it was thanks to the weeks he’d spent helping them practice skills like subtraction on a mini whiteboard.

“This has made me sure that I wanted to do this,” Cuellar said. “When I was a kid, I didn’t have that help, so being that person to be able to help them really feels good.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

New test data: Young readers, middle school math students struggling

2022-09-14T11:00:00+00:00

Test scores from nearly two million students nationwide show that while students made gains in the last year, a smaller share are able to read and do math at their grade level compared with before the pandemic began.

The results illuminate two particular areas of concern: More young children are struggling with early reading skills, while more older elementary and middle school students are missing foundational math skills like subtraction and multiplication.

The latest batch of data underscores how the pandemic and years of disrupted school derailed student learning, and comes soon after other national data showed 9-year-olds’ math and reading scores plummeted between 2020 and 2022. The new tests echo earlier reports showing that students who struggled before the pandemic are having the toughest time catching up, and suggest schools need to do more to help young readers and kids struggling in math class.

“Student learning is in a better place today in 2022 than it was two years ago,” said Kristen Huff, the vice president for assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, which makes the test that was used to gather these results. Still, “the students who we’re most concerned about — students who are two or more grade levels below — their trajectory of recovery is much slower than students who are on grade level.”

The results, released Wednesday, are drawn from students in grades 1-8 who took the i-Ready test at school this past spring. Testing officials compared them to a similar group of students from spring 2021, and to students who took the tests the last two years before the pandemic.

This test zeroes in on which skills students have mastered, making it a good indicator of exactly what students are struggling with and where schools may want to devote more time and money to get students caught up.

As some other tests have found, the i-Ready showed more trouble spots in math than reading.

Students in most grades saw small or modest increases in math performance from last year to this year, likely buoyed by a year of in-person learning, researchers noted. Still, a growing share of older elementary and middle school students are considered below grade level in math — a “disquieting” finding that signals the “need for targeted, intensive, and effective mathematics interventions,” Curriculum Associates researchers wrote.

Foundational math skills were a concern for students in every grade, with fewer students demonstrating grade-level mastery of essential skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Fewer students in grades 3 to 5, especially, hit their grade-level targets in math compared with pre-pandemic times, which researchers said was “especially problematic” because students learn math in those grades that is “pivotal” to math going forward. And students in grades 5 to 8 are especially losing ground in algebra and algebraic thinking, the data show.

That’s worrying because if students are stumbling over math facts in elementary school, it can make it harder to learn the more conceptual math that sets students up for algebraic thinking in middle school.

“What we see, specifically, is that students are falling behind in a couple of critical phases in their learning,” Huff said.

In reading, the share of older elementary and middle school students who are considered on grade level is getting close to pre-pandemic levels. But students in first and second grade, in particular, are scoring lower than they did pre-pandemic, likely because it was hard for them to learn to read when school was remote earlier in their school careers, researchers wrote.

A growing share of first and second graders are below grade level in phonics, the data show, which could have “worrisome implications” for their future reading abilities, the report says.

“Students who were able to learn the mechanics of reading, despite the challenges of an interrupted school year(s), will likely continue to grow,” the researchers wrote. Students who didn’t get the phonics help they needed at home “will likely continue to fall further behind.”

In southwest Idaho, Superintendent Sherry Ann Adams was pleased to see her students’ scores in math and reading improve on the i-Ready test this year, but she knows they still have work to do in math.

When her rural district of some 850 students went remote in the spring of 2020, officials realized that while most families had internet access, it often wasn’t powerful enough to support their online programs or for more than one child to learn online at once. They turned to a mix of virtual instruction and paper packets, which worked well enough for reading practice, but not for reviewing math skills.

“They missed about a quarter of a year of good math instruction,” Adams said.

While her district had early literacy intervention programs in place before the pandemic, math wasn’t as big of a focus, so schools are now working to add extra support in that subject.

This year, the district is setting aside time for elementary school teachers to work in small groups with students who are struggling with their math facts and other foundational skills. A third grade teacher may pull aside all the students who are working on multiplication tables, for example, while the other two teachers guide the rest of the third graders in other activities.

“We know, across the board, that’s one of the areas we have to continue to focus on,” Adams said.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Math and reading scores plummet on national test, erasing 20 years of progress

2022-09-01T04:01:00+00:00

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In a grim sign of the pandemic’s impact, math and reading scores for 9-year-olds across the U.S. plummeted between 2020 and 2022.

The declines erase decades of academic progress. In two years, reading scores on a key national test dropped more sharply than they have in over 30 years, and math scores fell for the first time since the test began in the early 1970s.

Put another way: It’s as if 9-year-olds were performing at the same level in math as 9-year-olds did back in 1999, and at the same reading level as in 2004.

“I was taken aback by the scope and the magnitude of the decline,” said Peggy Carr, who heads the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test. “The big takeaway is that there really are no increases in achievement in either of the subjects for any student group in this assessment — there were only declines or stagnant scores for the nation’s 9-year-olds.”

The scores, released Thursday, are the first nationally representative look at how students across the U.S. performed in math and reading just before the pandemic compared with this year. They come from a long-running version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test known as “the nation’s report card” that’s able to compare student achievement across decades.

The sample included nearly 15,000 9-year-olds from 410 schools, about two-thirds of whom were in fourth grade.

Carr said while her team usually shies away from ascribing a reason to score increases or decreases, it’s obvious in this case that the disruptions wrought by the pandemic were a major factor in the declines.

“It’s clear that COVID-19 shocked American education and stunned the academic growth of this age group,” Carr told reporters on a Wednesday call. “No other factor could have had such a dramatic influence on student achievement in a relatively short period of time.”

The scores could influence how state and district officials choose to spend their remaining COVID relief dollars — and fuel debates about whether public schools are adequately serving students in a time of great need. Many school districts already are devoting chunks of federal money to academic recovery, but there’s little evidence so far showing what difference those efforts have made for struggling students.

“Supporting the academic recovery of lower-performing students should be a top priority for educators and policymakers nationwide,” Martin West, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and a member of the board that oversees the national test, said in a statement.

Federal education officials cautioned that these scores shouldn’t be used to penalize schools. Rather, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement, these results should spur states and schools to use their federal aid “even more effectively and expeditiously” on strategies like high-dosage tutoring, hiring more staff, and running after-school programs. High-poverty schools especially have an unprecedented amount of money at their disposal, but some have struggled to spend it.

The education department would be watching, Cardona said, to make sure schools are “directing the most resources towards students who fell furthest behind.”

Reading and math score declines were most severe among students who were performing at the lowest levels. That means kids who hadn’t yet mastered skills like addition and multiplication, or who were working on simple reading tasks, saw their scores fall the most.

The gap between higher- and lower-performing students was already growing before COVID hit, but federal officials say the pandemic appears to have exacerbated that divide.

“There is still a widening of the disparity between the top and the bottom performers, but in a different way,” Carr said. “Everyone is dropping. But the students at the bottom are dropping faster.”

Officials noted that when they asked students about the tools they had available to them during remote learning, higher-scoring students were more likely than their struggling peers to say a teacher was available to help them with their math or reading work every day or almost every day — a disparity that could have contributed to the growing divide.

There were some differences across subject areas. Declines in math were pervasive, but Black students saw a particularly sharp drop.

Reading scores dipped by similar amounts for white, Hispanic, and Black students. But reading scores held steady in city schools, rural schools, and for English learners. To Carr, those were the only bright spots in the data.

“The fact that reading achievement among students in cities held steady, when you consider the extreme crises that cities were dealing with during the pandemic, is especially significant,” she said.

Officials said while these scores are an important indicator of the pandemic’s effect on elementary schoolers, the data doesn’t offer any insight into how long it could take for students to rebound academically. That won’t be clear, Carr said, until there’s more district, state, and federal data to analyze.

Data gathered from other state and national tests this year show elementary-age students are starting to rebound in reading and math after students saw dips, or made less progress than usual, earlier in the pandemic. But by some measures, middle schoolers are recovering more slowly, or not at all — raising concerns about whether enough is being done to support older students, who have less time to catch up.

Schools have a tall order ahead this year: Academic recovery efforts have been hampered by a host of issues, including a rise in student absenteeism, staffing challenges, and growing student mental health needs. In some schools, educators are also contending with an uptick in behavioral challenges and classroom disruptions.

A trove of federal data slated for release in late October will shine more light on how older students are faring. That will include scores from fourth and eighth grade students across the U.S., in individual states, and in certain cities.

“I am a little worried,” Carr said. “It’s difficult to predict what the recovery will look like. We’ll just have to see.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Kids are at low risk for monkeypox, but schools can take precautions, CDC says

2022-08-19T19:00:00+00:00

Children and teens are at low risk for contracting monkeypox, but schools can still take steps to prepare for possible exposures or cases, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

So far, a handful of the 14,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the U.S. have been among kids under 18, a CDC official said. In other countries, monkeypox has been much less common among children than adults, too.

In a new fact sheet, the CDC says the risk of getting monkeypox at school or in an early childhood setting is low. There’s been only one known case to date — an Illinois day care worker who tested positive for monkeypox earlier this month. All of the potentially exposed children and adults got screened, and none had tested positive as of last week, the local health department said.

Many of the precautions the CDC suggests schools take will sound familiar after two and a half years of following COVID protocols. That includes routinely cleaning and disinfecting classrooms, asking students and staff to regularly wash their hands, and providing personal protective equipment to staff who care for sick students.

Here’s what else the CDC says K-12 schools, early education providers, and after-school programs can do:

Understand the symptoms of monkeypox and how it spreads

Adults and children can contract monkeypox if they have close, personal contact with an infected person. So far, most monkeypox cases have been associated with sexual contact, though it’s possible to spread the virus by touching contaminated objects or fabrics — such as toys, books, and blankets — or a surface the infected person has used.

The main monkeypox symptom to watch for is a rash that can appear on the genitals, as well as the hands, feet, chest, face, or mouth. The rash may look like pimples or blisters at first and then scab over. Other signs include fever, chills, muscle aches, and other flu-like symptoms.

But the CDC cautions that many illnesses can cause a rash and fever in children, including chickenpox, so kids who haven’t had a known exposure should be assessed by a doctor.

Know what to do in case of an exposure

Schools should follow the steps they normally would to avoid the spread of illness, the CDC says. If a school does have a case of monkeypox, staff should clean and disinfect the places the infected person spent time, as well as any items or surfaces they touched. Schools should wash any linens or towels the infected person used, and throw away any items that can’t be sanitized.

There’s no test for monkeypox right now, unless a person develops a rash after being exposed. Children and teens who are exposed should be monitored for symptoms for 21 days, the CDC advises.

During that period, parents and caregivers of kids who were exposed should take their temperature daily, check their skin for new rashes, and look in their mouth for any sores or ulcers. Schools should also be prepared to watch for symptoms so they can communicate with families. School officials should ask their local or state health departments for guidance on how best to do that.

In most cases, children and staff who were exposed to an infected person don’t have to be excluded from school. “It is important to avoid stigma and fear-based exclusion of children and adolescents,” the CDC says.

Generally, contact tracing will be possible, since the virus spreads through touch and schools will know which students and staff were in a particular classroom. But in cases where contact tracing isn’t possible and there was a high degree of exposure, a health department may limit a student’s participation in school or other activities.

“The health department will consider the age of the individual and their ability to recognize or communicate symptoms, the types of interactions in the environment, and the risk of more severe disease to others in the setting,” the CDC says.

Students or staff who develop symptoms while under monitoring should isolate at home.

Know how to handle symptoms at school

If a student shows signs of monkeypox at school, school staff should bring the student to a private space away from other kids, such as an office. If they’re at least 2 years old, the child should wear a well-fitting mask and a parent or caregiver should pick them up and have them checked by a doctor.

Staff who are monitoring the possibly infected student should avoid close contact, if possible, the CDC says, but still attend to the child in an age-appropriate way, such as changing their diapers or calming them down if they’re upset. The school staffer should wear a gown and gloves if close contact is needed, such as to hold the child.

If the child has a rash, staff should try not to touch it and cover it with clothing, if possible. The staffer should also wear a KN95 mask, or other well-fitting mask, and wash their hands.

Widespread vaccination isn’t recommended for children or school staff, the CDC says, but vaccines are available for people who’ve come into close contact with a person infected with monkeypox. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that the Jynneos vaccine can be recommended for children under 18 after they’ve been exposed to monkeypox.

Have questions? The CDC is hosting two webinars on Monday for early education providers from 2 to 2:30 p.m. Eastern, and for K-12 schools from 3 to 3:30 p.m. Eastern.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

New CDC guidance: No quarantines, less testing

2022-08-11T19:44:39+00:00

Schools can end quarantines and regular screening tests for COVID, but students and staff should keep masks on in areas with high levels of COVID spread, according to guidelines released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new, more limited recommendations come as districts across the country are starting a new school year — and in many cases reflect decisions to ease up on COVID precautions that schools have already made. Almost no districts are starting the year with a mask mandate, and in-school quarantine rules are on the retreat.

“This latest guidance from the CDC should give our students, parents, and educators the confidence they need to head back to school this year with a sense of joy and optimism,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “While COVID continues to evolve, so has our understanding of the science and what it takes to return to school safely.”

Schools aren’t required to follow these recommendations — states and cities can still set their own rules — and updates to CDC guidance no longer prompt the kind of sweeping policy changes that they did earlier in the pandemic. Still, many districts look to the recommendations.

Chad Golden, a school administrator in Everett, Washington, for example, said last week that his district was waiting for new CDC and state guidance before making any changes to their COVID protocols. Of particular interest, he said, was “any possible adjustments they would make that would impact our student day, like social distancing.”

Here’s what the CDC says now.

No more quarantines

Under the previous CDC guidance, fully vaccinated students didn’t have to quarantine. But federal health officials had advised other students to quarantine for at least five days in a few scenarios.

Now, the CDC says no one in schools needs to quarantine after exposure, though they should wear a mask for 10 days, regardless of vaccination status.

“Administrators can decide how to manage exposures based on the local context and benefits of preserving access to in-person learning,” the guidance says.

Some states and districts have taken a similar approach for months. Still, some school leaders will likely breathe a sigh of relief at the change, as prior quarantine guidelines led to confusion and huge numbers of student and staff absences.

“It’s just so disruptive to schools when they’re struggling with lots of kids that are out,” said Sara Bode, a doctor at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio and chair-elect for the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on School Health. “It is really such a benefit to the school itself, to try to maintain some consistency with this in person.”

People who do test positive for COVID should still isolate for at least five days, the updated guidance reads.

Masks still suggested in ‘high risk’ areas

One recommendation the CDC did not drop: indoor masking in high risk level communities. Currently, over 41% of counties qualify as a high-risk zone. (Here’s where you can check your own county.)

Local policies diverge on this point. Only a handful of big districts currently have a mask mandate in place, including Philadelphia and Newark .

Schools “should consider flexible, non-punitive policies and practices to support individuals who choose to wear masks regardless of the COVID-19 Community Level,” the new guidance says.

The guidance also cautions that schools must make accommodations needed for students with disabilities to attend school in person, including requiring others to wear masks in certain instances.

“Students with immunocompromising conditions or other conditions or disabilities that increase risk for getting very sick with COVID-19 should not be placed into separate classrooms or otherwise segregated from other students,” the guidance states.

No more ‘test to stay’

The new guidance says that the practice known as “test to stay” is no longer needed at schools.

The CDC recommended the practice last year as a way to keep students in the classroom after exposure. As long as a student tested negative and showed no symptoms, they could stay in school instead of quarantining.

Test-to-stay was used in a number of districts, including Philadelphia, Chicago, and across Colorado. By the end of last school year, just over a third of public schools were using test-to-stay, according to a recent federal survey. But the practice required lots of rapid tests, making it resource-intensive.

No more regular screening testing

New guidance also says that routine screening testing is no longer recommended in K-12 schools.

But when COVID levels are high in a community, schools can consider using screening tests for students and staff who participate in certain high-risk activities, such as band, choir, theater, and close-contact sports. Schools may also want to use screening tests before or after big events, like prom, school trips, or school breaks.

And schools that serve students who are at higher risk of getting severely ill from the virus — such as students who have complex medical needs — may want to use screening testing when COVID spread in the community is medium or high, the guidance says.

Some districts have routinely tested students and staff to detect asymptomatic COVID cases. Last year, the Biden administration gave schools billions of dollars to run these kinds of programs.

But in general, in-school testing programs are waning. New York City is planning to end its weekly random testing program. In Chicago Public Schools, fewer than 5% of students in summer programs had consented to COVID-19 testing as of July 5.

Detroit’s school district was requiring universal testing for all employees and students, but this fall, the district will only test a random pool of 10% to 20% of the district’s population each week.

Continued push to improve ventilation

The CDC’s new general COVID guidance continues to acknowledge social distancing can help stop the spread of the virus, but says use of that strategy should depend on the setting, COVID levels in the community, and the quality of air ventilation.

Many districts had already dropped social distancing requirements or announced plans to do so this school year. Los Angeles schools said they would still follow social distancing protocols “to the extent possible,” while others, like Fort Bend schools in Texas, said they’d return to keeping three feet of distance if COVID cases spiked in the community.

The CDC is continuing to emphasize the importance of improving ventilation.

Districts across the country have been upgrading ventilation since the pandemic began. It’s become a top spending priority for many school officials: A recent review of some 5,000 district spending plans found leaders expected to spend nearly $6 billion in federal COVID funds to improve heating, ventilation, and cooling systems. The issue is particularly pressing for districts like Detroit and Newark that have aging buildings or other longstanding facilities issues.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Jessica Blake is a summer reporting intern for the Chalkbeat national desk. Contact her at jblake@chalkbeat.org or on Twitter at @JessicaEBlake.

Chilling effect: 1 in 4 teachers told to limit class talk on hot-button issues

2022-08-10T11:00:00+00:00

Soon after a wave of states moved to restrict lessons on topics like racism and sexism, reports of stifled classroom discussions began to surface.

But it was unclear just how common that experience was until now. In a new nationally representative survey, 1 in 4 teachers said they were told by school or district leaders to limit their classroom conversations about political and social issues.

A higher share of teachers, nearly 1 in 3, said they’d gotten those orders while working in a state with an official restriction on teaching about racism, sexism, or other contentious topics. But teachers in states without official policies also felt that pressure: Just over 1 in 5 said they’d been told to limit their classroom discussions, too.

The survey, released on Wednesday by the RAND Corporation, represents one of the best summations to date of how early efforts to restrict teaching about racism and sexism have affected schools and reshaped classroom conversations.

The survey is based on responses from nearly 2,400 K-12 teachers earlier this year, when 14 states had laws or official policies limiting how schools can teach about race, racism, or other forms of bias. Since then, three more states have added similar restrictions, according to a tracker maintained by Education Week, and others are still considering them.

This school year, as new laws or policies take effect, more teachers will be figuring out how to navigate these restrictions for the first time.

In Kentucky, for example, a law passed in April prohibits schools from teaching that an individual bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of their race or sex — a provision that’s limited conversations elsewhere about white and male privilege. The law also says it’s “destructive to the unification of our nation” to teach that racial disparities are based “solely” in the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws, a provision some worry will make it harder for teachers to draw connections between past and present forms of discrimination.

Sara Green, who teaches eighth grade social studies in Kentucky’s Fayette County schools and sits on the state’s teachers advisory council, says she and other social studies teachers are worried they’ll be more scrutinized this year after seeing what happened in other states that passed similar laws.

Her class spans the colonization of North America to Reconstruction — subjects that hit on lots of “racism, sexism and other ‘isms,’” Green said. Her students often have many questions and debates about whether Reconstruction was a success or a failure, and why Abraham Lincoln advocated for the end of slavery, but didn’t believe in racial equality.

“We are worried about being able to present the information that we have been trained to present,” she said, “and then possibly facing backlash from the public or from parents. That definitely is a concern.”

While plenty of teachers across the country say they haven’t changed their lessons, these restrictions have had a chilling effect.

Last school year, teachers reported cutting short conversations with students about slavery and the genocide of Native Americans because of new state restrictions. Some educators avoided using phrases like “systemic racism,” or skipped over PowerPoint slides about the fight for gay rights. As legislation worked its way through the Iowa statehouse, education officials there scrapped an equity conference designed to help teachers better support students of color.

RAND researchers heard echoes of that in their interviews with teachers. Some said they weren’t allowed to add more voices of color to their lessons, while others said they had to check their lessons against district policies or state laws for compliance. Sometimes parents put pressure on school leaders that filtered down to classrooms.

“I have had parents come in and say, ‘If this is what you’re going to teach, my student doesn’t need to know about this,’” one teacher told the RAND researchers. The teacher recalled their principal’s response was: “I don’t really think this is a good topic.”

That pressure isn’t being applied everywhere. The survey found that teachers of color who worked mostly with other teachers of color or with students of color were less likely to say they’d been told to limit their classroom conversations, suggesting their schools and the families they serve are more supportive of classroom conversations about race, racism, and bias, the researchers wrote.

When teachers are told to limit their classroom discussions about certain politicized topics, it seems to make those tricky conversations even harder to have.

The survey found that 38% of teachers who had no official limitations on what they could talk about in class felt like they hadn’t gotten enough guidance on how to have conversations about hot-button political and social issues. But a higher share of the teachers who did have to navigate restrictions — 56% — felt like they’d gotten insufficient guidance to have those conversations with their students.

“This finding suggests that teachers may not clearly understand what is or is not allowed or how to carry out instruction within the confines of these directives,” the RAND researchers wrote.

Social studies and English teachers, who are most likely to touch on these issues in class, are especially in need of better guidance about how to follow new policies or laws, the researchers said.

In several cases, when states have passed laws restricting lessons on racism, sexism, or other forms of bias, teachers have gotten little guidance on how to follow those rules. That trend has only continued.

Mississippi lawmakers, for example, passed a law in March that says schools can’t teach that any sex, race, or nationality is “inherently superior or inferior” — again a provision that can limit conversations about white privilege. Schools also can’t “make a distinction or classification” of students based on race.

Teachers and civil rights groups wanted to know how the law would be enforced, since schools that violate the provisions risk losing state funding. “The biggest fear we have is that it’s going to impact how teachers teach and how school districts embrace diversity and issues dealing with civil rights or Black history in Mississippi,” Jarvis Dortch, the head of Mississippi’s chapter of the ACLU, told Mississippi Today earlier this year.

But state education officials haven’t put out any guidance about how to follow the law, and they don’t plan to. That’s because they believe the requirements “are compatible with existing academic standards and expectations for Mississippi public schools,” Jean Gordon Cook, a spokesperson for the Mississippi education department, wrote in an email.

Kentucky issued some guidance about its new law, but it includes almost nothing about how to put the law into practice in the classroom.

Teachers from across Kentucky have been working over the last few months to adjust the state’s social studies standards to comply with another part of the new law that requires schools to incorporate 24 documents and speeches into their middle and high school lessons by July 2023.

Green and other Kentucky teachers already taught many of those documents, such as the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution, but other selections, like a speech by Ronald Reagan, raised questions. Green and others wondered why it constituted a “fundamental” American document, noting that the list doesn’t have any texts by Black women or Latino authors.

As those 24 documents get woven into the state standards, Green says she’d like more guidance on when and how the texts should be taught, and how deeply students should dive into them at various grade levels.

But the law also is presenting Green with a new teachable moment: When she covers required texts in her lessons, she can talk with her students about how they became part of the law and why.

“We oftentimes look at laws that differ from state to state,” she said. “The kids are interested in things like that. I don’t think there is anything wrong with letting them know: This is how this came about. What do you think about it?”

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Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Why schools are still struggling to hire bus drivers, custodians, tutors

2022-08-04T11:00:00+00:00

Javon May has tried radio ads. He’s planted yard signs. He’s made the rounds at community centers.

Still, on his quest to find new bus drivers for the Houston school district, he sometimes comes up short. That’s because he’s up against stiff competition. Other local districts and big delivery companies, like Amazon, need drivers, too.

But this summer he has a new tool at his disposal: a $2,000 hiring bonus for bus drivers who can start by the first day of school.

“We had to do something, because we were losing out,” said May, who recruits support staff for the district. The bonus has helped, but May is still pounding the pavement. “We really don’t stop looking for bus drivers. That’s always my No. 1 need.”

Schools have struggled to fill a number of lower-paid positions during the pandemic, including bus drivers. Principals don’t expect that to change in the new school year, a federal survey of nearly 860 school leaders released Thursday found.

About 6 in 10 principals said this June that they expected their vacant transportation staff roles to be “very difficult” to fill in the 2022-23 school year. Nearly half said the same about custodians. And around 4 in 10 said tutors would be very difficult to find.

Those school leaders also were most likely to report that they had multiple vacancies for bus drivers and custodians — meaning those roles were both in high demand and hard to staff.

Another survey released last month by the RAND Corporation found that nearly 6 in 10 districts said they were still trying to increase their number of bus drivers, while a third already had. That survey was based on responses from nearly 300 district and charter network leaders compiled from late February to early April.

“We suspect districts are still likely experiencing shortages,” the researchers wrote, “because of competition with other employers for low-wage workers.” Licensing requirements and worker health concerns could also be a factor, they added.

Districts have already tried many tactics to fill support staff roles. Three in 10 of the districts RAND surveyed raised pay or benefits for bus drivers last school year, while more than a quarter asked other staff to drive a bus. Nearly 3 in 10 districts tapped other school staff to perform cafeteria duties.

Districts, like Houston, are also trying hefty stipends and bonuses, often funded by federal COVID relief dollars.

Burbio, a private company that has been tracking school budgets and fall plans, found that in recent weeks there’s been a “marked increase in the size and duration” of incentive payments being used to attract school staff. A Pennsylvania district that serves 8,500 students is offering a $4,000 signing bonus for bus drivers, Burbio noted, on top of paying $25 to $30 an hour. Jefferson County schools in Kentucky are giving bus drivers an extra $6 an hour in incentive pay.

Clark County, Nevada, one of the largest districts in the country, reported that it had hired more than 100 bus drivers after it hiked starting pay to nearly $23 an hour, up from just over $15 an hour. The district is also spending millions of dollars on retention bonuses: Bus drivers, custodians, and food service workers who stick with the district for the year will get $4,500.

May, in Houston, has found that the district’s existing custodial staff are key recruiters for new custodians, so he relies heavily on word of mouth to fill those roles. The city has a large Hispanic immigrant workforce that wants benefits and job stability, so that position isn’t a hard sell.

But bus drivers remain a challenge. May’s goal was to hire 100 new drivers this summer. Since the district announced the $2,000 hiring bonus, May has changed up his online job postings so the bonus is splashed across the top of the ad.

He’s also been reaching out to driver candidates who didn’t go through with the licensing process in the past to see if the $2,000 will entice them to try again.

So far, 95 new drivers will get that bonus, and May is hoping to get over his 100-hire goal. He’s waiting to hear back from several dozen candidates he made offers to after a job fair last weekend.

“Right now, $2,000 is something that will stop people and make them think a second longer,” May said. “It’s going to pay off for us in the long run.” Families will “know that their kids are getting picked up in the morning on time, they’re getting to school on time, and they’re not missing breakfast.”

Last year, bus driver shortages had big consequences for families.

In New Jersey, hundreds of students were left without transportation to school for several weeks — which hit students with disabilities especially hard. Thousands of students with disabilities were stranded without transportation last fall in Chicago. Six months into the school year, the district was still working to assign bus routes to 1,000 general education students. This year, Chicago is raising bus driver pay to $20 an hour to stay competitive.

“I don’t want to be losing because our rates are so much lower,” the district’s CEO, Pedro Martinez, said recently.

As the school year approaches, schools are also looking to fill teacher vacancies. Special education teachers are a particular concern.

The June federal survey found that nearly 9 in 10 school leaders were more concerned about teacher and staff burnout last school year, compared with prior years.

So far, teacher turnover during the pandemic has been the same or a little above pre-pandemic levels — though the full picture of what happened last school year and this summer is still emerging. The federal survey found about 4 in 10 school leaders were more concerned about teachers and staff leaving their roles than in the past.

The RAND report suggests that expanded hiring during the pandemic is a big contributor to the teacher staffing crunch. Researchers found that more than three-quarters of the schools they surveyed had increased their teaching staff, which included substitutes, above pre-pandemic levels.

“In short, we believe it is districts’ increase in number of staff that they seek to employ rather than an exodus from teaching that is straining the teacher labor market,” the researchers wrote.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Without free school meals for all, many fear lunch debt will return ‘with a vengeance’

2022-08-02T11:00:00+00:00

For the last two years, any public school student in the U.S. could eat lunch for free. This year, that’s over.

That means Shani Hall, who oversees student nutrition services for Florida’s Hillsborough County schools, will be poring over her list of local residents and community groups that have offered financial help. When students accumulated meal debt in the past, those are the people who’ve wiped out balances.

Last year, for example, a local church pitched in $21,000 to cover old meal debts for high school juniors and seniors.

“Whenever we get a donor that reaches out to us, we keep that contact information and say: ‘Are you still interested?’” Hall said. “There is a lot of need out there.”

As the new school year gets underway, the end of a pandemic-era free meals provision is likely to mean the return of student meal debt. That’s because families who qualify for free meals may not realize they have to fill out paperwork again, and then struggle to pay the fees. Other students who ate for free during the pandemic might rack up debt before realizing their families don’t meet the low income thresholds.

“Before the pandemic, unpaid school lunch debt was a huge problem,” said Crystal FitzSimons, who oversees school nutrition work for the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center. “We are very concerned about unpaid school meal fees and them returning with a vengeance.”

How school meal debt affects students

The issue of school lunch debt rose to prominence in the years leading up to the pandemic. Three-quarters of school districts reported students had unpaid school meal debt by the end of 2017-18 school year, according to a survey of 800 districts conducted by the School Nutrition Association, a national nonprofit representing school food workers. That stacked up to nearly $11 million in unpaid meal debt at the 570 districts that disclosed their totals.

That debt can have big consequences for families.

In Illinois, for example, when a seventh-grader’s application for free meals was incorrectly processed, the student racked up nearly $1,000 in meal debt without his family realizing it, The Counter reported. The student eventually qualified with a second application, but as his family struggled to pay off the old debt, the district wouldn’t allow the high schooler to attend school events, like his homecoming dance.

Elsewhere, school districts have given students with meal debt cold sandwiches instead of hot lunches, or even hired debt collectors to go after families.

There are some working to change that. A few states, such as California and South Carolina, ban the use of collection agencies for school meal debts. And last month, House Democrats introduced legislation that would prohibit school districts from hiring debt collectors to retrieve unpaid meal debt. The bill also would give schools money to wipe out students’ old debt if they eventually qualify for free or discounted meals.

But it’s unclear what the future of that legislation will be — so far, it’s advanced along party lines without Republican support. And in recent months, the free school meals have repeatedly gotten caught in the political crosshairs.

Congressional Democrats pushed to extend the pandemic-era free-meals-for-all provision earlier this spring, but Republicans objected to the costs and it was left out of the school meals law that passed last month. Last week, a deal reached by Senate Democrats on a federal spending package also excluded a provision that would have made it easier for more schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students.

Still, many schools and big-city districts, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, will continue to offer free meals to all their students without any forms. They can do that through a decade-old federal program that allows schools with large shares of students from low-income families to serve free meals to all kids. The growing program offered free meals to nearly 15 million students the year the pandemic began, or about 3 in 10 U.S. students.

How schools are trying to help

Some districts that historically haven’t participated in that federal program, like Hillsborough County, will start this year. The district will offer free meals at 174 schools this year, expanding access to potentially tens of thousands of kids.

“We listened to families who were worried about losing free lunches,” Superintendent Addison Davis told parents in an email.

The program isn’t districtwide, though. So Hall and her team are calling, texting, and emailing families at the other 56 schools that still have to fill out paperwork. Hall worries some families will still slip through the cracks — especially parents of younger children who never had to fill out forms before.

Some districts have decided to cover additional meal costs this year to help families who are losing access to free meals. Pennsylvania’s North Penn School District, for example, will cover the cost of free breakfast for all students, and if a student qualifies for a reduced-price lunch, they will get a free meal.

Officials there saw school meal debt climb in the years leading up to the pandemic. That debt totaled around $5,500 in the 2018 school year, then grew to $15,500 the following year, and ballooned to just over $26,000 as the pandemic shuttered school buildings in spring 2020.

For the last two years, there’s been a zero balance, but with more families tumbling down the economic ladder since the pandemic began, officials don’t expect it to stay that way.

“It’s definitely something that we are preparing for,” said Melissa Froehlich, the district’s coordinator of school nutrition services. “I can see it easily going way higher than $26,000.”

Elementary school students in Pennsylvania’s North Penn School District line up for a meal in February 2022.

Similarly, Jenison and Hudsonville schools in Michigan will give free meals to all students that qualify for reduced-price ones. Officials hope the change will help around 1,000 families. The need was evident as officials saw a spike in students eating school meals when they were free.

“It removed a lot of stigma, but also it just became easier to use the program,” said Mary Darnton, the food service director for the two districts. She’s hopeful covering reduced-price meals “will also encourage more families to apply, because in the past even that small cost was prohibitive.”

The combination of school meal debt horror stories and the two-year pause on meal fees could also encourage schools to find other ways to cover debts, instead of sending collectors after struggling families.

“You can make choices about resources,” said Thurston Domina, a professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose research found that when schools offer free meals to all students, it reduces suspension rates. “Maybe that culture has shifted — not a prediction, but it’s a hope.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Feds urge schools to reexamine discipline of students with disabilities, calling it ‘an urgent need’

2022-07-19T20:37:20+00:00

Federal education officials are urging schools to reduce rates of suspension and expulsion for students with disabilities, as many schools continue to grapple with higher levels of student stress and misbehavior.

That means schools should be looking closely at their discipline data for disparities, officials said. Schools also should be training staff to help students with disabilities who struggle with their behavior without removing them from school.

“We don’t have to choose between protecting students’ rights and giving schools the tools to identify and deliver safe, appropriate interventions,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on a Tuesday call with reporters. “This work is especially urgent now as our schools and our students and families continue to heal from the pandemic.”

The education department released a series of letters and documents on Tuesday that spell out states’ and school districts’ responsibilities to avoid discriminating against students with disabilities when it comes to school discipline. Top officials underscored that adults contracted to work in a school, such as school police officers, are subject to these rules.

The documents don’t include much new information, and mostly aim to clarify what’s already in federal civil rights laws. But they do serve as a reminder that the Biden administration is watching how schools treat students with disabilities as the effects of the pandemic drag on.

Schools that fail to meet those legal obligations could be investigated for possible federal civil rights violations. If the department finds students’ rights have been violated, schools are typically required to take action to fix the problem.

The guidance package, described as the most comprehensive ever issued on this topic, comes about a year after the Biden administration announced a review of previous school discipline guidance and sought feedback from schools, parents, and others.

But controversial guidance that aimed to limit suspensions and expulsions for students of color — issued in 2014 under President Obama and revoked in 2018 under President Trump — remains under review. Education officials offered no details about whether that guidance would be reissued, and no timeline for when a decision would be made.

Education officials noted that this new guidance doesn’t prevent schools from suspending students with a disability when their behavior is a threat to other students or themselves — likely an attempt to counter potential pushback. The 2014 guidance about racial disparities faced intense scrutiny and some criticism from school leaders and educators who said it took away discipline options that made schools less safe. Some conservatives have said schools don’t need more discipline guidance at a time when they’re dealing with more student misbehavior. And while many schools have hired more mental health staff, they remain in short supply.

The documents include explicit reminders that schools need to determine if a student’s behavior was a result of their disability before issuing a punishment such as a detention or out-of-school suspension.

They also say that schools must sometimes make “reasonable modifications” to avoid discriminating against students with disabilities. That could mean adapting or choosing not to apply certain school rules when a student’s behavior is related to their disability — such as not giving detention to a student for using profanity if they have Tourette syndrome and it sometimes causes them to curse involuntarily.

And the department cautions that students with disabilities shouldn’t be suspended or expelled at all for certain non-violent or subjective misbehaviors, such as being late to class, skipping school, or disrespecting a teacher.

The documents also note the persistent connection between race and disability in school discipline rates. Officials said while they weren’t sure if the pandemic had made those gaps worse, they believed disparities have persisted in recent years. The year the pandemic began, for example, Black children with disabilities made up about 17% of all students with disabilities, but accounted for nearly 44% of students with disabilities who were suspended or expelled for more than 10 school days.

“It’s positive that they’re making those connections for people,” said Rachel M. Perera, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy who has studied civil rights enforcement in school discipline. “But something that seems to be missing is more practical guidance on what that means. OK, if a school district has these types of disparities, how do you go about reducing them? How do you actually address that?”

The guidance urges schools to turn to alternatives to removing students from school, such as providing one-on-one counseling or conducting a more intensive evaluation of a student’s behavior. It also says schools should provide ongoing training and coaching to help staff put these practices into action, and Cardona noted schools can use their federal COVID relief dollars to pay for such activities.

Knowing what to do instead is tricky, Perera said. Suspension rates tend to fall when schools emphasize alternatives to suspensions, but racial disparities in who is disciplined don’t go away.

Behavior challenges were a common theme last school year, as many students adjusted to being back in-person in school buildings with their peers. Many principals noticed an uptick in student fights and classroom disruptions that they attributed to the pandemic, a recent federal survey showed, though a sizable share didn’t see any change compared with pre-pandemic times.

Districts responded to the increase in student misbehavior in divergent ways, too. Some suspended students more often than before the pandemic began, while others suspended students at lower rates. Some districts, like New York City, that tried to continue with efforts to use alternatives to suspensions and expulsions found it especially challenging this past school year, as schools faced a spike in staffing shortages and more conflicts between students.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Pandemic effect: More fights and class disruptions, new data show

2022-07-06T18:42:28+00:00

About 1 in 3 school leaders noticed an uptick in student fights or physical attacks this past school year that they believed were brought on by the pandemic and its lingering effects, new federal data show.

In addition, more than half of school leaders reported an increase in classroom disruptions from student misconduct for the same reason.

The data, gathered in May from surveys of nearly 850 public school leaders, mostly principals, is evidence that many schools did see tensions rise this past year as students nationwide returned to fully in-person learning. For many educators, the behavior challenges were a defining feature of the school year — and complicated efforts to rebuild school communities and get students back on track academically.

Still, the responses were decidedly mixed. A sizable share of principals reported no change in these types of behavior. About 4 in 10 school leaders said the number of student fights remained about the same as in a typical year prior to the pandemic, while just under a third of school leaders saw about the same levels of classroom disruptions.

Educators say that some upticks were to be expected, as many students were dealing with heightened stress, isolation, and mental health needs this past year. Grief still permeates many students’ lives, too: An estimated 200,000 children and teens in the U.S. have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID since the pandemic began.

“We knew kids were going to be carrying just ridiculous amounts of stress and trauma,” said Katy DeFerrari, the assistant superintendent of climate and culture for Jefferson County schools in Kentucky. “I don’t necessarily think that it was all manifesting in acting out in the classroom or aggressive behaviors. Kids were just generally trying to adjust back to school. I think they did that better than everyone thought they were going to do.”

The new national survey results are bolstered by behavior and discipline data obtained by Chalkbeat from 19 of the nation’s 30 largest school districts through open records requests and a review of publicly available documents.

The district data diverges, too. Several large districts reported an increase in student fights this past year, though the size varied from a significant spike to a small uptick.

Duval County schools in Florida, for example, reported a 47% increase in infractions for fighting compared with the 2018-19 school year — the last that was unaffected by the pandemic. In North Carolina, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools saw student fights increase by 26% over the same time period. In Texas’ Northside school district, fights were up by 20%. In Florida’s Hillsborough County and Polk County, student fights increased by 17% this past year, compared with the year before the pandemic. (In Polk County’s case, that was with a month of school still to go.) Meanwhile, DeKalb County schools in Georgia saw about a 7% increase in fights over that same time.

But other districts saw fewer student fights. As of late April, Dallas and Houston schools had each seen a sharp 62% decline in fights compared with the 2018-19 school year. With two months of school left, student fights were down by more than half in Texas’ Cypress-Fairbanks school district over that same period. And student fights were down 42% over that time in Jefferson County, Kentucky, with a month of school to go.

In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, student altercations and fights were down 27% compared with the 2018-19 school year, with a month of school to go, officials said. Still, some schools struggled.

Robert Effinger, who teaches 10th grade history at a Bronx high school, said his school saw an increase in physical and verbal fights, though physical confrontations became less frequent as the year progressed. He thinks much of the early conflict stemmed from students trying to establish their place and social circles at the school after they were apart for so long.

In his eyes, a rise in students cutting class or arriving late was an even bigger issue. And there were other disruptions, too, like students yelling across a classroom. A big driver of that behavior, Effinger said, is that some students were struggling with their work.

“They don’t want to embarrass themselves, so they’ll act out,” he said. “That’s happened a decent amount this year.”

And though his school added a counselor this year, students often went without the mental health help they needed. “I referred a few students to counseling and there are no counseling slots,” Effinger said. “It’s like, what do we do?”

Ashley Lourenco, a rising 10th grader, estimated there were five fights this past year at her magnet high school in Newark, New Jersey, where altercations are typically rare. There was only one the prior year that she could recall. She also noticed students made jokes on social media that could be interpreted as threats, and her classmates seemed more on edge when they returned from remote learning.

“People are super stressed,” she said. “Mental health is a pretty prevalent issue among people I know.”

More comprehensive national data released last week shows that schools grew safer in many ways in the decade before the pandemic’s arrival, with students experiencing fewer incidents of crime and violence — except school shootings — between 2009 and 2019. Those figures fell further in 2020 as many students learned from home.

As some schools saw fights and disorder rise again this past year, they responded in different ways.

Some turned to removing students from school more frequently. Out-of-school suspensions in Northside schools were up by 15% this past school year, compared with the 2018-19 school year. Over the same period, out-of-school suspensions rose by 9% in Hillsborough County.

Elsewhere, suspensions fell despite an uptick in student misbehavior. Duval County, for example, issued 500 fewer suspensions this past school year compared with the 2018-19 school year, a drop of about 2%.

Suspensions were falling nationwide well before the pandemic began, as states and districts passed policies limiting their usage. Research has shown that Black students, especially, are disproportionately suspended from school, and that suspensions can lower students’ test scores and reduce their chances of graduating.

As an alternative, many schools turned to less punitive forms of discipline, such as having students talk out conflicts or attend counseling. Those strategies have been tested during the pandemic and educators in some places have called for a return to more punitive forms of discipline.

Still, many districts continue to adhere to those practices.

DeFerrari, the Jefferson County official, said her district placed a greater emphasis this past year on making sure schools weren’t using suspension as a punishment when student misbehavior stemmed from trauma or because an adult had contributed to the situation with their own reaction.

The district also hired more behavior analysts who can be dispatched to schools to help figure out what’s causing a student to act out. The team grew from three to 10 last year, and will number 16 in the coming school year.

The district’s suspension rate dipped, and as of late April, officials had given out just under 15,000 suspensions, compared with just over 20,000 during the 2018-19 school year.

It’s about “really helping schools and administrators understand kids are not going to be able to interact with you if they are upset until they’re calmed down and de-escalated,” DeFerrari said. “If you can eliminate those small headaches — that is what gets people into trouble — then you eliminate problems.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman, Patrick Wall, and Matt Barnum contributed reporting.

‘Un mensaje claro y fuerte’: Estudiantes LGBTQ protegidos contra discriminación, dicen reglas propuestas

2022-06-29T22:25:19+00:00

Read in English.

Los estudiantes LGBTQ que enfrenten discriminación por su orientación sexual e identidad de género están protegidos por la ley federal que prohibe la discriminación sexual en las escuelas, conforme con el reglamento propuesto el jueves por el departamento federal de educación.

Algunas escuelas ya aplicaban la ley de esta manera, señalaron los funcionarios, pero las reglas propuestas aclaran que las protecciones de la ley de derechos civiles conocida como Título IX (aprobada hace 50 años) les aplican a los estudiantes LGBTQ.

“Tenemos que ver esto como una oportunidad para proteger mejor a los niños LGBTQ, que enfrentan bullying y acoso, tienen mayores porcentajes de ansiedad, depresión y suicidio, y con demasiada frecuencia crecen sintiendo que no pertenecen en ningún sitio”, les dijo el Secretario de Educación Miguel Cardona a los periodistas. “Hoy enviamos un mensaje claro a esos estudiantes, y a todos nuestros estudiantes: Ustedes pertenecen en nuestras escuelas.”

La propuesta es el último paso de la administración Biden para fortalecer las protecciones de los niños LGBTQ, que con mayor frecuencia son blanco de ataque de nuevas leyes estatales que limitan enseñar sobre género y sexualidad, restringen los baños que los estudiantes transgénero pueden usar en la escuela, y limitan el acceso a atención médica para afirmación de género. Para reunir retroalimentación y comentarios sobre estas reglas, los funcionarios pasaron el último año hablando con estudiantes, padres, abogados y otras personas.

Las reglas propuestas se basan en un memorándum federal emitido el año pasado que indica que una decisión del Tribunal Supremo en 2020 determinó que la discriminación por sexo incluye orientación sexual e identidad de género, y que estaría incluida en el Título IX.

Sin embargo, los funcionarios federales de educación no dieron si las leyes estatales que impiden que los estudiantes transgénero participen en equipos de deporte que no corresponden con su identidad de género están en incumplimiento de la ley federal de derechos civiles. Cardona dijo que el departamento iba a emprender un proceso separado para decidir si emitía reglas con respecto a la elegibilidad para participar en equipos de deporte.

“El departamento reconoce que los estándares para que los estudiantes participen en equipos de deporte masculino y femenino están evolucionando en tiempo real,” dijo Cardona. “Y por lo tanto decidimos establecer reglas separadas en cuanto a cómo las escuelas pueden determinar elegibilidad y al mismo tiempo sosteniendo la garantía de no discriminación del Título IX.”

El departamento no estableció un plazo para ese proceso, pero los funcionarios reconocieron que es un asunto urgente.

Las reglas propuestas también incluyen requisitos más estrictos para que las escuelas brinden acomodos razonables para estudiantes en estado de embarazo, y eliminaron algunas de las reglas establecidas por la administración Trump bajo la dirección de la ex Secretaria de Educación Betsy DeVos con respecto a la investigación de agresiones y malas conductas de carácter sexual en las escuelas. Por ejemplo, las universidades ya no tendrán que conducir audiencias en vivo para evaluar la evidencia en esos casos — una de las partes más controversiales de los reglamentos de la era de DeVos.

Los miembros del público tendrán dos meses para comentar sobre estas reglas propuestas antes de que los funcionarios federales procedan a establecerlas oficialmente.

Kalyn Belsha es periodista de educación nacional basada en Chicago. Para comunicarte con ella, envíale un mensaje a kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Schools are spending millions on new virtual tutoring. Is it working?

2022-06-29T11:00:00+00:00

Superintendent Scott Muri knew his students needed extra help with math and reading. But before he could launch a tutoring program, he needed tutors.

This was no small challenge in a district that already faced a staff shortage. Shortly before the pandemic began, one in five classrooms didn’t have a permanent teacher.

“I didn’t need just five or 10 tutors, I needed hundreds,” said Muri, who leads Ector County schools, a district of some 32,000 students in West Texas. “Virtual was our only option.”

So, with federal COVID relief dollars in hand, Ector County joined many other U.S. school districts in an informal nationwide experiment. Could virtual tutoring be a credible replacement for in-person help? And could it fill gaps for students who, in a brutal irony, had lost ground when school was fully online?

The district spent more than $5 million last year to find out, paying for tutors to work one-on-one with 6,000 students virtually during the school day. Officials are still analyzing the results. Muri says students who got a lot of help outpaced their peers academically, but schools will make adjustments next year, especially for younger students.

“It is something that we will continue, hopefully in perpetuity,” Muri said.

Elsewhere, some schools turning to virtual tutoring have struggled to get students to participate, particularly the students who need the most support. Communication between tutors and teachers can be spotty, and the scheduling logistics are complex. The setup has frustrated some students, especially those who only got text- or chat-based help.

Most critically, the academic impact of pandemic-era virtual tutoring is still largely unknown. Still, it’s an unprecedented expansion of academic support, with more and more companies looking to become part of districts’ recovery plans — and a more permanent fixture in schools.

“We know that tutoring works, and we’ve seen different models that are effective, but there is still a lot of disagreement about how to get that done,” said Janice Jackson, the former Chicago schools chief who now chairs the board of Accelerate, a nonprofit focused on tutoring strategies. “We have a lot of tutoring companies in the ed tech space that are offering things that are more economical. But the jury is still out on their effectiveness.”

Many school districts are spending millions on virtual tutoring, particularly to help students with math and reading.

What it looks like

This school year marked the first time that many school districts attempted virtual tutoring on a large scale. Fueling this growth: Schools have billions in federal relief dollars, and must spend a chunk of that money helping students who fell behind academically.

An entire industry has cropped up in response, which now includes some longtime players and several companies that have pivoted from offering expensive private tutoring.

Their services can be divided into two main categories. The first is “on-demand” tutoring, which operates like homework help and matches students with a new tutor each time they log on.

The company Paper, for example, has students upload pictures of their work or type questions into a chat box. Students can type and talk to tutors over Tutor.com, and they can see and hear tutors through TutorMe. Those two companies allow students to “favorite” a tutor, but that tutor may not be available when the student needs help the next time.

The other approach pairs students with one tutor for multiple virtual sessions each week. It’s similar to the kind of “high-dosage” help that’s been shown to deliver strong results in person.

The small handful of studies that have looked at virtual tutoring during the pandemic saw promising results from this variety. But offerings vary, so it’s tough to say how many students are getting that kind, said Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education at Brown University who’s studying tutoring initiatives.

“It’s way premature to start saying: ‘Oh, it’s working here, it’s not working there,’” Kraft said. “I would be hard-pressed to name very many districts who would raise their hand and say: ‘Yeah, ours is just knocking it out of the park, we’ve got it figured out.’”

That’s left district leaders to sort through pitches for all kinds of virtual tutoring products. Brenda Lewis, an assistant superintendent for Grand Forks schools in North Dakota, has seen how much the quality can vary. She worked with a team to vet a half-dozen virtual tutoring providers before landing on Littera Education, which connects students and tutors on live video.

“It’s overwhelming at first,” Lewis said. Some companies “are really amazing and have the data to back it up, and others aren’t.”

Ten-year-old Alisma Meyer was among the first to try out the reading tutoring.

On a recent Wednesday morning at her elementary school, the rising fifth-grader scooted her chair close to a laptop and waited for her tutor’s face to appear. After they said hi, Alisma read aloud “Sleepy Barker,” a book about a dog awakened by noises in the night. Then Alisma’s tutor, Amanda Erdman, a former elementary school teacher, asked what Alisma noticed.

“I’ve improved at reading faster,” Alisma said.

“You have improved with reading faster and more fluently,” Erdman agreed. “What is something that you think you still need to work on as a reader that you think we can work on together?”

“Sometimes I need to work on longer words,” Alisma replied.

Then Erdman guided Alisma through an exercise in identifying letter sounds. Listening nearby, the school’s instructional coach could tell Alisma recognized more vowel groups than earlier in the year. Alisma saw progress, too, noticing that her hands no longer shake when she reads in front of her classmates.

“It’ll teach you stuff but it’s also fun,” Alisma said of virtual tutoring. “It’s kind of the premise of school.”

Some districts have found that younger students don’t like text-based virtual tutoring and prefer to be able to see and hear their tutor over video.

Who’s really getting help?

Alisma’s experience with virtual tutoring is what schools are aiming for. But it doesn’t always go that smoothly, and the offerings have raised questions about access and engagement — concerns that dogged schools when classes were remote during the pandemic.

When the school board in Palm Beach County, Florida debated renewing a $1.1 million contract with Paper in May, board member Debra L. Robinson pointed out that there had been a “huge disparity in usage.” Schools with higher poverty rates were using the on-demand tutoring less. (A district official said they’d worked to let more parents, teachers, and students know about the service, and the board reupped the contract for another $2.9 million.)

Participation in virtual tutoring has been relatively low in Akron, Ohio since the district launched its service in January. The district bought 5,000 virtual tutoring hours from TutorMe for just under $133,000, but after six months, students had used only 500 tutoring hours. All middle and high schoolers had access to the tutoring, but just about one in 11 students used it.

Marcie Ebright, a digital learning specialist for the district, said it was challenging to roll out a new service mid-year, but she hopes that more students will use the tutoring after the district promotes it this fall. Staff also will be analyzing which students used the service “so that we can more actively target the audiences that may need it,” Ebright said.

“Our early adopters are always going to be those kids that are seeking out that extra support to do better at school,” she said. If “we don’t really see the numbers increasing, and kids aren’t really taking advantage of it like we had hoped, then it might be something that we retire.”

In Hillsborough County, Florida, which also has a contract with Paper for just under $2.7 million, board member Karen Perez worried the service wouldn’t be as helpful for the many students without a computer or reliable internet at home. (Officials said they could provide laptops or the student could visit a library.)

Perez, who learned English as a second language, also had concerns that the limited interaction over text-based chat would be frustrating for English learners.

“For me, the population who is unable to access those services are the ones who usually need it the most,” she said. “If you’re looking at the tutoring but not putting the supports in place for the students to move forward and progress, then you’re just basically setting up the students to fail.”

Researchers who study tutoring have similar concerns. Susanna Loeb, a professor of education who directs the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, says virtual tutoring is likely most effective when students are getting that help during the school day at regularly scheduled sessions.

“Once the students aren’t in school, it’s not that the interaction isn’t effective when it’s there, it’s that it’s difficult to get students to show up, particularly the students who are most disengaged with school,” Loeb said. “Student opt-in just is not an equalizing approach.”

For their part, companies that offer on-demand virtual tutoring say there are benefits to their model.

Phil Cutler, the CEO of Paper, said many students like being able to work with a tutor at a time that fits their schedule, and districts like paying a fixed price for an unlimited number of tutoring hours. “Every student has access and they can use it as much or as little as they want to,” he said, likening it to an “all-you-can-eat” option.

And some point out that districts are free to work with multiple companies to address students’ needs.

“We’re not going to be the best thing for every student, but we are going to be able to impact a large number of your students,” said Ryan Patenaude, the executive vice president of FEV Tutor, which provides text-based virtual tutoring to several large districts, including Ector County. “It can’t be a one-size-fits-all model.”

Researchers think virtual tutoring is likely to be most effective when it happens during the school day at regularly scheduled sessions.

Will schools rely on virtual tutoring long term?

Virtual tutoring companies see this moment as an opportunity to become a more permanent offering. For the right price, many think — or at least hope — that schools will pay for virtual tutoring long after federal COVID relief dollars run out.

“It’s going to set expectations that are part of schools going forward,” said Anthony Salcito, who oversees virtual tutoring work at school districts for Varsity Tutors. “How do we think about being a partner to schools long-term, not just in this window right now?”

There’s a big incentive to get this right. Mississippi, for example, signed a nearly $10.8 million contract with Paper to provide on-demand tutoring to more than 100 districts across the state over the next two and a half years. Boston Public Schools will spend $5 million on Paper’s services over three years.

Prince George’s County schools in Maryland is spending $1.5 million for 10 months of TutorMe, while Wichita schools in Kansas is spending $2.5 million for a year of elementary school math tutoring from Varsity Tutors.

Schools are still trying to figure out how to get the best results for that money.

Denver Public Schools paid the company Cignition just under $700,000 this past school year to virtually tutor 880 students in math for at least 90 minutes a week. When staff interviewed students about their experience, they found elementary schoolers liked it more than older students — who sometimes got frustrated when they had to attend tutoring instead of a fun elective class.

Now, the district will only offer virtual tutoring to elementary and middle school students, while ninth graders will get in-person tutoring. And after some students complained about distracting setups at school, the district hired a coordinator who will ensure students have a quiet place to work.

The main thing to improve is collaboration between tutors and teachers, said Principal Laura Munro, who had 30 fourth and fifth graders participate this year and praised the program as engaging.

“How can we use the data from each session that kids are in to drive any adjustments in the classroom?” she said.

In Ector County, Principal Jessica Redman is looking forward to younger students being paired with tutors over video next year, after many of her elementary schoolers had a hard time with text-based tutoring. She’s also eager to get her hands on data that illustrates what exactly the effect of virtual tutoring was.

“It’s hard to know what the one factor was that helps the most,” Redman said. “We just did everything we could to get kids caught up.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Meals to go, fresh veggies: What the extension of meal waivers means for schools

2022-06-24T18:36:41+00:00

As food and other costs continue to rise, schools are getting help from federal legislation that will reimburse schools for meals at higher rates than usual and bring back rules that make it easier to get food to children and teens over the summer.

The legislation, known as the Keep Kids Fed Act, was sent to President Biden on Friday after it cleared Congress.

The measures are seen as a lifeline for school nutrition programs, many of which have grappled with missing food deliveries, staff shortages, and higher prices for staples like chicken, milk, and paper products this year. Schools had gotten higher reimbursement rates over the last two years, but those were set to expire at the end of the month. The additional funds will make it less likely that schools will have to dip into their education budgets to cover the cost of their meal programs in the upcoming school year.

The legislation also extends several pandemic-era waivers that had allowed schools to run grab-and-go meal programs and deliver food to students in the summer months. Those waivers were also going to end on June 30.

That will make a big difference in districts like Houston, which had delivered meals to students in 25 apartment buildings across the district last summer. Betti Wiggins, the officer of nutrition services, worried about not being able to reach those students again this year.

“Absolutely, I’ll be all over apartment buildings,” she said. That will help with “what the summer program was designed to do: Feed kids who do not have two meals available to them in the summertime.”

Congressional Democrats had pushed to extend the meal waivers earlier this spring, but Republican leaders shot that down, in part because of the price tag. This proposal covers the added costs with unspent agriculture department funds, as well as $400 million in COVID relief dollars that were originally set aside for colleges and universities.

The measures are only for one school year, but advocates say they will make a meaningful difference for families.

This summer, many school districts had planned to shorten their summer meal programs or give out food at fewer sites without the waivers in place. Starting in July, students would have had to eat each meal on site.

Now, school officials say they’ll be able to resume programs that allow families to pick up multiple meals at once and take them home. That will ease the burden on working parents and caregivers who have to drive a long distance to feeding sites, especially as gas prices skyrocket.

“We’re already hearing from a lot of our partners on the ground that parents are really, really frustrated,” said Lisa Davis, who oversees the No Kid Hungry campaign at the nonprofit Share Our Strength. “People are having to really think about it: Is the cost of the trip every single day more than the value of the food that my child is getting? It’s agonizing for parents.”

The waivers also allow schools and summer feeding programs to give out meals at centralized sites, instead of only in areas where there is a high poverty rate. For Charleston County schools in South Carolina, that means Walter Campbell, the executive director of nutrition services, will be able to add a public library back to the meal site list that he planned to drop if the waivers went away.

Still, the changes may come too late for some school districts, especially smaller ones that can’t afford to make sweeping changes to their meal programs at the drop of a hat. Advocates also worry about whether families will find out about the changes, since many districts put out the word about how their summer meal program would run months ago.

“Because of the timing, I think unfortunately, we will see communities where summer meals aren’t as available as they would have been if Congress had gotten this done in March,” Davis said. “But I think we will see many more sites, and many more kids served than we would if Congress didn’t do this at all.”

One big change is that families will again have to fill out paperwork to qualify their children for free and reduced priced meals when school starts in the fall, a requirement the waivers had lifted over the past two years. During the pandemic, schools were able to give meals to all students at no cost without checking their family income.

But between the higher reimbursement rates and the waiver of fines if schools can’t meet the usual nutrition standards — a common occurrence when delivery trucks arrive half-empty or without certain products — school nutrition officials say they hope they can redirect that money into healthier meals for students.

Wiggins in Houston, for example, didn’t think she’d be able to afford putting out salad bars at schools this year, but the extra funds will allow her to buy more fresh fruits and vegetables, which tend to cost more.

Campbell in Charleston County says the higher reimbursement rates mean he’ll be able to get burgers without a bunch of fillers in them. Patties that are mostly meat and spices cost 90 cents each, while the versions with additives cost 40 cents to 50 cents each, he said. And he’ll be able to buy healthier buns and salad dressing, too.

“We don’t want products with high-fructose corn syrup,” he said, but the healthier alternatives cost more. “Having these additional funds will allow us to continue doing what we’ve been doing.”

Still the legislation won’t fix the supply chain issues many schools expect will continue into next school year. That means schools will keep jumping through hoops to put food on students’ plates. Campbell’s district, for example, is working with 14 neighboring districts to order the same ingredients to reduce the chances they’ll get shorted. They’ve learned to use the same meat to make chicken sandwiches as chicken parmesan.

“You get creative with the menu,” Campbell said. It’s “talking to your distributor and saying: ‘Well, what do you have? What can you get hold of?’”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

‘A loud message’: LGBTQ students protected from discrimination, proposed rules say

2022-06-23T18:08:25+00:00

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LGBTQ students who face discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity are protected by the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination at school, according to proposed rules issued by the federal education department on Thursday.

Some schools already applied the law this way, officials noted, but the proposed rules make it clear that the protections outlined in the 50-year-old federal civil rights law known as Title IX apply to LGBTQ students.

“We must see this opportunity to better protect LGBTQ youth, who face bullying and harassment, experience higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicide, and too often grow up feeling that they don’t belong,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters. “Today we send a loud message to these students, and all our students: You belong in our schools.”

The proposal is the latest step by the Biden administration to strengthen protections for LGBTQ youth, who have increasingly come under attack by new state laws that limit teaching about gender and sexuality, restrict what bathrooms transgender students can use at school, and limit access to gender-affirming health care. Officials spent the last year gathering feedback about these rules, talking with students, parents, lawyers, and others.

The proposed rules build on a memo federal officials issued last year saying that a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that found sex discrimination includes sexual orientation and gender identity would apply to Title IX.

But federal education officials didn’t weigh in on whether state laws that bar transgender students from participating on school sports teams that correspond with their gender identity run afoul of federal civil rights law. Cardona said the department would undergo a separate process to decide if it will issue rules around eligibility for school sports teams.

“The department recognizes that standards for students participating in male and female athletic teams are evolving in real time,” Cardona said. “And so we decided to do a separate rule-making on how schools may determine eligibility while upholding Title IX’s non-discrimination guarantee.”

The department did not issue a timeline for that process, but officials acknowledged the issue is urgent.

The proposed rules also include stronger requirements for schools to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant students, and they reverse some of the rules the Trump administration put into place under former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos regarding the investigation of sexual assault and misconduct in schools. Colleges no longer have to conduct a live hearing to evaluate evidence in those cases, for example — which had been one of the most controversial parts of the DeVos-era regulations.

Members of the public will have two months to comment on these proposed rules before federal officials can move forward with putting a final rule into place.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Sticking around: Most big districts will offer virtual learning this fall, a sign of pandemic’s effect

2022-06-06T11:00:00+00:00

All kinds of applications have come Monica Morris’ way as she prepares to open the Dallas school district’s first standalone virtual school this fall.

Some applicants are students who have been homeschooled or enrolled in a temporary online program. Others struggled this year after returning to in-person class. A handful have serious medical needs.

All are hoping to attend iLearn Virtual Academy next year, which will enroll up to 350 students in third through eighth grades.

“We have seen a lot of interest,” said Morris, the school’s principal. “This isn’t just a pandemic response mode of learning anymore.”

Dallas is one of several large school districts set to expand their virtual offerings in the coming school year. Some, like Los Angeles and New York City, plan to open new standalone schools, while others, like Gwinnett County in Georgia, will add grade levels.

Nearly all of the nation’s 20 largest school districts will have a remote option this fall, with at least half offering more full-time virtual schooling than they did before the pandemic, a Chalkbeat review found. The shifts suggest that districts’ expansion of online schooling is poised to be a lasting consequence of the pandemic, despite longstanding questions about its effectiveness.

“Overall, 95% of the kids who attended school before the pandemic will be attending in person after the pandemic and in the near future,” said Larry Cuban, an education historian at Stanford University. “What I think the pandemic has done is to enlarge the option for those who don’t want to attend school in person, [or] who cannot because of illness.”

Last fall, as schools returned to predominantly in-person instruction, the vast majority of students returned to school buildings. A small but significant group of families wanted to remain virtual, though, and many districts expanded their virtual schools or launched temporary remote options.

Now, some are keeping or expanding virtual learning, turning it into a longer-term option for that slice of their student population.

Montgomery County and Prince George’s County schools in Maryland, for example, are continuing virtual schools that they created during the pandemic. Chicago will continue to run a virtual academy for students with certain medical conditions.

A number of other large districts, including San Diego, Philadelphia, and Clark County, Nevada, will maintain expanded versions of their virtual schools. All three added elementary grades during the pandemic.

Others are building something from scratch. In New York City, one of the few large districts that didn’t offer virtual learning this year, officials plan to launch two new virtual schools this fall that will initially serve ninth graders.

“There are some folks who are absolutely opposed to this — it’s not for them,” said Carolyne Quintana, who oversees teaching and learning for the district. “And for the folks who absolutely need it, it is.”

Elsewhere, officials have raised concerns as plans to launch new schools came together. In Los Angeles, then-interim superintendent Megan Reilly was blunt when she told the school board earlier this year: “We all believe that in-person education is absolutely the best.”

Despite that, she recommended starting six new virtual schools, framing it as a way to accommodate families with lingering pandemic safety concerns, which could stave off more enrollment losses. Nearly 18,000 students, or 4% of the student population, enrolled in the district’s remote learning option this year, an “independent study” program that suffered staffing shortages and drew complaints about lesson quality.

Reilly faced some pushback — “When do kids get to go poke each other and run around and throw balls at each other?” George McKenna, a former district teacher and principal, asked rhetorically. But the board, with McKenna the sole dissenter, ultimately signed off on the plan.

Research on virtual schooling remains largely discouraging. Prior to the pandemic, students who opted into virtual charter schools tended to have lower test score gains and graduation rates. Studies during the pandemic showed that students who weren’t attending school in person fell further behind academically than those who returned to classrooms.

Data from Chicago Public Schools showed students enrolled in its virtual program this year had lower-than-average attendance. In Detroit, the district’s virtual school struggled to stay fully staffed, and Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said recently that about one in three students both failed a core class and were chronically absent during the first semester.

Officials say improvements are coming, but some families plan to change course after a frustrating virtual year. “They really hate going to school because they’re not being taught,” Sharon Kelso, a caregiver and special education advocate, said of her two nephews in Detroit.

Some have questioned the pre-pandemic research findings because students who choose an online school may face other challenges that push down their test scores. Others say that while virtual school might not be ideal, it could help keep some students in school.

“Certain students might be dropping out in lieu of remote learning,” said Bree Dusseault, an analyst with the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

In Dallas, Morris is trying to head off some of those concerns. Elementary-age children will spend more live time on video than older students, and staffers are already planning in-person activities — something potential students often inquire about.

“They want to know about the clubs, and the field trips, and the opportunities to connect, because I think that’s what they missed the most in the virtual experience,” Morris said. “We want the kids to feel a part of something.”

Other large districts have scrapped or chosen not to expand their virtual options. Fairfax County in Virginia is dropping a virtual program available to students with specific medical conditions this year. Wake County, North Carolina is also eliminating its virtual school, while Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools will begin phasing out its virtual option for elementary students while keeping it for older grades.

“We believe two things — our schools are safe for all students and our students are more successful learning in person,” Fairfax County officials told families in March when officials announced the upcoming end of the virtual program, which enrolled less than 400 students this year.

Hawaii’s state-wide district will allow individual schools to offer remote learning, but officials decided against creating a standalone virtual school for now.

Other districts are rolling back the live instruction they offered to virtual learners, reverting to a more self-paced strategy they employed before the pandemic.

In Duval County, Florida, educators are expecting some 2,000 students at the district’s standalone virtual school next year, many more than the few hundred students it served pre-pandemic. Live virtual instruction will no longer be available, and teachers anticipate some younger students will struggle to stay on top of their schoolwork without the typical school schedule they followed this year.

That’s why teachers are planning to host extra virtual “success sessions” with students and their families, and offer in-person help when needed.

“Brick and mortar might be a better option for some students,” said Leslie Jones, who teaches 12th graders at the school. “But if they are with us, their teachers are doing everything they can to build that rapport.”

Ethan Bakuli contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

In wake of Texas shooting, some want schools to ‘harden.’ In many cases, that’s already happened.

2022-05-31T22:18:09+00:00

A lot has changed for Broward County teacher Nympha Girard since a gunman shot and killed 17 students and staff members in her Florida district.

Girard, who teaches at Plantation High School, about 16 miles south of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, recalls that before the tragedy there in 2018, students and staff could enter and exit through multiple doors and gates. Students roamed the halls during class. Girard often stayed into the evening to help students. And there wasn’t much of a security presence.

Now, students, staff, and visitors filter through the “welcome center” — the only point of entry. When a student has to use the bathroom during class, Girard calls for a security guard to escort them. The gates lock after school lets out, which means teachers don’t stay too late. And her school has two police officers and a security manager who are “constantly in your vision.”

Those extra safety precautions do make her feel safer. “I understand we always have to look ahead and go one step further,” Girard said. But still, she’s torn about adding more security, and would prefer to see stricter gun laws. There’s been ongoing debate about adding metal detectors, Girard said, but she’s not convinced they “would make us any safer.”

Girard’s experience illustrates how many schools have already undergone “hardening” in the wake of prior high-profile tragedies. They have hired more security guards and police, installed cameras, added fences outside playgrounds, created one point of entry, and drilled students for the possibility of an active shooter.

Now, after the latest mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, some politicians and education officials want schools to tighten security even more. But the rapid adoption of these measures in recent years highlights how far schools have already gone — and raises questions about how much further they can and should go.

“Schools over the past couple decades have increasingly become more characterized by security measures,” said Chris Curran, an education researcher at the University of Florida. “The tricky balance for schools is we don’t want them to look like forts. We want students to go to a place where it’s welcoming, it’s open, where they’re happy to be there.”

In 2019, two thirds of schools reported having a school security or police officer present, according to a federal survey. That includes a majority of elementary schools and more than 80% of middle and high schools. In just over half of schools, at least one officer is armed with a gun.

Nearly all schools also report maintaining controlled access to their building during school hours, using security cameras, planning for the possibility of an active shooter, and conducting lockdown drills. More than half say they have controlled access to school grounds, too. There have been sharp increases in nearly all security measures in the last two decades.

Despite these security upgrades, politicians are still calling for measures that many schools already have.

Former President Trump, for example, said on Friday that every school building should have one point of entry, metal detectors, and “strong exterior fencing” to prevent intruders from entering schools with a weapon.

A number of Republican governors and some Democrats have shared similar sentiments.

“It’s looking for ways to harden schools,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said. “Maybe a single entrance into the school system and making sure educators are trained.”

Prior school shootings have led to the kind of school hardening that some are now calling for again.

Soon after the 2018 Florida shooting, a majority of states pumped money — totalling roughly $900 million, according to an analysis by The 74 — into bulking up security. The federal government has also issued regular safety grants.

The state of Florida began requiring schools to post an armed police officer or guard on every school campus and allowed some teachers to carry guns. The state also set aside $233 million to upgrade school building security over the last four years.

“This funding has made a great impact on schools’ abilities to secure their campuses,” said Cassie Palelis, a spokesperson for Florida’s education department.

Similarly, in 2016 after a community college shooting in nearby Oregon, Idaho passed a law requiring school “threat and vulnerability assessments” every three years.

Guy Bliesner, with the Idaho School Safety and Security Program, conducts some of those assessments. He visits nearly 100 schools a year looking for security lapses like whether doors are left open, and issues a detailed report for each school. Over the years, Bliesner had seen schools put in place more robust safety measures.

“There has been an increasing awareness of security as an operational element at schools,” he said.

Proponents of these measures point out that there are documented instances of school security guards and other police preventing school shootings that had been planned. And some research shows that police in schools can reduce crime unrelated to shootings.

But despite their prominence and horror, mass school shootings remain quite rare. In most years there are fewer than 10 active-shooter events in schools in the whole country. And it’s not clear if tougher security has made schools safer from shootings or other crime.

Schools in Uvalde, Texas, had undergone security upgrades — hiring police officers, conducting active-shooting trainings, and doubling their security budget.

In practice, as the Uvalde tragedy shows, security doesn’t always work as intended: in that case, a back door was left open, school security did not stop the shooter from entering, and local police let the shooter remain in a classroom for nearly an hour before a tactical team burst open the door.

And tougher security can come with real downsides: students may feel less safe at school, and may even do worse in class. Black students, especially, are more likely to be arrested at school and to have more negative feelings about school police.

“You end up creating an environment where you lessen the trust between students and the adults who should be nurturing and protecting them,” said Bacardi Jackson, who co-authored a report about school hardening after the Florida shooting for the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.

Christina Quintero, who has three children in Houston ISD, watched as her children’s elementary school made changes to its building after the shooting at Texas’ Santa Fe High School in 2018. The district spent $3.4 million after Texas created a $100 million fund for school hardening. Her children’s school now has a single point of entry and staff are “hypervigilant” about who comes in. Visitors have to be buzzed through two sets of “big heavy” doors.

“It does make us feel more secure that our children are going through this,” Quintero said. But the calls from politicians for more spending on school security worry her. “I fear that putting more officers in these schools, putting metal detectors, and basically doubling down will further perpetuate the cycle of the school-to-prison pipeline, especially in minority areas.”

Quintero argues that school hardening doesn’t address the core problem: access to guns.

“That’s just a Band-Aid,” she said. “I guarantee you that it will fail, because we’re not addressing the root of the problem, which is gun violence and our elected officials accepting money from the NRA and not writing feasible policies that will actually protect our students.”

Meanwhile, in Florida, Girard said that repeatedly acting out an active shooter situation can be traumatizing.

“Sometimes things get too far,” she said. “Whenever the drills were over, when the classes moved, you could see it in everyone’s faces. We were all silently crying, because we were scared to death.”

The training has stuck with her in other ways, too. Girard doesn’t open the windows in her classroom now, even though they’re high off the ground. Two months ago, she cracked some for fresh air, but thought twice after worrying it could enable an intruder to hear her students during a lockdown. A student stood outside to listen as her class whispered and moved a chair.

“He said: ‘I heard something,’” Girard said. “So then I closed them.”

Right now, school officials are facing intense pressure to layer on even more security measures. Many parents are scared because of what they’re reading in the news. Many politicians are emphasizing security measures, with some hoping to pivot the conversation away from gun control laws.

Already many school systems have announced more police presence at least for the coming weeks. Some have laid out plans to update their security measures, too. The head of Los Angeles Unified schools, Alberto Carvalho, said the district was reviewing school access points and was considering using a tracking app to give first responders better access to schools.

But even some security experts say that officials need to avoid buying into quick fixes. Within days of the Uvalde shooting, Bliesner in Idaho said he’s received scores of emails from vendors hawking security products.

“Sometimes we just buy something and hang it out there so people say you did it,” he said. “It’s security theater.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Biden after Uvalde school shooting: ‘Why are we willing to live with this carnage?’

2022-05-25T15:17:55+00:00

President Biden urged lawmakers to act after 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday.

“Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” Biden asked in an emotional speech, where he said the pain of losing a child was like “having a piece of your soul ripped away.”

“Don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage,” he said, singling out gun manufacturers and gun lobbyists.

The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, marked the deadliest school shooting since 20 students and six educators were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

The incident is the latest shooting at an American school that has led to mass casualties — reigniting deep-seated concerns from families and educators about how to keep children safe at school. The tragedy also raises longstanding questions about what schools should do to guard against violence and how gun ownership should be regulated in the U.S.

The Uvalde attack marked the 27th school shooting that involved injuries or deaths this year, according to a tracker maintained by Education Week, with each bringing its own trauma to a community.

Little has changed in response, with federal legislation meant to limit access to guns or prevent mass shootings repeatedly failing to make its way through Congress. In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, families that lost children advocated unsuccessfully for state and federal gun control measures. Though survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 students and school staffers, had success pressing some states to pass tighter restrictions.

“We need to do something,” David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting who became an activist in its wake, wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

Over the last decade, Biden has played a prominent role in trying to pass gun control legislation. President Obama tapped Biden to lead the White House’s efforts on guns after the Sandy Hook shooting. Biden lobbied unsuccessfully for federal legislation to expand background checks on gun sales.

“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden asked Tuesday, his voice raw. “When in God’s name are we going to do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”

According to police and news reports about Tuesday’s shooting, an 18-year-old gunman, a student at a nearby high school, entered Robb Elementary with a handgun and possibly a rifle on Tuesday morning and opened fire. The school enrolls some 570 students in second to fourth grade, nearly all of whom are Latino, state data show. It was two days before the district was set to let out for summer break.

Though each school shooting is uniquely devastating, the aftermath is often similar for the communities that have been shaken by loss: grief, confusion, anger.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, who spent most of his career as an educator in Connecticut, said he’d never forget “the ripple effect of fear and heartbreak that spread among students and teachers” in his home state after the Sandy Hook shooting. Federal education officials are offering on-the-ground support to the Uvalde community and resources from an emergency program that helps schools recover from a violent or traumatic event.

In Uvalde, the district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, said that the district was notifying families that had lost loved ones and was providing services to them.

“Our prayer tonight,” Biden said, “is for those parents lying in bed trying to figure out, will I be able to sleep again? What do I say to my other children? What happens tomorrow?”

Chalkbeat has compiled resources and advice for parents and educators responding to trauma in their communities or helping children process violence elsewhere. Find those resources here.

Sarah Darville contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

This school year never got back to ‘normal.’ These are the lessons educators will carry with them.

2022-05-19T16:41:38+00:00

Rita Jackson had a big new job this year.

The longtime Baltimore elementary school teacher became a “learning loss interventionist,” working with small groups of struggling students every day. She’s spent the year showing younger students how to put pencil to paper and teaching older students how to craft compelling paragraphs.

With that targeted help, students are “definitely showing growth and gains,” she said. Still, “it was almost like whack-a-mole all year long,” Jackson said.

“COVID numbers are down, but the kids are fighting or they’re not getting along. Then, here go the numbers again, we’re spiking, oh here’s the stress and anxiety. Oh, we have no subs, so no intervention. It’s just constantly something else.”

That will sound familiar to many teachers and students across the U.S. about to wrap up their third pandemic-affected school year. The year marked a return to fully in-person learning for most, but COVID waves, staff shortages, and a sharp rise in student absenteeism meant the school year never quite got back to “normal.” Now, many exhausted teachers and students are counting down the days to summer — while thinking about how the lessons of this year will shape the next one.

“It has taken a toll on everybody to make it this far,” said Alyssa Rodriguez, a school social worker in Chicago. “It’s just going to be a very long finale.”

A rise in teacher absences due to COVID or other illnesses — and a lack of subs to fill in for them — has been a defining feature of this year. Coupled with persistent staffing shortages, the issue has compounded burnout and made it harder for students to catch up, as educators routinely stepped in for missing colleagues while juggling their own classes.

In Hillsborough County, Florida, assistant superintendent Daniela Simic saw how teacher absences weighed on schools. At the start of the school year, Simic said, teachers were asking her team of curriculum specialists lots of questions and using resources they had created to help teachers review skills or knowledge from a prior grade level. But she noticed a drop-off as the school year progressed, especially at schools with more teacher vacancies and absences.

“When you are so exhausted and you are dealing with having to take on three other classes during the day because there’s no substitute teachers available to take the kids, then you kind of revert to what’s easiest,” she said.

Substitute shortages were more common at higher-poverty schools in her district, Simic said, because subs were more likely to choose to work in schools with more affluent students. Those staffing disparities had an effect on student learning.

“That divide continues to grow and grow,” she said.

Student absences also complicated schools’ intervention plans. Many districts have reported a spike in student absences this year, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Memphis.

At Jackson’s school in Baltimore, some students missed school when they got sick or quarantined. In other cases, families kept children home for weeks at a time whenever the city’s positive case rate ticked up.

Jackson understands why the fear has lingered for some families in a majority Black city that’s weathered some 1,800 COVID deaths. Students who are cared for by grandparents are especially worried about getting their family sick. But she also sees the impact. Some of her students have missed 45 to 60 days of school.

“Our kids that aren’t coming to school aren’t getting the intervention and they’re not making growth,” Jackson said. “These are kids that are struggling, and that’s hard.”

In Los Angeles schools, teacher Meghann Seril saw her third graders make strides as they spent more time in the physical classroom.

The gains of one student who struggled to learn math virtually last year have been particularly heartening. Online, the student had a hard time recalling what she’d learned the week before, and she froze up when it came time to start a math problem. Now, Seril sees that student putting objects on her desk to help her count and using the listening strategies they worked on as a class.

But Seril is already eyeing ways to change up her instruction this fall. Third grade teachers at her school decided to put away the devices this year to give their students a break from technology. But sometimes that meant students did less independent learning.

For example, during a recent unit about how Los Angeles has changed over time and how people interact with the natural environment, students wanted to know: “Who takes care of the Los Angeles River?” Seril wished she’d planned for students to get into groups to find the answers to their questions online.

“I definitely want to build in time next year for students to do some of their own research, and to feel a little more empowered,” she said. “I want to swing back a little bit and see how we can get a better balance.”

Seril is also planning to spend some extra time getting to know the second graders who will be in her class next year, so she can tweak some of her lessons over the summer to reflect their interests — whether that be rocks or mythology.

“At the end of last year, I was so exhausted that I did not have the capacity to do this,” she said. “But I have been so re-energized by my experience with my students this year that I feel like I have that little extra that I can give.”

In Chicago, Rodriguez has seen her school nail down exactly when a mental health need is serious enough to require outside help, and how the behavioral health team can best work together to keep a close watch on students in need.

But there are some challenges that have lingered all year. Students are still fighting more than usual, and conflicts escalate quickly if an adult isn’t there to step in.

Come fall, her school is planning a big push to help students work on building friendships, resolving conflicts, and identifying adults they can turn to for help. Her school will be “coming in with very high and strict, concrete expectations,” she said, after a year in which students had a lot of “wiggle room.”

“We really didn’t know what to expect,” Rodriguez said. “We didn’t have as many guardrails as we normally would have had.”

Educators plan to hang reminders throughout the building so students have a clear picture of what happens if they skip their homework or act out in class.

The goal: “Just trying to figure out how we come in strong in the beginning so we’re not necessarily having to have so much discussion on the back end.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

‘We need to double down’: After a surge in ninth graders held back, schools step up support

2022-05-12T15:38:03+00:00

When high schools in Gwinnett County, Georgia opened their doors last fall, many more freshmen than usual walked in.

The main reason? Many ninth graders didn’t earn enough course credits to move on to 10th grade last year, officials say. While the district has seen its freshman class hover between 15,300 and 15,600 in recent years, this year’s class numbered more than 16,800.

“We understand, with that increase we saw in terms of the number of students who were not successful in terms of ninth grade promotion, that we need to double down on our efforts to get them on track,” said T. Nakia Towns, the district’s deputy superintendent. “It’s our highest priority.”

Many districts across the country have seen a similar spike in their freshmen class this school year. While some expected a bigger class because of higher birth rates — along with some continued pandemic-related school mobility — many school officials say the big driver is the larger-than-usual share of ninth graders who were held back.

Thirteen states, including Georgia, saw at least a 5% increase in their ninth grade class this past fall, according to data across 34 states provided by Burbio, a private company tracking school enrollment. The freshman class shot up by 10% or more in Arkansas, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, and West Virginia.

Coupled with other state data showing more ninth graders are off-track to graduate in four years, the data raise questions about whether schools will be able to help this larger group of struggling ninth graders catch up. Already, some school districts are pouring money and staff into new efforts to get these students back on track.

“If we don’t do something to intervene right now, and with urgency, we could see that play out three years later in ways that would not be good for kids and for families,” Towns said. “We’re determined not to let that happen.”

That scenario is playing out in Fort Worth schools in Texas, where about 990 of 7,300 freshmen were repeating the grade this past fall. Those students pushed ninth grade enrollment beyond where it’s been in recent years — typically between 6,300 and 7,000 students.

To respond, the district added two required reading classes for struggling ninth graders that offer extra time to practice foundational skills students missed out on in middle school during the pandemic.

Fort Worth also placed a “freshman success” coach at each of its high schools, part of a new initiative funded with federal COVID relief dollars. The 23 coaches, along with teachers, pay particularly close attention to ninth graders’ academics, attendance, and emotional well-being, and work intensively with a smaller group of students who need it most.

Marcey Sorensen, the district’s chief academic officer, says staffers are looking for warning signs earlier and intervening sooner. If a ninth grader fails a class in the first semester, they’re targeted for credit recovery in the second semester, instead of over the summer. The thinking is rooted in research that has shown ninth graders who fail even one core class are much less likely to graduate within four years.

“That feels a lot like being a warm demander,” Sorensen said. “It’s when there is an adult that is connected to a child to say: ‘You have to be on Edgenuity’ or ‘You have to go to credit recovery,’ or ‘I’m checking and monitoring your attendance and it is at this percentage,’ or ‘I’m taking you to the counselor.’”

So far this year, just over a quarter of the freshmen who were repeating the grade have moved up to 10th grade, or some 280 students.

Gwinnett County is trying to take a more proactive approach, too. For example, ninth graders who failed a core class in their first semester were assigned a “power hour” class in January so they could work on making up that half-credit. The district is also offering 30 minutes a day of intensive tutoring to ninth graders — math and science are the big needs — and paying teachers extra to work with students after school and on Saturdays.

The idea is “stopping in the middle of the year and saying: ‘Let’s actually remediate right now,’” Towns said, “instead of waiting until the end and digging a bigger hole for kids to get out of.”

State data show the district’s freshman class dipped by some 570 students this spring, after some ninth graders successfully moved up to 10th grade.

In Allentown, Pennsylvania, schools started with 450 more freshmen than the prior year, about 300 of whom were repeat ninth graders.

This year, the district added more credit recovery classes staffed by teachers during the school day and after school. Officials also revamped the summer bridge program that prepares rising ninth graders for high school. In the past, the program had been shorter and poorly attended, but this year the district lengthened it and saw a big increase in participation. Officials plan to run it again this summer.

“We knew the needs that we were going to get,” said Brandy Sawyer, who oversees secondary education for the district. “It was a big transition. These kids weren’t in school for a full year since fifth grade and here they are, ninth graders.”

So far, the district has seen 55 repeat ninth graders move up to 10th grade — more than four times the number who moved up last year.

Houston ISD in Texas is offering more vacation “boot camps” to struggling ninth graders. In the past, the district paid teachers to offer that extra help only at select schools, but all schools could offer the program this year.

Principal Orlando Reyna, who heads Austin High School, says that strategy prevents students from getting bogged down by make-up classes.

“Those credit recovery boot camps are a way to keep our students on track,” Reyna said. “We want to be able to keep their schedules as open as possible to be able to serve them better.”

That support comes as the district enrolled 17,700 ninth graders this past fall, up from 15,000 to 16,300 in recent years. Connie Smith, who oversees high school curriculum for the district, estimates that around 12% of those students were repeating the grade, often after they missed class to work or because they got sick or exposed to COVID. The district also saw an uptick in ninth graders due to the arrival of unaccompanied minors from Central America and refugees from Haiti, who have their own particular needs.

The district has been urging students to earn credits over the summer to build “cushion” into their schedules later if they have to retake a class.

“I’m feeling hopeful,” Smith said. “They are moving in the right direction.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Remote learning made it challenging for English learners to practice speaking skills. This district is finding ways to help.

2022-04-28T11:00:00+00:00

As Guillermo Benitez moved through a lesson on ratios, he pressed his sixth-graders to elaborate at every turn: How did we get that answer?

The math teacher gave some students a heads up first, knowing it’s helpful not to put English learners on the spot. Along the way, Benitez kept a mental tally of who hadn’t spoken up yet.

Benitez has relied on his experience as an English learner to support students. “I feel like that connection with them — they understand that I went through the same thing as them,” he said. “And if I can overcome it, they can overcome it as well.”

“I’ma call on you to explain something to me,” Benitez nudged one student. “You’re the only one I haven’t called on today. Your time’s coming. Are you prepared?”

“No!” the student said, with a giggle.

Earlier in the period, Benitez let students work out problems in groups of three before they shared with the whole class — another way of helping students prepare to participate. He leaned over the desk of a student who hadn’t spoken up in her group.

She began to explain how they arrived at 14, softly. “Good,” Benitez told her. “That’s how you show your work.”

For many teachers of English learners like Benitez, working with students to build oral language skills has been especially crucial this year.

That’s because remote learning made those skills harder to practice last year. A report released this month detailed some of the common challenges: Students had fewer opportunities to talk with their classmates online, and teachers who specialized in language support often got pulled away to help with other duties. The charts and word banks that students rely on as they learn to speak a new language were harder to share in virtual classrooms, too.

“Kids, especially younger kids, just did not have opportunities to use language in the way that they normally do,” said Amaya Garcia, a co-author of the report who researches education policies that affect English learners for the think tank New America. “For a lot of the people that we spoke with, that was a real area of concern.”

Those issues showed up on the test that many states use to measure the progress of students learning English. Across the U.S., including in Benitez’s school district, a smaller share of students reached their English language proficiency goals than usual last spring, especially in the younger grades. Scores dropped the most on the writing and speaking portions.

To help students make up for lost time, school districts like Berwyn North, where Benitez teaches just west of Chicago, are focused on boosting English learners’ speaking skills with new tactics, more coaching, and even new furniture arrangements.

Districts across the country are trying to help English learners make progress this year, after a smaller share of students hit their English proficiency goals than usual last year.

“That was very important for them to practice that conversation piece,” said Francela López, who oversees services for Berwyn North’s English learners, who make up a third of all students in the district. “They did miss out on some of that.”

Like many districts, Berwyn North schools had a tall order before them last fall. It marked the first time most students returned for in-person learning after more than a year. Though the district reopened buildings last spring, few students came in. Most English learners got language support over Zoom, but few were able to practice their English outside of class, López said.

Dana Sartori, an elementary school teacher who’s worked in the district for two decades, noticed that when they returned, many younger English learners were quieter than usual.

“It’s like you have to pull words out of them,” Sartori said in an interview in December. “I always thought that all the kids had silent periods, but this is different.”

To help, Sartori has tried to boost her students’ confidence. One morning that month, she stopped by the desk of an English learner in third grade wearing sparkly silver shoes whose voice barely rose above a whisper.

Sartori knew the little girl often stayed quiet because she struggled to read, so Sartori read the lesson aloud with gusto and asked the student to tell her about it. The third-grader’s voice rose up a notch. “It was louder because she felt comfortable and confident in what she was telling me,” Sartori said.

This year, Berwyn North teachers arranged new hexagonal desks in ways that encourage students to talk more with one another.

Educators have looked for ways to get students talking more to one another, too. Early in the school year, for example, López and a colleague helped teachers figure out how to set up new hexagon-shaped desks to encourage students to turn and talk with a classmate.

Teacher coaches have helped teachers add more speaking practice into their lessons, too. It’s something they did before the pandemic that’s taken on added significance this year.

One day in December, fifth-grade teacher Anne Vaccaro tested out a new activity that gave each student a different speaking role. Students pushed their desks together into groups of four and took turns asking and answering science questions about the atmosphere, weathering, and erosion.

Conversations filled the room. At one table where a little boy wasn’t saying much, a classmate tried to help him explain how erosion breaks down cliffs, while he nodded along — the kind of natural interaction that had been difficult to replicate online.

Some students glanced down at a piece of paper filled with phrases such as “What do you mean when you say that?” and “Can you tell me more?” Getting students to elaborate on their thinking like that has taken a little longer this year, Sartori said, but by winter, she was starting to see it stick.

“What I liked about interacting with my classmates was that I could share my ideas,” said one especially enthusiastic student.

Teachers also got more training on how to use Flipgrid, a tool that allows students to record themselves speaking, listen back, and get feedback. Sartori uses the tool twice a week in an extra support class for a handful of struggling English learners, though sometimes it hasn’t elicited the response she was looking for.

“Remember, you’re talking as much as you can!” Sartori told her three students that day. She wanted them to look at a picture of a young boy playing soccer and describe how he might be feeling.

“OK, when you’re ready!” Sartori said. None of the students spoke.

Sartori moved around the room, trying to help. She offered to turn off the camera so students wouldn’t see their faces. She provided some sentence starters and rehearsed what students might say. One student wrote his answer on a Post-it, but he didn’t want to say it.

“You’re being shy? What’s going on?” Sartori said. “You’ve done this before!”

For one 9-year-old, who rarely talks in her larger classes, the lesson felt hard. She prefers working in teams and doing activities that feel more like games, she said.

At home, she said in Spanish, “I talk a little more because I feel more comfortable there.” But at school, “there are a lot of people I still don’t know and it makes me nervous.”

The district is also serving a larger number of newcomer students this year, mainly from Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Morocco. Some students arrived a few months ago, while others started school just before the pandemic but didn’t attend many virtual classes last year.

Teachers are using tools like Flipgrid, a self-recording platform, and conversation prompts to get students more comfortable talking with each other in English.

To support those students at the middle school, teacher Hannah Nolan-Spohn created a small class in February specifically for newcomers with six Spanish speakers and two Arabic speakers.

It’s a one-hour class where students can get more consistent language support. Nolan-Spohn, who specializes in working with English learners, sets aside time every Tuesday for students to talk with their classmates, and she’s teaching them phonics so they feel confident in their pronunciation. She also tries to pick activities that will resonate with students, like listening to an audio story about a Vietnamese-American woman trying to maintain a connection with her mother’s language.

“I’m hoping that will continue to make them feel safe,” she said. “This is the place to make mistakes and take risks because everybody’s in the same boat as you. No one’s going to tease you. It’s OK if you mispronounce something. This is the space to try.”

Already, she’s built an atmosphere where students feel comfortable joking with each other. At the start of a lesson in mid-February, one student led the class in a daily speaking activity about the day and the weather. She teased her classmates when she didn’t get much of a response.

“Are they asleep?!” she asked Nolan-Spohn.

After a winter of pandemic hiccups — including a spike in student and teacher absences that pulled some English learner specialists away to sub — López is hopeful English learners will make more progress this year.

Last year, around 6% of English learners in the district scored high enough on the proficiency test to exit the program, though typically it’s between 7% and 9%. Educators are hoping it will be closer to 10% this year.

“I think we are moving along,” López said. “Our goal is to see some growth.”

Garcia, at New America, expects speaking scores will be higher this year, now that students have had more time to talk with their teachers and classmates in person. And with more information in hand, she wants schools to pay particularly close attention to English learners’ progress.

Last spring, school districts were able to test a much smaller share of their English learners than usual — Berwyn North reached around 60% — so teachers had less information to work with. This time around, teachers will know a lot more about what support students need and what they can do.

“To me, this is the level-setting year,” Garcia said. “Now we need to figure out how to adjust what we’re doing to address what we see.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

History class is under the microscope. This National Teacher of the Year is diving into lessons of race and oppression.

2022-04-19T18:53:52+00:00

Kurt Russell’s path to teaching was forged in his eighth grade math class.

It was there he met Larry Thomas, an energetic and tenacious educator who was also Russell’s first Black male teacher.

Russell liked that Thomas worked to connect with him over shared experiences, such as the fact that both of their families had migrated to Ohio from Alabama. He also admired how Thomas made math class relatable, like asking students to calculate an average using a famous basketball player’s performance statistics.

“He brought that cultural connection,” Russell said. “I just fell in love with him.”

That approach has stuck with Russell, who has taught history for more than 25 years in Ohio’s Oberlin City Schools, the same school district he attended as a child. Russell now teaches U.S. history, as well as courses he created on African American history and race, gender, and oppression. And it was his own work to connect with students and reflect their experiences in his lessons that helped earn Russell the title of National Teacher of the Year on Tuesday.

“We are living in a time when our students need conscientious teachers more than ever,” Russell wrote in his application, noting his parents attended segregated schools in the Jim Crow South, where Black students were denied basic resources at school, a disparity that still persists today. “While I cannot alter time or reverse past practices or policies, I can help construct opportunities for students of all races, ethnicities, religious affiliations, and gender identities.”

Chalkbeat talked with Russell about how teaching in his hometown allows him to forge deeper relationships with his students, why he created a history class focused on race, gender, and oppression, and what it’s been like to teach history at a time when lawmakers across the country, including in Ohio, are moving to restrict how race and racism are taught in schools.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What has it been like to come back and teach in the community you grew up in? How do you bring your own history to your lessons?

I always wanted to come back to Oberlin to teach, just because of what teachers in the community instilled in me. I’m able to connect with students because I’m connecting with their parents now, I’m connecting with their grandparents. I know them well.

I’m able to mention things that happened in Oberlin in a historical context. Oberlin is a hotbed for the Underground Railroad — we were Station No. 99. And there are several houses in Oberlin, on a street called College Street, that has the cellars where enslaved Africans were kept as they made their journey to Canada. As I mentioned these homes, students are like ‘Wow, I know that house!’ Students make a connection that way.

Can you tell me more about when you started teaching your race, gender, and oppression history class? What were you hoping students would take away from the class?

I started teaching that course maybe 13 or 14 years ago. Students came to me and said: Mr. Russell, are there any other courses that you teach? Because we want a little bit more than the typical U.S. history class. So I borrowed from my college first-year seminar. I believe the title was ‘Racism and Sexism in America.’ I said: You know what, I have readings from my college days, I have the syllabus, let me tweak it a little bit.

Russell teaches two classes at Oberlin High School he created that focus on African American history and the history of race, gender and oppression.

Right now, it’s still an elective, but it’s probably one of the most popular courses in the school because students see themselves in the lessons. We have topics such as the LGBTQ+ community, a Black Lives Matter unit, a women’s studies unit. A lot of the topics that we teach, students are able to see themselves, and they can create a narrative through their own stories.

Are there certain lessons that have been very engaging for students that you’ve noticed: ‘Wow this lesson really hit home for students’?

Every year as we study the LGBTQ+ unit, as we study Title IX, there is always a question that deals with: Should transgender students participate in athletics? Students really engage in that particular conversation because it’s current information. You see it on the news all the time, you see it in readings all the time.

In my classroom, students are, I wouldn’t say polarized, but they have different opinions. Which is great. But they’re able to have a discussion that’s respectful.

We set norms in my classroom, and we create a safe environment. Our norms are very basic: We will respect other people’s opinions. We will listen. Anything we say in the classroom stays in the classroom.

That’s what I really appreciate and really love about the class — it’s a microcosm of the United States of America. We are on the opposite sides on some of these hot topics, but should be on the same side, in terms of having respect for one another.

We’ve seen legislatures across the country putting restrictions on how race and racism can be taught. In Ohio, the legislature is considering some bills that haven’t passed, but would restrict talking about ‘divisive concepts.’ For you, as a history teacher, what has it been like to teach under that shadow?

My community, my students, and my school accept diversity within the curriculum. Even with some of the backlash, my students are more eager to learn, and my school district is more eager to put forth a more diverse curriculum. On a national and on a state level, you have individuals who may not agree with me, or with Oberlin City Schools, in teaching some of the subjects that are being taught.

Do your students bring up what’s happening at the state legislature in class? Have you had discussions about: Why are state legislatures considering putting laws in place that would change how history is taught?

Yes, they do. Especially in my race, gender and oppression class, we do readings and we watch TED Talks, and we watch news footage of discussions on these topics. Students just want to know more and more about it. It’s allowed my students to be more conscious about what’s happening and to voice their own opinion.

I know you helped create, along with other educators and students, the Black Student Union at your school a couple years ago. Can you say more about why you and others thought it was important that your school had this group?

After the untimely murder of George Floyd, two students said: Mr. Russell, we need to do something. They thought about creating a club. I belonged to the Black Student Union in college, we had some bylaws, and I shared that with my student group. And they took the initiative to run with it. We’ve met with the police chief, and with police officers, and resource officers, discussing that town-and-gown relationship. It has just made Oberlin High School a better place.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

2022-04-12T18:42:49+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing: ckbe.at/national

It happened in one class, then another.

An English teacher said they couldn’t talk about queer activists during a class discussion because they hadn’t sent home the required opt-out form.

A history teacher skipped over PowerPoint slides about the fight for gay rights during a lesson on the civil rights movement.

Another English teacher hinted that Oscar Wilde was, “you know,” instead of saying he was gay while teaching “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Queer symbolism throughout the text went unmentioned.

To 17-year-old Aneshka, who asked that their last name be withheld, these were all indications that a new law requiring teachers to notify parents about lessons on gender and sexuality had had an effect at their eastern Tennessee high school. The omissions and “hint, hint, nudge, nudge” approach frustrated Aneshka, who identifies as queer and uses they and she pronouns.

“It felt kind of like turning something that’s a fact of history, and life, and my life, into something secret or taboo,” Aneshka said. “It was very much like this odd sense of: So, am I not allowed to mention myself?”

Also read: Rising tide of censorship and scrutiny has schools scrambling to avoid backlash

While a Florida law that prohibits lessons in kindergarten through third grade about sexual orientation and gender identity has drawn national attention in recent weeks, several other states have imposed similar restrictions.

On Friday, Alabama’s governor signed a law like Florida’s that bans instruction about those same topics for students in kindergarten to fifth grade. Montana, Tennessee, and Arkansas all passed laws last year that require schools to give families advance notice of lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation and allow parents to opt their children out.

Ohio, Louisiana, and South Carolina are considering restrictions like Florida’s. And lawmakers in Oklahoma and Tennessee have introduced proposals that would go further, restricting teaching on LGBTQ issues in a history or English class, for example, though neither bill has advanced.

Already these curriculum laws are affecting the choices some educators are making in their classrooms, leaving them and their students unsure about how to talk about LGBTQ content. The result is that sometimes it gets avoided altogether.

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Coupled with other efforts, like those seeking to remove books from school libraries that include themes of sexuality and gender, it’s a climate that’s left many students and educators feeling a sense of whiplash.

“They honestly are so overwhelmed,” said Nashville teacher Cassie Norton of her students.

Norton co-sponsors her high school’s GSA club, where students gather to talk about gender and sexuality. Watching a slew of laws pass in quick succession — including a law that restricts teaching about race and racism and another law that restricts transgender students’ access to certain school bathrooms — left the students in the club feeling frustrated and isolated.

“By making it harder to have conversations in the general classroom environment, it’s making those issues worse,” Norton said.

Proponents of these measures have said it should be up to parents to decide when and how to teach their children about LGBTQ topics. And lawmakers who support these teaching restrictions have argued that elementary school students are too young to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity in class.

“We don’t need to be teaching young children about sex,” said Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, when she signed the state’s new law. “We need to focus on what matters — core instruction like reading and math.”

Many students, school staff, and LGBTQ rights advocates have vocally opposed these curriculum restrictions, saying they could lead to incomplete and inaccurate lessons, make some students afraid to talk about themselves or their families in class, and exacerbate mental health disparities that already exist for LGBTQ youth.

While Montana’s legislation was being debated, for example, several high school students and recent graduates said they worried the restrictions would make it harder to access factual information at school about topics like healthy relationships and consent. “There is already a gap in the curriculum around comprehensive sex ed and this bill makes that gap a gaping hole,” said Clara Bentler, a University of Montana student who graduated from high school in Billings, in testimony to Montana lawmakers.

These issues are not new — there have been decades-long arguments about what children should learn about gender and sexuality in school — but observers say this moment is notable because of the number of proposals and the speed at which they’re spreading. Federal education officials have said they’re watching for potential federal civil rights violations.

Some educators in states with these laws now find they’re being extra careful when LGBTQ issues come up at school. One contemporary issues teacher in Tennessee said she added a disclaimer to her syllabus to let students and parents know the class would touch on topics like gender and sexuality.

When Norton taught students about the civil rights movement in U.S. history class this year, she let them pick which parallel movement they wanted to research on their own, and made it an option to learn about LGBTQ protests during the Stonewall uprising — so it didn’t require a form. And when Norton taught about President Reagan and the AIDS epidemic, she sent students home with the entire text of the state history standard to show the lesson was required.

These laws have had other ripple effects.

At Aneshka’s high school, for example, GSA club members had plans to host an “ally week” to teach their classmates about how they could support their LGBTQ peers. They found a short PBS video that provided tips and compiled a list of resources. Then they asked their principal if they could share those tools during the school’s advisory period.

But the principal told the students it wouldn’t be possible because there wasn’t enough time to provide parents with the legally required 30 days’ notice. So, instead Aneshka and other GSA members held smaller, optional events after school and during lunch.

“It’s definitely a lot more impactful than I thought, but in a much quieter way,” Aneshka said of Tennessee’s law. She’d expected some “visible fuss and some bureaucratic mess,” with extra permission slips. But the reality has been “just like silence.”

State education officials in Montana, Arkansas, and Tennessee have left it to local school districts to carry out their state’s laws about lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. None issued guidance to schools, and none track how often parents are notified about these lessons or how often they opt out.

Both the Arkansas and Tennessee laws say teachers can mention the sexual orientation or gender identity of a historical or public figure without an opt-out form if it provides “necessary context” during a lesson. Teachers can also answer students’ questions on those matters if they’re tied to a class discussion.

In Florida, the new law requires that lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity for students above third grade must be “age appropriate” or “developmentally appropriate” and in line with state standards. But who decides that is up for debate, and the state has until June 2023 to provide guidance.

That’s left teachers trying to figure out the limits of these laws on their own, creating a climate in which some teachers worry that if they say the wrong thing, they could lose their job.

Anita Hatcher Powderly, who teaches sixth-grade English in Jackson County, Florida, and is part of a federal lawsuit challenging the Florida law, has already seen some evidence of that.

Shortly after Florida’s law passed, her schools’ sixth graders lined up to board school buses for a field trip. At first, there were going to be separate buses for boys and girls. But one transgender student, who wasn’t out to all their teachers and classmates, looked baffled about where to sit. Two of her colleagues “looked at me like: ‘What do we say?’” Hatcher Powderly said.

Before anyone could step in, it was announced there was only one bus, so it would be mixed-gender. But the scenario left Hatcher Powderly concerned.

“If we say the wrong thing now, is it going to be retroactive against us?” she said. “How do we comfort this child, how do we provide inclusivity, how do we provide equity?”

When elementary schoolers turn to Nashville counselor Alyssa McGuire on issues related to gender or sexuality, she still does her best to help. Now though, the fear it could cost her her job hangs over her like “a constant cloud.”

Recently, a few female third graders at McGuire’s school told their classmates they were interested in being in a relationship with another girl. The girls got teased by their classmates and wanted McGuire to help them understand what was happening. They had lots of questions.

“They were like: a lesbian’s not bad, right?’” McGuire recalled. “‘Am I allowed to say that? Can I be a lesbian?’”

McGuire talked to them about how people can label themselves in different ways. She would rather risk a parent complaining and give her students the words to describe how they feel, she said, than make the girls feel dismissed.

“There are times when I think about the law, and think about the policy, and I decide I don’t care what the law says, I’m just going to help my student because that’s the priority,” McGuire said. “But it’s just sad that that’s even a thing I have to think about.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Hiccups and hard lessons: What it takes to bring big new tutoring programs to America’s classrooms

2022-03-25T11:00:00+00:00

Teacher Kim Meaders has a singular focus when she steps into her Arkansas school just before 7 a.m.: keeping her school’s eighth and ninth graders from falling off track.

Meaders, a math teacher at Bryant Junior High in suburban Little Rock, is part of the Arkansas Tutoring Corps, which launched last year with federal COVID relief funding to help students plug pandemic learning gaps.

Since the fall, she’s been meeting with small groups of students at lunch or before school, helping them master two-step equations and memorize exponent rules.

“It’s definitely helping,” she said. Students who were afraid to ask questions in class are speaking up in tutoring. “That’s what was important to me, to make sure that the kids didn’t get farther behind,” Meaders said. When they do, she can prevent students from getting frustrated and giving up.

“Math is such a progression,” she said. “If we don’t address those issues quickly, it just compounds the problem.”

The Arkansas initiative is just one of at least a dozen new large-scale tutoring efforts started by state education departments and school districts across the country. They’re part of an unprecedented effort to help students recover academically after two years of disrupted schooling.

There are encouraging signs: Thousands of tutors like Meaders have gotten to work, and some say they’ve seen students make progress. But several initiatives are starting smaller or taking longer to reach students than officials originally hoped.

Chicago, for example, wanted 650 tutors in its corps this year, records show, but has 460. New Mexico hoped to place 250 “educator fellows” in schools this spring, but has 100 in schools so far. Arkansas wanted 250 tutors in place by winter, but has 219.

School officials are working hard to fill those slots. But the gaps are an indication of just how many students aren’t yet getting the help that officials think they need.

“The need was huge,” said Missy Walley, who’s overseeing Arkansas’ tutoring effort. The state has some 570 tutors in the pipeline, more than its goal, though 350 are still completing training and background checks. “We’re going to meet that.”

Smaller programs that rely on virtual tutors have gotten closer to their targets. Oklahoma, for example, wanted to bring on 250 virtual math tutors this winter and hired 210. State schools chief Joy Hofmeister said families reported on surveys that the tutoring had helped their eighth graders bring up failing grades and boost their confidence in math.

Other efforts still have a ways to go. In Houston, officials wanted to have 500 high school and college students tutoring in schools by now. They have 228 so far. That means the elementary schools they targeted for extra help have around four tutors per building, instead of the planned-for 10. (The district also has a separate pool of teacher tutors.)

Illinois education officials won’t say how many tutors they’ve hired so far, but the state pushed back the full launch of its initiative from this spring to next fall. Officials are looking for some 8,700 in-person tutors statewide — a much more ambitious goal than others have set.

“We’re certainly, as would be true in other states, experiencing challenges with staffing,” said Stephanie Bernoteit, a state official working on the initiative. “This type of project is fairly easy to describe. It is incredibly complex to implement.”

Dallas has turned to outside organizations to hire the 665 tutors who are helping students or are about to be assigned a school. Many are local, but some work virtually, Zooming in from as far as Montana. The district also has more than 40 additional tutors of its own on staff, though it is trying to get to at least 70.

“People are excited to have tutoring up and running — they know that students need it,” said Derek Little, the district’s deputy chief of teaching and learning.

Getting there, though, has required competing for tutors in a tight labor market.

Chicago, for example, was trying to recruit tutors at the same time as the school district was looking for substitute teachers and bus aides, positions with similar requirements and pay. It got to 460 tutors this month, and is looking to reach 600 by the fall.

Officials think they can get there with a refined recruiting strategy. They’ve learned to pursue candidates who are more likely to pan out: community members recommended directly by school principals and college students studying education.

Geography has posed another challenge. Tennessee’s tutoring initiative is ahead of schedule — they have more than 2,000 tutors working across 71 school districts, said Penny Schwinn, the state’s education commissioner — but rural school districts have had a harder time recruiting.

“Our very rural communities have struggled the most, especially if they’re doing after-school specific programs,” Schwinn said. Education officials are now meeting with rural districts to help them incorporate tutoring into the school day, a setup that can make it possible for more parents to serve as tutors.

In New Mexico, recruiting educator fellows has been easier than expected, said Amber Romero, who is overseeing the program. That’s in part because paraprofessionals and classroom assistants want these jobs, since the fellowship offers benefits and a stipend they can use toward a degree in education.

The interest has prompted some districts to delay their programs until the fall, when they will have backfilled those assistant roles. The fall start will also allow districts to hire high school seniors who are graduating this spring.

Scheduling remains a persistent challenge, too. Schools want tutors during the school day, several times a week — when they’re often shown to be most effective — but it can be hard to get tutors at that time.

William Solomon, who oversees the student tutor corps for Houston ISD, says it’s been difficult to get everyone’s schedules to line up as they try to match high schoolers and college students with younger peers.

“I definitely want to make sure that we’re starting earlier, and that we’re tapping into as many of those college students who want to test drive this career in education as possible,” Solomon said. “This is not something that’s going away, so the need for these near-peer tutors is going to continue.”

Another issue: It’s unclear whether the tutoring that is happening is truly helping students who’ve fallen the furthest behind. While all eight state and district initiatives that Chalkbeat spoke with for this story are keeping tabs on student progress, none had data to share yet.

Some initiatives have found that reaching students who most need help can be a challenge, especially if tutoring is optional and happens outside the school day.

In Oklahoma’s tutoring trial run, for example, just over a quarter of the 481 eighth-grade students who got extra help in math had been asked to attend tutoring based on their low test scores. The rest signed up on their own. As the state tries to expand to more grades, officials say they plan to reach out to targeted students earlier and more often.

Tutoring initiatives have faced logistical hiccups, too. In Chicago, the district recruited tutors before it finalized which companies would train them and provide them with tutoring materials. Officials thought they had a better chance of keeping tutors on staff if they paid them sooner. Plus, putting them into buildings quickly helped them build relationships.

But that left tutors like Darrell Hill, who started tutoring Chicago high schoolers in math this fall, to improvise. Tutors made up practice problems and tracked student progress informally.

All tutors eventually got trained, and Hill and other tutors now have lessons that correspond with what teachers are working on, along with a ready set of practice problems.

Hill and the three other tutors at his school have come up with their own routines, too. They all attend a morning math class together to make sure they understand that day’s lesson, grab copies of upcoming assignments, and then compare notes. Then they work through assignments and homework with students, who are seeing the benefit.

“We’re hearing initially ‘Don’t want to be here, this sucks, I want to go have lunch with my friends,” Hill said. But that turns into: “‘OK, now I get it. I didn’t get this before, now I do.’”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

As schools try to recover, COVID’s toll lingers: ‘We haven’t seen fine, ever’

2022-03-19T10:00:00+00:00

This story is being co-published with The New York Times Sunday Review.

As class ended on a recent Tuesday, Ana Barros, a middle school teacher, signaled for a seventh grader wearing Crocs to hang back. Minutes earlier, he’d stormed into the hallway, slamming the door in her face.

“Walk me through that moment you just had,” she said.

Ana Barros, a seventh-grade social studies teacher, says more students are asking to see the counselor at her Tulsa school this year.

Barros, who teaches social studies at an Oklahoma charter school, listened with patience. The student had struggled to manage his emotions before the pandemic. A year spent at home when classes were fully remote without the neutral ground that school provided had intensified his anger.

“When you’re mad, when you’re feeling that rage,” she said, “you can’t slam the door.”

“Sorry,” the student replied softly, trying to keep his feelings in check.

“It’s OK,” Barros said. “But we’ve gotta find a way to channel those moments when you’ve got rage. We’re on the same team. I’m not against you. I want to help you.”

In some ways, this is typical middle school teaching. But the pandemic has upped the volume and intensity of students’ needs and raised the stakes for schools trying to meet them.

The cascade of new challenges started with the onset of the coronavirus in 2020, which closed school buildings and plunged teachers and families into the unknowns of remote learning. The year that followed was a patchwork of remote and in-person instruction, with school districts around the country varying wildly in their policies.

Many hoped this would be the comeback school year, when schools would focus on recovery. The last schools that had been operating remotely fully reopened. COVID relief dollars poured into districts. The availability of vaccines for teens, and then children over 5, created hope.

But just as the pandemic’s emotional and academic toll on students grew clearer last fall, staff shortages hobbled schools. When the virus seemed like it was under control, the omicron wave of cases brought half-empty classrooms or temporary returns to virtual learning. It’s been a year of survival and triage for teachers, school leaders, students, and their families.

Now a shift is underway. Mask mandates have largely lifted, and more Americans say they are ready to leave the pandemic in the rearview mirror. But teachers like Barros are still grappling daily with issues that COVID has left in its wake, most of which defy easy solutions.

“I really feel scared to say that we’ve turned a corner,” she said. “The things that we were struggling with, even outside of COVID, are just still there.”

Barros found herself scrolling through job listings earlier this winter, but like most teachers, she’s sticking it out. “I’m choosing to stay because I love this,” she said.

In Barros’ classroom at the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences, many students require intensive support. One boy didn’t attend a single virtual class as a sixth grader or return when the school building reopened last spring. It’s her job to keep him tethered to school.

When another student started clutching a stuffed toy shaped like an avocado, Barros didn’t press her for a reason. And when one of Barros’ top students started having panic attacks in class, she helped come up with a plan to calm her heavy breathing. Her school has noticed an uptick in thoughts of self-harm, negative self-talk, and meltdowns. More students are asking to see the counselor.

Two years into the upheaval, teachers are depleted. On top of the needs in their classrooms, teachers and their unions have faced scrutiny over school shutdowns, vaccine and mask mandates, and COVID safety protocols, leading to labor strife in Chicago and elsewhere.

Some teachers have begun having doubts about their ability to keep going. As three colleagues departed midyear for higher-paying jobs outside the classroom, Barros, who has taught for four years in Tulsa, found herself scrolling job listings earlier this winter. Like most, she’s sticking it out. “For a while, I was in that victim mentality of ‘woe is me,’ but I do have choices,” she said. “And I’m choosing to stay because I love this.”

But America’s schools remain fragile. As teachers catch their breath after the latest wave of COVID cases, many are teetering between cautious optimism and lingering exhaustion.

Across the country, teachers like Neelah Ali are trying to help students who are struggling emotionally and keep them on track academically after two years of stop-and-start learning.

Ali teaches freshman biology at Denver’s South High School, where she is also a teacher coach, an assistant track coach, and a sponsor of the dance team, Jewish Club, and Black Student Alliance. She’s the kind of teacher who knows nearly everyone and will hop up on a table to help students understand a lesson.

Ali much prefers in-person teaching to what she called “the abyss” of virtual learning. Students had the option to return to classrooms part-time last spring and have been learning in-person all of this school year, though COVID cases meant attendance was spotty until recently. There are signs of genuine joy in school: students giggling together in class, cranking pump-up music in the weight room, and eating pizza off trays in the hallways.

But Ali says her students have less academic stamina than she is used to. Before the pandemic, all of her freshmen would most likely have finished their lab, which involved flipping pennies to determine the odds that two parents’ offspring would have dark hair or freckles, in a 50-minute class period. This year, only one pair of students did. More students are asking for breaks during class, too.

“I’m having more conversations with kids about not liking school,” Ali said.

Neelah Ali, a biology teacher at South High School in Denver, has noticed that her students have less academic stamina than they typically did pre-pandemic.

Students also seem more attached to the digital world. Despite posted signs prohibiting cellphone use, nearly all of Ali’s students on a recent day had their phones out at some point. A few used them in ways that were arguably academic, walking up to the white board and snapping a photo of the lesson on chromosomes and meiosis to copy it onto paper. For others, the phones were a distraction.

Ali knows that taking a student’s phone is likely to upset them deeply. That wasn’t as true before the pandemic, she said.

“Now it’s like, if I take the phone, it threatens their identity,” she said. “If I take it, that’s going to damage our relationship so much that I don’t even broach the topic.”

Despite the difficulties, Ali said she was getting through the curriculum, partly because the pandemic meant fewer guest speakers and field trips. But student absences because of COVID or COVID exposure have been another complication. In each of her classes, several students were on their laptops doing makeup work instead of the penny lab.

The absences, a national challenge this year especially during the omicron wave, pose a daily dilemma. When should teachers reteach a lesson that some students missed and when should they move on? The answers matter, as ninth-grade success is seen as a key predictor of whether a student will graduate from high school in four years. Last year, graduation rates dipped nationwide and more ninth graders fell behind on credits in some states.

“A lot of teachers are struggling with: Do we make it up or do we not make it up?” Ali said.

The little boy arrived in Kendra Barclay’s kindergarten classroom on a chilly Detroit morning wearing a white mask so big it was hanging off his face.

“You need a kid’s mask!” she told him, scurrying off to find one.

Mask adjustment is still part of the job for Barclay, who spent much of that morning transitioning from lessons on letter sounds to gentle, and at times stern, reminders about classroom COVID safety.

“Ch says chuh, chuh, chuh,” Barclay said as she surveyed the students sitting on the rug in front of her. “Kamryn, you’ve got to cover your nose.”

Though schools in most of the country have lifted their mask mandates, Detroit district leaders are still weighing a potential change. For now, Barclay continues navigating the physical logistics as well as the emotional toll of teaching in a community that lost thousands to COVID.

“How do you keep 5-year-olds socially distanced?” she said. “They love being near each other. A lot of them need that contact. They need to feel nurtured.”

At Detroit’s Spain Elementary-Middle School, kindergarten teacher Kendra Barclay navigates the physical logistics of social distancing with young children that long for close contact with their classmates.

Barclay finds a way to do both, and her classroom at Spain Elementary-Middle School in the city’s Midtown neighborhood includes plenty of dancing and singing. When she needed her students to see how their tongues should sit between their teeth as they make the “th” sound, she moved to the far side of the room and pulled her two masks down for a few seconds.

Back in September, the stress of wanting to serve the students who needed her while avoiding getting sick herself got the best of Barclay, a South Carolina native who has taught in Detroit since 1999. On the school’s first in-person day, the principal, Frederick Cannon, popped his head in her classroom door before the kids arrived and asked how she was doing. Barclay burst into tears. “It was just the fear,” she says.

Barclay is optimistic about the progress of her kindergartners, though she worries if enough of them will be prepared for first grade.

Months later, as she was beginning to feel more comfortable, a new wave of cases disrupted everyone’s lives again. Schools in the district went remote for weeks as the omicron variant spread and again for winter storms, briefly severing the connection between Barclay and some of her students. A couple of children signed in daily, but never turned their cameras on or responded when she called on them.

Barclay remains optimistic about her students’ progress and was grateful recently to be among a group of teachers who received recognition from the district for their work during the pandemic. She knows her students aren’t all where they should be academically, though. She has found herself reteaching lessons from the fall, like how to write words on the correct lines of their handwriting practice paper.

“I’m still committed to coming in every day, trying to push and pull the greatness in and out of them,” she said. “I just still worry. How many of them are going to be prepared for first grade?”

“I have to realize this is just what it is in the world right now, and I am doing all I can.”

After a winter of emotions that rose and fell with COVID case rates, the nation’s teachers and families are looking to what comes next. Whether their fatigue will stretch on through the spring and even fall. Whether their schools can turn a fragile grip on stability into a firm grasp.

This pandemic may become less acute, but its effects on schools will linger: the children coping with the death of their caregivers, the fissures that remain over how to keep kids healthy and safe, the kindergartners struggling with their ABCs, the seventh graders tamping down anxiety, the high schoolers fretting over their diplomas.

Schools are now spending big on mental health programs, tutoring, and other academic recovery efforts — work that is likely to stretch past the three years they have to use their federal relief funds. “Our hardest and most important work lies ahead,” the U.S. education secretary, Miguel Cardona, said recently.

For Ali in Denver, that work looks like a full school day followed by a three-hour virtual training on a new science curriculum that’s more inclusive and culturally relevant. The changes are important to her, but “burnout feels like it’s a lot closer than it used to be,” she said.

It’s the same for a lot of teachers she talks to, she said. The rising stress “feels like it’s more at our chest than at our feet.”

For Barclay in Detroit, the work means connecting with her students — whether by listening intently to a retelling of the plot of a “Transformers” movie or offering hugs even when they go against social distancing guidelines.

“I figure, you wouldn’t ask for a hug or a high five if you really didn’t need it,” she said.

Barclay helps one of her kindergartners with letter writing. She’s had to reteach some handwriting lessons from the fall as she works to keep her students on track.

And for Barros in Tulsa, the work looks like this: grading assignments on Sundays, spending her planning periods in meetings with families whose children are struggling, and mentoring a new teacher partly to supplement her comparatively low Oklahoma teacher’s salary.

She hopes she’s pushed past the worst of her exhaustion — when she was out sick for seven school days with COVID in January, wracked with guilt, waking up each morning to record a video lesson so her students wouldn’t fall behind.

Now the end of the school year feels within reach. Come fall, she won’t be as in the dark about where her students are, academically and emotionally, as she was this year.

Other challenges aren’t going away. Barros goes without adequate staffing support even in a normal year, helping translate for the school’s Spanish-speaking families as one of the few bilingual staff members. Her school also serves a disproportionately high share of students with disabilities. Without other teachers or aides in the room to help, it’s Barros who slips a pillow under the foot of a student with autism to soften the sound of his tapping foot, and Barros who pulls aside a student with dyslexia to read tricky passages aloud.

After months back together in the school building, she’s seen her students make real progress — reading full chapter books, building friendships with classmates. But they’re still dealing with the ramifications of the COVID years. It will take a wider network of support to truly give her students what they need, Barros says. To her, that includes greater investment in Tulsa’s under-resourced neighborhoods, stronger bonds between schools and families, and more counselors and therapists.

“We haven’t seen fine, ever,” she said. Pre-pandemic, many of the students with disabilities and students of color at her school were “already so underserved.”

“I feel like I’m a piece of the puzzle, and I see myself as a piece of the puzzle,” Barros said. “And sometimes it’s like, damn, some of those pieces are taking a long time to get here.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org. Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. Contact her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org. Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering Denver Public Schools. Contact her at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Iowa scrapped teacher training on equity. Students of color felt the sting of that decision.

2022-03-11T13:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with The Washington Post.

Volta Adovor has a lot she wants Iowa’s teachers to know.

To start: Some kinds of hands-on learning can feel inappropriate, not illuminating. A lesson about the tight quarters Africans were packed into during the global slave trade doesn’t require students to lie down side by side on the floor, as Adovor was asked to do in 10th grade.

Being singled out can be hard, too. “If we’re watching a video of a Black man getting hung, which is something that did happen when I was in eighth grade, the teacher then should not ask me: ‘Oh, do you feel comfortable?’” Adovor said. Checking in with a student after class, or sending an email in advance, might work better.

Those are a few of the ideas Adovor and two other high school students included in a presentation they crafted last spring. Called “What We Need Our Teachers to Know About Race,” it was to be part of a conference put on by Iowa’s state education department in April 2021 focused on equity in education. More than 650 educators had registered to attend.

But a few weeks before it was scheduled to take place, the conference was postponed. A bill that would limit how teachers can talk about racism was making its way through the state legislature, and state education officials said they were “mindful” that the bill could affect the conference.

“I was pretty mad,” said Adovor, who’s now 18 and a freshman at the University of Iowa. “It just felt like our voices were being silenced.”

The bill became law in June. It bans state agencies and schools from teaching “divisive concepts” at mandatory training sessions, including the idea that the U.S. or the state of Iowa is systemically racist or sexist, though it doesn’t apply to optional events like the state conference.

Still, the department hasn’t rescheduled the event, and officials have removed more than a dozen related videos posted in the run-up to the conference. One was a workshop about how schools could better listen to student voices. (The conference “is one option that we continue to consider,” department spokesperson Heather Doe said in an email.)

The deferred conference stands as just one illustration of the nation’s about-face on centering race and equity in teachers’ work over the last year. For the students, though, the fallout has been both local and personal. After state officials asked them to share their time and experiences as students of color, the apparently open-ended postponement has left some feeling doubly dismissed.

Iowa is one of 14 states that have passed laws restricting the teaching of racism and sexism in the classroom.

“We wanted to give solutions,” Adovor said. “It was just us talking about things that we cared about.”

Iowa education officials announced plans to host trainings centered on social justice and education equity in July 2020, about two months after the murder of George Floyd.

At the time, school districts and education organizations across the country were promising to better serve their students and families of color and acknowledging how they’d fallen short. A Virginia school district apologized for the role it had played in racially segregating its students. A Chicago charter school network disavowed a disciplinary practice it described as “white supremacist and anti-black.” Advocates successfully lobbied cities like Minneapolis, Oakland, Denver, and Seattle to reduce the presence of police officers in their schools, pointing to the disproportionate share of Black students who are arrested at school.

It was in that climate that Iowa’s education department started its many months of work on an event where educators, school leaders, and state education officials could “engage on issues that impact educational opportunities for historically disadvantaged/marginalized students,” as a program draft put it.

As more schools have undertaken equity and inclusion training for staff, some educators and parents have complained about what they see as heavy-handed and divisive tactics, like putting teachers into groups based on their race or asking white people to acknowledge their inherent privilege.

This conference bore little resemblance to that. Several sessions appeared to offer introductory information, such as “Equity Challenges and Solutions for Iowa’s English Learners” and “What is new since 1492 - An Overview of the American Indian Experience.” Others offered practical how-tos for teachers and school leaders looking to make their curriculum more inclusive or adjust school policies.

Drake University freshman Orlando Fuentes was going to share survey results about Latinx students who were called racial slurs, or were on the receiving end of racist jokes.

Notably, students were set to play a prominent role. In his conference presentation, Orlando Fuentes, now 19, was going to share the results of a survey he’d participated in that found dozens of Latinx students in Iowa reported they’d been called racial slurs or had racist jokes made about them at school.

Mariah Martinez, now 20, wanted to push educators in her home state to better incorporate the contributions of Black Americans, after her own history lessons as an Iowa student focused on “slavery, and Jim Crow, and hangings.”

“For the first time in five years, I felt like we were really moving forward and ‘doing’ equity work and not just ‘saying’ we are doing it,” wrote April Pforts, an Iowa education department official, in a letter that Chalkbeat obtained through an open records request.

Western Illinois University junior Mariah Martinez hoped to advocate for better education on the contributions of Black Americans.

Iowa would then become a part of another national trend. Over the last year, Iowa and 13 other states have passed laws or other policies that restrict how teachers can talk about racism and sexism at school, according to Education Week. Dozens more states have considered similar proposals.

Iowa House lawmakers passed an initial version of their legislation in March 2021, about a month before the scheduled equity conference.

The legislation’s main backer, Iowa House Rep. Steven Holt, said the proposal would ensure that schools don’t unfairly portray whole groups of people as inherently racist or sexist, and that concepts like white privilege are taught as part of more in-depth lessons. He and his wife, an Iowa public school teacher who was temporarily put on leave in 2019 for using an anti-Black racial slur in class, valued “academic freedom,” he said.

“This does not in any way ban diversity training or racial sensitivity training,” he said in a speech from the Iowa House floor last March. The bill, he added: “specifically allows training that promotes racial, cultural, ethnic, and intellectual diversity and inclusiveness.”

He reiterated that in a statement to Chalkbeat about the conference.

“Either those involved in the cancellation had not taken the time to understand the provisions of the bill,” Holt wrote in an email, “or in fact they intended to teach the divisive concepts identified in the bill that scapegoat and stereotype entire classes of people, in which case canceling the conference was appropriate.”

Here, as elsewhere, though, the effects would stretch beyond the text of the legislation.

Within a week, state education officials were scrambling to call off the equity conference and explain to confused educators why all the related materials had disappeared, emails obtained by Chalkbeat show.

“I think we need some sort of a blanket message to respond,” Jeanette Thomas, one of the lead conference organizers, wrote to several high-ranking education department officials. “This is my third message in about 15 minutes. Help!!” When Thomas received little guidance, she reiterated her concern: “Rather than delete the emails, I was hoping we could have one response to use.”

Some education department officials were clearly upset. The day the department pulled the plug, one of the lead organizers, Isbelia Arzola, summed up her feelings in a chat with a coworker. “It is very sad and disappointing,” she wrote. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”

After her colleague closed the conference registration, Arzola replied: “Thanks, I am crying again…”

In a phone call, panelists were told the conference was being postponed until the fall. “We were mindful of the presenters’ time in making this decision because we did not want to move forward with sharing content without knowing whether or not it would be compliant with the final bill language,” Doe, the education department spokesperson, told Chalkbeat in an email.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has risen to prominence within the Republican party, signed the bill in June, saying she was “proud to have worked with the legislature to promote learning, not discriminatory indoctrination.”

In the months that followed, Iowa teachers would report curtailing classroom discussions about topics like genocide, sexism, and the “one-drop” rule in response to the new law. The education department co-hosted a conference about emotional and behavioral health in November. There was still no word on the equity conference.

“No one contacted me at all,” Adovor said. “That’s how I knew it wasn’t going to happen.”

The conference is still officially postponed, according to the Iowa Department of Education, but has not yet been rescheduled. That left participating students like (from top left) Martinez, Adovor, and Fuentes disheartened.

The experience left students feeling frustrated or disheartened. They’d accepted invitations to headline sessions because they knew their experiences could offer lessons for Iowa educators.

Martinez, for example, was going to draw on her experience as a young Black and Mexican woman who attended a predominantly white Iowa school. She wanted to explain what it felt like to learn only a limited slice of Black history and to have classmates who expected her to speak on behalf of all Black Americans.

“I had very supportive teachers,” she said. Still, “I never really received any positive stories about Black history until I went and sought after it myself,” Martinez said.

Fuentes had wanted to make his pitch for why schools should prioritize hiring a more diverse teaching staff and offering more culturally responsive teacher training.

As a middle schooler, he remembers being challenged and encouraged by a Latina teacher who led his Spanish class for students who’d already been exposed to the language at home. But when a white teacher who wasn’t a native speaker took over the following year, “the teaching was night and day,” Fuentes recalled.

When he asked for more difficult assignments, Fuentes was told he was being ungrateful and disrespectful. “To be received that way when I asked to be pushed educationally, it infuriated me,” Fuentes said. He stopped taking Spanish classes after that, fearful of repeating that experience.

“That’s why I was so strong about having representation in our schools,” he said. “It’s so important, so things like that don’t happen to our students.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Food and staff shortages are still vexing school lunch programs. Costs may keep rising, too.

2022-03-10T21:40:44+00:00

School meal programs have faced a host of challenges this year. Staples like chicken, pizza, and muffins are hard to come by. Food deliveries often arrive late, or not at all. There’s still a shortage of cooks and drivers. Inflation is pushing costs up.

Now, schools may be faced with another test: the end of federal waivers that have kept meal costs down and made it easier to serve students food during the pandemic. Their omission from the latest federal budget deal has schools bracing for costs to increase next year and scrambling to plan their summer meal programs.

“School nutrition directors are really worried about what happens next, summer food sponsors are really worried about how they’re going to operate their programs,” said Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school programs for the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center. “We think it’s going to be a crisis.”

Early in the pandemic, federal officials issued several waivers that allowed schools to serve meals in ways they typically wouldn’t be able to under federal rules. Those allowances, extended through this school year, permitted schools to continue to do things like hand out grab-and-go meals when students had to quarantine or temporarily return to virtual learning, and serve meals in classrooms to allow for more social distancing.

Those provisions may be less necessary now, as cases fall and schools return to more normal operations. But the waivers also meant schools got back more money per meal than they typically would during the school year. That helped offset rising food costs and higher pay for cafeteria workers and delivery drivers that many schools offered to remain competitive in a tight labor market — pressures many schools are still facing.

When the waivers expire, schools will take in $1.65 less per meal on average, a 36% drop, according to a federal estimate.

Almost 90% of school meal programs that responded to a fall survey said they relied on the waiver that raises reimbursement rates this school year, according to an agriculture department report released earlier this month. Programs using the waiver were less likely to be running their school meal program at a financial loss.

The waivers also permitted any student to eat meals at no cost to them, lifting paperwork requirements for schools and helping families whose income shifted suddenly during the pandemic.

Advocates like FitzSimons say those provisions have “had a tremendous impact on both making sure that kids are in the classroom, nourished, and ready to learn.”

The waivers are set to expire at the end of June, and the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats had pushed to extend those provisions in the latest federal budget deal. But the waiver extensions weren’t in the package the House passed on Wednesday. The Senate is expected to approve that legislation as early as this weekend.

Leading Republican lawmakers have objected to continuing the school meal waivers in part because of the added costs, the Washington Post has reported. That higher reimbursement rate will likely cost the federal government some $8 billion this school year, a January agriculture department estimate found. The lawmakers saw the waivers as a temporary fix that was no longer needed.

Many schools expect to face higher school meal program costs, food supply issues, and labor shortages through the summer and into next school year, though, the recent federal report found.

When the waivers expire, schools will also again face financial penalties if they can’t meet the usual national nutrition standards, which can happen when schools have to substitute food items if an order gets canceled or arrives without certain ingredients. Nearly nine in 10 school food programs that responded to the federal survey this fall reported that they’d made such substitutions.

“Schools want to be investing more in students for addressing learning loss, and all sorts of other needs,” said Carolyn Vega, the associate policy director at Share Our Strength, a nonprofit that works to address child hunger. “So it would be really terrible for them to also have to try to use that money for school meals when there was another way that we could help offset those higher costs.”

Advocates say there could be more fallout from the expiration of the waivers, too. If another COVID wave or variant arises later this year, schools wouldn’t have the option to offer grab-and-go meals or make meal deliveries to students at home if they have to quarantine or learn virtually.

And advocates worry the end of the waivers will make it harder to serve food to children over the summer, which is usually a difficult time to reach families.

While summer meal programs typically have to be set up in areas where many students from low-income families live, the pandemic-era waivers permitted summer meal programs to run in more places, such as shopping plazas or community centers that are more centrally located but have lower poverty levels in the surrounding area.

Uncertainty about the extension of the waivers, FitzSimons said, has complicated efforts to hire summer staff, choose locations, and decide how many meals to serve.

Schools had hoped to gear up for more typical meal operations this summer and fall, Vega said, but they’ve faced a lot of obstacles.

“This school year ended up being a lot more challenging than anyone ever envisioned, between the supply chain issues and ongoing pandemic-related issues with the delta wave and then omicron,” she said. “We did not have the time and space to think through all of those things and begin that transition process.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

As pandemic complicates recruitment, Teach For America’s incoming class expected to hit a 15-year low

2022-03-08T12:00:00+00:00

Facing a sharp drop in applications, Teach For America is expecting its smallest crop of first-year teachers in at least 15 years, new data from the organization shows.

The organization expects to place just under 2,000 teachers in schools across the country this coming fall. That’s just two-thirds of the number of first-year teachers TFA placed in schools in fall 2019, and just one-third of the number it sent into the field at its height in 2013.

The latest drops are a continuation of a years-long trend. Still, it’s a striking decline for an organization that’s played a prominent role in American debates about how to improve education and how to staff schools that often struggle to attract and retain teachers.

“It’s more than you would expect,” said Pam Grossman, the dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, who has studied teacher preparation. “In a strong economy you would expect interest to decline, but that’s a big drop.”

Alongside declines in enrollment at traditional teacher prep programs and other nontraditional programs, it’s also more evidence that interest in becoming an educator in the U.S. has fallen.

Enrollment in all kinds of teacher preparation programs stood at a little more than half a million in the fall of 2018, the latest federal data show, down 18% from eight years earlier. More recent data from colleges that produce large numbers of teachers is mixed: Some traditional programs have seen enrollment increases more recently, while others have seen small dips.

“You have to put TFA in the broader picture of teacher ed programs,” said Grossman, whose university partners with TFA to provide their teachers with additional training. “I don’t think they’re alone in seeing drops. This is, in general, a trend that I’m very concerned about.”

COVID has added to the challenge of convincing prospective educators to take the plunge. TFA officials acknowledged that the pandemic has made recruitment tougher.

“People are feeling like with what they’re seeing in teaching, they’re not sure they can do it,” Tracy St. Dic, TFA’s senior vice president of recruitment, said of the organization’s teacher prospects. “They care about social impact, they care about social issues,” she said, “but they also really want to have the security, and the safety, and the stability.”

Coupled with changing working conditions is a competitive job market.

“There are a lot of jobs,” Grossman said. “Teaching has to compete with so many other professions that also require a bachelor’s degree or more, but pay much better than teaching.”

Other teacher residency and alternative teacher prep programs are experiencing similar challenges. TNTP, for example, which runs a teacher fellowship program in Baltimore, New Orleans, Indianapolis, and elsewhere, has received fewer applications than it typically would by this time of year. Similarly, applications to the Chicago Teacher Residency program are slightly down from last year, a spokesperson wrote in an email. (Both programs will continue to recruit throughout the spring.)

“We’re seeing more people withdraw because they are no longer interested in being a teacher,” Jacob Waters, a spokesperson for TNTP, wrote in an email. The organization is hearing “greater concerns about the teaching profession, burnout, pay.”

The Arkansas Teacher Corps, which places teachers in rural Arkansas schools with acute staffing needs, received only 55 applications this year, about a third of the number they received four years ago. Meanwhile, schools are asking the organization for even more teachers.

Typically, the organization can fulfill only about 15% of school staffing requests. “It’s just a bigger discrepancy now,” said John Hall, who oversees recruitment for the program.

The pandemic is still disrupting the mechanics of new teacher recruitment, too. TFA recruited teachers remotely last year, and this year it’s still a mix of virtual and in-person recruitment, which can make it harder to build relationships with student groups and professors who refer candidates, St. Dic said. Programs that TFA has historically drawn teachers from, like a partner AmeriCorps reading tutoring program, have also had a harder time recruiting young workers during the pandemic, narrowing the pipeline.

TFA also has its specific perception issues to overcome, including the longstanding critique that the organization often puts little-trained teachers in high-need classrooms who then exit education after a couple years. The organization has made changes to address that over the years, including recruiting a more diverse group of teachers and placing more teachers in rural schools.

New recruits say that’s been a topic of discussion. When 21-year-old Sarai Hertz-Velázquez attended a recent orientation, she was struck that a TFA leader spoke candidly about how the organization could improve. That was important to Hertz-Velázquez, who has thought critically about race and power dynamics in her work as a tutor and after-school program staffer.

“I don’t think anyone that I’ve spoken to has a savior mindset or thinks that they’re going to change the lives of every student they work with,” she said. “Part of that is because TFA makes it known that that’s not what people should come in expecting to do.”

Still, some aspiring educators remain wary of TFA’s history and its early reputation for recruiting many young white, Ivy League-educated graduates.

“I don’t think the current leadership of the current organization would ever say that they would want to see themselves as white saviors,” said Joshua Starr, who heads PDK International, a professional organization for educators. “I’m sure they actively work against that. It still may have that perception.”

And as many school systems look to diversify their teaching ranks and attract candidates who are graduates of their own schools, districts may be more inclined to spend money on a grow-your-own program rather than on a contract with TFA, Starr said.

“TFA doesn’t loom as large as it used to,” Starr said.

For its part, TFA has made a number of recruiting changes in recent years. The organization recently tripled the number of historically Black colleges with a TFA recruiter, and it hired a Native staffer this year to help recruit aspiring Native teachers, St. Dic said.

TFA is trying other strategies, including new financial incentives. This year, the organization is offering every first-year teacher at least $5,000 to help pay for teacher certification and moving costs. Incoming teachers who qualified for Pell Grants or who have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status will receive $10,000.

TFA has also recruited several hundred new teachers from the paid virtual tutoring program it launched during the pandemic. “What we believe is, when you meet students and you see what they’re capable of, and you see the impact you can have, it’s going to be hard to turn away from that,” St. Dic said.

Twenty-two-year-old Grant Jamison, for example, is joining TFA in the Cleveland area after working as a virtual tutor. He had already planned to join the corps, but after he worked with second-graders on their reading skills, he decided to seek an elementary school position. The experience of helping students learn to distinguish between the ‘B’ and ‘D’ sounds that had tripped them up stuck with him.

“It really flipped my idea of what it would actually be like teaching elementary school kids,” he said. Tutoring “definitely gave me a taste of teaching.”

And for some, meeting the needs the pandemic created or exacerbated in schools is part of the draw.

Patricia Garcia, 37, will be teaching through TFA in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley this fall after making a career change. She was a lab assistant at a technical college before the pandemic, but decided to take the leap into teaching after she enjoyed working with migrant high school students who’d fallen behind in their studies.

She knows she’ll be setting an example for students who grew up in the same community as her — “They’ll see me in the classroom teaching, and they’ll think ‘Hey, I could become a teacher, too,’” she said — and she’ll be stepping into the classroom when educators are in high demand.

“You hear stories in the news about the shortages and how people are resigning,” she said. “Right now, students need somebody to be there.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

More high schoolers are off track to graduate. Here’s how schools can help.

2022-02-08T18:30:59+00:00

More ninth graders fell off track to graduate last year as failing grades and absences stacked up, new data from a handful of states show.

In Illinois, the share of freshmen on track to graduate within four years dropped by 7 points in the spring of 2021, a reflection of students failing multiple semesters of core classes like math and English. In Oregon, freshmen on-track rates fell 12 points last year, too.

In Nevada, the percentage of ninth graders behind on course credits rose by 14 points. And North Carolina schools retained about one in six ninth graders in 2021, a rate that was twice as high as the year before.

The data provide more evidence of the difficulties high schoolers have faced while learning during a pandemic. After the first full school year disrupted by COVID, many states saw lower graduation rates for the class of 2021. And since ninth grade success is considered a key predictor of whether a student will graduate on time, some educators are now particularly worried about younger teens whose entire high school trajectories have been shaped by COVID.

“They can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Franciene Sabens, a counselor who’s noticed the ninth and 10th graders at her southern Illinois high school are struggling more than older students this year. “They’re trying to find their groove, and they haven’t had real, normal school in two years.”

Many ninth graders had an especially rocky transition to high school last school year without the support of in-person classes and after-school activities. Some fell behind in their virtual classes or while they were in quarantine, and are now struggling to make up missed credits. Others got overwhelmed as they tried to balance school with caring for younger siblings or other responsibilities.

Now, schools are trying to help younger high schoolers get back on track, from hiring staff specifically to work with struggling students to rethinking how students can make up failed classes. Some schools are getting more hands-on with advising or making small tweaks to get students the help they need during the school day.

Like many high schools, Oregon’s South Salem High School typically offered students who’d failed a class the chance to retake it in person or to make it up online with a credit recovery program.

But after many students saw their grades plummet during remote learning, the school looked for another option. This fall, the school offered make-up English, history, math, and science classes for 10th graders that were more tailored to students’ individual needs. The students worked with a teacher to figure out exactly which standards they’d failed, and came up with a plan to make up only those missing assignments.

“It has been incredibly successful,” said counselor Ben Handrich. “A lot of our ninth graders were not engaging with distance learning, and they just started flying through” these shorter make-up plans.

In Chicago, where researchers helped pioneer the use of freshmen on-track indicators, coaches at the Network for College Success, which works with 18 high schools in the city, have been helping teachers make small changes to support ninth graders.

A key question they’ve been focusing on is: “As a teacher, what’s in my locus of control to change?” said Sarah Howard, who oversees the group’s coaching work.

That could look like surveying students about what worked, and what didn’t, after a lesson. It could also mean anticipating times in the school calendar where student motivation slumps — like when the weather is cold or there’s a long stretch without a holiday — and keeping that in mind when assigning work and setting deadlines.

“I can think about, what’s the rhythm in my classroom that gives kids more space, more room, more flexibility,” Howard said.

At Elverado High School in Illinois, Sabens has found that many of the younger high schoolers who’ve failed classes struggled to break their homework assignments up into manageable chunks. Recently, Sabens sat down with the school’s science teacher and came up with a plan to help those students work on their organizational skills.

Sabens took home the ninth grade science book and typed up the text’s vocabulary words and unit questions so students knew exactly what their teacher wanted them to answer. The teacher also tried setting more mini-deadlines for students and offered more class time to finish homework.

But Sabens still worries about a group of freshmen who failed science earlier this year, which she likens to “building a house with a cracked foundation.” Often, she says, a student might think: “What’s the big deal? I’ll just make it up.” But that can lead high schoolers “to the point where the outs run out.”

“I want to see them walk across the stage in four years with their friends,” Sabens said. “But their habits are a little bit difficult to break.”

Matt Barnum contributed reporting.

Cardona to educators: ‘I know you’re stretched’

2022-01-27T17:27:44+00:00

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona challenged schools to keep their focus on getting struggling students back on track Thursday, while acknowledging that the disruption caused by the latest wave of COVID cases has exhausted the country’s educators.

“I know you’re tired, I know you’re stretched,” Cardona said in a speech delivered Thursday from the Department of Education, where he laid out his priorities for the months and years ahead. “I see you, and I understand what you’re going through. It will get better.”

Cardona’s words come as the omicron variant has left many schools struggling to fill staffing gaps. Without enough substitute teachers, educators have had to fill in for colleagues, combine classes, and try other stopgap solutions. Those challenges have prompted some schools to return to virtual learning for days or weeks and depleted educators’ and families’ reserves.

And while the education secretary noted the progress the nation had made in returning nearly all schools to full-time in-person learning, he said reopening and keeping schools open was critical but also insufficient for helping students recover.

“We must make up for lost time,” Cardona said. “Our hardest and most important work lies ahead. It’ll be what we’re judged against. As educators and leaders, we’re either closing educational opportunity gaps, or making them worse with the decisions we’re going to make in the next coming months and years.”

Cardona called on schools to use some of their billions in COVID relief funds to invest in academic recovery, calling specific attention to intensive tutoring, after-school programs, and summer school.

He asked school district leaders to try to give every struggling student at least 90 minutes a week of targeted support from a trained tutor — a strategy known as “high-dosage” tutoring that has proven successful in some cities that have tried it.

“We cannot expect classroom teachers to do it all,” Cardona said.

Many states and districts are now trying to ramp up massive tutoring programs, but have run into difficulties finding and hiring enough tutors. Some have boosted pay for tutors or expanded their programs more slowly because of the challenging labor market.

And with schools reporting an uptick in students struggling with behavior and mental health this year, Cardona called on districts to use their pandemic aid now to hire more mental health staff, such as counselors, psychologists, and social workers, and to pay community health partners for help.

Cardona also said schools should be investing in hiring and retaining paraprofessionals — an important role for supporting students with disabilities that has been especially difficult to staff this year due to the low pay.

The education secretary cautioned that a lack of mental health or other support shouldn’t lead to suspensions and expulsions for students who are suffering from trauma.

Cardona also used the speech to reiterate some of President Biden’s longer-term goals for funding education, including directing more money to schools that serve more students from low-income families, raising teacher pay, and expanding preschool.

On the campaign trail, Biden called for tripling Title I funding for low-income schools, and his administration has proposed doubling it in its federal budget for this school year, a move that would send an additional $20 billion to those schools.