Chalkbeat

NYC schools will no longer require 5-day COVID quarantines, following CDC guidance

2024-03-18T22:07:29+00:00

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New York City schools will no longer require a five-day quarantine for those who test positive for COVID, according to new guidance issued to principals and posted online Monday.

Educators across the five boroughs have been eagerly awaiting an update for more than two weeks, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ended its pandemic-era guidance that urged individuals who tested positive for COVID to isolate for at least five days.

Since March 1, the federal agency has instructed people to remain at home until their symptoms improve and they have not had a fever for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication. The CDC still advises people to take precautions over the following five days, including wearing a mask, social distancing, and testing.

Education Department policy directs those experiencing COVID symptoms to isolate themselves from others and get tested. Like the CDC, the city now recommends students and staff stay home until symptoms have improved and they’re fever free for 24 hours without the aid of medication. The department also urges students and staff to wear a mask and take other precautions for five days after returning to school.

For those who test positive for the virus but exhibit no symptoms, “there is no need to stay home, but precautions outlined in the updated guidelines should be taken upon return to school,” according to the email sent to principals.

The new policy for schools also matches the city’s Health Department guidelines.

The elimination of a minimum isolation period is the latest in a series of changes that have loosened COVID-related restrictions in schools — as federal and city health authorities have moved to treat the virus more like the flu and other common respiratory infections. Last spring, Mayor Eric Adams announced that proof of vaccination against the virus would no longer be required for city employees and school visitors. And schools previously sunsetted masking requirements, vaccine mandates for student athletes and prom attendees, as well as daily health screenings and in-school COVID testing for students and staff.

The city’s public schools will continue to provide COVID tests in school upon request, according to the email sent to principals. (As of this month, the federal government has ended its free COVID test distribution program, and the city’s public libraries are no longer distributing free tests.)

Schools staff will still be able to take up to 10 days off for COVID-related absences without dipping into their sick days this year, according to the United Federation of Teachers, which emailed members about the updated guidance Monday evening.

COVID cases have fallen steadily since mid-January, after the city saw an uptick in cases over the holidays. As of March 14, there were about 22 cases per 100,000 people, according to New York City’s daily average of the last seven days from the Health Department. That was down slightly from the week before and had fallen from roughly 87 cases per 100,000 people in September.

Though the city’s Health Department tracks cases by age group, the spread of the virus is no longer publicly reported by school. In September, the city’s Education Department scrapped a map tracking the daily number of cases among students and staffers across schools.

The city’s Education and Health departments did not respond to multiple requests for the city’s COVID guidance for schools in recent weeks.

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Clock is ticking for NYC families: Millions in pandemic food benefits may expire next month

2024-01-22T19:09:20+00:00

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Millions of dollars in unused NYC pandemic food benefits could begin to expire in February, as the deadline for families to use them rapidly approaches.

The funds — known as the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer, or P-EBT — were sent to all New York City public school families in several rounds over the past four years. They’re intended to help cover costs for meals that would ordinarily be provided at school.

Last year, the state distributed multiple rounds of the benefits, including $120 per child for the summer of 2023, as well as at least $391 per child for the summer of 2022 and the 2021-22 school year. (Funds from the latter disbursement could total as much as $1,671 per child based on COVID-related absences or remote-learning days during the year.)

Now, the latter of these funds are set to expire for families who have not used them.

David Rubel, an education consultant who has followed the food benefits closely, fears thousands of families may soon lose benefits they’re not even aware they have.

“Imagine if tomorrow morning we read that the major food pantry programs lost half of their budget,” he said. “We’re really talking about something of that magnitude.”

Rubel’s concerns stem in part from data he obtained through a request under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, which state officials confirmed. For P-EBT benefits issued for the summer of 2021, nearly 600,000 students across the state never redeemed the money, the data showed.

That meant roughly 27% of the more than 2.2 million students who received the benefits never used them — with the expired benefits totaling roughly $222 million.

And for the expiring benefits from the summer of 2022, more than 263,000 recipients in New York City had not used the benefits, according to data shared by Rubel. That meant more than $100 million in potential food benefits were at risk of expiring.

Rubel worries the state hasn’t conducted sufficient outreach to inform families about each round of the funds. He said he’s urged state officials to request an amendment to the program timeline from the federal government.

The state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, or OTDA, which oversees the P-EBT program, said the expiration of the funds was based on federal statutes and regulations.

“The deadline cannot be extended,” officials said in a statement.

In a handful of other states, officials have amended their P-EBT programs to effectively extend the timeline for families to use their benefits. In California, for example, officials allowed households to request a restoration of their benefits if they had expired without ever being spent.

New York officials, however, said they had no plans to seek federal approval to amend the P-EBT program.

Here’s what families should know:

When will benefits start to expire?

P-EBT benefits automatically expire 274 days, or about nine months, after they were last used. More than 60% of the summer 2022 benefits were issued to families last May, meaning those who have yet to use them will see their funds start to expire in February.

Whenever families use the benefits, the timeline will reset and they will have another 274 days before the funds are at risk of expiration.

How can families replace their cards?

Families who have lost their P-EBT card can get a replacement by calling 1-888-328-6399.

Why are some families not using the funds?

Since the pandemic began, OTDA has issued more than $6.3 billion in P-EBT benefits, with about 60% going directly to the existing accounts of households already receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. Others received the funds on state-issued P-EBT cards.

The state maintains detailed information about the benefits on its website, and operates a phone helpline at 1-833-452-0096.

OTDA officials previously told Chalkbeat they’ve conducted extensive public outreach and worked with advocacy groups to help raise awareness of the food benefits. The state’s Education Department has also distributed messaging about the benefits to local school districts, officials said.

Families with valid phone numbers on file with their school district should also have received a text message whenever new benefits became available, according to state officials.

Some families, however, said they never received such text messages, and others have struggled to access the benefits.

“We should be striving for 100%,” said Angela Trude, an NYU professor who has studied food access and government benefits. “We want everybody to use the benefits.”

Trude said she’s worked with families who falsely assume that using food benefits could take money away from others who are in greater need, or that the government will eventually ask them to return the funds.

It’s critical to combat these misconceptions, she said, while also communicating that all families should use the benefits.

“If these families feel like they are taking away, then instead of not using them, they can actually buy nonperishable foods and donate them to community organizations and food pantries,” Trude added.

Rubel believes nearly all of the expired benefits from the summer 2021 disbursement occurred among families who are not SNAP recipients, as SNAP households received the benefits in their existing accounts and could keep spending as usual in order to use them.

For families who have been able to take advantage of the benefits, advocates have said they can be hugely consequential. Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry New York, said P-EBT funds “can be the difference between a child going hungry or having a healthy, nutritious meal.”

“We know families are hurting — 3 out of 4 have told us it’s been harder to afford groceries than in 2022 — so we hope every household eligible for P-EBT takes advantage of this benefit,” she said in a statement. “We know how important it is to get the word out about these funds before they expire, and urge families to check their EBT accounts and keep their cards handy.”

New York needs more outreach, expert says

Wendy De La Rosa, an assistant marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied government benefits, said New York and other states should be doing more to effectively reach families.

Using text messages to notify families about their benefits is a “fundamentally flawed” approach, according to De La Rosa.

“Scams are through the roof, and every security expert is telling us to be scared,” she said. “In what world would we think that a single text message — often coming from an unknown number — would meaningfully increase uptake?”

For students experiencing housing instability, she added, phone numbers on file with school districts may be inaccurate or outdated.

“It has to be a text message, and an email, and a letter, and phone calls, and actually figuring out, ‘Which parents have we not reached?’” De La Rosa said. “And then making a concerted effort to reach them so that everybody is informed.”

Some families also respond better to certain messaging around benefits. Increasing the degree of ownership families over the benefits can spur more to use them, De La Rosa said. Families are more likely to make use of benefits that are framed as something they are entitled to, rather than those that are seen as a program meant to help them.

A permanent summer food benefits program on the horizon

Despite her concerns, De La Rosa said she’s pleased to see New York among the states that have opted into a permanent federal summer food benefits program. Across the country, 9.5 million students who would have been eligible for the benefits will likely go without them this year, after at least 12 states declined to participate in the program.

“When you put it in that context — where you have families in some states experiencing child hunger because the legislators didn’t want to implement this policy — then of course New York is ahead of the curve,” she said.

This story was updated on Feb. 14 with new data on unused benefits from the summer of 2022.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amid a surprising pandemic recovery, academic inequality grew. What now?

2024-02-02T18:26:37+00:00

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Academic gaps between students from low-income backgrounds and their more affluent peers have widened, even as American students as a whole are making a surprising recovery from the pandemic’s disruptions.

And in contrast to the initial sharp decline in test scores during the pandemic, when differences among districts drove much of the decrease for low-income students, gaps have widened in the last year between students from different income levels within the same district.

Those are the findings of a new analysis of student progress between spring 2022 and spring 2023 from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and a team of researchers that includes Stanford’s Sean Reardon, who studies inequality, and Harvard University’s Thomas Kane, an education professor and economist.

The analysis defies some of the direst predictions about pandemic learning loss even as it confirms others — such as the fear that students who already face the most challenges would fall much further behind and not get what they need to catch up.

The new analysis presents a sunnier picture than a previous one from the testing group NWEA that found that students learned at a similar rate or slower during the 2022-23 school year than in pre-pandemic years, meaning they weren’t making up lost learning.

The analysis relies on federal and state reading and math test data from 30 states accounting for roughly 8,000 school districts and some 15 million students. Because states use different tests and have different thresholds for proficiency, the researchers used a method to put the state test scores onto a common scale and to convert proficiency rates to grade levels, allowing comparisons among school districts in all 30 states. Some states, including New York and Colorado, were excluded because too few students took state tests, while others changed tests.

Most students are still behind their 2019 counterparts, the analysis found, and likely will be for years. But they’re also making greater year-over-year gains than researchers had seen in decades of administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card.

The report’s authors called on state and local leaders to make the most of remaining pandemic relief dollars and do more to make sure tutoring, summer school, and other help reaches the students who need it.

“Recovery really is possible, but let’s focus in particular on the communities that have the furthest to go to catch up,” Reardon said in an interview. “And we should worry that the federal money is running out and some of the resources will not be there and states will have to step in.”

Here are three key takeaways from the analysis.

Many students made remarkable gains, but recovery incomplete

Between 2019 and 2022, the study estimates students missed the equivalent of half a year of typical learning in math and a third of a year of reading.

By spring 2023, the average student had recovered about a third of the loss in math — or a sixth of a grade level — and about a quarter of the original loss in reading — roughly one-twelfth of a grade level, the analysis found.

That might not seem like much, Reardon said, but in the decade before the pandemic, students “almost never” made this much additional academic progress in a year. When it did happen, it happened in small affluent districts.

“It’s pretty impressive,” Reardon said. “You moved an entire ship, not just a little dinghy. That’s the good news.”

Students in Pennsylvania and Mississippi made up more ground than the national average in math after experiencing larger-than-average declines between 2019 and 2022. Tennessee students also made up more learning in math, while Illinois students made more progress in reading — and actually did better than their 2019 counterparts.

But even with the growth students seem to be showing in the new analysis, researchers estimate the average student needs at least another year of recovery in math and another two years in reading. In math, only Alabama students scored better than their 2019 counterparts, and Oregon students actually did worse in both reading and math in 2023 than in 2022.

Academic inequality has widened between districts, within districts

One of the most striking findings from the analysis is that gaps between low-income students and those who are better-off have widened, with some of the largest gaps found in Massachusetts and Michigan.

Racial and ethnic gaps are widening too. Black students’ scores on average improved more than white students’ scores between 2022 and 2023, but because Black students’ scores declined so much during the pandemic, the gap remains slightly larger than in 2019. Hispanic students showed relatively little improvement from 2022 to 2023.

An analysis last year by many of the same researchers found that students in the same district experienced similar academic setbacks, regardless of their background. Scores for students from less-affluent backgrounds dropped more on average because they were more likely to live in high-poverty school districts where people experienced more negative effects of the pandemic.

This new analysis finds that many high-poverty districts are helping students make up for learning loss. Overall, they made similar progress to their more affluent neighbors — and the highest-poverty districts actually showed larger-than-average improvements.

But because districts serving lots of students in poverty were further behind to begin with, gaps with higher-income districts grew even when they made similar progress. And in some states, notably Massachusetts, affluent districts made big gains between 2022 and 2023 while high-poverty districts actually lost ground.

And now gaps are opening up between less-affluent students and better-off students within districts. Students’ test scores fell by similar amounts, but some fell onto a trampoline, Reardon said, while others seem to have fallen into a pit of sand.

“We do not know the reason for this, but it is troubling,” the report notes. “Even as student achievement has improved rapidly since 2022, those gains have not been equally shared, even within the same school district.”

As community-wide stresses recede for some families, Reardon said, “the ways that kids in the same places have access to different resources seem to be playing more of a role.”

Students from low-income households often are segregated in very high-needs schools, where the staff is overworked, Reardon said. Some districts may not be targeting help to those who need it most.

Of all the gaps that opened between students from different economic backgrounds, researchers estimate 60% to 70% is due to differences between districts, while the rest is due to differences within districts.

Urgency needed to help student recovery, close gaps

As of this fall, the lowest-income districts still had about 40% of the federal pandemic relief they received. States and school districts have until September to commit that money — and making the best use of it is essential, Reardon said.

The report makes four recommendations:

Schools should tell parents early in the spring if their children are below grade level.
Districts should expand summer school seats to accept anyone who signs up.
Districts should extend the recovery effort throughout the 2024-25 school year by signing tutoring contracts before the September deadline.
Communities should work together to reduce absenteeism.

States and districts should use all the data at their disposal to ensure the right help — tutoring, counseling, or attendance help — reaches the students who need it most, Reardon said.

The new analysis is accompanied by an interactive map that allows leaders and community members to identify districts making more progress and learn from them.

Districts have had a lot of leeway to decide how to spend pandemic money. States should use incentives to ensure remaining funds go toward academic recovery. And they “may need to complete the final leg of the recovery on their own resources,” the report says.

With advocates pushing states to keep paying for tutoring, those conversations are already starting in many places.

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

The pandemic defined my high school class in painful and precious ways

2023-06-27T10:00:00+00:00

As I rubbed my tired eyes, I searched for my phone to stop the 8:55 a.m. alarm I had set for each weekday. Before I could even brush my teeth and form a thought in my brain, I opened my laptop and clicked the login link for my trigonometry class.

Had I been in class rather than doing school online, I would’ve greeted my friends, smiled at my classmates, and talked about how hungry I was. But for the past year — and for what would be the entirety of my sophomore year of high school — the school day started when a teacher let me into the Zoom meeting from the waiting room. I sat in silence on my bed, waiting to speak my first words of the day.

“How is everyone doing?” my math teacher said.

Jasmine Harris

“Good,” I responded, grateful that she was making some effort at normalcy. But with delayed responses and cameras off, were we really engaging, and was I really “good”?

Before the COVID-19 lockdown began in March 2020, I was partway through my freshman year of high school. I had just met most of my classmates a few months earlier, so I only knew them on a surface level. When we returned to campus at the beginning of our junior year, I expected things to be a bit awkward, considering we were timid freshmen the last time we were together. However, I did not expect this awkward phase to last all of junior year.

Jasmine, far right, with her classmates during their senior class trip in Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania.

I think it’s safe to say that many high school students graduating this year had a similar experience. After all, this year’s graduating seniors were freshmen back when COVID first closed schools. For the Class of 2023, our high school career has been largely defined by the pandemic and its consequences.

We spent our junior year — a challenging academic year under normal circumstances — adjusting to being back in a classroom setting. Socially, it was weird, given that it had been almost two years since most of us had seen each other face to face. Conversations were awkward and short. I can count on my fingers the number of times I hung out with my friends the entire school year, and by the end of my junior year, I still didn’t feel a close connection with the friends I had met my freshman year.

So when senior year came around, my classmates and I were determined to make our last year of high school our first normal year of high school. We no longer wanted to be burdened by the strangeness of almost two years without in-person socializing.

Just one month into my senior year, my friend group expanded, and everyone around me seemed so much more extroverted and eager to hang out. My friends constantly tell me how much I’ve changed, that I used to be so quiet and not want to do anything after school. My classmates and I have grown closer by the day and are eager to plan an entire bucket list of things that we want to do together before we head off to college.

It’s like we want four years of high school experiences — so many of them missed to quarantine — rolled into one year. This year, we feel the need to plan parties, go to the movies, and go out for food together constantly. This has also made our senior year all the more precious.

My fellow seniors and I were determined to make our last year of high school our first normal year of high school.

My friends and I often reflect on this feeling and speak about how, even though it is sad that this is our last year together, it feels like we’re just getting started. That feeling has also bonded us and made us more appreciative of our time together. This year has been thrilling in ways that I do not think it would have if we hadn’t been isolated for so much of high school.

But I believe that the lockdowns and the difficult time apart have taught us about ourselves, how valuable it is to live in the moment, and the importance of prioritizing our friendships and relationships.

This year, racing through these four years of high school has come with major (and historic!) challenges for the Class of 2023. But with every hardship comes lessons. These days, we seniors greet each other with a smile and a “hello.” We may complain about how hungry we are. But then, maybe because we know what it’s like to go without these social interactions, there’s a beautiful afterthought about how important our “hellos” and smiles are.

Jasmine Harris is a senior at Bronxdale High School and a Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellow in New York City. In the fall, she will be in the Sophie Davis BS/MD program at City College of New York. She’s glad to have found a good balance between school and social life despite the chaos of her high school career.

It’s tough to build school community post-pandemic. Music helps.

2023-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

The gym was packed. Parents, aunties, grandparents, and cousins filled the seats and more stood in the back. As their child’s class came up to perform, they jostled to the front, cell phones in hand, ready to get a good video.

The kids were dressed up in their finest sparkly red dresses or shiny slicked-back hair, with creased pant legs and bowties. All for a little winter concert at an elementary school.

It almost seemed like a night from the before times, pre-pandemic. The students’ voices weren’t always in perfect pitch, and some of them were a little fuzzy on the exact words. But the scene, and the songs, were perfectly beautiful.

It was also a surprising turnout for this school year. I lead a two-school charter network in Denver, and our school community has been a paradox post-pandemic. When we ask for feedback from our families, they ask for more in-person events: movie nights, dad and child dances, parent workshops, festivals. But typically we rely on parent volunteers to help us host these events. This year, when we’ve asked for volunteers to organize these events, almost no one signs up.

At the last moment, a little flurry of people always agree to man the grill, run the popcorn maker, or be on the clean-up crew. But it makes each event feel like a heavier lift when there aren’t quite enough hands, and that makes parents and staff more hesitant to volunteer the next time.

Turnout for most school meetings this year have been sparse, too. Our School Accountability Committee, which is supposed to have as many parents as staff members reviewing our academic data, had only staff at several meetings. We held a parent education night and only three people attended, while seven teachers were ready to share their great curriculum work.

It feels like we are longing for the social events from before the pandemic but we have all changed our boundaries. People have re-organized their work-life balance. They are used to being home more and maybe less used to extending themselves outside their most intimate sphere. Just as so many people are reluctant about going back to the office, we are reluctant to shift back to our previous level of community engagement. It feels like no one wants to leave home after collecting their kids at the end of the day and even fewer want to jump on a Zoom meeting after work.

I can understand it. I feel resistance myself about going to as many evening events as I have in the past, and teachers are more hesitant as well. Maybe we are still exhausted — or depressed, scared, and traumatized — from all we’ve been through, from the pandemic to recent gun violence. It leaves few people, parents or staff, with the energy it takes to organize and volunteer.

It has also been hard to be a parent in this country for a long time. We do so little as a society to support people with young children. Maybe living through these last few years has taken that little bit of extra parents still had to give.

Still, it worries me. Those outside of school time events are where community gets built. It’s where we get to see each other as people, and not just a teacher and a parent.

It all felt different at our winter concert performances, though. We were not trying to educate our families, we were not trying to fundraise, we weren’t even asking them to set up game booths or make cupcakes. We just invited them to hear their children sing.

It was a simple event. Staff set up the chairs and the stage. Teachers shepherded the children from classrooms to the stage and back. Our office team bought trays of cookies, and the tech teacher set up the sound system. I was grateful that staff were willing to do a little bit more that night so that we could all hear the children sing.

Music is a healing force, and children singing together often brings tears to my eyes. It is an expression of innocence and hope wrapped up in nostalgia for our own childhoods. Recent studies have shown that creative expression helps relieve anxiety, stimulates the rewiring of the brain after trauma, and even just listening to music can reduce cortisol production and stress. So it is no accident that these assemblies drew us together in community like nothing else has been able to since the pandemic.

We need the medicine of music to breathe life back into our tired, traumatized parent brains. I think it might be time for a spring concert.

Christine Ferris is the executive director of Highline Academy Charter Schools in Denver. She founded and led Our Community School, a K-8 charter school in Los Angeles, from 2005 to 2013. Ferris has been a consultant for charter schools in Denver, Los Angeles, and nationally.

More than 90,000 NYC students haven’t spent recent pandemic food benefits, data shows

2023-10-20T21:20:02+00:00

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Families of more than 90,000 eligible children in New York City have not redeemed recent allotments of pandemic food benefits, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat.

That means at least $35 million dollars in potential benefits remain unused and could expire early next year, with New Yorkers losing out on the federal funds.

The funds — known as the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer, or P-EBT — have been disbursed in several chunks since 2020 to help cover meal costs for families whose students usually receive free meals at school. Because New York City’s public schools have universal meals, all families are eligible regardless of household income.

This year, the state distributed multiple rounds of funds, including $120 per child for the summer of 2023, as well as at least $391 per child for the summer of 2022 and the 2021-22 school year. (Though funds from the latter disbursement could total as much as $1,671 per child based on COVID-related absences or remote-learning days during the year.)

In total, the state has issued roughly $5.4 billion in P-EBT benefits since 2020, with about 60% of benefits issued directly to low-income families who receive federal benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Advocates have praised the program for providing critical support across New York, especially as the effects of the pandemic placed additional strain on struggling families.

But among non-SNAP families, more than 90,000 students in the city had not redeemed funds from the 2021-22 school year and 2022 summer allotment, according to state data shared by education consultant David Rubel and confirmed by the state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

Among families who were receiving P-EBT cards for the first time, 41,271 had not spent any of the funds. For those with existing P-EBT cards, 49,465 had not used the benefits, either.

Liz Accles, executive director of Community Food Advocates, expressed concern over the high number of families who had yet to use the funds. She worried some may have encountered difficulties accessing them, while others may be unaware they exist or choosing not to use them.

For many in the city, the P-EBT program has been a “lifesaver,” she added.

“The vast majority of New York City public school families are struggling financially to make ends meet, and the cost of groceries is significant for everyone,” Accles said. “We hope that everyone will redeem the benefits.”

Rubel obtained the data earlier this month through a request under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, prompted by concerns that many families might be unaware of recent disbursements — especially those with limited English proficiency. He said he’s followed P-EBT news closely, but he wasn’t aware of the summer 2022 disbursement until he came across a related Chalkbeat article.

“If I didn’t know about it, what about the families of the other million children in our public school system,” he said, adding he worried many families may have lost or discarded their P-EBT cards. “There’s a lot of money here sitting on the table.”

All households with phone numbers on file with their school district should have been notified by text when benefits became available, according to OTDA. Those receiving benefits for the first time were provided additional instructions about how to activate and use their P-EBT cards. Families receive another text if benefits remain unused six months after receiving them, state officials said.

The state’s Education Department also issued messaging about the benefits to all school districts in New York, officials added.

Still, for families who haven’t heard about the benefits, have forgotten, or have otherwise yet to redeem them, there’s still time to spend funds from the recent allotments.

Here’s what families need to know:

Who is eligible?

All families with children who attended K-12 in the city’s public schools during the 2021-22 school year were eligible for food benefits allotted for that year and the summer of 2022. Those who attended school last year were also eligible for the summer 2023 benefit. Those in charter, private, and other schools, or prekindergarten, who received free meals through the federal school lunch program were also eligible.

Families were eligible regardless of their immigration status.

How were benefits distributed?

Families that receive SNAP, state Temporary Assistance, or Medicaid benefits got their disbursements directly added to those accounts.

All other eligible families received funds on a P-EBT card, which was issued with their first allotment of benefits.

How can you replace your state-issued P-EBT card?

Those who have lost their P-EBT card can get a replacement by calling 1-888-328-6399.

There is no deadline for requesting a replacement card, according to state officials. Though if one is needed, officials suggest requesting one as soon as possible.

What can you use P-EBT for?

The benefits can only be used to purchase food items.

When do the benefits expire?

P-EBT funds are available to families for 274 days, or about nine months, after being issued.

Each time a family spends some of the funds, the remaining balance is valid for another 274 days, state officials said.

Why should you consider using the benefits?

All families should spend the benefits, regardless of their financial status, Accles said.

P-EBT benefits, like the federal stimulus checks that were distributed across the pandemic, provide community benefits that extend beyond the food they purchase, she added. While the funds can help cover groceries and other meal costs, their use also bolsters the local economy.

“There is a dual purpose to this,” Accles said. “It’s in everyone’s interest for those dollars to be used.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

A math problem with no easy solution: Regents scores plummeted during pandemic

2024-01-23T17:58:15+00:00

New York City high-schoolers’ scores on math Regents exams plummeted during the pandemic and have yet to bounce back, according to recently released state data.

Performance on the Regents tests, which serve as graduation requirements in New York, fell in every subject with the exception of U.S. History between 2019, the last year before the pandemic, and 2023, the data shows.

But the decline was steepest for city students in higher-level math courses. In Algebra II, proficiency rates for city students fell from 69% in 2019 to just 44% last year. In Geometry, 56% of city students passed the Regents test in 2019, but just 38% passed last school year.

The sharp decline is a stark indicator of the ongoing challenges the city faces in helping students recover from the academic impacts of the pandemic. Those challenges are particularly acute in math, where one course builds directly on the last and interrupted instruction can have ripple effects.

City officials are betting big on a new curriculum overhaul, where high schools for the first time are required to use a shared math curriculum for Algebra I.

“Math Regents scores have been unacceptably low for the last several years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein. “We launched our rollout of the Algebra 1 Illustrative Math curriculum to address dropping test scores.”

The curriculum mandate is currently in place only for Algebra I, but city officials have raised the possibility of standardizing curriculum for higher-level math courses as well. Illustrative Math, the mandated Algebra I curriculum, has drawn mixed responses from educators.

The Algebra I Regents exam is also undergoing a change this year to align with a new set of standards, and similar changes are on the way for the Algebra II and Geometry exams.

Brownstein said the Algebra I curriculum mandate is “just the first stage” of the Education Department’s work to improve high school math instruction and that “we are confident we will see rising Regents scores as a result.”

Pandemic Regents waivers help explain drops

There are likely several factors that drove the unusually steep decline in higher-level math scores.

In general, math scores fell more dramatically than reading scores across grade levels and districts. That pattern held true for New York City on the state’s third-to-eighth-grade state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests fourth and eighth graders.

Bobson Wong, a veteran high school math teacher in Queens, said basic academic skills like knowing how to study, remember things, and ask for help – skills that are particularly important in memorization-heavy subjects like math – all took a hit during the pandemic.

But educators also pointed to specific features of New York’s high school Regents tests and the state’s pandemic policies that may help explain the size of the drops.

High school math, to a greater degree than other subjects, is cumulative – meaning it’s extremely difficult to perform well in Algebra II without having mastered Algebra I, said Wong.

Prior to the pandemic, many schools didn’t enroll students in Algebra II or Geometry courses unless they’d passed the Algebra I Regents exam. But during the pandemic school years of 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, when schools were partially or fully remote, Regents tests were mostly canceled and students could earn waivers by passing the course linked to the test.

As a result, when in-person instruction returned, educators said they noticed an unusual number of students enrolled in higher-level math courses who’d never really mastered Algebra I.

“I saw a lot of students in my Algebra II class waived through Algebra I and they didn’t know any algebra,” said Wong. “We didn’t really do anything to prepare them for a course like Algebra II. It requires so much knowledge of algebra and so much prior skill.”

During the pandemic, there were few good options to fairly assess students. State officials concluded that trying to hold Regents exams during the height of the pandemic, with schools offering varying levels of in-person instruction and students often struggling to engage in remote learning, would exacerbate inequality and unfairly block some students from graduating. Students in New York typically need to score a 65 or higher on five Regents exams to earn a diploma, and can receive an “advanced” diploma by passing more of the exams.

More than 80% of New York City’s high school graduates in 2020, and nearly three-quarters of graduates in 2021, had at least one Regents exam exemption counted towards graduation requirements, a 2022 analysis from Education Trust-New York found.

But while many educators supported the additional flexibility during the pandemic, some have expressed concerns that students granted Regents exemptions or who passed courses because of added pandemic grading flexibility didn’t get the support they needed to catch up, and were instead moved into higher-level courses for which they were unprepared.

“We had to make some really important and responsive decisions,” said Tracy Fray-Oliver, the vice president at Bank Street Education Center and a former math official in the city Education Department. “But without ensuring the mastery in these courses that came before, you’re going to see these kinds of results.”

Passing the Algebra II and Geometry Regents tests isn’t a requirement for graduation because students can satisfy the math Regents requirement by passing only Algebra I. But the tests are required for an advanced diploma, and passing them can be an indicator of whether students are on track to take and pass pre-calculus and calculus.

Gaps between racial groups grew

Across the state, the Regents exam declines were also largest on the Algebra II and Geometry tests, although the drops in New York City were larger in both cases.

The gaps between racial groups also grew. The share of Latino students in New York City scoring proficient on the Algebra II exam, for example, was more than cut in half, from 58% in 2019 to 28% last year. Just 26% of Black students passed the Algebra II test last year, down from 55% in 2019.

The proportion of Asian American students passing the exam fell from 87% in 2019 to 74% this year, while the share of white students scoring proficient fell from 82% to 63%.

Fray-Oliver said she applauded the city’s efforts to overhaul high school math curriculum, but added that many of the skills students need to succeed in higher-level high school math courses are first taught as early as elementary.

Critics have long argued that the Regents exams aren’t effective ways of assessing what kids know and encourage rote learning at the expense of deeper understanding. That’s part of why a Blue Ribbon Commission recently recommended to the state’s Board of Regents that New York offer more pathways outside of the exams for students to earn graduation credit.

Wong said he expects the scores on the higher-level Regents tests to slowly bounce back on their own as the effects of the pandemic fade.

“I wouldn’t push the panic button and say we have to do all these interventions,” he said. “If the drop-off continues, that could be more of an issue.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@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.

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.

For some kids, returning to school post-pandemic means a daunting wall of administrative obstacles

2023-12-19T05:01:00+00:00

ATLANTA – It’s unclear to Tameka how — or even when — her children became unenrolled from Atlanta Public Schools. But it was traumatic when, in fall 2021, they figured out it had happened.

After more than a year of some form of pandemic online learning, students were all required to come back to school in person. Tameka was deeply afraid of COVID-19 and skeptical the schools could keep her kids safe. One morning, in a test run, she sent two kids to school.

Her oldest daughter, then in seventh grade, and her second youngest, a boy entering first grade, boarded their respective buses. She had yet to register the youngest girl, who was entering kindergarten. And her older son, a boy with Down syndrome, stayed home because she wasn’t sure he could consistently wear masks.

After a few hours, the elementary school called: Come pick up your son, they told her. He was no longer enrolled, they said.

Around lunchtime, the middle school called: Come get your daughter, they told her. She doesn’t have a class schedule.

Tameka’s children — all four of them — have been home ever since.

Obstacles on the road back to school

Thousands of students went missing from American classrooms during the pandemic. For some who have tried to return, a serious problem has presented itself. A corrosive combination of onerous re-enrollment requirements, arcane paperwork and the everyday obstacles of poverty — a nonworking phone, a missing backpack, the loss of a car — is in many cases preventing those children from going back.

“One of the biggest problems that we have is kids that are missing and chronic absenteeism,” says Pamela Herd, a Georgetown University public policy professor. She studies how burdensome paperwork and processes often prevent poor people from accessing health benefits. “I’m really taken aback that a district would set forth a series of policies that make it actually quite difficult to enroll your child.”

In Atlanta, where Tameka lives, parents must present at least eight documents to enroll their children — twice as many as parents in New York City or Los Angeles. One of the documents — a complicated certificate evaluating a child’s dental health, vision, hearing, and nutrition — is required by the state. Most of the others are Atlanta’s doing, including students’ Social Security cards and an affidavit declaring residency that has to be notarized.

The district asks for proof of residency for existing students every year at some schools, and also before beginning sixth and ninth grades, to prevent students from attending schools outside of their neighborhoods or communities. The policy also allows the district to request proof the student still lives in the attendance zone after an extended absence or many tardy arrivals. Without that proof, families say their children have been disenrolled.

“They make it so damned hard,” says Kimberly Dukes, an Atlanta parent who co-founded an organization to help families advocate for their children.

During the pandemic, she and her children became homeless and moved in with her brother. She struggled to convince her children’s school they really lived with him. Soon, she heard from other caregivers having similar problems. Last year, she estimates she helped 20 to 30 families re-enroll their children in Atlanta Public Schools.

The school district pushed back against this characterization of the enrollment process. “When parents inform APS that they are unable to provide updated proof of residence, protocols are in place to support families,” Atlanta communications director Seth Coleman wrote by email. Homeless families are not required to provide documentation, he said.

Tameka’s kids have essentially been out of school since COVID hit in March 2020. She and her kids have had a consistent place to live, but nearly everything else in their lives collapsed during the pandemic. (Tameka is her middle name. The Associated Press is withholding her full name because Tameka, 33, runs the risk of jail time or losing custody of her children since they are not in school.)

Illustration depicting Tameka. A corrosive combination of re-enrollment requirements, arcane paperwork and the everyday obstacles of poverty is keeping children out of schools.

Echoes of a partner’s death

Tameka’s longtime partner, who was father to her children, died of a heart attack in May 2020 as COVID gripped the country.

His death left her overwhelmed and penniless. Tameka never graduated from high school and has worked occasionally as a security guard or a housecleaner for hotels. She has never gotten a driver’s license. But her partner worked construction and had a car. “When he was around, we never went without,” she says.

Suddenly, she had four young children to care for by herself, with only government cash assistance to live on.

Schools had closed to prevent the spread of the virus, and the kids were home with her all the time. Remote learning didn’t hold their attention. Their home internet didn’t support the three children being online simultaneously, and there wasn’t enough space in their two-bedroom apartment for the kids to have a quiet place to learn.

Because she had to watch them, she couldn’t work. The job losses put her family even further below the median income for a Black family in Atlanta — $28,105. (The median annual income for a white family in the city limits is $83,722.)

When Tameka’s children didn’t return to school, she also worried about the wrong kind of attention from the state’s child welfare department. According to Tameka, staff visited her in Spring 2021 after receiving calls from the school complaining her children were not attending online classes.

The social workers interviewed the children, inspected their home and looked for signs of neglect and abuse. They said they’d be back to set her up with resources to help her with parenting. For more than two years, she says, “they never came back.”

When the kids missed 10 straight days of school that fall, the district removed them from its rolls, citing a state regulation. Tameka now had to re-enroll them.

Suddenly, another tragedy of her partner’s death became painfully obvious. He was carrying all the family’s important documents in his backpack when he suffered his heart attack. The hospital that received him said it passed along the backpack and other possessions to another family member, Tameka says. But it was never found.

The backpack contained the children’s birth certificates and her own, plus Medicaid cards and Social Security cards. Slowly, she has tried to replace the missing documents. First, she got new birth certificates for the children, which required traveling downtown.

After asking for new Medicaid cards for over a year, she finally received them for two of her children. She says she needs them to take her children to the doctor for the health verifications and immunizations required to enroll. It’s possible her family’s cards have been held up by a backlog in Georgia’s Medicaid office since the state agency incorrectly disenrolled thousands of residents.

When she called for a doctor’s appointment in October, the office said the soonest they could see her children was December.

“That’s too late,” she said. “Half the school year will be over by then.”

She also needs to show the school her own identification, Social Security cards, and a new lease, plus the notarized residency affidavit.

She shakes her head. “It’s a lot.”

Calls from the school — to a disconnected phone

Some of the enrollment requirements have exceptions buried deep in school board documents. But Tameka says no one from the district has offered her guidance.

Contact logs provided by the district show social workers from three schools have sent four emails and called the family 19 times since the pandemic closed classrooms in 2020. Most of those calls went to voicemail or didn’t go through because the phone was disconnected. Records show Tameka rarely called back.

The only face-to-face meeting was in October 2021, when Tameka sent her kids on the bus, only to learn they weren’t enrolled. A school social worker summarized the encounter: “Discussed students’ attendance history, the impact it has on the student and barriers. Per mom student lost father in May 2020 and only other barrier is uniforms.”

The social worker said the school would take care of the uniforms. “Mom given enrollment paperwork,” the entry ends.

The school’s logs don’t record any further attempts to contact Tameka.

“Our Student Services Team went above and beyond to help this family and these children,” wrote Coleman, the district spokesperson.

Inconsistent cell phone access isn’t uncommon among low-income Americans. Many have phones, as Tameka’s family does, but when they break or run out of prepaid minutes, communication with them becomes impossible.

So in some cities, even at the height of the pandemic, social workers, teachers, and administrators checked on families in person when they were unresponsive or children had gone missing from online learning. In Atlanta, Coleman said, the district avoided in-person contact because of the coronavirus.

Tameka says she’s unaware of any outreach from Atlanta schools. She currently lacks a working phone with a cell plan, and she’s spent long stretches over the last three years without one. An Associated Press reporter has had to visit the family in person to communicate.

The logs provided by Atlanta Public Schools show only one attempt to visit the family in person, in Spring 2021. A staff member went to the family’s home to discuss poor attendance in online classes by the son with Down syndrome. No one was home, and the logs don’t mention further attempts.

The details of what the district has done to track down and re-enroll Tameka’s children, especially her son with Down syndrome, matter. Federal laws require the state and district to identify, locate, and evaluate all children with disabilities until they turn 21.

Tameka and her 8-year-old daughter talk on their porch in Atlanta on Dec. 5, 2023, about when she might start school. The little girl should be in second grade but has never attended school.

One government agency has been able to reach Tameka. A new social worker from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, the same agency that came years earlier, made another visit to her home in October.

The department offered to organize a ride for her and her children to visit the doctor. But without an appointment, Tameka didn’t see the point.

The social worker also shared a helpful tip: Tameka can enroll her children with most of the paperwork, and then she would have 30 days to get the immunizations. But she should act fast, the social worker urged, or the department might have to take action against her for “educational neglect.”

A complex history works against parents

To many observers, Tameka’s troubles stem from Atlanta’s rapid gentrification. The city, known for its Black professional class, also boasts the country’s largest wealth disparity between Black and white families.

“It looks good from the curb, but when you get inside, you see that Black and brown people are worse off economically than in West Virginia — and no one wants to talk about it,” says Frank Brown, who heads Communities in Schools of Atlanta, an organization that runs dropout-prevention programs in Atlanta Public Schools.

Atlanta’s school board passed many of its enrollment policies and procedures back in 2008, after years of gentrification and a building boom consolidated upper-income and mostly white residents in the northern half of the city. The schools in those neighborhoods complained of “overcrowding,” while the schools in the majority Black southern half of the city couldn’t fill all of their seats.

The board cracked down on “residency fraud” to prevent parents living in other parts of town from sending their children to schools located in those neighborhoods.

“This was about balancing the number of students in schools,” says Tiffany Fick, director of school quality and advocacy for Equity in Education, a policy organization in Atlanta. “But it was also about race and class.”

Communities such as St. Louis, the Massachusetts town of Everett, and Tupelo, Mississippi, have adopted similar policies, including tip lines to report neighbors who might be sending their children to schools outside of their enrollment zones.

But the Atlanta metro area seems to be a hotbed, despite the policies’ disruption of children’s educations. In January, neighboring Fulton County disenrolled nearly 400 students from one of its high schools after auditing residency documents after Christmas vacation.

The policies were designed to prevent children from attending schools outside of their neighborhood. But according to Dukes and other advocates, the increased bureaucracy has also made it difficult for the poor to attend their assigned schools — especially after the pandemic hit families with even more economic stress.

Other Atlanta parents face similar battles

The Associated Press spoke to five additional Atlanta public school mothers who struggled with the re-enrollment process. Their children were withdrawn from school because their leases had expired or were month to month, or their child lacked vaccinations.

Candace, the mother of a seventh grader with autism, couldn’t get her son a vaccination appointment when schools first allowed students to return in person in Spring 2021. There were too many other families seeking shots at that time, and she didn’t have reliable transportation to go further afield. The boy, then in fourth grade, missed a cumulative five months.

“He wasn’t in school, and no one cared,” said Candace, who asked AP not to use her last name because she worries about losing custody of her child since he missed so much school. She eventually re-enrolled him with the help of Dukes, the parent advocate.

Many parents who have struggled with the enrollment policies have had difficulty persuading schools to accept their proof of residency. Adding an extra burden to those who don’t own their homes, Atlanta’s policy allows principals to ask for additional evidence from renters.

Shawndrea Gay was told by her children’s school, which is located in an upper-income neighborhood, that her month-to-month lease was insufficient. Twice, investigators came to her studio apartment to verify that the family lived there. “They looked in the fridge to make sure there was food,” she says. “It was no joke.”

Then, in Summer 2022, the school unenrolled her children because their lease had expired. With Dukes’ help, Gay was able to get them back in school before classes started.

Tameka's 8-year-old daughter ties her shoe before running out to play. (AP Photo/Bianca Vázquez Toness)

Tameka hasn’t reached out for help getting her kids back in school. She doesn’t feel comfortable asking and doesn’t trust the school system, especially after they called the child welfare department. “I don’t like people knowing my business,” she says. “I’m a private person.”

On a typical school day, Tameka’s four children — now 14, 12, 9, and 8 — sleep late and stay inside watching television or playing video games. Only the youngest — the girl who’s never been to school — has much interest in the outside world, Tameka says.

The girl often plays kickball or runs outside with other kids in their low-income subdivision. But during the week, she has to wait for them to come home from school at around 3 p.m.

The little girl should be in second grade, learning to master chapter books, spell, and add and subtract numbers up to 100. She has had to settle for “playing school” with her three older siblings. She practices her letters and writes her name. She runs through pre-kindergarten counting exercises on a phone.

But even at 8, she understands that it’s not the real thing.

“I want to go to school,” she says, “and see what it’s like.”

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Gaps in Michigan student achievement remain wider than pre-pandemic norm, report finds

2023-11-16T23:00:57+00:00

The gaps between Michigan’s lowest and highest performing K-8 students are wider than would have been expected before the pandemic, and some students are falling further behind, according to an analysis of benchmark testing results released this week.

However, the students and districts that saw the most learning loss also have shown the strongest academic recovery, the research findings suggest.

“Overall, the results show us that progress is being made, but that progress is gradual — especially compared to how large the impact of the pandemic was,” said Tara Kilbride, interim associate director of the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, the research group that did the analysis. “It’s going to be a long-term, multiyear effort.”

The analysis covers assessments given to Michigan students each fall and spring since 2020, and captures how student growth compared with national trends before the pandemic.

Since spring of 2021, student achievement in the state improved slightly in math and very little in reading, the report found.

In fall 2020, Michigan students were in the 42nd percentile of national norms in math, meaning 58% of students nationwide performed better. Michigan students fell to the 39th percentile in math by spring 2021. In spring 2023, they returned to the 42nd percentile.

It is likely that students are still behind where they were in math prior to the pandemic, since the first benchmark assessments were administered well after in-person learning went on pause in March 2020.

In reading, students in the state fell from the 51st percentile in fall 2020 to the 45th percentile in spring 2021. Results in reading have not moved substantially since then.

“The differences in recovery align with findings from other states across the country — at least what we see in math,” said Kilbride. “But reading results in other states have been varied. Michigan falls somewhere in the middle.”

Districts that were the most affected by the pandemic — many of which are in urban areas serving more diverse populations of students from low-income families — made the strongest recovery, according to the report. The accelerated learning rates out of those districts drove overall growth at the state level.

Overall, Michigan students are making the growth in a school year that would have been expected before COVID, the assessment results in the report show, but some students are still falling behind, because they are not learning at a fast enough pace to catch up.

The same trend is being seen nationally, researchers say.

“We are making only very slow progress,” said Dan Goldhaber, a professor at the University of Washington and director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

“You really need the pace of learning to be considerably faster” to make up for lost learning, he added, “and we’re not seeing that.”

Goldhaber said the state of recovery nationally is “concerning” because tests are highly predictive of how kids will fare later on in life.

Benchmark assessments offer researchers and policy makers a couple of advantages over yearly M-STEP standardized test results, because they more clearly measure student growth during a school year, from fall to spring. Some of the assessments show how kids are achieving at a level beyond their grade.

In many cases, the assessments can be better than letter grades or report cards at helping parents understand how their children are performing, said Goldhaber.

“Grades are actually higher than they were before the pandemic, and they don’t seem to comport with what we know about test scores,” he said. “The meaning of an ‘A’ in terms of knowledge as assessed by the test is different from what we knew before the pandemic. I am worried that parents can be getting false signals about how their students are doing from grades, and maybe they should be paying some attention to the tests.”

The assessment results do have their limitations. The analysis includes assessments from about 773,000 of the 947,000 K-8 students in the state, at 769 of 852 school districts.

Legislation that passed in 2020 requiring Michigan districts to give the benchmark assessments gave them several options of approved test providers. Because of this, researchers did not include students who moved districts in their analysis.

Additionally, many students missed testing dates.

“Some of the reasons students did not take tests are the same reasons that they may have been impacted even more by the pandemic,” said Kilbride. “That could mean our results are showing a rosier picture than what truly happened.”

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Could a Newark early learning center funded by philanthropists be a model for child care?

2023-10-25T15:20:45+00:00

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At Clinton Hill Early Learning Center in the South Ward, everything is designed with the city’s youngest children in mind:

Many of the wall decorations are just 2 feet off the ground — the perfect view for infants and toddlers. The lobby overflows with plants and sunlight, the classrooms are filled with color, and the courtyard has climbing structures, toys, and, most importantly, padded flooring.

Clinton Hill Early Learning Center offers one solution for closing gaps in financing early childhood education. The center is funded by the Maher Charitable Foundation, a philanthropy that engages in early childhood education projects and policy efforts and has previously funded the expansion of Newark early learning facilities.

Maher built the $17 million Clinton Hill Early Learning Center, working closely on construction plans with community organizations Clinton Hill Community Action, Clinton Hill Community & Early Childhood Center Inc., and La Casa de Don Pedro. The three groups now share the responsibility of running the center day-to-day.

That partnership is helping provide some Newark families with access to state-of-the art programming and facilities at a time when infant and toddler care nationwide is both expensive and limited.

During the height of the COVID pandemic, federal funding helped to keep care centers operational. Now that money has expired, leaving many early childhood education and care centers struggling to stay open.

Khaatim Sherrer El, executive director of Clinton Hill Community Action, said the center’s goal from the beginning was to act as an example of what’s possible for Newark.

“We didn’t want to signal that we’re trying to put anybody out of business,” said Sherrer El. “We want to demonstrate what the children of Newark deserve.”

Early learning providers struggle without pandemic aid

The need for child care for Newark’s youngest children is great. The group Advocates for the Children of New Jersey reported that, as of March 2022, there was space for only about 18% of Newark’s infants and toddlers in the city’s programs.

Cynthia Rice, senior policy analyst for ACNJ said programs for infants and toddlers are both the most expensive to provide and historically underfunded. Now, the problem is getting worse.

“During and after COVID, the American Rescue Plan helped programs keep their doors open. But now, that money is gone. It had to be gone by Sept. 30,” said Rice.

Rice said the COVID-era relief funding primarily helped pay for staffers’ salaries. But without additional funds, early childhood programs are struggling to pay the number of employees necessary for infant and toddler care.

“You have one adult for every four babies. That’s what our regulations require, so it’s a lot more expensive than preschool,” Rice said.

The Century Foundation is calling the ending of the American Rescue Plan the “child care cliff” and predicts it will have severe consequences as child care programs adjust to the lack of funding. They expect that nationwide an estimated 3.2 million children will lose access to child care.

On Oct. 18, N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy announced that, in line with his administration’s universal preschool goal, $25 million in state funding will be awarded to 26 school districts to expand high-quality preschool programs. The funding, called Preschool Expansion Aid, will support over 1,715 new seats available by January 2024.

Rice said that while this is an exciting development for preschools, it won’t help programs that exclusively serve infants and toddlers.

Districts that applied for Preschool Expansion Aid were required to demonstrate their effort to include both Head Start and child care programs. Head Start is a federally funded program that supports low income families’ access to care or schooling for infants through 5-year-olds. Child care includes infant and toddler programming.

However, Rice said the state uses what is called a mixed delivery system, in which independent education providers contract with public schools in order to provide more seats for early learning.

Funding is given to school districts, which are then responsible for distributing the funds to contracted providers as needed.

Rice said certain groups seem to be taking priority.

“Many districts are applying for the money, but their engagement with child care and Head Start is not what we had hoped,” said Rice.

Between the “child care cliff” and funding distribution, Rice worries that programs specifically serving infants and toddlers could suffer financially in the coming months.

“Change will have to come from a federal, state, and local commitment to children. No city can do it alone. It’s just too costly,” Rice said. “But bringing attention to programs like Clinton Hill and engaging foundations like Maher can help advocate for what our children deserve.”

Children were the focus of Clinton Hill Early Learning Center’s design plans.

Maher models a solution for Newark’s youngest students

For years — after the state cleared homes and other properties for a school building that never materialized — the land Clinton Hill now sits on stood vacant. Then, in 2019, the Maher Foundation purchased the land from the state in an agreement to build an early education center.

Clinton Hill Early Learning Center opened its doors in March of 2022 and now serves 198 children — 48 infants and toddlers and 150 preschoolers. Families pay tuition on a sliding scale based on income, though many children attend free of charge.

Instruction at Clinton Hill Early Learning Center follows a research-backed curriculum, even for the youngest children. Sherrer El says calling the facility a learning center rather than a care center was intentional.

The center’s building also sets a high bar. While children enjoy bright colors and seemingly endless collections of books and toys, staff can access thoughtfully designed laundry, craft, and break rooms.

This fall, Maher received two awards in recognition of the center’s construction: A Smart Growth Award from New Jersey Future and a Community Builder Award from the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice.

Sherrer El said constructing an entirely new space, rather than repurposing an existing Newark building, allowed for more intentional design choices focused on kids.

One of his favorite things about the center is how engaged students’ fathers have been, a testament to the importance of having space set aside for parent engagement.

Many of the building’s classrooms are conjoined to foster collaboration between teachers, and some contain an observation room where parents can watch their young children play.

“We’re working on setting up a two-way mirror so that education researchers can use the space, too,” said Sherrer El.

Several of the center’s spaces are also available for public use. Teachers from other institutions may use a variety of resources, though Sherrer El said the lamination machine seems to draw the most attention.

Both Sherrer El and Rice hope that the center’s construction — and funding model — will serve as an example for other philanthropic organizations aiming to follow their lead.

Samantha Lauten is a fall reporting intern for Chalkbeat Newark covering public education in the city. Get in touch with Samantha at slauten@chalkbeat.org or reach the bureau newsroom at newark.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado lawmakers will consider program to ease summer childhood hunger

2023-11-15T00:05:32+00:00

Low-income families in Colorado could receive $120 per child to help pay for groceries next summer if state lawmakers agree to tap a federal program aimed at reducing childhood hunger when school is out.

The legislature begins meeting Friday for a special session to address spiking property taxes after voters rejected Proposition HH. But lawmakers will also consider the summer grocery program because the state must opt in by Jan. 1 to participate in 2024.

The program has a wonky name — Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer, or Summer EBT — but the idea is simple: Reduce childhood hunger in low-income families when school meal programs are on break or harder to access over the summer. Eligible families would get a card preloaded with money to buy food that is sent to their homes when school’s out.

Families of up to 350,000 Colorado children would benefit.

The program would be another step in Colorado’s continuing effort to shrink the number of children who go hungry in the state. Starting this school year, the vast majority of Colorado students can get free school meals regardless of family income because of a universal meal program approved by voters in 2022.

A program similar to Summer EBT was in place during the pandemic, but it was optional for school districts, and it expired last summer. The new Summer EBT program would require all districts in the federal government’s National School Lunch Program to participate. In Colorado, that’s every district but Aspen.

Helping low-income families pay for groceries in the summer reduces childhood food insecurity, increases fruit and vegetable intake, and cuts the amount of sugary beverages children drink, according to federal evaluations of a pilot Summer EBT program in several states.

Families would be eligible for Summer EBT in 2024 if they have household incomes at or below 185% of the federal poverty level — $55,500 for a family of four — and have children attending preschool through 12th grade in a public school that offers the National School Lunch or Breakfast Program.

For the state to participate, Colorado lawmakers will have to appropriate about $3.5 million to help administer the program, said Brehan Riley, school nutrition director at the Colorado Department of Education. The federal government would match that amount, plus send $35 million to $42 million directly to qualifying families in the form of benefit cards. The program would be jointly administered by the Colorado Department of Human Services and the education department.

Riley said children will still be able to get any free summer meals offered through their school district even if their families also receive the Summer EBT benefit.

“The $120, I think it averages out to $1.33 a day,” she said. “So it’s supposed to supplement” the summer school meals program. Some students can’t get to local schools that offer summer meals because they live too far away or don’t have transportation.

If state lawmakers approve the Summer EBT program during the special session, which could last just three days, Colorado would join 10 other states planning to participate next summer. They include Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia

The Colorado State Board of Education voted 7-1 in support of the proposed Summer EBT bill on Tuesday. Board member Debora Scheffel, a Republican who represents a large swath of eastern Colorado, voted no. Board member Steve Durham, also a Republican, was absent.

If lawmakers approve the Summer EBT bill, Riley said the most important thing parents can do to ensure they’re eligible is fill out the free and reduced-price meal form at their child’s school. In some districts, the form may have a slightly different name, possibly the “family economic data survey.”

“We are hearing from districts that families haven’t been filling out those forms,” she said. “In order to receive summer EBT benefits, that form has to be in place.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Some NYC families struggle to use pandemic food benefits, as millions of dollars remain unspent

2023-11-15T00:08:41+00:00

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Myrna Mangual, a parent coordinator at P.S. 35 in the Bronx, hears from at least 10 parents a week who are confused about how to access pandemic food benefits.

The benefits — known as the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer, or P-EBT — went out to all public school families and others in New York City, with several installments issued since 2020. Intended to cover the costs of meals usually provided for free at school, the funds have been praised by advocates, who have called the program a lifesaver for many of the city’s struggling families.

But for some of the parents Mangual works with, the money hasn’t been easy to use.

Those families aren’t alone, as tens of millions of dollars in potential New York City benefits remain unused. In the city, families of at least 90,000 eligible children had not redeemed a recent allotment of the pandemic food benefits as of last month, according to state data previously shared with Chalkbeat.

Those funds, which total at least $35 million, could begin to expire after December if they continue to go unspent.

Some families at P.S. 35 never received their state-issued P-EBT cards, while others say they didn’t see certain disbursements added to their accounts. When calling the state’s P-EBT helpline, some parents say they’ve had trouble reaching anyone who can provide assistance, often stumbling on the automated responses or experiencing long wait times to speak to an agent, before eventually turning elsewhere for answers.

Mangual, however, said she doesn’t know how to help the families at her school — where more than 95% of students come from low-income backgrounds and nearly a quarter are English-language learners, according to city data. She said she’s never received training on how to guide families through using the benefits.

“This is where my frustration comes from,” she said. “We know nothing.”

In total, New York’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, or OTDA, has issued $6.3 billion in P-EBT benefits, with about 60% going directly to SNAP households with existing EBT accounts, while others received the funds on state-issued P-EBT cards.

The state maintains detailed P-EBT information on its website and operates a phone helpline at 1-833-452-0096. OTDA officials said they’ve provided information on each phase of the benefits to the state’s Education Department, which then distributed that information to local school districts.

The city’s Education Department said it has promoted information about the benefits on its website as well as on social media, and referred families with questions to OTDA.

Still, parents, schools, and community organizations say there’s been a disconnect, and many families aren’t receiving the information they need to take advantage of the benefits. Difficulties accessing the funds come as the need for them is especially high.

Nearly 75% of New Yorkers felt it was harder to afford groceries than a year prior, while more than half worried they would be unable to pay their food costs if faced with an unexpected $500 expense, according to a survey conducted by No Kid Hungry New York in April.

Stephanie Wu Winter, a senior program manager for No Kid Hungry, stressed the urgent need for the benefits.

“We’re glad these programs are being stood up and recognize it’s no small task to administer them,” she said in a statement. “But there’s a clear opportunity to increase outreach to families and give them direct lines of communication to understand what benefits they’re eligible for and when they’ll receive them. There’s time to get this right, but only if we move quickly.”

Education consultant David Rubel wants to see ramped up publicity before it’s too late, fearing the unspent money could be roughly $46 million across the two most recent disbursements.

“Parents did not know they had more P-EBT dollars coming due to minimal publicity,” said Rubel, who obtained the data on unused benefits through a public records request.

Families say it’s hard to get help

Carol Jackson, a Queens parent, said she received a text message in July notifying her that she’d soon receive a P-EBT card in the mail, but it never arrived.

As a SNAP recipient at the time, she should have seen her P-EBT benefits added directly to her existing account, but Jackson added she wasn’t sure whether the benefits were ever provided there, either.

She tried calling the helpline, but couldn’t get through to an agent, she said.

Meanwhile, Lynn Lu, a Manhattan parent and professor at the CUNY School of Law, said she experienced difficulties accessing the benefits last year on one of her children’s P-EBT cards, after they switched schools. She tried calling for assistance to check the balance on the card or figure out how to get it replaced, but wasn’t able to get a clear answer.

As part of her work at CUNY, she teaches a law school clinic where they represent clients in maintaining public assistance, like SNAP. But even as a member of listservs discussing such benefits, Lu said she was only “dimly aware” that another disbursement of P-EBT funds had rolled out this fall.

“It does raise this question of: How is word getting out to the general public?” she said, adding she couldn’t recall her children’s schools ever saying anything about the pandemic food benefits.

All families with valid phone numbers on file with their school district should receive a text message whenever new benefits become available, according to state officials. But some families said they never received such messages, even if they got initial notifications about their P-EBT cards.

In a statement, Anthony Farmer, a spokesperson for OTDA, said the agency has “worked tirelessly” to distribute the benefits to millions of residents across the state.

“The agency also conducted extensive public outreach and worked closely with advocacy organizations across the state to ensure eligible families are aware of these benefits and could take steps to redeem them,” he said.

More recent allotments will continue to be sent out to families through the end of December — including the at least $391 per child sent out for the summer of 2022 and the 2021-22 school year, as well as the $120 per child distributed for the summer of 2023 — according to OTDA.

One school reports widespread issues

Officials at the Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens say families at the school have not received P-EBT funds since the first disbursement in 2020. The school, which receives free meals through the city’s Education Department, serves students who are deaf from across the five boroughs.

Lori Glick, a social worker at the school, said families desperately need the extra support.

“There’s not enough food at home,” she said. “From the minute the announcement is made, they’re waiting for this money.”

State officials did not comment on the school’s specific situation, but said that not all children were eligible for all phases of P-EBT. For example, some of the allotments were based on COVID-related absences during the school year. Officials urged families with questions to call the P-EBT helpline.

Staff at the school said they remain unsure why families haven’t received more recent allotments of benefits.

“Honestly, it makes it look like we’re not doing something,” said Laura Cruz, the school’s director of pupil personnel services. “The families, they work with us, but then they get a little frustrated like, ‘What is Lexington not doing?’ And I don’t know if there’s something that we’re not doing.”

Community organizations report language barriers, other challenges

Both the P-EBT helpline and OTDA website offer information in languages other than English. Callers to the helpline can receive assistance from either an agent who speaks their native language or through an interpreter, while information posted online can be translated via a function at the bottom of the webpage, officials said.

But for some families with limited proficiency in English, using the benefits remains a constant struggle, said Wei Zhang, a program supervisor at the Chinese-American Planning Council.

Zhang works primarily with Chinese American families in Brooklyn who have children with disabilities and who have faced unemployment or been limited to part-time work since the onset of the pandemic. Many parents that he works with speak little English, making it hard for them to seek out help.

There’s been consistent confusion about how to activate P-EBT cards, how to use the benefits, and when more funds will be added, said Zhang, who has had to translate information about the benefits for families.

P-EBT can be particularly essential for those who earn just enough to be ineligible for SNAP benefits, added Mary Soriano and Sindy Rivera, senior case managers at WHEDco, a community development organization in the south Bronx.

“Pretty much all of their income is going towards rent, utilities, or child care,” Soriano said of the families they work with. “The pandemic EBT, as well as regular SNAP benefits, is what helps them feed their family — their children — every single day.”

But the vast majority of families they work with speak limited English, and some do not have consistent access to phones or computers, further complicating their ability to learn about and access their benefits.

Confusion surrounding the benefits has also been exacerbated by scams intended to steal them, like skimming or phishing, Zhang said. He’s seen families in Brooklyn lose their P-EBT benefits to such scams.

State officials have advised all EBT card holders, including P-EBT cardholders, to “remain vigilant” about potential scams. Taking basic precautions — like carefully inspecting point-of-sale devices, changing PINs regularly, and reviewing transaction history often — can help protect the benefits.

While the state received federal approval to replace stolen SNAP benefits in some circumstances earlier this year, P-EBT benefits are not eligible for replacement under federal guidelines, officials said.

Other states face P-EBT distribution issues

New York isn’t the only state to face hurdles in getting families to spend the federal benefits. In Maine, distribution of P-EBT cards this year spurred confusion among families and some school administrators. In California, nearly $1 billion in benefits remained unspent as of July. Meanwhile, in Mississippi, more than 14,000 families had their cards deactivated by mistake in 2021.

Benefit scams, too, have occurred across the country.

Though some families in New York City have encountered difficulties, most stress the benefits remain important.

Mangual, the parent coordinator, said she wished there were more avenues for parents to seek help. If schools had a point person to turn to for answers within their district, for example, it would be far easier to assist families, she said.

To Lu, the Manhattan parent, one of New York’s strengths during the pandemic was a pre-established “expectation that everyone is going to be able to get nutrition assistance through school, without any stigma.”

“That message is great,” she said. “But even when you do something helpful, there’s still going to be glitches.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools graduation rates hit record high, data show

2023-10-31T19:01:51+00:00

A greater share of Chicago Public Schools students graduated last school year than in 2022, reaching a new record, officials announced Tuesday.

The graduation rate of 84% — representing students who graduated in four years — was 1.1 percentage points higher than the graduation rate for the Class of 2022, when 82.9% of high school students graduated on time. The dropout rate for the Class of 2023 was slightly higher at 9.4% than it was for the Class of 2022, which saw 8.9% of students drop out between freshman year and graduation.

Chicago Public Schools’ five-year graduation rate for the Class of 2022 — which includes students who take extra time to finish their diploma either at a traditional or alternative school — was 85.6%, 1.6 percentage points higher than for the class of 2021 when it was 84%.

District officials announced the numbers with fanfare at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez flanked by Mayor Brandon Johnson and joined virtually by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Martinez said the rising graduation rate was a sign that the district is continuing to recover from the pandemic, reminding the audience that the students in the Class of 2023 were freshmen as the pandemic started in 2020, followed by two school years of remote and hybrid learning.

“When you think about their last year, their senior year, was probably their most normal year, I want you to take these results and put them in that context,” Martinez said.

Cardona described the graduation rates as “promising signs for the future of education in Chicago.” He highlighted the district’s use of federal COVID relief dollars, which CPS has put toward several purposes, including covering teacher salaries and hiring more instructional staff.

The announcement came one day after Illinois state education officials released statewide data, including graduation rates that had also increased across Illinois. (The state and Chicago Public Schools calculate graduation rates differently, so Chalkbeat is unable to provide direct comparisons.)

Chicago’s graduation rate has steadily increased over time, hitting a record high in 2022 even as students have faced academic challenges connected to the pandemic. Tuesday’s announcement comes on the heels of another report that found a rising share of CPS students are enrolling in college.

Racial disparities among graduates still remain, though they are narrowing. Graduation rates increased for Black, Hispanic and Asian American students, while dropping slightly for white students — by .4 percentage points — compared to the Class of 2022. Rates also dropped for multiracial students by 5.7 percentage points.

Nearly 75% of Black boys graduated in four years, up from roughly 65% five years ago, according to district data.

Despite higher graduation rates, SAT scores dipped for the Class of 2023, to an average composite score of 914. The average score for the Class of 2022 was 927, according to district data. Separately, the district also saw slightly fewer ninth graders — 88.7% — who were on track to graduate by 2026. That’s compared to 88.8% of the class that’s one year older than them.

As the pandemic set in, the district relaxed some grading policies, as did other school systems across the nation — raising questions about how such policies may have contributed to CPS’s rising graduation rates. Martinez argued that an increase in students completing college-level credits was a sign students were held to a high standard. Just under half of the Class of 2023 earned early college credits, a 5% increase from 2022, according to the district.

One of those students is Zaid Orduño, who said at Tuesday’s press conference that he took college-level courses at Daley College during his time at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, through the district’s Early College Program. His classes at Daley included English, math, sociology, and psychology, and he ultimately earned an associate’s degree alongside his high school diploma.

Taking those classes, he said, inspired him to pass up his original plan of joining his family’s construction business and instead pursue a civil engineering degree at Illinois Tech, he said.

A wall at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts is dedicated to remembering a hunger strike held in 2015 to demand for the reopening of Dyett, which was closed at the time.

Dyett, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side, saw its graduation rate tick up by more than 3 percentage points, to 86%. Johnson noted how far the school had come since he and other community members participated in a highly publicized hunger strike in 2015 to demand that Dyett, then shuttered, reopen. He also recognized fellow hunger striker Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who now represents the neighborhood nearby in City Council and serves as the chair of the Committee on Education and Child Development.

“A hunger striker can turn into a mayor and an alderman, and more importantly, a hunger strike can lead to the success that we are experiencing with our students right here at Dyett High School,” Johnson said.

He also used the moment to once again advocate for expanding the Sustainable Community Schools Initiative that Dyett and 19 other schools are a part of. The program partners schools with a nonprofit that provides wraparound services for students and families.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC teens rethink college and career options, counselors are trying to adapt

2023-10-30T16:44:21+00:00

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When students come into Danielle Insel’s college and career advising office with their sights set on higher education, she has a checklist of next steps ready. For years, around nine out of 10 kids fell into that camp, she estimates.

But recently, a growing number of seniors — upwards of 30%, she guesses — have told her they have no intention of going to college. And more kids than ever are considering ways to make money without a college degree, Insel said – driven in part by people and jobs they’ve encountered on social media. For those students, there’s no equivalent checklist.

Insel has one student this year determined to be a tattoo artist. But after researching potential trade school options and finding nothing affordable, Insel — the postsecondary readiness counselor at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn — said they came up with a plan for the student to visit tattoo parlors and ask if they’d take her on as an apprentice. So far, one has invited her back for a more in-depth conversation.

The shift in Insel’s office is not an isolated case.

The pandemic profoundly reshaped the college and career landscape for high school graduates in New York City and across the country. And the counselors who advise them have had to change their approach in response.

The rate of city students enrolling in some form of higher education within six months of graduation fell from 81% in 2019 to 71% in 2021 — the lowest rate since at least 2007, according to city data. Nationwide, 62% of recent high school graduates enrolled in college in 2022, down from 66% in 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That drop combined with the increasing interest in non-college options has spurred counselors like Insel who have historically focused primarily on pushing students toward college to spend more time and effort helping students navigate the world of work and trade school.

“I’ve changed my language to, ‘I’m not here to push college on anyone, there are plenty of different pathways,’” said Insel.

That shift in language mirrors one across the entire New York City Education Department, which went from touting a program called “College Access For All” several years ago, to pushing a new initiative focused on “career-connected learning” and multiple “pathways.”

Danielle Insel, the postsecondary readiness counselor at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in Brooklyn, said she’s changed how she talks to students about their options after graduating high school.

Roughly 100 high schools across the city are getting money through the new FutureReadyNYC initiative to roll out career and technical education courses, and thousands of students are participating in paid internships or apprenticeships.

“What you’re seeing all across the nation, this idea that everybody’s just promoting college, college, college … There’s got to be another way and another track and another pathway for kids to be successful,” schools Chancellor David Banks previously told Chalkbeat.

Helping students with detailed post-graduation plans

In many ways, that’s a welcome change, counselors said. Previously, Insel sometimes felt the singular focus on college could be alienating and make some students “upset and scared and confused.” It could also push some students who weren’t ready into college, leading them to drop out and wind up with debt, not degrees.

Even as many counselors welcome the new acceptance of non-college pathways, it presents some challenges.

Some counselors still worry about the availability of long-term, economically-secure life paths for their non-college bound kids.

The majority of new jobs posted in New York City require a bachelor’s degree, and there are still stubborn disparities across a range of life outcomes – including a growing gap in life expectancy – between Americans with a college education and those without.

Moreover, the roadmap for how to best support kids uninterested in college is often less clear than for their college-bound peers, counselors said.

Educators in New York City feel “overwhelmed” by keeping track of the many programs across the five boroughs for students looking to enter the workforce without a college degree, according to a September report from College Access: Research and Action, which conducted in-depth interviews with educators from nine city schools.

Multiple counselors who spoke to Chalkbeat lamented the lack of affordable, quality trade school options for recent high school graduates, and said the few programs they’ve traditionally relied on, like the Coop Tech program run by the city Education Department, have gotten harder for students to get into as demand has grown.

For Adeola Alexander, a veteran college counselor at Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn, the challenge lies in striking the right balance between supporting students’ immediate goals, interests and economic needs, and looking out for their long-term prospects.

“Once young people start to work, that’s a good thing,” she said. “But the money you make at 16 is not sustainable for you when you’re 26. … I just want to ensure that when students are being exposed to careers and jobs that there’s a long-term plan for them.”

Education Department officials say they’re planning to ensure by 2030 that every high school graduate – college-bound or not – leaves school with a detailed plan of their next steps.

“If you think about how fast the world is changing, and the different kinds of occupations and careers,” Jade Grieve, the Education Department’s Chief of Student Pathways, recently told reporters, “that’s deep, hard work.”

Students facing a new college reality

Counselors said a number of factors drove down college enrollment during the pandemic.

Many students disengaged from school during remote learning, and came back “a little bit disillusioned with college-going,” said Alexander.

Other teens had family members who lost jobs, and felt additional pressure to make money – putting the idea of college temporarily out of the question, counselors said.

Still others were frightened by the prospect of attending any in-person classes while COVID-19 was spreading, or were deterred by vaccine mandates at colleges, counselors said.

It’s clear that the pandemic wasn’t the only force driving the decline in college enrollment.

Adeola Alexander, a college counselor at Brooklyn’s Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning High School, said she works to ensure students have a long-term plan for their careers.

Students in New York City, like those across the country, have long been concerned about the potential risks of student debt and whether investments in higher education will pay off, counselors said. And some educators said they saw those worries escalate in recent years as the national conversation on the student debt crisis intensified.

“Absolutely I have noticed more students talking about debt and talking about either people they know or people they’ve seen on social media who have taken out a lot of debt and couldn’t pay it,” said Alexander.

The kids most likely to fall off the college track were those who might’ve in past years attended community colleges, which offer two-year programs and enroll higher shares of Black, Latino and students from low-income backgrounds, data suggests.

There are signs of a modest rebound this year. After years of enrollment declines, the City University of New York, by far the most popular destination for New York City public high school graduates, saw a slight uptick in this year’s freshman class compared with last year.

Some schools like Insel’s require all students, even those certain they won’t attend, to submit applications for CUNY.

The city Education Department launched an initiative this year to deliver a CUNY acceptance letter to every high school graduate in the hopes that having a physical letter in hand may give students who were on the fence the extra boost they need to enroll.

Alexander, the counselor in Flatbush, patiently walks her students through a thicket of misconceptions about the economics of college, explaining that it’s often feasible to work and attend school at the same time, like she did. Most students who attend CUNY, moreover, graduate with no debt, and in some cases, taking on a small amount of debt can be a responsible financial decision, when it’s likely to reap long-term gains, she tells students.

Alexander’s work with students often continues after they graduate. Every year, she gets a trickle of students returning to her office because they’re interested in restarting college after dropping out or enrolling for the first time.

Counselors navigate the world of work

Postsecondary counselors seeking to advise students who don’t plan on attending college often have to navigate a world of work where the steps are less clear, and the resources more scattered, than they are for students pursuing higher education.

For many students, trade school can seem like a logical first step. But finding trade schools that are affordable and vetted for quality is often a challenge, counselors said.

“I do struggle still with helping students find what I want to say is viable trade school options,” said Alexander.

Many trade programs don’t offer their own financial aid, and may not accept the same state and federal aid as colleges, counselors said.

And while colleges are required to provide public information on costs, completion rates, and long-term work outcomes for their graduates, that information can be harder to find for trade and vocational programs.

In this vein, the September report from College Access: Research and Action stated that “educators are rightfully asking about the return on investment of the alternatives that are being offered.”

Counselors guiding a student directly into a specific line of work can feel additional pressure to understand the economics of that industry, since the student won’t have the flexibility that comes with a college degree.

Jasmine Benzvi, a counselor at Queens Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in Forest Hills, said it’s part of her job to keep up with “what’s happening in the job market, where the jobs are going, and which fields pay well.” But she acknowledged it’s “not possible to be an expert on all of those things.”

Several counselors pointed to another factor that may be swaying students’ views on whether they need higher education.

“I honestly believe TikTok and social media has shown our students can earn money in a variety of ways without a college degree,” said Insel.

Students interested in cosmetology, for example, who see online influencers making money from hair and makeup tutorials, may see it as a more viable path, Insel said.

Insel said she’s started looking into the economics of a career as a social media influencer so she can have more concrete information to share with kids.

“I’ve definitely had to learn along the way,” she said.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Perry schools will offer pay raises to attract and retain bus drivers

2023-10-26T21:18:16+00:00

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Perry Township Schools is raising wages for new and current bus drivers as the district continues to face staffing strains, even though it redrew some school enrollment boundaries earlier this year to try to ease the problem.

With a recruitment event coming up Saturday, the Perry school board this week approved a 5% pay increase for all current drivers that will be retroactive to the start of the school year. Additionally, drivers who have been with the district since at least since March will be eligible for a $500 retention bonus if they stay until January 2024.

Starting pay for new drivers will rise 2.5% to $23.57 per hour.

All other support staff, like cafeteria and custodial workers, will also get the same pay rate increases. Administrators, meanwhile, will receive a 4% base pay increase.

Like districts across the country, Perry faced struggles throughout the pandemic to keep its bus routes staffed. Ahead of this school year, Perry redrew elementary school enrollment boundaries to shorten and consolidate bus routes and ensure each route had its own regular driver in place, rather than a substitute. All the routes still have a regular driver, said district spokesperson Elizabeth Choi.

The change has improved the district’s busing issues, Choi said. But buses sometimes still arrive late because of staffing problems.

For example, on Monday, the first day after the district’s two-week fall break, a large number of drivers were absent, Choi said. In cases like that, the district will first turn to substitute drivers to fill the routes, then to licensed office staff and mechanics.

If there’s still a need, the district sends drivers back to cover additional routes — though this can mean some students arrive well after the school day has begun.

“Lack of drivers has a domino effect on the rest of the school day for our students,” said Board President Emily Hartman in a district press release, calling the pay increases a “necessary decision.”

Since January, 25 bus drivers have left the district, including 10 who retired, said Choi. The district has an 80% driver retention rate, she said.

The district is hosting a recruitment event on Saturday that will allow would-be drivers to test drive a bus, talk to current drivers, and ask questions. The event will take place at Jeremiah Gray Elementary from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools could see a $391M budget deficit next school year, official says

2023-10-25T21:59:31+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is expecting a $391 million budget shortfall next year as federal COVID relief money runs out, officials said Wednesday.

The district has received $2.8 billion in COVID relief since the onset of the pandemic. The last $300 million of that will be spent in 2025, according to Mike Sitkowski, chief budget officer for CPS, who shared the figures during a Board of Education meeting. The current budget is $9.4 billion. Next year’s budget starts July 1, 2024 and will cover the 2024-25 school year.

By law, the school district must balance its budget, Sitkowski noted. That means district officials will either have to cut expenses or find a way to boost revenue. Board President Jianan Shi called for the latter.

“Our district needs more revenue, and this is a moment for all of us at every level to stand up and advocate for our teachers, our students, our families, for this board to advocate for more revenue at the state, local, and federal levels,” Shi said after the presentation.

The financial update comes as the City Council holds budget hearings for the city’s next budget, which is due by the end of the year but is typically finalized by Thanksgiving. The district’s budget operates on a different timeline, more closely matching the school year. The district will also hold budget community roundtables for the public throughout November. (Dates can be found here.)

Districts across the nation have been bracing for financial challenges as their pandemic relief dollars run out. Chicago officials have directed their relief dollars toward employee salaries, hiring more instructional staff and creating several new programs. About $670 million of federal relief was included in this year’s budget — representing about 7% of the current budget set to end June 30, 2024.

Asked on previous occasions about what CPS will do once the federal money runs out, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has said district officials plan to ask the state for more support.

The $391 million deficit is the result of complicated collection of revenues and costs the district is projecting for next year: First, the district will have a $670 million hole in next year’s budget due to the loss of federal pandemic aid, according to Sitkowski’s presentation. That gap will be partially filled by the last bit of federal relief — about $300 million. However, the district is also expecting $123 million more in expenses it says it can’t control, including for teacher pension costs, debt service, health care costs, and inflation, Sitkowski said.

Those costs will be partially offset by rising revenues of $102 million, which include $23 million more from the state, as well as some rising tax collections, and more state support for pensions, according to Sitkowski.

The projections shared on Wednesday seem to outpace what a previous analysis warned of. A report issued under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned of a potential $628 million deficit by 2026 and predicted a neutral outlook for 2025. The report also noted that as the city has shifted more costs onto the district, it could shoulder more expenses as the board goes from mayoral control to an elected body.

District officials have been ratcheting up pressure for more money from state officials. This school year, CPS is projected to see a $23 million increase in state funding, for a total of about $1.77 billion this school year.

But on Wednesday, Sitkowski said that if the state fully funded districts under the Evidence-Based Funding Formula, CPS would have an additional $1.1 billion in funding.

Last month, the board highlighted the need for $3.1 billion to address critical repairs at school facilities over the next five years.

Sitkowski said direct funding at the school level has also increased by $1 billion since fiscal year 2019, even as enrollment dipped. More than 2,300 teachers were hired in that time, including classroom teachers, interventionists, and educators for the arts and physical education, he noted.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Rising share of Chicago Public Schools graduates are pursuing college, study finds

2023-10-12T18:25:42+00:00

A rising share of Chicago Public Schools students enrolled in college in recent years, and far more are earning degrees or certificates at two-year colleges.

That’s according to a study released Thursday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To & Through Project, which tracks college enrollment. Additionally, the study found that more Chicago students than ever are projected to pursue and complete college over the next decade.

The study’s findings run counter to national trends of sagging college enrollment during the pandemic; nationwide enrollment in two- and four-year colleges fell by .6% from 2021 to 2022, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Many young people across the nation are questioning whether higher education is worth the cost, said Jenny Nagaoka, one of the study’s authors and deputy director of the Consortium on School Research.

Higher education is “tremendously expensive, student debt is a huge issue [and] ultimately for a lot of students they’re unclear if the payoffs will be there,” Nagaoka said. “But CPS students are still going to college. They’re still seeing there’s value in it.”

Research shows that a college education can lead to better salary-earning potential, provide better access to high-quality housing, and contribute to better overall health, according to a review of literature by Healthy People 2030, a federal government-led project that tracks health data.

“We are hearing so much discouraging news about achievement in our schools right now, and this is not to say that’s not real, but I think it’s really important to note that at the same time, we’re actually also seeing increases in attainment,” Nagaoka said.

The study used a measure called the Post-Secondary Attainment Index, or PAI, to project college enrollment and completion based on current high school graduation and college enrollment and completion rates. Researchers calculated graduation rates slightly differently from the district, which is why they’ve come up with an 84-percent graduation rate for 2022 versus 82.9% reported by CPS. (The authors emphasized that the index is not meant to be a prediction; rather, it is a “starting place” to understand how to improve current patterns.)

This year the index is 30%, meaning that if CPS graduation and college enrollment and completion rates remained the same over the next decade, 30 out of 100 current ninth graders would earn a college credential by the time they are 25, researchers project. That is a 2.4 percentage point increase over last year and the highest rate on record since researchers began calculating this index in 2013. At that time, the index was 23%.

This year’s ninth graders were in middle school when the pandemic shuttered school buildings.

Nagaoka said they’re “cautiously optimistic” that these trends won’t reverse in the future, since this year’s record-setting data reflects students who were in high school and college during the pandemic.

But the study also found significant racial disparities within the data. For example, 66% percent of Asian American women would earn a college credential over the next decade according to the PAI, but just 13.6% of Black men would do the same.

During an event Thursday announcing the study’s findings, CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova acknowledged that the district has more to do to close racial disparities.

“With these groups, especially at the high school level, we’ve learned that one of the most impactful ways we can provide support is by establishing partnerships that will provide mentorship and guidance to the students throughout their high school experience,” she said.

The researchers also studied college enrollment data from 2022 and college completion data from 2021, based on data that was available. Some highlights included:

60.8% of CPS students who graduated in 2022 immediately enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges, 1.5 percentage points higher than the class of 2021.
There are stark racial disparities in who pursued college upon graduation in 2022. For example, nearly 80% of white women immediately enrolled in college upon graduation, while just 45% of Black male students did the same.
Just over 53% of English learners immediately pursued college after graduating last year, compared with 68% of former English learners.
For the class of 2015, nearly 56% of students who immediately enrolled in a four-year college and roughly one-third of students who immediately enrolled in a two-year college eventually earned a bachelor’s or associate degree, or earned a certificate by 2021.
For those who did not immediately enroll in college in 2015, roughly 3% earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. Another 5% completed an associate degree or certificate. While those rates are on the rise, they are 1.7 percentage points smaller than similar completion rates for the class of 2009.
The percentage of students who earned some sort of college credential after enrolling in four-year schools dipped by .6% between the graduating classes of 2014 and 2015.

Chkoumbova attributed the gains to various efforts across district schools to keep students interested in school and prepared for the future, including more career and technical education and dual-credit programs. She also pointed to the district’s work on how it disciplines students. Rather than suspending students, schools are using restorative practices to keep them connected and in class.

A district spokesperson pointed to a host of other programs, such as a new pilot initiative that aims to re-engage young people who are no longer in school or working. The spokesperson also pointed to efforts to get students interested in college and staying there. That includes the Direct Admissions Initiative, which tells seniors whether they can get into a select list of colleges, and another program that provides students with support and mentorship in the two years after they graduate from high school.

Nagaoka also highlighted the increase of 5.6 percentage points in the two-year college completion rate for class of 2015 graduates, the largest increase by far over at least the past six years.

That increase, researchers and Chkoumbova noted, coincides with the onset of Chicago’s STAR Scholarship, which former Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced in the fall of 2014 and offers free tuition to City Colleges for any CPS student with at least a 3.0 grade point average by high school graduation.

Chicago’s college enrollment rates beat national figures for high-poverty schools by about 11 percentage points, researchers found. Nagaoka attributed this in part to efforts by counselors, nonprofits, and others who work in schools to ensure students know about their college options.

More specifically, CPS requires students to create a post-secondary plan, or “evidence of a plan for life beyond high school,” in order to graduate from high school. That requirement forces students to have a conversation about what’s next, she said.

Ninety-seven percent of seniors in the class of 2022 submitted a post-secondary plan, a district spokesperson said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Absenteeism remains high, with 31% of Colorado students missing too much school last year

2023-10-04T23:30:50+00:00

Nearly a third of Colorado students were chronically absent last year, missing 10% or more of the days they were supposed to be in school, according to new state data released Wednesday.

That’s slightly better than the 2021-22 school year — when COVID’s omicron variant ripped through schools — but far worse than any year before the pandemic.

Colorado education leaders are sounding the alarm about the missed days, as student academic performance still hasn’t recovered to prepandemic levels.

“Every day a student is in school is an opportunity for them to learn, build relationships and access support,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said in a press release. “We know districts are working hard to ensure students attend school regularly. But we need everyone, including educators, parents, students and community members, to make a renewed effort on this important matter.”

“The surest way to make improvements in our recovery from the disruptions of the pandemic is for kids to be in school,” Córdova added.

Colorado’s chronic absenteeism rate was 31% last year, representing 269,582 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Before COVID, rates ranged from 18% to 24%. Colorado is not alone, with most states reporting more students missing school.

Some groups had a greater share of students who were chronically absent. Kindergartners and 10th, 11th, and 12th graders all had chronic absenteeism rates above 35%. Roughly 40% of English learners missed too many days of school, as did 43% of low-income students and 60% of homeless students.

And the majority of absences — 62% — were excused.

Johann Liljengren, director of the dropout prevention and student re-engagement office in the Colorado Department of Education, said schools report a wide range of reasons students aren’t showing up to school. Expectations around health and wellness are different in the wake of COVID, and there’s more concern about not spreading illness to others. State education officials point to “how sick is too sick” guidance for when kids should stay home.

Some students report that they feel anxious or that they don’t feel safe at school. Others are disengaged or bored, and much of their schoolwork is now available online, even if instruction is supposed to happen in person.

School-based attendance workers and others who work with youth missing school describe teenagers sleeping in after working overnight shifts and elementary students who don’t make it to school because a parent is depressed or overwhelmed.

A few absences a month that don’t feel like much to a parent can add up over time.

And missing school can be a warning sign for future problems. Students who are chronically absent in middle school are more likely to drop out of high school, he said.

Liljengren said more schools are beginning to use attendance teams that go over data, reach out to families, and make home visits. The state, meanwhile, has some grants available to support that work and also points schools to organizations like Attendance Works, which provides free resources. The state has also convened a cohort of school district leaders to share information and learn from each other.

Liljengren stressed that schools need to give students a reason to show up.

“What are we really valuing about in-person or live lessons?” he said. “We are thinking about how we really draw students in.”

See district level attendance data here.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

More NYC teachers are frequently out sick following COVID-19 pandemic

2023-09-25T20:29:17+00:00

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New York City teachers are calling out sick more frequently in the wake of the pandemic, following a national trend of increased educator absences as COVID-19 and other illnesses continue to swirl, city data shows.

During the six years prior to the pandemic, about 14% of teachers each school year used more than their 10 allotted sick days on average. That percentage sank to historic lows during the two school years in which classes were fully or partially remote, according to city numbers.

But when full-time, in-person classes resumed in the 2021-2022 school year, the number of teachers using 11 or more sick days jumped to 16% and continued climbing to nearly 19% last school year, according to the most recent Mayor’s Management Report.

Teachers along with union and Education Department officials attribute the rise in teacher absences to the ongoing impact of COVID-19 and other illnesses — including the surge of the highly contagious omicron variant in winter 2021 and the “tripledemic” of COVID-19, flu, and RSV cases last winter.

“Since the onset of the COVID pandemic, everyone, including teachers, have been encouraged to take the time that they need to recover when sick and stop the spread of communicable diseases,” said Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull. “This can lead to an increase in the rates at which teachers are absent.”

Elevated teacher absences can have a “tremendous effect” on school operations, said Roony Vizcaino, the principal of the Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce in Harlem, which has seen an increase in teacher absences over the past two school years.

“You don’t have that continuity of instruction, of relationship building,” Vizcaino said, and for students already dealing with disruption and uncertainty on a daily basis, the absence of a trusted adult can “derail” the rest of the school day.

Higher rates of chronically absent teachers are correlated with lower student achievement.

Substitutes are often difficult to find, and when they do come, can rarely replace full-time classroom teachers, Vizcaino added. Turning to other teachers to cover vacant classes can increase stress and burnout for those educators — forcing them to take time off to recover.

“It becomes this sort of domino effect in the school where adults are taking time off and there’s a collective complaint about, ‘Why am I covering classes every day,’” he said.

Calling out sick is rarely a full respite even for the teachers who do it, several educators noted, given the amount of work it can take to prepare plans for a substitute or colleague and catch students up when they return.

The city’s tally of teacher absenteeism looks at the number of sick days used but not vacation days, according to an education department spokesperson.

The uptick in New York City mirrors a national trend. During the 2021-2022 school year, nearly three-quarters of schools across the country reported more teacher absences than in a typical pre-pandemic school year, according to a survey from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Student chronic absenteeism has also spiked in New York City and across the country over the past two school years.

Brooklyn elementary school teacher Sarah Allen said COVID was “definitely the biggest thing” causing her and colleagues to miss more school in recent years.

“It can go on for weeks with just one case of COVID in your family,” Allen added, noting many teachers also had to stay home to care for sick family members.

Teachers were granted additional days off that weren’t drawn from their normal 10 sick days to recover from COVID-19 or the effects of vaccinations.

This school year, teachers who test positive for COVID will get five days off to recover before dipping into their sick days, and will get four hours of leave to recover from a COVID booster shot, according to guidance from the union.

Many educators are also now more cautious about showing up to work with symptoms, union officials said.

“Like the rest of the working public, educators and school staff are less likely to go to work with a cough or a cold now than pre-Covid,” said a spokesperson for the United Federation of Teachers.

Allen also said that she saw more colleagues taking mental health days, as educators confront mounting levels of stress and burnout.

“People I know who don’t usually take them, we were just extra beaten down last year,” she said. “It feels like for many of us [there are] more behavior issues, greater needs, money given to families is ending. There’s more on our plates, and everybody is exhausted.”

Caroline Shepard, a teacher and union chapter leader at Simon Baruch Middle School in Manhattan, said educators are more willing to enforce work-life balance in the wake of the pandemic.

“Personal boundaries are just stronger, and I think it’s a good thing,” she said.

Vizcaino said he’s tried both positive incentives for strong teacher attendance and disciplinary measures for especially high rates of absence, but neither has made much of a difference in recent years.

The increase in teacher absenteeism comes as rates of teachers leaving the profession have gone up in New York City and across the country. Vizcaino sees the two as related.

“Folks want to preserve themselves as much as possible,” he said. “I think for teachers, they’re saying, ‘This is a marathon. If I have to pause in this marathon once or twice… that’s okay, then I can finish the race.’”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@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.

As NYC COVID cases rise, one Brooklyn school adopts temporary mask mandate

2023-09-20T15:22:36+00:00

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Just weeks into the new academic year, a middle school in a Brooklyn charter network has reinstated a mask mandate amid a sudden surge in COVID cases, Chalkbeat has learned.

The move follows warnings from some health experts and weeks of steadily climbing case numbers in New York City — signs COVID will once again remain a factor in the nation’s largest school system.

The Brooklyn Prospect Charter School network last week notified families at its Windsor Terrace Middle School, located in Downtown Brooklyn, that a spike of cases among sixth graders prompted the temporary mask mandate. The requirement would last until each grade went five days without any new cases, according to an email sent to families.

Those precautionary measures continued into this week.

Tuesday, another email to families noted the school had seen “a severe spike of new cases across the building,” with “many students and staff being out sick.” That email said a mandate would remain in effect until further notice, requiring all staff members to wear masks, with students “strongly advised” to do the same.

“Throughout the pandemic, in accordance with public health guidance, we have done everything we can to ensure that our school communities are safe spaces of learning,” a spokesperson for the network said in a statement. “No one wants to return to a world where all students are required to wear masks to attend school and so we are following state health guidelines by encouraging students to wear masks while leaving the ultimate decision of whether to do so up to our students and their families.”

Network officials declined to say how many students or staff had tested positive, but said that Brooklyn Prospect has continually tracked COVID cases in its schools.

The impact of COVID on public schools citywide can be difficult to follow. This month, Education Department officials scrapped a map reporting daily case counts among students and staff in the city’s schools. They said schools no longer needed to report cases this year, though the city’s Health Department would continue to monitor cases among school-aged children. (Some individual schools might continue to track cases among their communities, but they no longer need to send the data to the Education Department.)

The Education Department maintains COVID guidance on its website, but little information has been distributed to families this year about protocols in schools. Charters, such as those run by the Brooklyn Prospect network, can create their own protocols.

Overall daily case numbers across the five boroughs have steadily risen in recent months, according to the city’s health department. The average number of new cases jumped from around 250 in June to roughly 1,300 as of September. Hospitalizations as a result of the virus have also spiked upwards, though both metrics remain well below their peaks earlier in the pandemic.

Still, even a modest resurgence in COVID cases could signal an additional challenge for schools, potentially worsening absenteeism rates that have surged in NYC since the pandemic began. Roughly 53% of public school students were fully vaccinated as of November 2022, according to the most recently available public data.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org

Chicago Public Schools enrollment is stable for first time in more than a decade

2023-09-20T02:26:40+00:00

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Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools is flat for the first time in more than a decade, according to preliminary data obtained by Chalkbeat.

New preliminary numbers for this school year show just over 322,500 students are registered at CPS schools. The data represents enrollment as of the end of the day Monday, the 20th day of the school year, when the district traditionally takes its official count. On the 20th day of last school year, 322,106 students were enrolled according to official data.

CPS enrollment has been in decline for 12 years, so this year’s shift is significant.

In the past decade, the district’s student body shrunk by 20%, with the district seeing multiple year-over-year declines of roughly 10,000 students. The dramatic contraction began after the 2011-12 school year, which was the last year CPS saw a bump in enrollment, from 402,681 to 404,151 students. Last year, Chicago lost its standing as the nation’s third largest district.

Enrollment now appears to be leveling off in Chicago. In the past year, the city has welcomed thousands of migrant families from the southern border and in July, a top mayoral aide suggested that newcomers were boosting enrollment in schools.

A district spokesperson, however, said enrollment changes are due to multiple reasons and cautioned against attributing the shifts to “any one group of students.”

“We will offer more analysis and context to our enrollment figures later this month,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said in a statement. “We are honored and privileged to serve each and every student.”

It’s too early to tell if this is the start of a new trend, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

“If it’s just a one-time pause in the trends of declining enrollment, it might not have a big overall long-term effect, but it’s really just hard to say right now since we don’t know what will happen in the future,” Allensworth said.

Thinning enrollment was driven by factors such as dipping birth rates and other population changes. With the onset of the pandemic, districts across the country enrolled fewer students, with more than 33,000 students falling off Chicago’s rolls since the fall of 2020.

Shrinking schools have left CPS officials and mayors to contend with how to best fund classrooms, especially as student needs grew during the pandemic. Enrollment has long been a determining factor for how much state and federal money a district gets. Mayor Brandon Johnson has been an outspoken critic of tying enrollment to funding, but past mayors have funded schools within CPS based on how many kids they serve.

Even with fewer students, the district’s budget has grown to $9.4 billion. That’s roughly flat compared to last year’s budget, but up from a decade ago when it hovered around $6 billion. A new state funding formula and a wave of pandemic recovery money have helped offset enrollment declines. Though state money is increasing, the district has recently seen fewer dollars than expected due to lower enrollment and increased property wealth.

According to preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat, there are 5,767 more students learning English as a new language this school year than last year. That’s a sizable jump: CPS has historically enrolled an average of 3,000 new English learners annually, a district spokesperson said.

CPS officials said they do not track immigration status of students. They have pointed to the growth in English language learners as one sign of newcomers, but emphasized that not all English language learners are newcomers.

The district enrolls migrant students in three ways. First, like any student, migrant children can enroll directly at schools. They can also make an appointment at the city’s new welcome center housed inside Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School on the West Side.

Finally, enrollment teams are going to families’ homes, after receiving information from the city’s Department of Family and Support Services about those in need of help who can’t make it to the welcome center, said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

Schools across the district have historically struggled to meet state regulations for providing proper support for English learners. When finding a school with the right program for English learners, officials try to stay within a two-mile radius of the child’s home, Asaf said.

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which provides extra support for kids and families at a handful of Southwest Side schools as part of the district’s sustainable community schools initiative, said they’ve noticed an increase in migrant families among the parents they serve who don’t have stable housing.

Last year, the organization placed a case manager part-time at a high school in Back of the Yards that needed extra help with parents as they enrolled more migrant students, said Sara Reschly, deputy director of the group’s community services division.

At Brighton Park Elementary School, case manager Lupe Fernandez said newcomer families currently have very basic needs, such as undergarments and help navigating the CTA. The school is planning to create a free “closet” where families can pick up things they need for free.

“If there are schools that have those strong community partnerships, you know, like that would be a place to start because then you can wrap services around the whole family,” Reschly said.

Asaf, with the district, said they are processing more school transfers among newcomers as those families find new homes or more permanent housing.

Preliminary data analyzed by Chalkbeat show this school year, nearly a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students are learning English as a new language — a figure that trumps other large districts. For example, 14% of students in New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, were English learners last school year.

The preliminary data signals the continuation of another trend over the past decade: a decline in the share of students from low-income households. Preliminary data indicate that number is 67%, down from 73% last school year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools pauses COVID-19 vaccinations until doses of new version arrive

2023-09-15T16:25:00+00:00

Chicago Public Schools has temporarily stopped giving COVID-19 vaccines at school-based vaccination events and clinics, while officials wait for the recently approved new vaccines to arrive.

The move comes after the school district scaled back COVID guidance — ending school-based testing and continuing with no masking or quarantine requirements.

Chicago public health officials said Thursday that doses are expected to be here in the “coming weeks” and by early October, supply of the new version of the vaccine should be “plentiful.”

They encouraged anyone older than 6 months to get the new COVID vaccine as cases are already starting to rise heading into the fall and winter months.

“It’s clear that this will provide additional protection against COVID regardless of what vaccines you’ve gotten in the past, whether they were the primary series or last year’s bivalent booster,” said Brian Borah, medical director for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Surveillance at the Chicago Department of Public Health.

CPS officials said once doses arrive, the district will resume offering the shots for free.

The district is no longer tracking COVID vaccination rates by school or among students and staff. It is continuing to track self-reported cases. In previous years, data showed fewer than half of students were vaccinated with the original COVID vaccines and boosters, with schools on the South and West sides having some of the lowest rates of uptake.

CPS has 27 school-based health clinics and continues to offer vaccination events at schools and mobile events at charters and high schools. Students can also access free flu shots and vaccinations for other viruses that are required to attend public school, including tetanus, measles, and meningitis. According to WTTW, about half of all CPS schools are below “herd immunity” for measles, but rates have improved since dropping during the pandemic.

Because the COVID public health emergency has ended, vaccines for the virus have become “commercialized” and no longer covered by the federal government. City public health officials said those with insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid, should go to their doctor or local pharmacy for a shot first.

But the city and school district will continue to provide free vaccines to all children under 18 and those without insurance or those who are underinsured, regardless of immigration status, under other federal programs that allow them to do so.

In addition to the school-based clinics and events, the city operates three public immunization clinics in Uptown, Pilsen, and West Elsdon, near Midway Airport.

The department of public health will also run annual COVID and flu vaccination clinics at City Colleges locations on Saturdays in October and November.

Saturday, Oct. 7, Malcolm X College
Saturday, Oct. 14, Kennedy-King College
Saturday, Oct. 21, Wilbur Wright College
Saturday, Oct.28, Olive-Harvey College
Saturday, Nov. 4, Richard J. Daley College
Saturday, Nov. 11, Arthur Velasquez Institute
Saturday, Nov. 18, Truman College

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Schools face a funding cliff. How bad will the fall be?

2023-09-13T15:13:30+00:00

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It’s an ominous phrase that is top of mind for many school district officials: the “funding cliff.”

This refers to the imminent end of billions of dollars in federal COVID relief money that schools have been relying on during the pandemic. “The feds pushed a lot of money into the K-12 system,” said Lori Taylor, an education finance researcher at Texas A&M University. “Now the districts are being weaned off of that funding — they’re losing that shock absorber, that cushion.”

This has educators and experts nervous: the money might be gone before students have fully recovered academically and could lead to painful layoffs and other budget cuts. Some schools have already begun cutting back on recovery programs including tutoring, summer school, and extra staff, like college advisors.

But what is not yet clear is how steep the fall from the funding cliff will be. That’s because there are many other factors that will shape school budgets, including money from other sources. Plus, schools are making spending choices now that could lead to bigger or smaller cuts later.

What we do know is that high-poverty schools face a bigger cliff, that more federal money won’t be forthcoming, and that school budgets will be shaped both by districts’ own financial decisions and those made by state politicians. How precisely this plays out could affect classrooms and students for years to come.

Here, Chalkbeat offers a guide to the federal school funding cliff and what factors will make or break school budgets after the federal money runs out.

Schools got a lot of federal money, but it’s running out — and no more is coming

Schools have received a large infusion of federal money since the pandemic: roughly $190 billion or close to $4,000 per student.

The money was meant to address the consequences of the pandemic on schools, including learning loss. In practice, local officials had wide discretion over how to spend it. Money from the final pot has to be earmarked by the end of September 2024 (though schools can seek an extension for when that money is actually spent). The latest data shows that schools still have funding left, but are on track to use it all by the deadline.

Some advocates had hoped that even more federal dollars would be on the way. For instance, the Los Angeles teachers union had sought to make federal relief permanent. But this is not going to happen. The recent deal that President Joe Biden struck with Congressional Republicans limits new federal spending on education for the next couple years.

In sum, the infusion of temporary federal money really will be temporary. Once it’s spent, it’s gone.

High-poverty schools got more federal money, so face a steeper cliff

The COVID relief was not spread evenly across schools. Nationally, districts in more affluent areas received just over $1,000 per student, with some getting even less. High-poverty districts, on the other hand, got over $6,000 per student. A handful of very high poverty districts, like Detroit, received massive sums of money. There was also variation from state to state, with schools in the South getting more federal money as a percent of their total budgets.

This means that some schools will face little or no funding cliff while others will face steep cliffs. “Districts serving our neediest kids have further to fall,” noted a recent analysis published by the Brookings Institution.

The scope of cuts will depend on how schools have chosen to spend federal money

“A lot depends on how prudent they were in their use of the federal funds,” said Taylor. “Federal funds should have been interpreted as one-time money.”

It’s clear that a good chunk of the funding was indeed used for one-time expenses: HVAC and other building upgrades, personal-protective equipment for COVID, bonuses for staff.

Detroit, for instance, earmarked over half of its COVID relief for long-deferred facilities upgrades. “One thing that I’ve tried to do as superintendent is be disciplined with finances,” superintendent Nikolai Vitti recently told Chalkbeat. “I always think about recurring revenue with recurring expenditures, and one-time revenue with one-time expenditures.”

On the other hand, at least some districts have used COVID money for ongoing operating costs like paying teachers’ salaries and maintaining buildings. State data show that schools have been adding staff in recent years. As federal aid runs out, layoffs might follow.

There’s also a third, mushier category: supplementary expenses that schools have added to try to make up for learning loss or address other needs. Those might include expanded summer school programming, after-school tutoring time, vendor contracts, temporary new staff. Some have already begun cutting. Detroit eliminated some positions like college transition advisors. Districts in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Reno, Nevada have cut back on tutoring.

As the funding cliff approaches, these recovery add-ons may start to vanish even more rapidly. This programming may be easier to cut because it’s not part of core instruction, but could still be painful to lose, especially when students remain behind academically.

Generous state or local funding could cushion the fall

The biggest chunk of education funding comes from states, and they have been increasing spending on schools of late. One recent analysis found that most states have increased education spending in their budgets this year, often by substantial amounts. Last year, California passed a record state budget, which included a one-time $7.9 billion learning-recovery grant to schools, on top of the one-time federal aid.

If state funding continues to increase, districts could be protected from major cuts even as federal money dwindles.

David Lauck, CFO of Alliance College-Ready, a charter network in Los Angeles, says he’s not expecting immediate cutbacks thanks to funding increases from California. “We do not anticipate any major dropoff in programming,” he said.

More local funding could also help cushion schools. Officials in Kansas City are planning to use higher property tax revenue to keep some of the staff they added with federal aid. “We’ve done the work so we can retain them,” said Jennifer Collier, the superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools. “The cuts were not as deep as we originally thought.”

But states could soon face budget challenges, limiting their ability to help schools

States governments also received a separate $195 billion worth of temporary federal money. This has supported the generous education funding for schools, but it also means states face their own funding cliff. Moreover, many states are projecting that revenue from state taxes will decline next year.

“With more fiscal data coming in, the long-term health of state budgets looks murky,” concluded Lucy Dadayan, principal research associate with the Urban Institute.

That could create a double whammy for schools: federal funds run out and states don’t have the ability to provide an additional buffer. Once again, high poverty schools are more at risk because they tend to be most reliant on state funds. Local funding is also not a guaranteed backstop. The higher-poverty schools that face the greatest fiscal cliff typically have less property wealth to draw from.

The budget situation will likely vary by state. A number of Republican-leaning states have adopted tax cuts and private school choice programs, which could strain state budgets.

But there is some good news for public schools. States have built up substantial “rainy day” funds that could bolster budgets. Plus the broader economy, contrary to some predictions, is looking relatively strong. That’s a more promising indicator for state revenue, since a strong economy tends to mean higher funding from sales and income taxes.

Bruce Baker, a University of Miami professor and school finance researcher, says he suspects the upcoming funding cliff won’t be as bad as what happened after the Great Recession, when schools made deep cuts after federal aid runs out. But he said this will vary from place to place and that schools are to some extent at the mercy of state politicians.

“A lot of these cliffs are going to be a function of state choices,” said Baker.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

COVID guidance for NYC schools: Here’s what you need to know for this year

2023-09-12T18:55:36+00:00

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COVID has not disappeared from New York City, but the map showing the daily number of cases among students and staffers across schools has.

The Education Department scrapped the map on Monday.

Officials confirmed that schools are no longer reporting cases, though they said the Health Department would continue to closely monitor cases among school-aged children.

The map had been updated as recently as Monday morning. Three students and nine staffers had tested positive for Covid on Sept. 10, according to the data posted then. But after a reporter inquired about the data, the map was taken down after two years of daily updates.

The move comes amid an uptick in COVID cases across the five boroughs. The city saw a 25% increase from the previous week in the number of patients hospitalized with COVID, reaching 619 on Tuesday, according to a tracker created by the news site THE CITY using state data. There were about 87 cases per 100,000 people, according to New York City’s daily average of the last seven days from the Health Department.

The Education Department has sent out little information to families this year about COVID protocols in schools, but has guidance available on its website.

The department’s guidance remains consistent with latest recommendations from the city’s Health Department, the state, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Education Department officials said.

“COVID remains top of mind for many families,” schools Chancellor David Banks told reporters last week. “So we encourage families to stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccines. We’re also closely monitoring upticks and ensuring that schools are prepared for an increase in respiratory illnesses in the community.”

Here’s what you need to know about the approach to COVID in schools this year.

What if a student or school staffer tests positive for COVID?

The rules remain the same as last year.

First, if someone tests positive, they should isolate to help prevent spreading the virus to others.

Quarantine should last five days, with the day of the positive test considered Day 0. The student or staffer can return to school on Day 6 if they have no symptoms or the symptoms are improving and they have been fever-free without medication for 24 hours. They must continue to wear a mask indoors until Day 10 following the start of the symptoms or when they tested positive.

The teachers union also has guidance for educators around COVID-related absences.

Do students and staffers still have to mask if they’ve been exposed to someone with COVID?

Yes, according to city guidance. They should wear masks for 10 days when they are not able to separate from others, including at home.

Can I still get an at-home test kit?

Schools will no longer regularly send at-home COVID test kits in students’ backpacks, as they did last year. But they will have kits for those who request them, Education Department officials said.

Many schools might have a stockpile of kits from the past school year. Though the expiration date listed on the box might be past due, it’s possible the tests are still good. You can check the expiration date here by using the lot number on the box. The Food and Drug Administration has extended the expiration dates of a number of test kits, sometimes by up to two years.

Are parent-teacher conferences in person again?

No, under the recent teachers union contract, schools will hold parent-teacher conferences remotely. They may, however, be held in person upon request by parents or caregivers.

Other parent engagement activities, including grade conferences, can also be conducted remotely.

What’s happening with ventilation at schools?

The city is in the midst of its third round of purchasing replacement filters for the air purifiers it bought at the height of the pandemic, Education Department officials said. At that time, each classroom was outfitted with two air purifiers, though questions remain as to whether the city got the best bang for its buck on the purifiers it purchased.

Officials said they have taken multiple steps to improve ventilation in schools, including equipping HVAC systems with MERV-13 filters as well as window air conditioners with MERV-13 filters. They’ve also trained maintenance staff to use anemometers and carbon dioxide readers to check air quality within rooms, and continue to ensure that building ventilation is working as originally designed, they said.

“We have ensured that all ventilation systems are in good working order,” Banks said. “And our custodial engineers are prepared to troubleshoot any ventilation concerns.”

Are COVID vaccines required?

Vaccines are not required, but they are recommended. As of November 2022, 53% of students were fully vaccinated, according to public data.

“Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccines, along with other proven prevention tools — like masking, testing, and staying home when sick — continue to be our best defense against COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses,” Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said last month in response to the rise of another new variant.

The FDA approved a new round of COVID boosters this week. Anyone 5 years old and up can receive a single dose of the shot, whether or not they’ve been previously vaccinated. Those under the age of 5 can receive the updated vaccine as well, and have different options depending on whether they get it from Pfizer or Moderna.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit school district enrollment figures dip as year begins

2023-09-11T22:28:57+00:00

Early attendance and enrollment data show a steady decline in the number of students in the Detroit school district, adding to pandemic-related enrollment losses.

About 51,600 K-12 students were enrolled in the Detroit Public Schools Community District as of Friday, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said at a school board academic committee meeting Monday. That’s down from about 52,300 at this time last year, and roughly 53,000 students at the start of the 2021-22 school year, according to district reports.

Of the 51,600 enrollees, roughly 88%, or just over 45,000 students, had attended school for at least one day; a year earlier, that figure was 47,000, or about 90%.

“As of right now, I’m not concerned by these numbers,” Vitti told committee members Monday, noting that two early dismissals last week for extreme heat affected the 2023-24 attendance numbers.

“I think this week will give a better indicator of where we are,” he said.

The school year began Aug. 28.

Each year, DPSCD officials share enrollment and attendance data from the first couple weeks of the new school year. These numbers provide an early gauge of enrollment patterns ahead of Michigan’s two official Count Days, in October and February, when the number of students attending school is tallied for the purposes of allocating state funding.

Enrollment numbers can fluctuate over the course of the year as families move into and out of the city, or send their children to different schools, even after initially enrolling in DPSCD. At the end of last school year, K-12 enrollment was 48,000, well below the figure of the start of the year, and down about 2,000 students from before the pandemic.

Improving student attendance and enrollment has been a major priority for officials in DPSCD and districts across Michigan, especially in recent years given the pandemic’s impact. The district used part of its federal COVID relief aid to expand its family outreach and door-to-door canvassing initiatives.

But as that aid dries up, DPSCD plans to spend less money this year on enrollment strategies. Instead, it will use a smaller budget to market specific schools with available seats and promote the district through school employees and families.

DPSCD’s average daily attendance and chronic absenteeism figures improved last year, inching toward pre-pandemic figures.

In 2022-23, the district’s average daily attendance rate was 81.6%, up from 76% the year before, compared with 83.1% before the pandemic. The chronic absenteeism rate was 68% at the end of the last school year, down from 77% the year before.

But that still means more than two-thirds of DPSCD students missed 10% or more of the school year.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Schools are cutting recovery programs as U.S. aid money dries up. Students are still struggling.

2023-09-06T04:01:00+00:00

This story is a collaboration with the Associated Press. Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to get essential education news delivered to your inbox.

DETROIT – Davion Williams wants to go to college. A counselor at his Detroit charter school last year helped him visualize that goal, but he knows he’ll need more help to navigate the application process.

So he was discouraged to learn the high school where he just began his sophomore year had laid off its college transition adviser — a staff member who provided extra help coordinating financial aid applications, transcript requests, campus visits, and more.

The advisers had been hired at 19 schools with federal pandemic relief money. In June, when Detroit’s budget was finalized, their jobs were among nearly 300 that were eliminated.

“Not being able to do it at this school is kind of disappointing,” Williams said in August at a back-to-school event at Mumford High School.

An unprecedented infusion of aid money the U.S. government provided to schools during the pandemic has begun to dwindle. Like Williams’ school, some districts are already winding down programming like expanded summer school and after-school tutoring. Some teachers and support staff brought on to help kids through the crisis are being let go.

The relief money, totaling roughly $190 billion, was meant to help schools address needs arising from COVID-19, including making up for learning loss during the pandemic. But the latest national data shows large swaths of American students remain behind academically compared with where they would have been if not for the pandemic.

Montgomery County schools, the largest district in Maryland, is reducing or eliminating tutoring, summer school, and other programs that were covered by federal pandemic aid. Facing a budget gap, the district opted for those cuts instead of increasing class sizes, said Robert Reilly, associate superintendent of finance. The district will focus instead on providing math and reading support in the classroom, he said.

But among parents, there’s a sense that there remains “a lot of work to be done” to help students catch up, said Laura Mitchell, a vice president of a districtwide parent-teacher council.

Mitchell, whose granddaughter attends high school in the district, said tutoring has been a blessing for struggling students. The district’s cuts will scale back tutoring by more than half this year.

“If we take that away, who’s going to help those who are falling behind?” she said.

Districts have through September 2024 to earmark the last of the money provided by Congress in three COVID relief packages. Some schools have already started pulling back programming to soften the blow, and the next budget year is likely to be even more painful, with the arrival of what some describe as a “funding cliff.”

In a June survey of hundreds of school system leaders by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, half said they would need to decrease staffing of specialists, such as tutors and reading coaches, for the new school year. Half also said they were cutting summer-learning programs.

As the spending deadline looms, the scope of the cuts is not yet clear. The impact in each district will depend on how school officials have planned for the aid’s end and how much money they receive from other sources.

State funding for education across the country has been generous of late. But states may soon face their own budget challenges: They also received temporary federal aid that is running out.

Many school officials are bracing for the budget hit to come. In Shreveport, Louisiana, officials say that next year they might have to cut some of the 50 math teachers they added to double up on math instruction for middle schoolers.

Schools there added the teachers after identifying deep learning gaps in middle school math, and there’s evidence it helped, with a 4-point increase in math scores, officials say. But at a cost of $4 million, the program will be in jeopardy.

“Our money practically is gone,” Superintendent T. Lamar Goree said.

Some researchers have questioned whether the money was sufficient or sustained enough to address the deep declines in learning. But with a recent deal limiting federal spending increases in education, more money from Congress will not be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers and commentators have pointed to anemic academic recovery to suggest schools didn’t spend the COVID relief money wisely in the first place.

Experts note that district officials had wide discretion over how to spend the money, and their decisions have varied widely, from HVAC upgrades to professional development. “Some of the spending was very wise, and some of it looks, in hindsight, to have been somewhat foolish,” said Lori Taylor, an education finance researcher at Texas A&M University.

To date, there is limited research on whether the federal money has helped address learning loss. One recent study of eight districts’ summer school programs found no impact on reading scores but improvements in math. Since only a fraction of students in each district attended, this made only a small contribution to learning recovery, though.

School officials insist the money has made a difference.

“I wonder what the counterfactual would have been if we didn’t have the money,” said Adriana Publico, the project manager for COVID relief funds at Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada. “Would students have been even worse off? I think so.“

The Washoe system has cut hours for after-school tutoring in half this year and eliminated teacher coaches from many elementary schools. The district just finished a dramatically expanded summer school program, but officials aren’t sure if they’ll be able to afford to continue it next summer.

Some school systems are trying to maintain COVID-era additions. In Kansas City, Missouri, district officials say they’re planning to keep a number of the positions that were added with federal money, including intervention teachers and clinicians who work with students who have experienced trauma. The district will be able to do so, said CFO Erin Thompson, because of higher property tax revenue.

“This might not be as bad as what we thought,” she said. “We’re optimistic at this point.”

In Detroit, which received a windfall of federal COVID money, district officials say they budgeted carefully to avoid steep cuts when the money runs out. This included earmarking more than half of their federal relief — some $700 million — for one-time building renovations to aging campuses across the city.

But ultimately, officials said some reductions were necessary. Expanded summer and after-school programs have been phased out, in addition to the hundreds of staff positions, like the college advisers.

“In an ideal world, I would rather have college transition advisers,” said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. “But it’s another example of making hard decisions.”

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Collin Binkley is an education reporter for the Associated Press.

Barnum reported from New York and Binkley reported from Washington, D.C.

Detroit public schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti speaks on budget cuts, academic recovery

2023-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

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As federal COVID relief dollars for education begin to run out, school systems across the country are facing a jolt to their finances. But the Detroit Public Schools Community District has fared better than many in limiting the impact of the funding loss.

The district hasn’t been immune to cuts: Hundreds of positions were eliminated, the community has criticized district decisions, and parents remain concerned about the loss of some programs. But it deliberately focused most of the $1.27 billion it received from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, on one-time costs — rather than recurring budget items that can’t be sustained without federal aid.

That strategy will save the district from a so-called funding cliff that many other school leaders may soon face when the federal dollars run out in September 2024, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in an interview with Chalkbeat.

Vitti talked about what he thinks the district did right and his recommendations for other school leaders.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was the district’s strategy as you planned for the loss of the federal COVID relief money? What did you prioritize?

One thing that I’ve tried to do as superintendent is be disciplined with finances. … I always think about recurring revenue with recurring expenditures, and one-time revenue with one-time expenditures.

Boards, in particular, can be very vulnerable to spending one-time funding in a recurring way. Because of the concentrated poverty that our families face, you look at our outdated infrastructure, salaries that are not fully competitive, the wraparound services that our kids need — and all of that was magnified and exacerbated because of the pandemic.

So the normal challenges that we have as a district linked to concentrated poverty, linked to historic racism, you see that money and it’s like, “Wow, we can solve a lot of our problems,” because we’ve been talking about the need for revenue, because our kids need more than the average student.

When we paid for things that needed more people, we tried to rely on contracted services rather than increasing employment.

One focus of the dollars was let’s fill the revenue gap because of the loss of enrollment. Right when the pandemic hit and the first year we came back, we were down about 3,000 students. We’ve picked up some since.

(We kept everyone employed) that normally would have been laid off. You know, let’s not close schools, let’s not cut programming — that’s the last thing we want to do during the middle of the pandemic.

We funded things that were very specific to COVID, like masks, temperature check machines, ventilation systems, COVID testing, moving to smaller class sizes in order to have social distancing, the virtual school, nurses in every school, expanding mental health in all schools — we did all of that through contracted services, or it was one-time. There were things we did that weren’t linked to contracted services like expanding summer school.

About half of the dollars went to fund facilities, which was a clear one-time expense, one-time need, and an enormous gap in our district, which is that we have a $2 billion infrastructure problem with no revenue to solve.

There is a way to use the money to, for example, increase salaries, but you have to do it through bonuses if you’re going to be responsible. If you link it to salary increases, you’re going to hit a cliff.

Was getting kids back into classrooms in person with things like smaller class sizes, masks, hazard pay for teachers, and upgrading HVAC systems a focus to improve academic outcomes in the long run?

I think if we go back to the pandemic, the greatest sense of urgency I had was to get kids back in school, without a doubt. That literally kept me up at night and led to my own mental health issues. I did deal with mental health issues, because I didn’t feel like we were serving children the way they needed to be served. … Our children in particular needed in-person learning in order to continue to show the improvement we were definitely showing before the pandemic. I knew every day they were at home, we were getting farther behind.

2021-22 was the first year that everyone tested on M-STEP, and we really saw the impact of the pandemic that year. But in 2021-22, DPSCD showed less learning loss on average than the state of Michigan and less learning loss than city charter schools. That showed me that having this urgency of getting back in person and keeping schools open in that 2020-21 year was important (along with) fully implementing our curriculum online.

Which cuts were the most difficult to make, and which programs do you wish could continue but had to end due to the end of ESSER funding?

I never want to be the superintendent that has to reduce staff to get to a number, because I understand that there’s a human being behind it, and that human being is connected to a family. It’s never easy for me.

The next hardest decision probably came to not having summer school at the scale that we had before.

We heard from some parents and students that the loss of college transition advisers is disappointing. Do you wish the district could keep those positions?

What we said was, we have to protect direct impact on student achievement, so we definitely protected the classroom. We didn’t increase class sizes. We definitely have invested in our academic interventionists and even expanded them.

When looking at the college transition advisers, there’s no question they had an impact on children — no doubt about that — but not a direct impact on student achievement.

What we tried to do was convince college transition advisers to go into the On the Rise Academy program and become counselors, because that was something we could see expanding in future years, maybe with more (state money for at-risk students).

Did you anticipate the amount of criticism from the community you received about the cuts? Has it been difficult to communicate to the community that the end of some of the programs and resources funded by ESSER was due to the federal relief money expiring?

Detroit children have great need, and the school system in and of itself does not provide the resources that children deserve to be competitive with their peers in more affluent neighborhoods and school districts. That’s not a function of an incompetent, corrupt school board or superintendent. It’s the nature of how the schools are funded.

Although Gov. Whitmer has made strides in narrowing the gap between wealthy districts and DPSCD, the gap is still there. We not are not even equal yet. We are definitely not equitable.

People are very passionate about what we should be doing for our children. And there’s a sense of anger because our families know our children are capable.

What do you think other districts need to consider as they get to the point DPSCD reached last school year with the remainder of ESSER money being earmarked? What should they prioritize as those dollars run out?

My recommendation is to communicate often, frequently, and honestly about the advantages and disadvantages of the funding, and be upfront about how you’re spending the money.

DPSCD had less learning loss than our counterparts. And as we move into the 2023-24 school year, undoubtedly we’re narrowing the gap in performance, which means not only did we use the money effectively, we used it efficiently.

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

The public is souring on American education, but parents still give own child’s school high marks

2023-09-05T17:22:48+00:00

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There remains a startling disconnect between the public’s perception of American schools versus parents’ views of their own child’s education, according to the latest polling data from Gallup.

Americans’ views of the country’s schools have continued to fall, with just 36% saying they’re satisfied with U.S. education. This is tied for the lowest point on record since Gallup’s survey began in 1999.

In contrast, parents give their own child’s schools and teachers high marks: 76% say they’re completely or somewhat satisfied with their oldest child’s education, a figure that is similar to levels before the pandemic.

The 40-point gap between the public’s and parents’ perception of schools is the second highest on record. And it suggests that while critiques of American education seem to be making inroads with the public, they don’t appear to reflect most parents’ own experiences.

“Americans’ satisfaction with the quality of K-12 education in the U.S. has fallen to a record low point as a new school year begins,” wrote Megan Brenan, a research consultant at Gallup. “Still, parents of elementary and secondary school students remain quite satisfied with the education their child is getting, and they offer mostly positive reviews of the performance of their children’s teachers.”

Contrasting views about American schools between parents and the broader public has been a long-standing phenomenon, shown since Gallup began polling.

The pandemic appears to have turbocharged this gap. Republican politicians have castigated many public schools for remaining virtual into the fall of 2020, imposing mask mandates, and — in their telling — advancing left-wing curriculum on race and gender. Consistent with that, Gallup found a particularly steep decline in satisfaction with American education among Republicans: it fell from 49% in 2020 to 25% this year.

The public’s declining perception may also reflect a variety of other, widely publicized challenges that schools have faced of late: steep academic learning loss, rising teacher turnover, and a stunning increase in student absenteeism.

A separate recent survey from EdChoice, a group that backs publicly funded private school choice, found a spike in the share of Americans who say K-12 education is headed in the wrong direction.

But despite the unprecedented upheavals in American education, parents have remained fairly satisfied with their own child’s school, including how officials have handled the pandemic and how teachers have taught about race. Close to three-quarters of parents rate their child’s teacher as excellent or good, according to the latest Gallup data. A recent EdChoice poll found that while only 30% of non-parents said local schools were going in the right direction, 59% of parents said they were.

Gallup’s poll does not break down parent satisfaction by school type. Other surveys have found that parents whose children are in private school tend to be more satisfied, although public school parents also give their child’s education high marks. Since the pandemic, enrollment has shifted toward charter, private, and homeschooling, although the vast majority of children are still educated in district public schools.

Notably, parents’ sunny views about their own child’s schooling do not extend to education writ large. They hold similarly pessimistic views as non-parents about schools in the country as a whole, according to Gallup.

This seems to mirror polling data about the economy: While most Americans say their personal finances are in good shape, they give the broader economy low marks.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

After first week of classes, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities waiting for bus routes

2023-08-29T17:50:44+00:00

A week into the new school year, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities were still waiting to receive bus service, officials said.

A total of 733 students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation under federal law, were waiting for bus service as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, 10 students living in temporary housing, who are also legally entitled to transportation, had yet to be assigned to routes.

Lacking half of the drivers it needs, the district decided this year to limit bus transportation to students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. These students can alternatively choose to receive stipends of up to $500 a month to cover transportation costs, which families of close to 3,270 children have done, the district said. The district is continuing to receive new requests for transportation, a spokesperson said.

For the families who haven’t accepted the stipends, the lack of bus service can be challenging, especially for students with disabilities who have varying needs. Working parents may not have the flexibility to drive their kids to school, and taking public transportation may also not be feasible.

The district said its policy is to pair students with routes within two weeks of their request, and it appears to be making progress. As of Thursday last week, 1,045 students with disabilities were waiting for a seat on a bus — about 300 more than the number at the start of this week. The district has also shrunk travel times for most students with disabilities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez announced at last week’s board meeting.

However, that progress is happening as the district said it would not provide bus service this year to other students, including those attending selective enrollment and magnet schools. Those students have instead been offered Ventra cards, including another card for a companion, such as a parent.

Parents of some of those children, who are also struggling to accommodate their children’s commutes, sharply criticized the decision during a Chicago Board of Education meeting last week.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Board President Jianan Shi said he understands “the challenges that this has on families.” But he believes the district is doing better, citing the improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, as well as the district’s efforts to address the driver shortage by planning to boost pay.

“CPS has the responsibility to serve our students with special needs and our students experiencing homelessness, and I believe we are doing that,” Shi said.

During last week’s meeting, chief operating officer Charles Mayfield said that even as the district has employed marginally more drivers, it has received more transportation requests. As of Aug. 19, the district employed 678 bus drivers, 22 more than it did at roughly the same time last year, a spokesperson said. The district has received just over 1,000 more requests for transportation as of this August compared to last year.

This is at least the third year that Chicago Public Schools has struggled to provide bus transportation for all students who are typically eligible. Last year around this time, roughly 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes that were longer than an hour, while more than 1,800 had not been routed, officials said.

The Illinois State Board of Education has taken notice of these issues. In 2021, state officials placed the district on a corrective action plan to ensure it was providing bus service to all students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs called for it. One year later, the state instituted a second corrective action plan to shorten commutes for students with disabilities.

Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

First day of school: Chicago Public Schools reopens under a new era of leadership

2023-08-21T21:28:02+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is officially back in session.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, the first Chicago mayor in recent history to send his children to public schools, kicked off the first day of classes by joining educators, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates outside Beidler Elementary School on the West Side.

Under a sweltering sun at 8:30 a.m., Johnson greeted parents and children in front of a chorus of reporters and cameras, before ringing the ceremonial bell to start the school year.

The joint appearance with Davis Gates, Martinez, and other district and union officials was unsurprising for the union-friendly mayor who came up through the CTU’s ranks, but still a break from the past when the union and City Hall officials would visit schools separately.

Despite the district facing a number of challenges ahead, including unreliable bus transportation, ongoing enrollment shifts, and an influx of immigrant students, Johnson focused on a new era of collaboration at the city’s public schools.

Later in the morning, after touring two other campuses, Johnson visited Kenwood Academy, where his son is now a sophomore.

Speaking to a history class, he likened the first-day icebreakers the teacher was doing to what he’s doing as the city’s new mayor.

“I hope that you will lean into the collaborative approach that your teacher is taking, because that is what we’re doing as a city,” Johnson told the students. “We’re building relationships, we’re collaborating so that we can make collective decisions together that ultimately can help transform people’s lives.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, and other city hall, school district, and union officials pose for a photo inside a classroom at Kenwood Academy on the South Side.

CPS claws back from enrollment losses

Visiting Beidler was a symbolic choice for the mayor. The school narrowly escaped closure about a decade ago and is now part of a program Johnson wishes to expand: the Sustainable Community Schools initiative, which aims to provide wraparound services and more programming for students and families.

But Beidler is among several other schools in the program that have lost at least a quarter of their enrollment since the initiative started.

The official enrollment count will not be known until after the 20th day of school in September. But last year, 80,000 fewer students were enrolled in Chicago Public Schools than there were a decade ago and it is now the nation’s fourth largest school district. Chicago’s declining enrollment predated the emergence of COVID-19, but continued during the pandemic.

And for many parents and kids arriving at Beidler Monday morning, more pressing thoughts — like wishing for a great year — were at the forefront. Dondneja Wilson hoped that her daughter, who started preschool, would “grow, and learn, and have fun.”

“She likes kids a lot, so I feel like that’s going to be her favorite part,” Wilson said.

Dondneja Wilson and her daughter pose for a picture outside of Beidler Elementary School.

Last year, data from the last day of school in June obtained by Chalkbeat showed little change in overall enrollment. However, the number of English learners grew by more than 5,000 students. District officials have pointed to the increase as an approximation of how many migrant students have arrived on buses in the past year.

Chicago is seeing an influx of newcomers, many of whom are seeking asylum, arriving by bus from the southern border in Texas.

The number of bilingual teachers in CPS has dipped since 2015, even as the English learner population has grown, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis. While 6,900 teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements — more than ever before, according to the district — it’s unclear how many are actually assigned to teach bilingual education.

Educators and immigrant advocates have expressed concerns about whether schools can properly support these new students. Jianan Shi, president of the Board of Education, said the city’s new welcome center for migrant students on the West Side has enrolled “hundreds” of newcomer students. He’s requested more information on the system’s overall strategy for supporting newcomers.

A classroom door welcomes students in Spanish at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park.

Outside Beidler, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told reporters that “the biggest challenge” is ensuring that all newcomers are registered in school, but he said the district is well-positioned to serve them, noting that Chicago has one of the largest bilingual and dual language programs in the nation. About one-fifth of the city’s students are English language learners.

“The challenge we have right now is, again, keeping up with all the new asylum-seekers that are coming in, going to them, making sure that we’re able to register them, assess them,” Martinez said. “But we’re doing that as we speak now.”

Transportation woes continue on first day

Transportation woes that have plagued the district for the last few years also cropped up on the first day, as parents reported problems with bus routes and trips that took more than an hour.

Laurie Viets, a CPS parent of three children – two of whom have transportation written into an Individualized Education Program – said the district promised to have all transportation issues resolved by last Friday.

However, Viets found out on Friday that one of her children, a seventh grader, was not going to have transportation and another child, a first-year high school student, would have a long bus route. Today, it took 70 minutes to get to school; it’s normally a 12-minute car ride, Viets said.

Viets said she wished Chicago Public Schools would have given her more time to prepare for changes in the transportation plans. Now, she won’t have transportation for one of her children for up to two weeks and she is concerned that her other child will be on the bus without air conditioning in extreme heat until they shorten his route.

The district’s bus problems stem back to 2021, the first year back to full-time, in-person school after COVID forced CPS to close buildings in March 2020. Students were left waiting on the first day and beyond for buses that never showed. In emergency mode at that time, the district began offering $1,000 stipends for rideshare services such as Lyft and Uber. But the transportation troubles continued well into the school year.

Last year, some 365 students were waiting for bus routes the first week of school and in September, district officials said they were still working to reduce 90-minute rides for some students.

The district has blamed and continues to point to a nationwide bus driver shortage as causing the transportation troubles. It signed a $4 million contract with a longtime vendor and bus-routing software company to try to fix the issues.

But last month, on July 31, district officials announced that it would not be able to transport roughly 8,000 students on the first day of school. They offered $500 monthly stipends to families of CPS students with disabilities or those in temporary living situations. Both groups are legally entitled to transportation. The district said at the time that 3,000 students had chosen the stipend option.

Davis Gates called the transportation troubles “a disaster” and a “failure of privatization.” CPS contracts with private bus companies to provide students with transportation. Davis Gates said she would like to see the district bring busing “in-house” and experiment with having its own fleet of buses that could start small by covering field trips and sporting events and then grow.

“These are Band-Aid approaches. I have not seen anything transformative or revolutionary in this space. And again, three strikes you’re out,” she said. “This isn’t a good way to start the school year with respect to transportation.”

The district has previously increased pay rates for bus driver companies, and is hoping to do so again this year. Martinez said he hopes that will help fill the driver shortage.

Viets, the parent worrying about her children’s transportation, said more needs to be done.

“Next year, if CPS is going to start by Aug. 21, by Aug. 1 they should know what the routes are,” said Viets.

If Chicago finalizes plans the Friday before the start of school, she said, the district is “not giving parents any kind of respect at all. They’re not giving us an opportunity to make other plans when they mess up.”

As Viets noted, the extreme heat also adds to worries about long bus rides. The weather also raises concerns about conditions inside buildings once students arrive.

Air-conditioning, aging buildings prompt push for green schools

With temperatures expected to reach 100 degrees this week, Martinez said his team worked “around the clock” to ensure classrooms are equipped with air conditioning this week.

Martinez said every classroom has at least a window unit, a key union demand during the CTU’s 2012 strike that was implemented a couple of years later by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Still, in some cases, hallways are not air-conditioned, Martinez said.

Johnson has touted “climate justice” as a key focus of his administration and reiterated Monday that includes schools.

“Having buildings that are retrofitted, as well as an economy that’s built around green technology, some of that is top of mind,” he said.

Davis Gates used this week’s weather forecast to illustrate climate change’s impact on the city and why it underscores the urgent need for a new CPS facilities master plan, which hasn’t been updated since 2018. She added that building greener schools will be one issue the union will bargain over ahead of its contract expiration in 2024.

The school calendar’s pre-Labor Day start is an issue Davis Gates would immediately bargain over, she said. The late August start date began in 2021, matching up with many suburban districts.

The union was not able to bargain over the school calendar in 2019, Davis Gates said. But the passage of a 2021 state law reinstating some of the CTU’s bargaining rights could allow the calendar to be back on the table. The union’s contract expires next June and it’s likely the district and new mayor will begin negotiations with the teachers this winter.

The larger issues that officials highlighted were likely not top of mind for many students, such as 5-year-old Pierre, who started kindergarten at Beidler.

Asked what he was most excited about this school year, Pierre replied, “Playing.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s first day of school is almost here. Here are five things we’re watching this year.

2023-08-18T20:42:43+00:00

Chicago Public Schools’ estimated 320,000 students will head back to class Monday for a school year that will be marked by old issues — and some new concerns.

The district’s enrollment has been dwindling for at least a decade, raising questions about how to best fund schools still recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

Funding overall has become more complicated as the city’s federal COVID relief dollars dry up. Much of that money has been used for supporting existing and additional staff, many of them providing extra academic support for students.

As the district decides on how, if at all, to continue funding some of those programs, it must also contend with the continued enrollment of incoming immigrant students.

Here are five issues Chalkbeat Chicago will be watching this school year:

A fiscal cliff is approaching

This is the last full school year before Chicago must earmark how to spend what’s left of nearly $3 billion it received in COVID relief aid from the federal government. The deadline is September 2024.

That means the district will soon be staring down a financial hole that has been filled by that influx of federal funds since the pandemic.

The district spent a large share of pandemic relief money on staff salaries and benefits. The district also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on academic recovery efforts, including after-school programs, an in-house tutor corps, and more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

District officials have projected a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year, raising questions about how Chicago will sustain any programs and services supported by the federal dollars.

A financial analysis released under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted that CPS “will not have a funding source” to keep up these academic recovery and social-emotional learning efforts.

As the district’s financial picture is becoming more precarious, Mayor Brandon Johnson has shared lofty plans for schools, including expanding the Community Schools model — leaving complicated financial decisions ahead.

The district’s state funding could also be in jeopardy if it fails to comply with a state law requiring that at least two staffers at each school are trained on the use of student restraint and timeout. The deadline for that, coincidentally, is the first day of school.

Student academic needs persist

Three years since the onset of the COVID pandemic, there are still signs Chicago students need extra help in the classroom. Students appear to be improving in reading achievement, but they’re gaining less ground in math, according to recent state test scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

As the district’s COVID dollars fade out, questions remain about how district officials will approach academic recovery, and whether there will be efforts to keep any of the extra support CPS has funded with the federal dollars.

Some of those COVID dollars went toward the creation of a $135 million universal curriculum called Skyline, which has received mixed reviews. The district has pressed schools not yet using the curriculum to prove they’re using another high-quality option, so it’s possible more campuses will use Skyline this year.

Additionally, Illinois’ General Assembly passed a new law requiring the State Board of Education to create a literacy plan for schools, which is due by the end of January 2024.

District grapples with continued dipping enrollment

Chicago’s public school enrollment has dipped by 9% since the pandemic began — a trend also seen among other big-city school districts — and is almost one-fifth smaller than it was a decade ago. Last year’s enrollment dip of 9,000 students was enough to push the district’s ranking from the country’s third largest public school system to the number 4 spot.

This year’s enrollment figures won’t be publicly released until later this fall.

As the district’s student body has thinned out, funding has grown — to $9.4 billion for the upcoming school year. Still, as the district has logged fewer students — including those from low-income families — CPS has in recent years received less state funding than it has projected. And with COVID aid running out, officials must grapple with how to fund schools serving a fraction of the kids they used to. (There is a citywide moratorium on school closures until 2025.)

Some advocacy and interest groups, including the teachers union, believe funding should be divorced from enrollment, in part because investing fewer dollars will only encourage more families to leave or to never enroll in public schools. Just over 40% of new budgets for schools this year was determined by student enrollment, with the rest accounting for other factors, such as student demographics.

Still, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has emphasized that the district can’t factor out enrollment.

“In a large school district where schools serve 40 students, 400 students, and even 4,000 students, enrollment simply has to play a role in our funding formula,” Martinez previously told reporters.

Increase in migrant students poses new challenges

Last year, Texas officials began busing newly arrived migrants to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago. Since then, an estimated 12,000 migrants, many of whom are fleeing economic and political turmoil from South and Central American countries, have arrived in Chicago, While the district won’t say how many such students have enrolled, CPS saw roughly 5,400 new English learners last school year, Chalkbeat found.

Most Chicago schools have previously struggled with providing adequate language instruction for English learners. And with the city expecting more newcomers, educators and immigrant advocates recently told Chalkbeat that schools are not adequately resourced to serve these new students.

Some of these children may arrive without years of formal education and, if they’re learning English as a new language, are legally required to receive extra support.

The district’s number of bilingual teachers has dropped since 2015 even as the English learner population has grown, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. More teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements, which allows them to teach, but it’s unclear whether any of those educators are using those endorsements in the classroom.

District officials will be tasked with how to properly support these students. Officials had previously promised to release a formal plan by the first day of school but have not done so yet.

No district maps yet for the elected school board

As Chicago prepares to begin electing school board members next fall over the next two years, lawmakers have yet to approve maps that would designate which districts each board member would be elected from in the first round of elections. Ten members will be elected in November 2024, while the rest will be elected in November 2026, for a total of 21 members.

Illinois state lawmakers are in charge of approving those maps. In May, they extended their deadline to April 1, 2024, after concerns over whether the maps would match the makeup of the district’s student body or the city’s overall demographics.

Some observers cheered the extension. However, the delay presents new complications. If maps are not approved until April, the campaign season for the first set of districts would last just seven months, making it potentially challenging for candidates to prepare and for voters to have enough information ahead of Election Day.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado 2023 CMAS results show slow academic recovery, red flags for some students

2023-08-17T17:00:00+00:00

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State test scores released Thursday show signs that Colorado students are recovering from pandemic learning disruption, as 2023 scores approached 2019 levels in some grades and subjects.

But worrying signs remain that many students are still struggling.

The share of fourth and eighth graders who could read and write at or above grade level on CMAS tests taken this past spring remains more than 4 percentage points behind the share who could in 2019. Seventh and eighth graders are similarly behind in math. Each percentage point represents thousands of students who are not meeting expectations and who are less prepared for the next grade.

At the same time, fifth and sixth graders are posting similar scores in reading and writing to their peers four years ago, and in math, all elementary students are. At nearly every grade level, more students met or exceeded expectations in both language arts and math in 2023 than did in 2022, with fifth and seventh graders improving several percentage points in reading.

State education officials attribute the progress to a more normal school year, with fewer disruptions due to illness and safety protocols, as well as to school districts’ investments in new curriculum and tutoring to help students catch up. At the same time, staff shortages meant educators had less time to help struggling students, and many schools reported increases in students missing class.

The uneven recovery may be due to differences in where students were developmentally when COVID hit and school moved online — and how critical the material they missed during disrupted schooling was to the next grade level. Students who were in eighth grade in spring 2023 were in fifth grade when schools shut down in March 2020.

“There are some key learnings that typically occur in some grade levels that have impact down the road,” Joyce Zurkowski, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education, said on a call with reporters this week.

She said education officials consider “what typically is covered (in) fifth grade, second semester — and how that could be impacting our students in seventh and eighth grade.”

All Colorado students in grades three through eight take reading, writing, and math tests every spring. The tests are known as the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS. Some students also take tests in science and social studies. High schoolers take the PSAT and SAT.

Scores for English learners raise concerns

Test scores for English learners and students who took the reading and writing tests in Spanish raise major concerns about how well these children are faring in school.

Just 18.7% of third graders who took the test in Spanish met or exceeded expectations, down 8.8 percentage points from 2019 — by far the biggest lag in student recovery. And just 14.2% of fourth graders who took the Spanish test met or exceeded expectations, down almost 5 percentage points from 2019.

State education officials said the trend calls for more attention to these students. Some of that will have to come from state lawmakers, who have set aside money and crafted new rules to support reading and math instruction, but not bilingual learners.

Floyd Cobb, the associate commissioner of student learning, made that clear this week. Asked what the state education department will do to close the gap between bilingual learners and English-speaking students, he said, “that’ll need to be answered by the General Assembly.”

“Our job here at the department is to make sure that we go about implementing the laws that the General Assembly passes, and in the event that someone writes a bill, and that bill makes it through, we’ll engage in our work to be able to support,” Cobb said.

Colorado’s Latino communities suffered a heavy toll during the pandemic, experiencing more illness and death, more job losses, and more economic instability than white Coloradans. Hispanic families are also less likely to have reliable internet access, and have been affected by rising rents and home prices that have pushed many of them out of their neighborhoods.

Colorado education officials are also watching with concern the test scores of middle school girls. Girls typically do better than boys in language arts, while boys do better in math. That hasn’t changed, but in some cases, gender gaps have narrowed because girls are doing worse. The number of eighth grade girls meeting or exceeding expectations in language arts is down 7.7 percentage points since 2019, and down more than 3 points just since last year.

“When we look at the national level, there’s been significant research that suggests young women have struggled more during the pandemic with depression and anxiety,” Colorado Commissioner of Education Susana Córdova said.

“It’s hard to say if that’s the reason why we’re seeing lower performance with young women than we are with young men,” Córdova said. “But I think it’s going to be important for us to continue to monitor and look at and to focus supports on young women.”

Colorado continues to have major gaps in proficiency rates based on student race and economic status. The share of white and Asian students scoring at grade level is 24 to 30 points higher than for Black and Hispanic students. The gaps between students living in poverty — as measured by eligibility for free- or reduced-price lunch — and their more affluent peers is more than 30 points in most grades and subjects.

These are longstanding problems, but Colorado education officials said they demand urgent attention.

How state officials, schools, teachers, and families use CMAS results

Critics of standardized tests say they are a better measure of the effects of poverty than of academic performance, but state education officials point out that they are the only statewide measure of how well students meet the state’s academic standards.

The state uses the test results to rate schools and districts, and to direct help to schools with lower scores and issue state improvement orders.

Parents can use their children’s individual test results to discuss strengths and weaknesses with teachers, and they can use state data to see how their school and district perform compared with others.

Schools and teachers can use the test scores to determine the subjects where students are furthest behind and find ways to help them improve.

In addition to the raw test scores, Colorado also calculates growth scores. Those scores measure how much progress students made compared with students who scored similarly to them the year before and are generally considered a better measure of the work educators do than raw test scores.

Because of the way the growth scores are calculated, the state average is always around 50 on a 100-point scale. Students who are behind need growth scores above 50 to catch up.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, Colorado students would need growth scores of 55 or higher to catch up to 2019 achievement levels, said Lisa Medler, the executive director of accountability and continuous improvement for the Colorado Department of Education.

Among districts with more than 1,000 students that serve a large portion of students of color, only Denver edged above 50 in growth in both language arts and math, and many districts had below-average growth scores.

Statewide, district growth scores for grades three through eight ranged from a high of 79 in math in Hinsdale County RE-1, a small district in southwest Colorado, to a low of 23, also in math, in Agate School District #300, a tiny district in the east.

Denver scores rebound, but big gaps remain

In Denver Public Schools, Colorado’s largest school district with nearly 88,000 students, test scores for most grades and subjects rebounded, but not quite to pre-pandemic levels.

There were a few exceptions. Third graders scored higher this past spring than four years ago: 40% met or exceeded expectations in 2023, compared with 39% in 2019.

The troubling trend of English learners falling further behind showed up in Denver’s test scores, too. Most English learners in Denver speak Spanish, and more than 1,600 Denver students took the state literacy test in Spanish. But only 21% met or exceeded expectations on the Spanish literacy test, down from 29% in 2019.

While English-speaking students are catching up from pandemic learning loss, students who are still learning the English language are not, the test data shows. The test score gap between English learners and English speakers is growing.

Denver has other gaps, too. Last year, Denver’s test score gaps between white and Black students, and between white and Hispanic students, were the biggest in Colorado. The gaps did not shrink this year. In fact, the gap grew in math between white and Hispanic students.

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero has said he wants to see the number of students scoring at grade level go up by 10 percentage points in reading and math by 2026 — a goal he included in the district’s strategic plan. The plan says test scores should improve even more for “some student groups,” an acknowledgement that Denver has big gaps to close.

This year’s test scores show only slight progress toward that goal. Proficiency rates in grades three through seven rose between 0.2 and 2.4 percentage points, depending on the grade. Eighth graders declined slightly in language arts.

On both the PSAT and SAT, fewer Denver students scored at or above a benchmark meant to indicate college readiness this past spring in literacy and math than did in 2019.

Adams 14 test scores remain low

The Adams 14 school district, which received state orders to reorganize after years of chronic low student performance, continued to see low scores.

At the high school level, students in every grade level tested had lower average combined scores than in 2019. The trend is similar statewide, but Adams 14’s scores are lower than the state’s average.

In grades three through eight, Adams 14 saw significantly lower scores districtwide compared with 2019, nearly across the board.

The biggest decrease was among fifth graders taking English language arts tests, only 12.7% of whom met or exceeded expectations. The only districtwide improvement was very small: just a 0.1 percentage point increase among sixth graders in math. Only 4.3% of those students met or exceeded expectations.

Looking at growth among Adams 14 students, the district and most of its schools had growth scores of less than 50. The two highest growth scores were for math at Dupont, with a 57.5, and language arts at Rose Hill Elementary which had a growth score of 58.

The test where Adams 14 had its highest percentage of students meeting expectations was on the language arts tests given in Spanish. Among third graders taking that test, for instance, 19.2% of students met or exceeded expectations, compared with 17.6% of third graders taking that test in English.

Adams 14 has one of the state’s highest proportions of students learning English as a second language, and historically has had trouble educating those students and complying with their civil rights. In more recent years, the district has implemented bilingual programming and created a plan that finally got federal approval for how to educate English learners.

Third graders still recovering in reading

Elementary students are still not yet up to pre-pandemic reading proficiency levels, despite big changes in how Colorado schools teach reading.

Statewide, 39.9% of the spring’s third graders met or exceeded expectations on reading tests. That percentage is lower than last year, and down from 41.3% in 2019.

Sheridan, Douglas County, Jeffco, and St. Vrain districts in the metro area showed significant improvements in third grade reading.

In Sheridan, the district went from having just over 10% of students meet expectations for reading in 2019 to 26.8% this spring. In the Douglas County school district, 58% of third graders met expectations in reading, up from 52% in 2019. The score put the Dougco district above most metro area districts.

The Jeffco school district also had increases, with 48.2% of third graders meeting reading standards, up from 46.3% in 2019.

Mapleton and Pueblo 60 districts have not been able to bring the percentage of students meeting expectations back up to 2019 levels. In Mapleton, 17.8% of third grade students met or exceeded reading expectations this spring, down from 28.1% in 2019. In Pueblo 60, 22.9% of third grade students met or exceeded reading expectations, down from 27.6% in 2019.

Among 10 districts that serve the highest percentages of students of color and have more than 1,000 students, all saw a decrease in the percentage of students meeting expectations in math. Westminster and East Otero in southeast Colorado had the smallest decreases in overall math scores. Among Westminster students 15.5% met or exceeded expectations in math this year, down from 16.4% of students in 2019.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools scales back COVID guidance

2023-08-16T23:15:53+00:00

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Nicole Abreu’s daughter Alexis is excited about starting sixth grade at Friedrich L. Jahn Elementary School next week. It will be the medically fragile 12-year-old’s first time back to school in person after being homeschooled last year and she can’t wait to meet other kids.

But her mom is concerned that Chicago Public Schools had yet to announce COVID-19 guidance when the start of school is only a few days away.

“Do kids even still have to report if they have COVID? Is there a quarantine period?” said Abreu. “It is unsettling to be a few days from school and not know.”

Parents like Abreu, who decided to homeschool her immunocompromised daughter and two other children last year, say they have heard little from the district about COVID-19 mitigations for the coming school year.

But during a school board committee meeting Wednesday, Jamie Tully, the district’s director of Health Information and Response, outlined a pared-down approach: The district will no longer do in-school COVID testing, but will provide at-home rapid tests to students and staff when an exposure occurs and ahead of breaks around Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Quarantine requirements and care rooms in schools are now gone, but close contacts will be encouraged to mask for 10 days, Tully said. CPS will also continue to collect and report data on cases and vaccinations.

The looser guidelines reflect a shift for Chicago since the height of the pandemic when the district struggled to reopen during the school year 2020-21. Once schools fully reopened during the 2021-22 school year, the district ramped up testing and vaccinating students across the city.

“I think the most important thing that we can communicate, particularly right now around COVID-19, is please stay up-to-date on your vaccinations and stay home when you’re sick,” Tully told board members on Wednesday.

The scaled-down mitigations come as cases are ticking up across the nation and at a time of uncertainty for the city’s public health department after Mayor Brandon Johnson fired Chicago’s Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady late last Friday. The move seemed abrupt, but Johnson committed to firing Arwady while on the campaign trail, stating that the two have different views on public health.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the Illinois State Board of Education updated public health guidance for schools on a monthly basis. After federal and state emergency orders were lifted in May, wearing masks, weekly testing, vaccinations, and social distancing were no longer required for students across Illinois.

Coronavirus cases increased in late summer across the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported last Friday to the CDC that Illinois had a low level for COVID-19 hospital admissions as of the end of July. The department said that it will continue to monitor for COVID-19 data and other respiratory diseases as the fall and winter seasons start.

As of Aug. 15, Chicago Public Schools reported that 85 adults and 11 students have self-reported coronavirus cases.

Students are encouraged to get vaccinated

Chicago is hosting several back-to-school events this week where students can get vaccinated for COVID-19 and required childhood vaccinations for diseases such as measles, mumps, and chickenpox before heading back to classrooms.

As of the end of last school year, around 48% of eligible students had been fully vaccinated against COVID. Those numbers could backslide as they did last year with a new group of incoming kindergarten and pre-K students entering and high school seniors graduating. All ages are eligible for vaccination and boosters.

The federal government announced that an updated COVID vaccine that will target the latest variants responsible for a majority of new cases will be available in the fall.

Chicago shifts away from school-based testing

Last school year, just over 13% of Chicago Public Schools students opted into school-based COVID testing and the district also distributed about 1 million rapid tests.

CPS has 650,000 rapid tests in storage that can be distributed this year, Tully said. The district is asking the Chicago Board of Education to approve a contract with Fisher Scientific worth up to $5 million to purchase 500,000 more at-home COVID tests for students and staff to be distributed based on demand at schools during the 2023-24 school year.

The proposed contract for next school year would be a tiny fraction of the company’s previous contracts with the district to provide COVID testing to students and staff. Publicly-posted invoices show the company billed Chicago Public Schools $62 million from July 2022 to May 2023. The previous school year, the company billed the district $78 million for COVID testing.

In the fall of 2021, the University of Illinois’ Shield testing program was at over 1,700 K-12 schools and tested almost 113,000 school employees and about 900,000 students. The program gave Illinois school districts the ability to test students for the coronavirus by taking a sample of saliva and results would come back in less than 24 hours. The University of Illinois decided to end this COVID-19 testing program in June.

Expert urges schools to take safety measures

In July, the Illinois State Board of Education and the state department of public health adopted CDC guidelines for schools that were updated in May. The guidance says students should stay up-to-date on vaccinations for COVID-19 and other illnesses. When feeling sick, students are encouraged to stay home and schools can use COVID-19 testing to confirm or rule out COVID-19.

Daniel Johnson, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, said schools are a place where children can pick up COVID-19, which they could then share with their households.

“It’s incumbent upon all of us to be thoughtful about how we minimize the risk of getting COVID in a school setting while recognizing the importance of children going to school,” said Johnson “So children to conduct their lives, both socially and educationally, in as much a normal way as they possibly can.”

Johnson recommends that everyone gets vaccinated or get a booster if they have not been vaccinated in the last six months. If a child is sick, they should stay at home and get tested to confirm whether or not they have the coronavirus.

He recommended that schools should have good ventilation to circulate fresh air in classrooms and allow students to wash their hands or use sanitizer.

For immunocompromised children such as Abreu’s daughter Alexis, Johnson said he would recommend that students go to school, but they should be vaccinated.

Parents should encourage children to wear masks in the classroom and parents should tell their schools that they want to be informed if their child is exposed to COVID-19.

“Everything should be done to try and keep children in school and as safe as possible,” Johnson said.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Pandemic-era summer school boosts math scores, but barely makes a dent in steep learning loss

2023-08-15T20:26:31+00:00

Summer school might be more popular than ever — at least among educators trying to address unprecedented declines in student learning.

With the help of COVID relief money — some of which was earmarked for this very purpose — schools across the country have expanded learning opportunities over multiple summers. Officials say summer school is no longer just for kids who need to make up classes to move up a grade, but for a broader swath of students who have fallen behind since the pandemic began.

So has summer school worked as a learning loss recovery strategy?

A new study, the most comprehensive analysis to date of pandemic-era summer learning, says the answer is: kind of.

Students who attended school over the summer of 2022 saw their math scores improve, according to the research. This offers some of the first concrete evidence that a key learning loss strategy is working. However, those gains were modest, and there were no improvements in reading. And since only a fraction of students went to summer school, it barely made a dent in total learning loss.

Overall, the latest research suggests that some catch-up efforts are paying off, but may be insufficient to return students to their pre-pandemic trajectories.

“It’s a glass-half-full, glass-half-empty story,” said Dan Goldhaber, coauthor of the study and a professor at the University of Washington. While summer school had a positive impact, he said, “only a small slice of the damage that was done from the pandemic is recovered from summer school.”

Summer learning helps, but benefits are modest

The new research, released by a team of scholars with the education research group CALDER, examines the impact of summer school last year in eight districts, including those in Dallas, Portland, and Tulsa.

Summer programs varied from place to place, but they typically ran between 15 to 20 days, with an hour to two of academic instruction each day. Districts usually allowed anyone to participate, but also targeted invites to struggling students. Summer school was open to students in elementary and middle grades, and, in a few places, high school.

Somewhere between 5% and 20% of students participated in summer school, depending on the district. Goldhaber noted that some districts had open spots, perhaps indicating low demand among families or insufficient recruitment efforts. Participating students attended about two thirds of the time — highlighting the perennial problem of absenteeism in summer school.

On the more encouraging side: Summer school students were more likely to be struggling academically, suggesting that officials were successful in recruiting kids who were most in need of extra learning time.

Researchers compared test scores of summer school students versus similar kids who didn’t attend over the summer. To start the next school year, summer school students had slightly higher scores in math, though not reading. There was clear evidence of math gains in five of the eight districts.

“The simple takeaway is something’s working,” said Goldhaber.

The researchers note that it’s possible that those students made more gains not because of summer programming, but because their families were more motivated to help them catch up.

Still, the new research offers some support for one of the most common learning-loss recovery strategies since the pandemic began, including over this most recent summer.

Newark Public Schools, for instance, required 10,000 struggling students to attend summer school this year, double that of last year. The district is selling it as an extension of regular schooling. “We’re working to engage parents and make sure they understand that their kids aren’t done just because it’s summer,” a summer school principal previously told Chalkbeat. “If you miss school, we make calls.”

Denver launched a “summer connections” program which focused on “accelerating” students by providing instruction for their incoming grade level, rather than reviewing material. An internal analysis found, unlike the CALDER study, that participating students did not make noticeable test score improvements compared to those who didn’t go to summer school. (Teachers and parents did say that students had made social growth, and nearly all students said they had made friends in the program.)

But even when it is effective, summer school can only go so far in making up pandemic-era learning loss.

The CALDER researchers estimate that summer learning closed only 2% to 3% of the pandemic-induced learning gap in math. In other words, the impact, relative to the size of the problem, was tiny. This reflects the fact that summer school is, by its nature, limited in scope. Summer learning added only a small bit of time for a small fraction of students.

The researchers say that summer school could close the math gap only if every student attended over multiple years. This would amount to extending the school year — an idea that has not proven popular with school officials or parents.

Schools have also added staff, tutoring programs, and after-school time, among other catch-up efforts. To date there is limited research on the efficacy of these approaches. Some of them, particularly online tutoring, have faced challenges reaching struggling students.

Data from the testing company NWEA through the end of last school year found that students remain substantially behind where they would be if not for the pandemic. Results from a handful of state tests also show that students remain behind, but suggest that students in some states have been catching up to pre-pandemic levels.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana expands tutoring grants to more students and increases the maximum state funding

2023-08-11T19:35:25+00:00

Indiana is expanding its grant program for tutoring that it launched last fall to cover middle school students, as well as more elementary schoolers, the state education department announced Thursday.

In addition, the maximum grant award for Indiana Learns, which provides grants to students to use for tutoring and academic programs that meet “learning partner” requirements, is increasing to $1,000. The new maximum award of $1,000 is available to students who are new to the program and those who signed up earlier.

The state first rolled out Indiana Learns last fall in response to learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. Originally geared towards students in fourth and fifth grades, the program is now open to any student in third through eighth grade who qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, and whose scores on state math or English language arts tests were below proficiency.

The expansion comes as 2023 state ILEARN scores demonstrated a small improvement in math but a slight dip in English. In 2022, 41.2% of Indiana students scored at or above proficiency in English, compared to 40.7% of students this year. Meanwhile, math proficiency rose from 39.4% in 2022 to 40.9% this year.

“We know from our 2023 ILEARN proficiency results, and the ongoing academic impact/recovery analysis, that our middle school students in particular need strategic learning support and interventions,” Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said in a press release.

Families can find out if their student is eligible for a grant by going to indianalearns.org and entering their student test number, or STN, and birthday. The STN can be obtained from their student’s school or their ILEARN scores if the family has access to that.

If a student is eligible, families can immediately view the funds available to them. On the same website, they can also browse tutoring partners and schedule services.

Prior to this expansion, in addition to the initial state grant of $500, districts could choose to provide an additional $250 per student for Indiana Learns that the state would match. But the state education department said that with the maximum Indiana Learns state award increasing to $1,000, there’s no longer a matching component of the program.

Molly Williams, a spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Education, said that when families use the grants and their remaining funding drops to $200, money will automatically reload if they still have grant funding available.

The state also said that the grants can now support tutoring during the day at schools.

“This will allow parents and families, who may not otherwise be able to pay for high-dosage tutoring, to access these opportunities for their students and provide them the additional support they need,” Jenner said.

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

Five key issues facing Memphis-Shelby County Schools as the new year begins

2023-08-07T02:00:00+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools students return to class Monday for the 2023-24 school year.

This one could be less turbulent than recent years, but no less consequential, as the district confronts key decisions about its next leader, the future of its school buildings, its strategy for improving student academic performance and wellness, and its budget for the post-pandemic era.

Here’s a closer look at five key issues that the district will face this school year:

Search for a superintendent is on — again

MSCS is still seeking applicants for its superintendent job, nearly a year after Joris Ray resigned amid a scandal.

The first attempt to find a leader unraveled, exposing disagreements on the board, fueling public doubts about whether the body could execute a search successfully, and forcing a hard reset.

The board remains committed to the national search it promised Memphians last year. Interim Superintendent Toni Williams, who had once been a finalist for the permanent job, won’t be a candidate. She agreed to drop out of the search under the terms of a new contract she signed to continue as interim leader through another school year.

So far, Take 2 of the search has been consistent with the parameters and the that timeline board members set out in their discussions: The new job posting, which went up at the start of August, reflects the leadership qualities board members collectively decided on, and all applicants will be evaluated against the board’s policy on minimum qualifications.

If the second attempt goes according to plan, applications will close by November, and a new superintendent will be selected by February, with a start date of July 1, 2024. By that schedule, the new superintendent would have a chance to ease into the leadership role during a transition period with Williams, who by that point will have led the district for close to two years.

School building projects will keep students moving

District officials will introduce a new facilities plan this school year that will propose ways to address a backlog of costly maintenance issues. A mix of construction projects, closures, and consolidations will likely affect thousands of students, requiring that some move out of their school buildings and into others.

MSCS is working with More for Memphis, a consortium spearheaded by nonprofit Seeding Success, to develop the plans and establish funding sources.

The plan will describe 110 school investments over the next decade, and officials say they are seeking millions of dollars in private funds for the first five years of facility upgrades and academic improvements. In addition to schools, the district may also consolidate administrative offices, reviving efforts started years ago with the purchase of the old Bayer Building.

Some school communities are already preparing for changes, separate from the new districtwide plan. Under agreements between MSCS and neighboring districts to comply with a new state law, Germantown High School is due to be replaced by a new building in Cordova, mostly paid for through local tax increases. Germantown Elementary and Middle schools will also close in coming years, as will Lucy Elementary School in Millington.

Meanwhile, LaRose Elementary will continue to accommodate students from Cummings K-8, where falling ceiling tiles forced the building to close for repairs just weeks into the 2022-23 school year.

And in Frayser, students at Trezevant High and at MLK College Prep High, which is part of the state’s Achievement School District for low-performing schools, can expect a new high school building in the coming years. Hanley, a K-8 school that was also in the ASD, is returning to MSCS.

The district’s broader plan is likely to address other Memphis schools that are currently in the ASD or expected to exit in coming years.

Academic needs will get a closer look

MSCS will remain focused on improving academic performance for individual students, but changes are also happening at the school and district levels to improve accountability for academics.

While MSCS students are making progress in their recovery from learning losses during the pandemic, math scores still lag, especially for middle schoolers.

And in reading, scores on state standardized tests have rebounded, but proficiency rates for the district have historically been among the lowest in the state. The reading test scores are particularly consequential for third graders, who face the risk of being held back if they don’t successfully complete certain intervention programs.

Interim Superintendent Williams has supported a review of district academic departments and initiatives with a focus on literacy. The review would look at where the district is spending funds for academic programming and assess how effective those programs have been. That assessment would inform the development of an academic plan that board members would monitor each month for progress.

At the school level, the district has expanded its own turnaround program, called the Innovation Zone, or iZone, to include several more schools, including four schools that have returned from the ASD. Schools in the iZone have a longer school day to provide more instruction for students and help the schools perform better overall.

The iZone expansion comes as new accountability measures take effect in Tennessee. The Tennessee Department of Education is expected to begin assigning letter grades to public schools this fall, after years of delays.

District will have to adapt to end of some federal funding

MSCS bolstered its budget over the last several years with some $775 million in one-time federal funds to help schools deal with the pandemic and support their recovery efforts. The dollars come from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund and are commonly referred to as ESSER funds.

Districts have until September 2024 to spend their funds, so officials have to wrap up the spending this school year.

MSCS has already budgeted funds for academic recovery programs, salaries for educational assistants in early grades, and improvements to schools’ heating and air systems. Early rounds of funding were used to buy computers and tablets so students could learn from home online. (Actual spending in the district has been difficult for the public to track.)

As the federal funds run out, Memphis and other districts across the country will have to decide which programs they can sustain with other funding sources, and which ones they will cut.

But the adjustment will be less harsh for Tennessee school districts, thanks to the state’s new school funding formula, which came alongside a $1 billion increase in education spending. Memphis was projected to receive about $114 million more in recurring funds through the new formula, which takes effect this school year.

City’s crises challenge student health, academic success

MSCS has spent more on social emotional learning and support for students, including new wellness centers as some schools. Mental health employees will get the salary schedule they sought last school year.

Factors outside of the district, though, continue to create obstacles. Youth homelessness in MSCS, for instance, has climbed to its highest measured count in four years, to 2,880 students at the end of the last school year.

Support services for Memphis students and families outside of the classroom have grown in importance since the start of the pandemic.

How Memphis and Shelby County tackle persistent social issues such as violence, policing, justice, and poverty will be a critical factor for student wellness and academic success in the district. Candidates in October’s crowded mayoral election have offered many ideas, including some that mirror existing MSCS programs.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

8,000 Chicago Public Schools students won’t have bus service on first day of school, district says

2023-07-31T23:43:11+00:00

More than 8,000 Chicago Public Schools students will not have bus service on the first day of class on Aug. 21, a problem the district blames on an ongoing bus driver shortage.

With only half of the 1,300 drivers needed to transport students who require bus service, Chicago said it will instead prioritize transportation for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. Both groups are legally required to receive transportation to school.

For some students with disabilities, bus service is a requirement on their Individualized Education Programs. More than 7,100 such students have signed up for bus service so far, officials said. (Siblings of students with disabilities can still receive bus service if they attend the same school.)

This is the third year in a row in which the return to class has been marred by transportation woes that have left thousands of students without transportation or with long commutes. The district, which contracts with outside companies to provide transportation, has attributed bus service snarls in previous years to nationwide driver shortages.

In an effort to help fix ongoing transportation problems, the district in March approved a $4 million contract with Education Logistics Inc., known as EduLog, to schedule bus routes, determine start times for summer school and assign bus vendors during the school year. The contract is set to run through June 30, 2026.

This year, in the face of continued bus service troubles, the district will instead offer Ventra cards to general education students and one companion, such as a parent, “for as long as they are without school bus transportation,” according to a news release from Chicago. These families may have the option to get bus service “at some point” in the school year but the timing for that is not yet clear, said Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer for Chicago Public Schools.

Last year, Chicago provided bus service to 17,275 children, or about 5% of students.

“There’s been a nationwide shortage, and I think that is not an easy thing for any K-12 [district] right now,” Mayfield said Monday in an interview with Chalkbeat. “Even if you Google search bus driver shortage, you get a number of school districts that have the same issue that we’re having today and they are making adjustments similar to where we are, to try to provide alternatives.”

As of Friday, the district said it could guarantee bus service on the first day of school for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness, after Chicago twice extended a sign-up deadline this summer, Mayfield said. But it can’t guarantee immediate service for families who sign up now. The district is required to link those families to bus service within two weeks of their request for transportation.

As an alternative, CPS is offering families of students with disabilities and those in temporary housing up to $500 in monthly stipends to cover transportation costs. So far, 3,000 students have chosen this option, officials said.

The continuing transportation issues have Chicago parent Laurie Viets bracing for yet another chaotic start to the school year. Two of her three children have district-provided bus service written into their Individualized Education Programs.

This year, she said the district has been more proactive since parents have raised concerns about bus services issues over the past few years. Over the summer, Viets received a couple of phone calls from the district asking if she would like to take the $500 stipend, but she declined. She said she prefers that the district provide bus service for her children.

Viets only learned the district had yet to figure out routes for students when she talked to a district representative last week.

“I have no hopes at all that transportation will show up,” said Viets. “I’ve got three kids, three separate schools in three different parts of the city. We’re going to be scrambling to get the two that need transportation to school because I guarantee we will not have transport on that first day.”

It is a familiar scenario for Viets – last year, she said she couldn’t get transportation for one of her children for about six weeks – and for thousands of other CPS families.

In the 2021-22 school year, when students returned to classrooms after COVID shuttered buildings, the district did not have bus services for 2,100 students on the first day of classes. At the time, the district provided families with $1,000 to help with transportation and even reached out to ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft for support.

At the start of the next school year, the district was able to route 15,000 Chicago Public Schools students to classes but hundreds of students with disabilities dealt with long commute times. At the time, the district reported that 365 students with disabilities had to deal with commute times of 90 minutes or longer and could not arrange transportation for 1,200 students.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Politicians and pundits say parents are furious with schools. Polls say otherwise.

2023-07-25T18:11:18+00:00

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The polling company Gallup has been asking American parents the same question since 1999: Are you satisfied with your oldest child’s education? Every year through January 2020, between two-thirds and 80% said yes.

The pandemic upended many things about American schooling, but not this long-standing trend. In Gallup’s most recent poll, conducted late last year, 80% of parents said they were somewhat or completely satisfied with their child’s school, which in most cases was a public school. This was actually a bit higher than in most years before the pandemic. A string of other polls, conducted throughout the pandemic, have shown similar results.

“Contrary to elite or policy wonk opinion, which often is critical of schools, there have been years and years worth of data saying that families in general like their local public schools,” said Andy Smarick, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

“It would be natural to assume that in 2020, 2021, parental support for schools would have cratered,” said Smarick. “But it didn’t.”

But that’s not the prevailing narrative that has emerged. Instead, many commentators have seized on another part of the Gallup poll: Only 42% of American adults are happy with the country’s public schools — this figure has dropped several points since 2019.

“The last few years have been historically convulsive ones for education in America,” a recent New York Times Magazine piece said. Tellingly, satisfaction with public schools had dropped to “a 20-year low,” the story continued, citing Gallup. Some outlets implied or outright stated that the declining view of schools was driven by parents. An article in the conservative news outlet the Washington Free Beacon, for instance, mischaracterized Gallup’s results to claim that parents’ satisfaction had “plummeted.”

In reality, Gallup’s poll suggests a divergence between parents’ views of their children’s schools versus the public’s view of the nation’s schools: There was a startling 38-point gap between the two — which had also hit a 20-year record.

This and other data suggests that dissatisfaction with American public schools — and the policy changes that have resulted — has not been driven by most parents’ own experience with public schools.

Despite pandemic upheaval, most parents say their schools are doing fairly well.

Gallup’s finding is not an outlier. A Pew survey last year found that over 90% of parents were at least somewhat satisfied with the quality of their child’s education. A New York Times poll found that 77% were satisfied. Focusing just on parents with children in district schools, Education Next reported that 85% were at least somewhat satisfied; more recently EdChoice found that 84% were.

“Despite all the disruptions of the past two years, there is no sign of a pandemic-era drop-off in parents’ positive views of their children’s schooling,” wrote Gallup researcher Frank Newport. “Parents remain solidly positive about their kid’s quality of education — as they have been for over 20 years.”

It’s a striking finding in light of the massive upheavals to American schooling since the pandemic, which led students to fall behind academically. There have also been pitched debates about how schools should teach about race and gender. What could explain this? Local schools may have taken parents’ preferences into account in how they approached the pandemic and what they teach. Smarick said that in general people also tend to give institutions that they interact with directly, including schools, the benefit of the doubt.

“You know what they’re dealing with. You know what they’re trying to solve,” he said.

Polls do show that parents whose children attend private schools tend to be more satisfied than those in public schools, a pattern that existed before the pandemic. Certainly some parents aren’t happy with public schools, and have likely become more energized since the pandemic. And even parents who give decent marks to their child’s schools often say they could be better.

Dawn Delfín joined her school’s parent teacher association after her son entered kindergarten in the fall of 2020. The schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico, were still only offering virtual instruction. She supported that decision and sympathized with the challenges schools faced, but was frustrated by both the communication from the school and the quality of online instruction. “They did their best,” she said. “It was never going to be ideal, but it could have been handled better.”

In the years since, she’s been quite happy with her son’s school. She’d give it a B+ or A-, she said. It’s been “mostly great,” said Delfín, who is now president of the New Mexico PTA. “The teachers are excellent. They work hard.”

The polling results may seem surprising since there has also been an unprecedented decline in students enrolled in public schools. Between 2019 and 2021 the number of students attending public schools dropped by nearly 3%, from 50.8 million to 49.4 million. (More recent data is not available nationally.) Some of this reflects falling birthrates and immigration, while other children have shifted to private or home schooling. There’s also been a shift within the public school system from district to charter schools.

Some see this as at odds with the polling data. “While survey respondents express that they’re generally satisfied with how public schools responded to the pandemic, the enrollment numbers reveal a very different story,” wrote Frederick Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Satisfaction rates may also be higher because families moved their kids into schools they were happier with.

Although the enrollment shift is historically large and may prove disruptive to school districts, it still constitutes a small fraction of the nation’s children. This is consistent with the polling data, which shows that a small but meaningful chunk of parents — comprising millions of people — were dissatisfied with their child’s school. Moreover, much of the enrollment shifts came not from students who were already attending public school, but those in early grades who were entering school for the first time. “I would call these modest changes in school enrollment compared to what it could have been,” said Smarick

Those without schoolchildren are particularly unhappy with public schools.

Surveys actually show that it’s people without school-age children who are especially dissatisfied with public schools.

A recent EdChoice survey found that 57% of parents said their local school district was moving in the right direction, which was 10 percentage points higher than in January 2020, before the pandemic. (This is a bit different from the other parent surveys in that it was not asking about parents’ own experiences directly.) But among non-parents, only 29% said the local schools were on a positive trajectory.

This same gap between parents and non-parents has also showed up in polls by Education Next and the New York Times. The views of those without school-age children may be shaped by news coverage, which has advanced the narrative that schools are in disarray and parents are upset.

Nevertheless, the perception that parents have turned against public schools has justified a slew of proposed and actual policy changes. Republican-led states have passed new curriculum restrictions and expansive school choice programs under the banner of advancing parents’ rights. The polling satisfaction data does not speak to parents’ views on these various policies. But it does indicate that these changes are not a response to widespread parental unhappiness with public schools.

Delfín says that while she’s seen anger directed at schools on social media, she hasn’t heard much about it from parents she knows. “I really don’t see the same thing translating in everyday life,” she said. “Most families I know have their pluses and minuses about school and that always has been and always will be.”

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

At least $120 in pandemic food benefits headed to each NYC public school family, officials say

2023-07-20T18:36:20+00:00

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New York City public school families: Hold onto your state-issued food benefits cards. Another allotment of $120 per child is headed your way soon.

The latest disbursement of funds — known as the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer, or P-EBT — aims to help cover summer meal costs for families whose students usually receive free meals at school. Since New York City public schools have universal meals, all families are eligible regardless of household income.

The latest food benefits will roll out later this summer, though state officials didn’t provide a precise timeline. The benefits must be issued by Dec. 31, according to federal guidelines.

The funds follow prior disbursements in recent years, including funds of up to $1,671 per child that began rolling out earlier this year. Those funds were based on COVID-related absences or remote-learning days during the 2021-22 school year, as well as an additional credit for the summer of 2022.

In total, the state has issued $5.4 billion in P-EBT benefits since 2020, with about 60% of benefits issued directly to low-income families who receive federal benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The new summer installment will be the final round of P-EBT benefits for school-age children, state officials said.

In a statement, Justin Mason, a spokesperson for the state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, said the agency has conducted “extensive public outreach” and “worked closely with advocacy organizations across the state to ensure all eligible families are aware of these benefits and could take steps to redeem them.”

Advocates have praised the program for providing critical support across New York, especially as the pandemic has placed additional strain on struggling families.

[More: Here’s how NYC families can find free summer meal sites]

In a recent survey, nearly 75% of New York families said it had become harder to afford groceries this past year, according to No Kid Hungry, a national campaign run by the nonprofit Share Our Strength.

“With so many New Yorkers struggling to pay for food, we’re relieved the USDA has approved the State’s plan to provide P-EBT benefits to eligible families,” said Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry NY, in a statement.

For those on a low budget, the USDA estimates a family of four with two school-age children would spend roughly $250 per week on food — or around $1,000 each month.

Who is eligible for P-EBT?

All families with children who attended K-12 in New York City public schools this past school year are eligible for the summer food benefits. Those in charter, private, and other schools who received free meals through the federal school lunch program are also eligible.

Families can receive the benefits regardless of their immigration status.

Do you have to apply for the food benefits?

The benefits will be issued automatically and families do not have to apply for them.

How do you get the benefits?

Families that receive SNAP, state Temporary Assistance, or Medicaid benefits will get their disbursements directly added to those accounts.

All other eligible families will receive the latest round of benefits on the same P-EBT card where they received prior installments.

What if you lost your state-issued P-EBT card?

Those who have lost their P-EBT card can get a replacement by calling 1-888-328-6399.

What can you use P-EBT for?

The benefits can only be used to purchase food items, and are available to families for 274 days after being issued.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

House Republicans seek 80% cut to federal program for students from low-income families

2023-07-14T20:24:05+00:00

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Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives want to dramatically slash funding for Title I, the long-running federal program that sends money to schools based on the number of children from low-income families that they serve.

A bill advanced by a Republican-controlled House subcommittee on Friday seeks to cut Title I grants by 80% or nearly $15 billion.

The proposal is part of a broader package of GOP-backed cuts to schools and other federal programs. The bill would also ban the use of funding to teach “critical race theory,” although the concept is not defined.

Since Democrats control the Senate and White House, the deep cuts appear unlikely to be enacted. Even some Republicans may blanch at the idea, which would lead to spending reductions in their own districts’ schools. Still, the move highlights Republicans’ growing critique of American public schools — in how they’re funded, what they teach, and how they responded to the pandemic.

“While Title I grants do support school districts everywhere, including rural schools in districts like my own, these funds disproportionately support big city public schools: the same public schools that failed to educate the most-vulnerable children entrusted to them, by closing their doors for almost two years,” Rep. Robert Aderholt, a Republican from Alabama, said in a subcommittee hearing Friday.

It also underscores just how far apart the two parties have moved on education issues: President Joe Biden has sought to dramatically increase Title I funding.

“I don’t think this can pass Congress, but it’s incredibly concerning that this is what the leaders of this committee think is a reasonable thing for Congress to do,” said Sarah Abernathy, executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a coalition of education associations that supports more money for schools.

The House proposal represents an initial volley in how much to fund various federal programs in the upcoming fiscal year. The cuts to Title I are justified, Republicans on the subcommittee said in a messaging document, because some COVID relief funding provided to schools ”remains unspent and further investments will not be provided until these funds are used responsibly.” A major chunk of the proposed cut would come by rescinding Title I money that was approved by Congress last year.

House Republicans are also seeking to eliminate Title II, which among other things provides professional development to teachers — or as the subcommittee’s Republican members put it, “teacher training programs that send teachers to expensive weekend workshops.”

The proposal would hold steady funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which helps schools educate students with disabilities. It would also provide a modest boost for the federal Charter Schools Program, which supports the expansion of charter schools.

Although the legislation received initial approval from subcommittee Republicans, it’s a long way from being enacted. Any final spending law will have to be approved by the Senate and signed by the president.

What is clear is that the big education funding increases that Biden initially hoped after being elected for will not be forthcoming: The president has already made a deal with Republicans to limit discretionary federal spending, including for education.

The vast majority of money that schools receive come from state and local sources. Funded most recently at $18.4 billion, Title I accounts for a small share of the several hundred billion spent on education each year. But by design, the money flows disproportionately to schools serving more students from low-income backgrounds. That means any cut to Title I would hit those schools hardest. It would also have a larger impact on schools serving more students of color.

The proposal would affect district, charter, and private school students alike. (Private school students in poverty receive Title I services provided by their local district in coordination with the student’s school.)

How Title I funding is used varies from school to school. But it typically supports instruction for students from low-income families, including by hiring more teachers to reduce class size, adding class time, and providing coaching to help teachers improve. Most research has found that more money for schools boosts student performance. Studies on Title I in particular are more limited and mixed, though.

Republicans link COVID aid with Title I cut

House Republicans’ effort to cut Title I appears motivated by the fact that schools have received large sums of federal COVID relief money, which was distributed through the Title I formula. The biggest tranche came from the Biden-championed American Rescue Plan. Republicans have questioned whether that money has been used effectively and suggested that schools have been slow to spend it. Republicans have also voiced concern that high levels of federal spending have contributed to inflation, which some research supports.

Nat Malkus, a fellow at the American Enterprise, a conservative think tank, said some of these concerns are legitimate. “Boatloads of money went out in ARP, more than school districts were ready to use effectively and without any of the guardrails that could guide the spending,” he said.

School officials, on the other hand, say that the money has provided crucial support throughout the pandemic. And they now appear to be on track to spend down the relief dollars as part of a multi-year plan. They have until fall of 2024 to do so, and may seek extensions.

“They haven’t spent it all yet because they didn’t have to,” said Abernathy. “If you want to give local control, that’s what happens.”

House Democrats predicted that if the Republican bill were enacted, it would result in tens of thousands of teachers losing their jobs. “We are witnessing a widespread attack on public education that should horrify all of us,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut. A number of education groups also condemned the proposal.

Malkus agreed that if the cuts are ultimately enacted it would have harmful effects. “There’s no doubt that it’s going to hurt students,” he said. But he also emphasized that the proposal faces long odds and perhaps should be seen as more of a messaging document: “It’s something that you should take seriously, but not literally.”

Title I was enacted in 1965 under President Lyndon Johnson as an effort to improve the education of disadvantaged children by providing additional funding to their schools. Ever since, various Republicans — including presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump — have been trying to cut or eliminate the program.

In 2020, Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos proposed combining Title I and other federal education programs into a sharply reduced block grant that districts could spend as they see fit.

But Title I has persisted, even when Republicans have fully controlled the federal government, in part because it has developed a constituency of teachers and school administrators who support the program. And most school districts in the country receive some Title I funding. Even many Republicans have been loath to back cuts in funding to their local schools.

“It’s a program that a lot of schools get,” said Abernathy. “It is generally very hard to slash funding for big formula programs that go to most Congressmembers’ constituents.”

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit school district’s absenteeism rates declined after COVID quarantine rules ended

2023-07-12T12:00:00+00:00

The easing of COVID safety protocols helped the Detroit school district record a significant decrease in its chronic absenteeism rate this past school year, officials said, an encouraging sign for a district that has one of the highest rates in the nation.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District had seen its rate of chronic absenteeism jump to 77% in the previous year, when unvaccinated students who had possible COVID exposure were required to isolate for seven to 10 days. In October 2021, the district had more than 400 students a week in quarantine.

But this past school year, the percentage of students who were chronically absent — meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year, or 18 days — dropped to 68%, a decline DPSCD Superintendent Nikolai Vitti attributes to the end of districtwide quarantine and close-contact guidance. School administrators and educators were instead able to “focus on teaching and learning and intervention,” he said.

“Beyond anything, it was really getting back to the reform this year,” Vitti said at a school board academic committee meeting Monday. The district had projected a “two- to three-percentage point” improvement in its chronic absenteeism rate, he added.

“Our principals have become more comfortable being accountable to improving student attendance, and that meant more problem solving with families and with students, incentivizing improved attendance,” Vitti said.

Before the pandemic, DPSCD had committed to a multi-pronged reform effort to reduce absenteeism, including offering wraparound services for students, hiring attendance agents, and partnering with community organizations.

By the end of 2018-19, in part because of those efforts, chronic absenteeism fell to 62%, from 70% in 2017-18.

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, Board President Angelique Peterson-Mayberry said she has heard some school principals complain that they have limited strategies and staff to address absenteeism.

“When there are vacancies with staff, it depends (solely) on the attendance agent at that location,” Peterson-Mayberry said. “Sometimes the schools feel strapped, because they feel like they can’t make children come to school.”

Vitti said he’s heard similar concerns over the years.

“A lot of our teachers, attendance agents mainly, will say: ‘What is the recourse after I do a home visit? After I make a phone call?’” he said.

For the coming school year, Vitti said Tuesday, the district may consider adding punitive measures to address absenteeism. In a preview at a finance committee meeting last month, Vitti said he would propose new policies that would penalize students who missed more than 50% of the school year, either requiring them to repeat the grade or, in the case of students who attend schools outside their neighborhood, assigning them back to their neighborhood school.

Vitti said the district had planned to institute the penalties years ago, but held off because of the pandemic. “Now that we are back and functioning on a reform agenda, I think that it’s time to do some things that we planned on doing,” he said.

Meanwhile, DPSCD plans to retain its attendance agent positions, with 20 of those agents shifting to its central office to provide districtwide attendance outreach. The remaining attendance agents will be placed in schools with the highest concentrations of poverty and chronically absent students.

The district is also set to launch 12 school-based health hubs in the next three years to provide medical resources and services that families would need to keep students attending school regularly.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Recent school year saw little academic recovery, new study finds

2023-07-11T04:01:00+00:00

There’s been little, if any, progress making up large learning gaps that have emerged since the onset of the pandemic, according to a new analysis of data from the testing group NWEA.

In the 2022-23 school year, students learned at a similar or slower rate compared to a typical pre-pandemic school year, the analysis found. This left intact the substantial learning losses, which have barely budged since the spring of 2021.

NWEA offers only one data point based on a subset of American students, and more data from other exams will be needed to produce a clearer picture of academic progress during this last school year. Still, NWEA’s analysis is a concerning indication that the steep learning losses seen since the pandemic have proven difficult to ameliorate and could have lasting consequences for students and the country.

The results are “somber and sobering,” said NWEA researcher Karyn Lewis. “Whatever we’re doing, it’s not enough,” she said. “The magnitude of the crisis is out of alignment with the scope and scale of the response and we need to do more.”

Since the onset of the COVID pandemic, NWEA, which develops and sells tests to schools, has been measuring students’ progress on math and reading exams in grades three through eight. By the spring of 2021 — according to NWEA and a string of other tests — the typical student was far behind where they would normally be. Test score gaps by race and family income, already yawning, had grown in many cases. This coincided with dramatic disruptions outside and inside schools, including extended virtual instruction. Students were learning during that time — but much more slowly than usual.

By the end of the 2021-22 school year, NWEA offered some reason for optimism. Gaps were still there, but students in many grades had started to slowly make up ground. Learning during the school year was back to normal, perhaps even a bit better than normal. State tests also indicated that students were starting to catch up.

But NWEA’s results from the most recent school year are more pessimistic. For reasons that aren’t clear, progress stalled out, even reversed. In most grades and subjects, students actually learned at a slightly slower rate than usual. Growth in middle school reading was particularly sluggish.

In no grade or subject was there evidence of substantial catch-up this year. Instead, the learning gap this spring was not much different than in the spring of 2021, according to NWEA. Students of all types remain behind, but NWEA shows that Black and Hispanic students have been hurt somewhat more than white and Asian American students.

“This is not what we were hoping to see and it’s not the message we want to be sharing at this time,” said Lewis. “But the data are what they are.”

Frustratingly, though, the data does not come with a clear explanation.

Schools were beset with challenges this past year: Chronic absenteeism remained at an alarmingly high level in many places. More teachers left the classroom than usual. Educators reported difficulties managing students’ behavior and supporting their mental health.

But it’s not clear why there was more progress in the 2021-22 school year, which was also an unusually taxing year in many ways, according to teachers. Lewis said this was puzzling, but speculated that an initial burst of motivation upon returning to school buildings had fizzled.

Learning loss recovery efforts have also run into hurdles. Tutoring has reached only a small subset of students. Few districts have extended the school day or year to guarantee all students more learning time.

But NWEA researchers cautioned that their data cannot speak directly to the effectiveness or particular recovery efforts or to the federal COVID relief money more generally. “We have no access to the counterfactual of what life would be like right now absent those funds — I think it would be much more dire,” said Lewis.

It’s also possible that some combination of out-of-school factors may be driving trends in student learning. Researchers have long noted that a complex array of variables outside of schools’ control matters a great deal for student learning.

What the NWEA study does suggest is that students are not on track to catch up to where they would have been if not for the pandemic. Lewis says the takeaway is that policymakers and schools simply aren’t doing enough. “If you give someone half a Tylenol for a migraine and expect them to feel better, that’s just not reality,” she said.

NWEA’s analysis is based on data from millions of students in thousands of public schools. Outcomes may not be representative of all students or schools, though, since the exam’s administration is voluntary.

NWEA researchers say other data would be helpful to confirm the results. That could come soon: State test results from this year are beginning to emerge and other testing companies will be releasing their own data.

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s rising graduation rates bucked national trends. A little-known grading policy may hold clues.

2023-07-10T10:00:00+00:00

When high school teacher Rachel King welcomed a new cohort of 10th graders to her classroom in the fall of 2021, she made a discovery: a number of her students had never completed their coursework from the previous year.

At the time, the 36-year-old taught English at The Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn. It was her 13th year teaching and her third at the all-girls middle and high school, which serves predominantly Black and Latino children from low-income households.

When schools first shifted to remote learning in March 2020, it quickly became clear that students were struggling to log on to their classes and complete assignments. Thousands lacked access to devices, WiFi, or a quiet place to work. As worry spread that many could get left behind, education department officials announced new academic guidelines. Attendance and testing requirements would be waived for the remainder of the year. No student would fail a course.

If a high schooler was not on track to pass a course by the end of a marking period, they would receive a grade of “NX”— equivalent to a “course in progress”— on their transcripts rather than an “F.” The NX would serve as a placeholder, giving them additional time to make up missing assignments and demonstrate mastery of the course material. In the meantime, they would progress to the next semester or grade. Once they completed missing work, their NX would be retroactively converted into a passing grade.

The education department promised that this would provide greater flexibility and extend empathy to students who were struggling in the face of a major public health crisis.

Reflecting back on the policy, many educators worry it misleadingly inflated graduation rates and left some kids academically unprepared. Many teachers felt their hands were tied and that the system — which they were a part of — failed to support the most vulnerable students.

King initially felt torn about the policy. She wanted to give her students every possible chance to succeed. But she was nervous it would give students a reason not to turn in their work.

In June of 2020, almost 30% of all New York City high schoolers had received an NX in at least one class, according to previously unreported Department of Education data obtained by Chalkbeat and the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. With the city’s problematic rollout of its remote summer school program — where a large swath of students never logged on at all — only 3.6% of NXs were converted into passing grades citywide.

According to King, though, her school had successfully supported students through the summer. So that first year most— if not all—of her students were able to clear their NXs.

But as the policy was extended through June of 2021, what was supposed to be a temporary fix eventually became a problematic fixture.

So in the fall of 2021, King and many other teachers greeted thousands of students who had yet to pass their previous year’s classes.

By the end of that school year, at least 95,000 high schoolers across the city – just over 33% – had received at least one NX, according to data received through a Freedom of Information Act request. Disproportionately these were students of color, students in temporary housing, and students with disabilities. About 40% of all Black and Latino high schoolers received at least one incomplete, a rate about twice as high as white students. And almost half of all students with disabilities did not pass at least one class.

Of roughly two dozen teachers across 17 schools in all five boroughs surveyed by Chalkbeat/Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, the majority said that the work required to convert NXs into passing credits was often minimal and low in rigor. Support from the education department never came, many educators said.

Ultimately, many of the city’s most vulnerable students were pushed through to the next grade level with few supports, no direct instruction, and little work completed, according to the teachers who were surveyed.

A number of teachers said the NX policy preserved the perception that students were doing okay academically. For instance, while graduation rates across the country generally stagnated between 2019 and 2021, New York City’s improved by six points. For students with disabilities, the rate jumped even more: just over nine points.

Yet, as New York City’s graduation rates climbed, so too did the rate of chronic absenteeism. In the 2020-21 school year, nearly 33% of students missed 10% or more school days. Typically, chronic absenteeism is a predictor of poor academic performance since missed school means missed learning time.

Nathaniel Styer, education department spokesperson, said that students still had to meet state graduation requirements. “The NX grades had nothing to do with graduation rates,” he said.

But changes to those requirements gave the NX policy more power.

Pre-pandemic, high school students in New York State had to pass four required exams and accumulate 22 units of academic credit to receive a Regents diploma. During the pandemic, these statewide requirements were loosened with the temporary lifting of Regents testing. Instead, students just needed a passing grade in the course that would have culminated in a Regents. With the NX policy, New York City made it easier to accumulate credits and graduate. While graduation rates across the state climbed, the city’s did so at a faster rate.

“They lowered an already low bar,” said David Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Bloomfield acknowledged that students needed flexibility during a time when families’ lives were in upheaval. But he said the city’s actions were tantamount to “turning its back on all of these students and saying ‘We’ve got too much to handle during this pandemic. We’re just going to put our heads down on the desk and wave our arms forward for you to just get through.’”

Teachers felt pressure to keep passing rates up

The NX, or “course in progress,” policy was not new, even though few teachers had ever heard of it. It was intended to be for a small population of students experiencing an acute crisis, such as a health emergency. The education department expanded its use to unprecedented levels during the pandemic.

Suddenly, many teachers were responsible not only for their new course loads, but also for all of the students who had not passed the previous year. Students, too, were responsible for their current course loads while also trying to make up past work.

Education department officials had pledged to provide schools with the resources necessary to support students through this unprecedented time, such as staffing and devices. Of the 25 teachers surveyed, only three were aware of support provided to their school regarding implementation of the NX policy, other than electronics.

Officials did not respond to questions regarding what support the education department had provided to schools. They did not answer questions about what was required of students to recover these credits.

The majority of teachers surveyed said their students only had to complete independent work, such as packets or brief online assignments, in order to pass. A few teachers said they did not know what work was assigned to their students who did not pass courses; once they assigned the NX they never received updates about their students’ progress.

Over half of the respondents reported that the students who received NXs did not receive direct instruction from a teacher or complete meaningful work in order to receive their credits.

It appears that once a student with an NX completed the work necessary to pass the course, any record of that NX was cleared from the transcript, making it difficult for future teachers or professors to know which students might need additional support.

Some teachers described tacit pressure from school administrators to keep their passing rates up, despite the lack of completed work. One Brooklyn science teacher alleged that his principal explicitly told staff to pass all middle schoolers outright, discouraging them from giving out NXs in the first place, even if the students had never attended class.

A number of teachers also reported that, while they did not like the policy outcomes, they were not sure what other options existed for the city. One administrator said that the city provided him with policy updates, superintendent check-ins, and support with use of resources that students and teachers could use to make up work. His school relied largely on an online learning platform to recover credits.

A Staten Island history teacher reported that her department was asked to create a packet of work for all high school students with NXs. Once these packets were distributed, she never saw them again. Students were asked, instead, to give them to the school administrators. They then graded the students’ work, rather than returning it to the teachers. Administrators either instructed teachers to change the NXs to a passing grade or went into grade books and did so themselves.

Many teachers acknowledged lowering their own expectations, feeling like they had no other choice given the circumstances. More than 8,700 New York City children lost a parent or caregiver to the coronavirus, according to the COVID Collective.

A high school history teacher in Queens said that when she gave her students NX grades they returned to her for an additional class the next year. But the coursework this time, she said, was “a joke.” Because the course asked for no student-teacher engagement, she said she never even met some of her students.

“They didn’t come to class. I could bump into them on the street. Unless you told me their name I wouldn’t know them,” she said.

Despite her discomfort with the policy, she said it did work for some students who really struggled. The “course in progress” work allowed the students to move on and gave them a chance to finish high school, even if the work was not comparable to a real course.

Will Ehrenfeld, a high school history teacher at P-Tech, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, serving predominantly students from low-income backgrounds, said that by the spring of 2021, in a class of 30, only two or three students typically attended live Zoom sessions.

More than a quarter of his students received an NX, he said. Ehrenfeld put a lot of pressure on himself to help kids pass to the next grade level. He wanted them to get the chance to move forward with their lives.

“I don’t want to hold kids back,” Ehrenfeld said, “but I do think it’s worth learning history and learning how to write… A lot of our kids went off to college and really struggled.”

P-Tech teacher Will Ehrenfeld (left) talks with Devin Ballesteros (right), a student at the Brooklyn high school.

Even with the flexibility of the NX policy, more than 1 in 5 high school students did not reconcile their NXs from June 2021 to passing marks.

When asked about what happened to these 61,000 students who failed to convert their NX into a passing grade, an education department spokesperson said, “They might have just taken the ‘F’ and moved forward.” (Not all courses are required for graduation.)

King, the teacher at the Institute of Math and Science, became increasingly frustrated as the year wore on, and she watched the requirements for her students continue to plummet. The city’s expectations fell first, then her school’s, and finally her own, she said.

King said at one point she was told by her school’s administration to use students’ grades on a single assignment as their grade for the entire year. Students quickly caught on. “They knew if they just turned something in, they would pass.” King had six students who never showed up and never completed make-up work. They still passed, she said.

For the first time in her 13-year career, she began toying with the idea of leaving. “I can say this isn’t good for kids one thousand times and nobody is going to care,” she said.

Some students benefited from grading policy, others struggled

Kenneth Johnson, a high school senior at P-Tech, was a strong student before schools were shuttered in the spring of 2020.

He successfully balanced his course load and his love for track and football. His favorite class was math. After the transition to remote learning, he struggled to keep up. He finished out the year with multiple NXs.

Kenneth Johnson.

In the fall of 2020, Johnson moved to New Jersey to live with his father and play football at the local high school. Because the NX policy did not exist there, he was unable to recover his missing credits. After moving back, he returned to P-Tech. “That’s where the NX portion came in,” he said. “It really helped me to get back on track.”

He said the work he completed was not equivalent to an entire year’s worth of course material, but it was still challenging. “You had to be on point with it, still like a regular class,” he said. “It was a cool concept. Allowing the kids who didn’t take the remote [learning] as seriously as they should have to redeem themself.”

Earlier this year, Johnson enlisted in the Army. Because of test scores, he qualified for a math-based job, and was able to move up a rank.

For other students, though, it was more detrimental.

TJ Kor had a number of NXs by fall of 2020 when he was a sophomore at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens. While the make-up work was not rigorous, it required his attention on the weekends and after school. He became overwhelmed.

Kor was so behind from all of the missed instruction, he would benefit from repeating the entire grade, his mother argued. The school disagreed, which frustrated his mother, Helen Kor. She wondered, does an NX really satisfy the needs of students? The school told her that when students are forced to repeat grades they suffer, she said. Some studies support that idea.

Kor’s mother eventually transferred him to an independent school for his junior year. “He recognizes he’s not alone. There’s lots of people who are trying to make up the credits they lost during the pandemic.”

For one teacher, the final straw

From the start, the 2021-22 school year was atypical for King. One of her normal teaching duties had been replaced with a course exclusively for students who had received an NX the previous spring. She was on the books as their teacher of record, but she had never met a number of them. “I didn’t know what they looked like, what they sounded like, had not seen any work from them. Nothing. The NXs were truly the ones who were like, I forgot this person was on my roll.”

King struggled to get her students to show up for the first period make-up course. She created assignments, such as paragraphs analyzing TedTalks, that students could do independently. She sent them end-of-unit projects from the year before and asked them to at least complete those. Some did, others did not. As time went on, the tacit pressure to pass them mounted.

Her regular classes felt more challenging too. “I had 10th graders who could not, in an entire hour, produce four to six sentences.”

Then, one morning while biking to school, King was hit by a car. For the many days she could not be in school because of her injuries, another teacher covered her NX course. Her students continued to miss the class. As time went on, she felt that if she did not pass them, the next teacher would. The entire operation was built to fail, she said.

By winter break, King thought, “I don’t know how much longer I can put up with this.” And that, she said, was when she cleared her NXs and passed all of her students. The move felt unethical, but she was defeated and unsure of what other option she had.

Looking back, King felt empathy for the decision makers, for the city, for those who were making policy choices throughout the pandemic. She recognized what a difficult time this was, filled with confusion and uncertainty. But, it also exposed the deeper systemic fissures that had gone unchecked for so many years. For her, it was the final straw.

By March 2022, she had quit.

Amanda Geduld reported this story as a Stabile Investigative Fellow while at Columbia’s Journalism School. She was previously an English teacher in New York City.

Denver expanded summer school with COVID relief dollars. Are students making academic gains?

2023-07-07T21:39:17+00:00

There are three pies and four monsters. How much pie will each monster eat?

That was the math question before five soon-to-be fifth graders earlier this week at Summer Connections, Denver Public Schools’ full-day summer program for elementary students.

With dry erase markers and personal white boards, the students sat in a loose semicircle on the floor of a classroom at Joe Shoemaker elementary school, puzzling out the answer. A student named Gael was the first to solve it.

“Gael says three-quarters,” the teacher said. “Why, Gael?”

Smaller class sizes, a mix of academics and fun, and acceleration instead of remediation — meaning incoming fifth graders do fifth grade work instead of reviewing fourth grade skills — are the hallmarks of Summer Connections, which is now in its second year and serving about 1,860 elementary school students.

But it’s hard to understand whether the program, which is funded by federal COVID relief dollars and meant to help students catch up on lost learning, is having the intended effect.

Initial data comparing the spring and fall reading scores of first through third graders who had attended Summer Connections last year showed they did not experience “summer slide,” or the loss of academic skills. That was good news, given that the same data showed that students who did not attend Summer Connections did experience summer slide in reading.

But a more detailed analysis showed no difference in reading scores between the two groups. That analysis, which matched Summer Connections students with non-Summer Connections students who were similar demographically and academically, found the two groups “had statistically identical average fall test scores,” according to a district memo.

A pre-pandemic half-day summer program called Summer Academy had the same outcome.

In an interview, Angelin Thompson, the director of extended academic learning for DPS, pointed out that the more detailed analysis was also narrower. It only looked at students who took one particular reading test, Istation English, which was about half of Summer Connections students.

DPS researchers highlighted other caveats too, including that comparing Summer Connections students to non-Summer Connections students is imperfect. Unlike in medical studies where one group is given a placebo and the other is given a drug, there is no placebo in this comparison. The students who did not attend Summer Connections could have spent their summer playing and never picking up a book or with a private reading tutor.

And while Summer Connections focused on math and science in addition to reading, there were no fall tests in the other subjects to measure whether students made progress.

For her part, Thompson is focusing on the broader analysis that showed Summer Connections students didn’t experience summer slide. It could be a key piece of data as DPS leaders decide whether to keep the program, which is costing nearly $4 million to run this summer, when the federal stimulus dollars, known as ESSER, dry up next year.

“I’m hoping we will make the case that this program is so beneficial and families appreciate it and kids are having fun,” Thompson said. “Once the ESSER dollars go away, DPS will have to make hard choices on what we continue to fund and what we don’t.”

Some said the day was too long, while others asked for more

Summer Connections debuted last summer as a super-size version of the half-day Summer Academy. Summer Connections was almost twice as long at six weeks instead of 3½ weeks. It offered a full day of academics instead of a half day, and it was open to all elementary students, not just those struggling with reading or learning English.

This year’s program is similar, with a few tweaks based on lessons learned. Summer Connections is five weeks this year instead of six, a compromise between parents and teachers who said six weeks was too long and research that says longer is better, Thompson said.

It’s still a full day, though, despite some concern from teachers. In a survey of last year’s Summer Connections teachers, 54% who said they wouldn’t return this summer cited “day too long” as the reason. “The full days were extremely long,” one wrote, according to a district slide presentation summarizing the survey results.

“Kids were having a rough time and often didn’t attend much,” another wrote.

Parents were split on the issue, with some asking in the survey for a half-day option and others asking for more coverage, including child care in the mornings before 9 a.m.

One parent wrote that the hours were “very working parent friendly.”

Thompson, who is newly in charge of the program this year, said DPS kept the full day because parents and students wanted it, and to fit in all the fun activities, including gym and computer science classes, Lego challenges, and a new field trip to the Denver Aquarium. To address teachers’ concerns, Summer Connections added more student-free time during the day for teachers to prep their lessons.

Thompson also hired more special education teachers and paraprofessionals to address another issue: a perceived lack of support for students with disabilities last summer. Some teachers said they didn’t know until the first day of the program which students had special education plans, and some parents said teachers didn’t follow their children’s plans.

Special education has been tricky. Students with disabilities are overrepresented at Summer Connections, but the program is not specifically designed for them.

Last year, 22% of the roughly 2,000 Summer Connections students had a special education plan, which is twice the district rate. Some students with disabilities are offered a different summer program called “extended school year,” which is tailored to their needs. But it’s only a half-day program, and Thompson said some families opted for the full-day Summer Connections instead, despite attempts to explain that the other program has more resources.

“At Summer Connections, we don’t turn away anyone for any reason,” Thompson said. “If you register your kid when there’s available space, that’s it.”

This year, only one of the 10 schools hosting Summer Connections — Lowry Elementary — had a wait list. At all of the other schools, all students who wanted to attend got in.

Friendships and social growth were a bright spot

Even if the academic results from last year’s Summer Connections program were complicated, the survey results revealed another bright spot: fun and friendships.

Almost all of the students surveyed said they made friends, and 31% said it was their favorite part of the program. (The first runner-up? Recess.)

“That I made new friends and I also learned how to multiply two digits and one digits together,” one student wrote in response to what they liked about Summer Connections.

Teachers also cited students’ social growth as a success of the program, and 96% of parents said it helped their child be more socially prepared for the next school year.

“I think it has been a very interesting social experience for students,” one teacher wrote. “Very few students knew each other beforehand so it was amazing to see how they created friendships in such a short amount of time. I hope that stays with our students and empowers them to create friendships wherever they go in life.”

That social success was evident on the playground during recess at Joe Shoemaker elementary school this week. A clump of fifth grade girls wandered the soccer field chatting while third graders chased each other up the climbing mountain and across plastic toadstools.

A big group of boys played a fast-paced game of basketball as a recess monitor shouted, “Pass it! Shoot it! Yes, that’s it!” Girls dangled off the rope jungle gym, their hair floating free.

Not a single student sat alone.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s TCAP test scores climb for second straight year after pandemic

2023-06-29T19:00:00+00:00

Tennessee’s third set of test scores from the pandemic era improved again across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

State-level results released Thursday showed an overall increase in proficiency since last year for public school students, and a surge since 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across the nation.

But the performance of historically underserved students — including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color — still lags. Those groups of students, who already trailed their peers before disruptions to schooling began in 2020, also spent the longest time learning remotely during the public health emergency caused by COVID-19.

The latest scores continue the state’s upward trend of pandemic recovery, based on standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP.

The academic snapshot suggests that Tennessee’s early investments in summer learning camps and intensive tutoring are paying off to counter three straight years of COVID-related disruptions.

Gov. Bill Lee called the results “encouraging,” while interim Education Commissioner Sam Pearcy praised educators, students, and their families for their hard work.

“These gains signal that we’re focused on the right work to advance student learning,” Pearcy told reporters during a morning call. “And as a result of that, we know that we will all continue to keep our foot on the gas to keep this momentum rolling.”

Beginning in the third grade, Tennessee students take TCAPs in four core subjects. This year’s students exceeded pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and social studies, while improving in math and science.

As previously reported, Tennessee’s third-grade proficiency rate jumped by over 4 percentage points to more than 40% on tests given this spring. Many of the other 60% have to participate in learning intervention programs to avoid being held back a year under a new state law.

Results for historically underserved student groups reflected both good and bad news.

The good news: Improvement for students of color, children from low-income families, those with disabilities, and those learning to speak English mostly paralleled the gains of their more affluent, white, or nondisabled peers.

The bad news: Tennessee isn’t closing those persistent gaps. Our analysis below focused on overall performance in English language arts.

The statewide data is available online by clicking “2023 State Assessment” on a new dashboard of the Tennessee Report Card.

District-level results, which are being reviewed by district leaders, are scheduled to be released in July.

And for the first time under a long-delayed change to the state’s accountability policies, this year’s TCAP results will be used to help calculate A-to-F grades this fall for Tennessee’s 1,700-plus public schools. The state has deferred the new accountability measure for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with graphics and analysis.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

New York wants to revamp how schools are evaluated. Here’s what could change for now.

2023-06-22T16:45:25+00:00

How does the state determine whether schools are doing well or if they are struggling and need extra support?

Before the pandemic, state officials relied on standardized tests and high school Regents exams to figure out how well students were doing, along with other factors, such as graduation rates. But the public health crisis paused state testing and affected school performance metrics in other ways.

Now, education department officials are seeking a new, temporary evaluation system for the next two school years, with the hopes of creating something more permanent for the 2025-26 school year.

If a school is found to be struggling, it is required to develop an improvement plan that must be approved by local and state officials. Schools that don’t make progress for five years could face state takeover or closure — but it’s a route that state officials rarely took even before developing the current accountability system, which is meant to be less punitive for schools.

In the short term, over the next two years, state officials want to exclude certain science and social studies exams, as well as measures for student growth and college and career readiness, when deciding which schools need improvement. These changes are necessary, officials say, because schools are still missing a trove of data, such as enough student participation in state tests, because of the pandemic.

Already, the conversation is sparking some controversy. Some groups focused on education reform believe the move represents a step backward just as schools need more help as they recover from the pandemic. Other observers believe the state’s proposed plan is reasonable.

Ultimately, the federal government must sign off on these proposed changes, since the state’s accountability system is required by federal law and is written into New York’s federally required Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, plan.

“They’re doing a decent job of balancing what’s of interest in the state and the federal ESSA requirements, and incorporating all the instability and uncertainty that came with the slowdown of testing during the pandemic,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College and an expert in testing.

But Education-Trust New York, an advocacy organization focused on equity issues, worried that several of the proposed changes could mean masking “bright spots and disparities,” according to their written public feedback to the state.

“I think these next two school years are incredibly important for kids coming out of the pandemic,” said Jeff Smink, the group’s deputy director, in an interview with Chalkbeat. “We have to both give them all the support they need but also hold them to high standards, and I just don’t feel like we’re doing that right now.”

What metrics would still be used?

Under the state’s proposal, schools will still be measured on English language proficiency (based on a state language exam for English learners), graduation rates, how well students are doing in core subjects based on Regents and state test scores, and chronic absenteeism. In New York City, chronic absenteeism has been a pressing issue, with 41% of students last school year absent for at least 10 school days.

What do state officials want to ditch (for now)?

The state wants to put a pause on measuring academic progress based on certain goals for student scores on state English and math tests.

State officials say they want to update these goals — first set in the 2017-18 school year — before they use them to determine whether schools are struggling.

The state’s proposed plan would also pause the use of “Measures of Interim Progress,” which more broadly measures whether schools are meeting goals for academics and other things, like their graduation rates.

For elementary and middle schools, officials want to pause how they’ve been measuring student growth, largely because of the lack of testing data. Typically, they calculated student growth using three years of testing data, but the pandemic caused big disruptions: For example, just one in five New York City children took state exams in the 2020-21 school year, when most children chose to learn from home.

For high schools, officials won’t consider college, career, and civic readiness metrics, which include advanced coursework or extra credentials in specialized jobs-based courses. That’s because the pandemic may have hampered students’ access to some of these programs or courses, officials said. They also worried that the pandemic’s impact on learning may have caused students to perform worse academically than they otherwise would have, such as on AP exams.

What will the state do with data, even if it’s not being used to evaluate schools?

State officials still plan to provide all of this data to schools for “informational purposes only” for the next two school years, they said.

Why do state officials want to exclude elementary school science exams and high school social studies assessments?

Science tests would be excluded because the state has changed who must take those exams. Traditionally, students in fourth and eighth grades take the state science test. However, only eighth graders took the test this school year, as the state prepares to offer the exam next year to fifth graders instead of fourth graders. That means they won’t be able to compare results equitably across elementary and middle schools that have different grade configurations.

Fifth graders will take the exam next spring. Asked why those scores won’t be taken into account for the 2024-25 school year, a spokesperson said that it allows districts to have “consistency and predictability” for now, as they attempt to rebuild the accountability system.

While calling it a “logical” move, Ed-Trust argued that excluding science tests “undermines the importance of science education” and worried schools will have less reason to focus on it. The organization suggested that the state should instead work with local districts to “ensure a smooth transition” to the new science assessments without entirely removing it as one way to measure student performance.

On the high school level, officials want to pause using social studies tests because of multiple exam cancellations in recent years. The state looks at cohorts of students, such as the graduating class of 2023, when considering how they performed on these tests, namely the Regents exams for Global History and Geography and U.S. History and Government.

But students who will graduate this year couldn’t take Regents exams in 2021, when they were in 10th grade, because of the pandemic. U.S. History and Government exams were also canceled last year, when these students were juniors, in the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, with the state education department claiming there was material on the exam that could “compound student trauma.”

State officials have emphasized that this plan “in no way diminishes” the importance of science or social studies instruction.

How will schools be labeled if they need support?

The lowest performing schools are known as schools in need of Comprehensive Support and Improvement, or CSI. But the state won’t list new CSI schools until the 2025-26 school year because they identified a group of such schools this year under a tweaked system, and that process only happens every three years, officials said.

A total of 139 New York City schools were identified this year as in need of some level of improvement, with 83% of them listed as CSI schools, according to state data.

However, New York will identify schools for Targeted Support and Intervention, or TSI, next year, which must happen annually per federal law. Those are schools that aren’t meeting goals set for specific student groups, such as by race, economic status, and those with disabilities.

In one recent — and perhaps confusing — change, schools that are meeting or exceeding their goals are no longer called “Schools in Good Standing” and instead are now labeled by the state as schools identified for Local Support and Improvement, or LSI.

What will happen for the 2025-26 school year?

State officials plan to revamp the accountability system for the 2025-26 school year after collecting feedback from the public. The new plan will also incorporate any changes to the state’s graduation requirements, which could come as soon as the end of this year. The education department is rethinking the role of Regents exams in graduation, among other considerations.

Pallas said that the plan for the 2025-26 school year and beyond would still have to meet federal ESSA requirements and earn the buy-in of school district leaders — meaning that it likely won’t be “a dramatic break from the past.”

“It’s gotta be something that feels progressive but also comfortable,” Pallas said.

Thomas Wilburn contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Latest national test results show striking drop in 13-year-olds’ math and reading scores

2023-06-21T04:01:00+00:00

American 13-year-olds remain far behind in key math and reading skills, according to the latest data from a long-running national test.

Scores were substantially lower in the fall of 2022 compared to the last time the test was administered three years earlier. Making matters worse, even before the pandemic hit, 13-year-olds had lost ground on the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP.

That adds up to a striking collapse in achievement scores since 2012, after decades of progress in math and modest gains in reading. In reading, 13-year-olds scored about the same as those who took the test in 1971, when it was first administered. Math scores were now comparable to those in 1992.

The data is just the latest evidence that the pandemic and school closures exacted a steep toll on student learning. These scores do not shed light on whether schools have made any progress in closing these learning gaps, since they offer only a snapshot in time. Other analyses show that students have made up some of what they have lost. Regardless, the new data suggest that most students remain far back from where they would normally be if not for the pandemic.

“The learning disruption further undermined the development of basic skills that students need at this age,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the arm of the U.S. Department of Education that administers the exam. “This is a huge scale of challenge that faces the nation today.”

Tuesday’s results come from NAEP’s long-term trend exam, which has tested students’ basic skills since the 1970s. Between October and December of last year, the test was given to a representative sample of 13-year-old students, who are typically in seventh or eighth grade.

These students scored nine points worse in math and four points worse in reading, compared to 13-year-olds in 2020. That year marked a notable decline compared to 2012, the high point of scores on both tests.

For instance, in 2012, 85% of 13-year-olds had demonstrated skills in basic problem solving and math operations, like multiplication. In 2020, that number fell to 79% and now is at 71%.

The declines affected large swaths of students, but Black 13-year-olds saw particularly steep drops in both subjects. The gap between the lowest- and highest-performing students also widened — continuing a pre-pandemic trend that has alarmed and befuddled experts. (Unlike the main NAEP exam, these results are not broken down by state or city.)

In a survey accompanying the test, students reported being absent from school far more frequently and reading for pleasure less often.

The test score results align with a variety of other assessments, including NAEP’s long term trend tests of 9-year-olds and the main NAEP given to fourth and eighth graders. This and other data have told a consistent story:

Since the pandemic, students have learned at a slower rate than usual, creating a gap compared to their expected trajectory, dubbed by many as “learning loss.”
This learning loss has applied across student groups, states, and school types — but in general, historically disadvantaged students have fallen further behind.
Students in schools that spent more time in remote learning typically have lost more ground. It’s not clear what other factors explain why some schools have done better or worse, though.

“It’s really a body of evidence that is setting up an urgency for the need for policymakers, for researchers to figure out what we need to do moving forward,” said Mark Miller, an eighth grade math teacher and a former member of the board that oversees NAEP.

Standardized tests are only one measure of academic achievement, but these scores matter because they are predictive of students’ — and the country’s — success. One recent study found that state scores on a separate NAEP eighth-grade math test predicted high school graduation, adult income, and incarceration rates.

Through the fall of last year, students appear to have recovered some — but not nearly all — of the lost ground. An analysis by NWEA, a testing company, tracked students’ progress through the beginning of this school year. The group found that students had made up between 10% and 40% of learning loss depending on the grade and subject. (Students in eighth grade, which most closely corresponds to the 13-year-olds tested by NAEP, were on the lower end of this range.) A separate study using state tests from last year found similar results.

“Even with continued rebounding, student achievement remains lower than in a typical year and full recovery is likely still several years away,” wrote NWEA researchers.

Supported by tens of billions of dollars in federal money, schools have launched a variety of catch-up strategies, including summer school, small-group tutoring, and hiring more teachers and other staff. Although there has been evidence of modest recovery, researchers say it’s not yet clear how successful particular approaches have been. “There is nothing in this data that tells us what is working,” said Carr, referring to the recent results.

A recent Chalkbeat analysis found that many large districts’ tutoring programs have reached less than 10% of students. A popular online tutoring program has also had low uptake. Adding extra time to the typical school day or year has been rare, and some experts fear that optional programming will not reach students most in need of help. Still, the NWEA analysis found that students lost less-than-usual academic ground in the summer of 2022, which could be due to extra summer programming.

Miller, who teaches in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said his school has used COVID relief money to ensure all students now have a computer or tablet, to offer free summer credit recovery, and to provide after-school tutoring. He’s seen some of his students improve from the after-school help through the extra time and practice. “If they get it in the morning of my class and the afternoon again, it’s beneficial,” he said.

In his own class this year, Miller intentionally focused on building relationships to get students bought into his lessons. He says it paid off: “I was able to get kids to engage in mathematics more so, not because they loved the math, but because we had built a trusting relationship where they were willing to work and put in some extra effort and time for me.”

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

NYC teachers union and Adams administration reach tentative deal on 5-year contract

2023-06-13T20:12:43+00:00

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New York City reached a deal with the teachers union for a five-year contract that includes annual raises, expands opportunities for virtual learning, and allows some remote work for certain employees, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

The tentative deal for the United Federation of Teachers’ 115,000 full-time and 5,000 part-time education department employees includes 3% wage increases for the first three years, followed by a 3.25% increase in the fourth year, and 3.5% in the fifth year. The full contract would cost the city $6.4 billion, city officials said.

Starting salary for new teachers will jump from $61,070 to $72,349 by the end of the contract. In five years, the most experienced teachers will earn $151,271. The deal also proposes to cut in half the amount of time it takes teachers to reach a $100,000 salary — from 15 to eight years.

It also includes annual retention bonuses that will grow to $1,000 in 2026, for as long as an employee is an education department employee, and will be built into the system going forward. It’s the first time the union has negotiated such a payment, said Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers union, during a press conference announcing the deal.

“We’re saying to all of our titles and every member, whether you’re in the first year or your 25th year, New York City is saying that we appreciate you, we recognize the challenges that you take on every day and you will receive $1,000 every [year] for that,” Mulgrew said. [Mulgrew initially misspoke, and his statement has been clarified.]

The retention bonus is “a good strategy” for keeping teachers, said Melissa Arnold Lyon, assistant professor of politics and policy at the University of Albany, who has been following the UFT’s contract negotiations. Teacher turnover rates in New York City and elsewhere hit an unusual high after last school year, potentially exacerbated by the stresses of the pandemic.

“There are a lot of costs of trying to find and hire new teachers,” Lyon said. “If $1,000 helps you to keep a teacher, at least on the micro level, that’s worth it.”

The agreement is retroactive to Sept. 14, 2022, and runs through Nov. 28, 2027, city officials said. The wage increases follow the pattern of raises set by the February agreement with District Council 37, which includes cafeteria workers, parent coordinators, and crossing guards.

Many teachers expected that their union would follow suit and had expressed concerns given that the previous deals were not keeping pace with inflation, which has moderated somewhat in recent months but reached 6.5% last year. Teachers had complained that their responsibilities have only increased since the pandemic, as they continue to catch up students academically and socially from years of interrupted learning.

A virtual learning program to expand

The contract would expand a pilot remote learning project that allowed small schools to offer virtual courses — such as AP Chemistry — that they otherwise couldn’t because of staffing issues. This year, the program used federal funding to grow, reaching about 1,500 students across 58 schools, with 23 separate online courses outside traditional school hours.

Under the tentative deal, high schools, as well as schools that serve grades 6-12, could offer virtual courses after school and on the weekends starting in the next academic year, union officials said, though nothing would bar schools from creating tutoring programs, too. Those programs would be available to students who volunteer to participate, and would be staffed by volunteer teachers. A quarter of high schools would be allowed to participate next year, growing to all high schools by the 2027-28 school year. High schools must apply to participate, education officials said.

Courses might be offered at individual schools or through the central education department, and high schools must apply to participate, education officials said. Part-time remote teachers can apply to be part of their school-based remote program and work before or after the school day; there will also be full-time, centrally hired teachers for the other program.

Programs could vary, Gendar said. For example, a school could offer evening courses, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., for students who are missing classes because they’re working day jobs, she said.

Schools could offer non-traditional schedules for students and teachers who want them. If a teacher volunteers to work a virtual program in addition to their regular work day, they will be paid overtime, Gendar said.

During a press conference, schools Chancellor David Banks said the virtual learning agreement gives students more flexibility, noting that some benefited from remote learning during the pandemic.

“Students who were at risk of dropping out were able to continue their coursework on a schedule that works best for them,” Banks said of remote learning during the start of the pandemic. “This expands those types of opportunities across the entire system.”

The contract would also allow some employees, who don’t work directly in schools, to work remotely for up to two days a week. It was not immediately clear which employees that would include.

Another sticking point was over how teachers would get to spend an extra 155 minutes each week after school. The deal would allow them, as they did this year, to do professional development and parent outreach, and it added a new option for teachers to do other classroom work of their choice in that time.

Teachers have mixed feelings

The contract is not yet final. First, the union’s negotiating committee, composed of 500 members, along with its executive board and delegate assembly will decide whether to send the tentative deal to all union members for a vote. Union officials did not immediately provide dates for those votes.

Some teachers took to social media to criticize the deal, but pushing back against it could be an uphill battle. The union cannot easily pull off a work stoppage because a teachers strike would violate New York’s Taylor Law, which imposes significant financial penalties for public sector unions that strike.

Robert Effinger, a union chapter leader at the Bronx High School of Business, said the pay increases surpassed his expectations.

Although some educators hoped that the salary increases would exceed inflation, the union was hemmed in by the pattern set by unions that negotiated contracts earlier this year. But Effinger said he was glad to see the union negotiate a quicker path to higher pay, an issue he hopes will help retain more educators.

“One of the reasons people burn out in education is they feel like they’re doing a lot of labor that is not appropriately compensated,” he said. “Having an accelerated early track is better for keeping people in.”

Still, he said he’s eager to hear more details about other elements of the contract including increased teacher autonomy, a major part of the union’s campaign, which focused on burdensome paperwork requirements educators face.

The union plans to hold a virtual town hall for members on Thursday at 4 p.m.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit families will have fewer summer school options this year as district scales back programs

2023-06-08T22:13:45+00:00

Detroit parent Cazar Baird likes her kids to have something to do during the summer. In the past, she searched for dance programs or church-sponsored basketball clinics to keep her three children busy.

When she found out last year that the Detroit school district was offering expanded summer programming at her youngest son’s school, she quickly took advantage.

It has been the best way to “keep him sharp and active” over the summer months, Baird said. And unlike other summer camps around the city, it has been free.

But as her son neared the end of third grade at Gompers Elementary-Middle School this week, Baird was still figuring out where to send him this summer.

That’s because the Detroit Public Schools Community District no longer plans to have the robust summer learning programs it offered to district families over the past two years, using COVID relief aid from the federal government. It’s pivoting back to a narrower range of offerings: course recovery for missed or failed classes to students in grades 8-12, a transition program for incoming kindergarteners, and some limited activities in partnership with local recreation centers and public libraries.

DPSCD was among the many Michigan school districts that used COVID relief aid to beef up their summer programming, offering anything from credit recovery to camps focused on robotics, sports, and culinary arts. The expanded options came at the right time for students struggling with the academic impact of the pandemic and parents struggling with child care. Many parents and students have been looking for extra study time, fun activities, and opportunities to make up credits.

DPSCD spent a combined $21 million on programs over the past two summers, and its Summer Learning Experiences program was spotlighted by the White House in a tour by U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and first lady Jill Biden of summer school programs funded by COVID relief aid.

But by the end of this school year, DPSCD will have spent or allocated the $1.27 billion it received in COVID funding, and Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said it would be tough to justify continued investment in expanded summer school.

The summer programs helped keep some students engaged, he said, but they were not nearly as successful as officials hoped.

“There isn’t concrete evidence that summer school leads to raising student achievement in the aggregate, because many students do not attend summer school,” Vitti told families and community members at a virtual community meeting Monday.

When the district had COVID relief money to spend, Vitti said, more than 40,000 K-8 students were eligible to attend. But only 900 signed up, and barely a third of them actually attended.

“And summer school is only for four to five weeks,” he said. “So you really can’t make up a whole year over the summer. It’s great to offer it, but it’s not directly linked to student achievement as a district.”

That’s not to say the money was a waste. The summer programming “allowed families and students to overcome their fears of returning to school in person,” Vitti said, and “provided families and students with a safe and reliable child care option during the summer.”

That’s something Baird appreciated about the district’s summer programming.

“Some parents can’t afford a lot of these summer camp programs, because they have more than one child to provide for,” she said.

“Most of these programs are weekly or biweekly, but it’s still per child, and like $200 or $240, or $180, and that’s a lot of money.”

Other districts are continuing with their extensive summer learning plans, using what’s left of the money they received under the federal aid programs, known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER.

Ypsilanti Community Schools has already registered 1,280 students — about a third of its total enrollment — for its Grizzly Learning Camp, according to district spokesperson Leslie Davis. The district is spending about $1.5 million on summer school, using ESSER dollars and state funds. The program offers a mix of robotics and sports instruction, as well as credit recovery classes for students who need them.

Southfield Public Schools has spent roughly $465,000 in COVID relief money between last year and this year to bolster its summer programming, emphasizing math and literacy instruction for students who have fallen behind, and providing field trips as well as electives in STEM, yoga, and physical education.

In Detroit, the scaling back of summer school comes amid discussions about broader budget cuts the district wants to make to account for the depletion of federal COVID aid and declining enrollment.

Vitti said DPSCD would need roughly $8 million to continue offering the same academic and extracurricular summer programs to K-8 students that it provided through Summer Learning Experiences.

Some relief could come from Lansing, where the Legislature is getting set to take up a school aid budget that may provide another infusion of money for DPSCD. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s school aid budget proposal recommends appropriating $94.4 million to the district to settle a 2016 “right to read” lawsuit against the state.

While the settlement money is strictly limited to supporting the district’s literacy plan, Vitti said, the extra funding would allow the district to reallocate other dollars toward bringing back other ESSER-funded initiatives such as expanding after school and summer programming, and placing contracted nurses in every school.

In the meantime, DPSCD is still looking to provide some summer programming for its families. The district’s Office of Family and Community Engagement is partnering with the Detroit Public Library to offer summer reading activities from July 10 to Aug. 4, with limited registration.

DPSCD is also expanding its Kindergarten Boot Camp, a four-week program designed to help students and families transition from preschool to kindergarten. The two sessions will operate from June 20 through July 14, and July 10 through Aug. 4.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

NYC failed to provide full services to 9,800 preschool children with disabilities last year: report

2023-06-06T09:30:00+00:00

More than one-third of New York City’s preschool children with disabilities did not receive all of the extra support they’re entitled to in the last school year, according to a report released Tuesday morning.

The report, by advocacy organization Advocates for Children New York, analyzes the most recently available city data for the 2021-22 school year. The figure represents an increase from the 2020-21 school year, when 30% of children, or about 7,800, didn’t receive all of their required services.

The data means that a child may have received some of their required speech therapy, for example, but no required physical therapy — services that are spelled out in an individualized education program, or IEP.

Among the 9,800 children — or close to 37% — who didn’t receive all of their required services:

About 6,500 children who required speech therapy — or about a quarter of children who needed monolingual speech therapy and a third of children who required bilingual services.
Nearly 28%, or 5,300 children, who required occupational therapy.
About 2,000 children, or nearly 26%, who needed physical therapy.

The report showcases a yearslong problem with the city’s public preschool system, which serves 3- and 4-year-olds: Programs struggle to provide all children with the services they need, as they are legally required to do. Young children’s access to these services might be more crucial now, since some of these students may have missed out on necessary services as infants and toddlers early in the pandemic, like tens of thousands of kids nationally.

The greatest disparity in who received services was based on language: Sixty-nine percent of children who required only English instruction received their services, versus 53.5% of those who needed to be taught in another language.

The racial and socioeconomic disparities were smaller. While 69% of white students fully received services, the same was true for 67% of Hispanic children, 65.5% of Black children, and 62% of Asian children. Sixty-seven percent of permanently housed students received services, versus 61% of homeless children.

The city’s data might actually “significantly” underreport the problem, the report said. The education department considers a child “fully served” if they received at least one session of all of their required services, the report said.

“A child whose occupational therapist quits in November and is never replaced, or a preschooler who waits six months for mandated speech therapy to begin because the DOE is unable to find a provider, is not fully served from the perspective of their parents and teachers, but they are left out of the counts above,” the report said.

In December, Mayor Eric Adams vowed to open hundreds of additional seats for preschool children with disabilities to ensure that all children get the seats that they’re entitled to. Advocates have praised that commitment, but it already is being tested. While the city has opened 700 new seats this school year for students with more challenging disabilities, about 300 preschoolers are still waiting for a spot, the report noted.

Having access to seats is a perennial issue. Last year, just over 1,000 preschool children who required a small special education class did not have access to those seats by the end of last school year, according to the report.

“We agree with the concerns of our parents and advocates that for far too long students with disabilities were excluded from programming and services,” Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the city’s education department, said in a statement. “This administration is committed to righting this wrong.”

But the city’s commitment to open more seats doesn’t address the ongoing shortage of staff who can provide extra required services for these children, one significant reason why children are missing out on services, said Betty Baez Melo, director of the Early Childhood Education Project at Advocates For Children. The city contracts with outside organizations to provide many of these services, so Advocates For Children is calling on Adams to spend another $50 million to increase pay for those service providers and hire their own staffers.

Brownstein noted that the education department has expanded its own teams who provide services to preschool children, including hiring an additional 24 speech therapists, 23 occupational itinerant therapists, and 12 physical therapists.

The $50 million request from Advocates For Children would also go toward speeding up evaluations for children, another weak area the report cited. Nearly 16% of children, or 1,974, who were eligible for preschool special education services waited more than 60 days — the legal deadline — for a meeting to determine what extra services they should receive, according to the organization. That’s a similar rate to last school year.

Over the last three years, the education department has opened 21 Preschool Regional Assessment (PRAC) teams, which provide evaluations in addition to state-approved agencies that the city contracts with. This school year, staffers on PRAC teams had the option of working overtime, allowing more students to get evaluated — something they plan to do again next school year, officials said.

Still, education department officials said there are not enough agencies to meet the evaluation needs of preschool students, as more children have been referred for services since the pandemic. They plan to work with city, state, and federal government officials to ensure there’s enough funding to link students with necessary services.

While data for this school year is not yet available, the organization reported that it’s received many calls from families who have struggled to access services for their young children. One of those calls was from Terese, a mother in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn who asked to use her first name only for privacy reasons.

Her 4-year-old son required the help of a special education itinerant teacher, or an SEIT, who helps children like hers with disabilities inside of a general education preschool class. But in February, that teacher left her son’s preschool with no replacement.

Terese spent a month emailing the main special education contact in her district about a replacement teacher with no response, even taking days off work to deal with the issue, she said. Meanwhile, her son was talking less at home.

“The teacher started reporting to me that he was not communicating in the classroom,” Terese said.

Terese’s problem was not unique. According to the report, roughly 1,300 preschoolers, or nearly one in five children did not have an SEIT all last school year, even though their IEP required one.

Eventually Terese contacted Advocates For Children, which advised her to lodge a complaint through 311. After that, a special education official with her district responded, blaming the lack of a teacher on a staffing shortage. By mid-May, her son once again had an SEIT, she said.

“I felt all alone,” Terese said. “The DOE just left me to fend for myself with my child with special needs.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Over 25,000 Tennessee 3rd graders retook reading test this week to try to meet new promotion policy

2023-05-26T21:44:49+00:00

More than half of Tennessee third graders at risk of being held back because of their reading test scores took another test this week to try to advance to fourth grade without summer school or tutoring.

The state began offering the retest on Monday. By Friday, 25,304 third graders had submitted a second reading assessment, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the state education department.

Preliminary scores from the initial test in the spring indicated that about 60% of Tennessee’s 74,000 third-graders could be at risk of being held back under a new state retention policy for third graders who struggle with reading. But that number is before factoring in exemptions under the law.

The testing do-over marks the end of a pivotal school year for third graders, who were kindergartners in 2020 when the pandemic shuttered school buildings and caused unprecedented learning disruptions.

A 2021 law enacted a tough new retention policy starting this school year for students who don’t test as proficient readers by the end of third grade. The law also created several learning intervention programs to help students catch up.

Since the 2022-23 retention policy is based on the results of a single test under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, retesting using a similar “TCAP-style test” was part of the state’s plan for giving third graders another opportunity to improve their score.

The retesting window continues through June 5, but schools were expected to complete most of the do-overs this week so families can get their students’ results back sooner.

State officials have pledged that test vendor Pearson will return new scores within 48 hours after submission.

To get promoted to the fourth grade, third graders who who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must either attend a summer program with a 90% attendance rate, then show adequate growth on a test administered at the end of the program; or they must take advantage of state-funded tutoring throughout the 2023-24 school year.

Third graders who score in the bottom category of readers known as “below” must participate in both intervention programs to get promoted to fourth grade.

Summer learning camps start as soon as next week at some schools, although the schedule varies by district. For instance, Nashville’s program starts on June 1, while Memphis-Shelby County Schools launches its summer learning academies on June 20.

This week’s retests, via the state’s online Schoolnet platform, started off bumpy in some districts due to technical issues but smoothed out after the first day, Blackley said.

There were “isolated tech issues” on Monday in some districts that were “fully resolved,” Blackley said. “Our testing vendor, Pearson, has been troubleshooting effectively to manage and will continue to do so throughout the entire window,” he said.

Blackley added that technical problems will not delay the return of scores.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools tapped hundreds of academic interventionists to catch students up after COVID. Is it working?

2023-05-25T11:00:00+00:00

In a classroom on Chicago’s West Side one morning last November, Teresa Przybyslawski sat side by side with a soft-spoken sixth grader. She read a script off her computer screen while he peered at his own tablet.

“On your screen, you will see some addition problems,” read Przybyslawski. “I want you to do as many of them as you can in one minute.”

She glanced at the sixth grader, John. His back was taut, his face tense.

Down the hall, the boy’s classmates at Brunson Math and Science Specialty School, a high-poverty elementary school, geared up to tackle dividing fractions. But here, alongside Przybyslawski, one of the district’s new interventionists tasked with helping students who fell behind during the pandemic, John was about to work on math normally taught in first grade.

“Are you ready? Three. Two. One.”

Numbers flashed on John’s screen: “2 + 7. 5 + 10. 10 + 4.”

At the start of this school year, John, whose real name Chalkbeat is not using to protect his privacy, read at a first grade level and did second grade level math. It would be Przybyslawski’s job to get him caught up – fast.

School districts around the country are pushing to help students bounce back from the pandemic’s profound academic damage: expanding literacy tutoring in Detroit, cutting class sizes in New York City, and buying science-backed reading curriculums in districts across Colorado.

Instructional materials are seen inside Brunson Elementary School in Chicago. School districts around the country — including Chicago Public Schools — are pushing to help students bounce back from the pandemic’s profound academic damage.

Chicago Public Schools has turned to academic interventionists — a cadre of hundreds mostly classroom teachers already on the district’s payroll, tapped this year to turbocharge the learning of struggling students one-on-one or in small groups.

These newly-minted catchup specialists are tackling three years of COVID fallout layered upon pre-pandemic learning gaps and traumas, at schools that experts and educators agree should have been staffing interventionists all along.

Research has backed Chicago’s intervention approach, and emerging data here and in other cities shows school districts are making headway. But experts say the effort is in its infancy: A recent study by nonprofit test maker NWEA found students are rebounding, but schools are likely a few years away from returning to pre-pandemic achievement, especially for younger learners.

Meanwhile, educators face their own version of Przybyslawski’s countdown.

Three, two, one. Before children like John arrive in high school unprepared, lowering their odds of graduating, starting college or careers, and escaping poverty.

Three, two, one. Before districts like Chicago run out of federal COVID relief dollars.

Three, two, one. Before society at large moves on, and the energy required to remain in full-on recovery mode fades.

As Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, put it at an academic recovery event this past fall: “If we fail to act differently to catch students up, to ensure every student graduates with everything they need, we will have failed this generation and future generations of students.”

One school on Chicago’s West Side tackles academic recovery

Brunson Elementary is in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, one of the hardest hit by COVID and by a surge in the city’s other epidemic: gun violence.

Of Brunson’s 400 students, almost 90% are Black, and almost all are poor. Almost 60% were chronically absent last year, meaning they missed roughly 20 or more days. This year, Brunson has deployed “attendance heroes” — teachers, paraprofessionals, and cafeteria workers — who check in daily with truant students. But across the district, attendance and disruptive behaviors continue to interfere with learning.

“It’s heartbreaking what kids here carry on their backpacks that we can’t see,” principal Carol Wilson said.

Principal Carol Wilson at Brunson Elementary School on Friday, February 24, 2023 in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. The school was one of the hardest hit by COVID and by a surge in the city’s other epidemic: gun violence.

Since the pandemic hit in 2020, Chicago Public Schools — like districts across the country — has seen drops in the portion of students meeting reading and math standards on a required state assessment. The district’s latest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card,” showed nearly a decade of growth in math had been wiped out while reading results held fairly steady.

When Chicago schools tested students this past fall to gauge where they stood, two-thirds of John’s sixth grade peers districtwide did not hit grade-level benchmarks in reading. A third were flagged as needing urgent interventions. The picture was similar in math.

Przybyslawski used to teach a classroom of 25 students math and science. Now, her focus is on 15 or so struggling middle schoolers at Brunson.

She set out to create an orderly, efficient operation, using new digital platforms that constantly size up how students are progressing in mastering skills they should have learned in earlier grades — and dictate what they work on next.

In her role as an interventionist at Brunson Elementary, Teresa Przybyslawski works with struggling students one on one or in small groups. She also “pushes into” classrooms to help fellow educators build academic interventions into their routines.

In reading, the school piloted an artificial intelligence program that gave students passages to read back to it based on their level and flagged mistakes they made.

She wanted John to divide fractions along with his peers eventually. But in the meantime, Przybyslawski, who also supervises the school’s new team of three tutors, all Brunson grads, measured progress in small increments.

During that session in November, John hesitated briefly before answering 6 + 5.

He was stumped on 3 + 8.

But on the rest, he rattled off the correct answers before Przybyslawski had even finished reading them out.

“We got to the third row,” she told the boy when the minute-long assessment was up. “Very nice work!”

After students left, she logged in their results into Branching Minds, a new platform used for tracking interventions.

Wilson, the principal, and district officials lean on the technology to monitor the progress students are making. Soon, Wilson would also get a second round of standardized tests — administered around the middle of the school year — she hoped would tell her if the school’s efforts were paying off.

‘How can we reach more kids?’

In the bid to speed up students’ academic recovery, Chicago leaders have bet on an arsenal of strategies. They’ve expanded after-school programs, started an in-house tutor corps, and poured millions in teacher training and a new in-house lesson bank called Skyline.

They also tapped some 250 educators to serve as new academic coaches. There are more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

All in all, the district earmarked $730 million in COVID recovery dollars this school year for its recovery efforts.

Academic interventions — by tutors, classroom teachers, or the new interventionists — are at the heart of the strategy. The district budgeted for at least one interventionist on each of its roughly 500 campuses, though not all schools used the money for such positions, and some schools combined the duties with existing positions. And it required all schools to use the same digital platform to track interventions that Przybyslawski is using.

Across the district this past fall, new interventionists chipped away at catching up tens of thousands of students. One math problem and one sounded-out word at time.

“How do we get students a lot of extra support with so few people?” -Teacher Elizabeth Battaglia

At Moos Elementary on Chicago’s West Side, where most of the 430 primarily Latino students enrolled needed intervention in the fall, Elizabeth Battaglia and the tutors she oversees could reach about 60 students across all grades — not nearly enough.

“How do we get students a lot of extra support with so few people?” she kept asking herself, even as she was encouraged by her students’ growth.

In reading, Battaglia tried a blitz tactic: 20 minutes each day over two weeks when stronger readers are paired with struggling peers to read passages to each other and help correct each other’s mistakes. It helped.

At Sadlowski Elementary on the Southeast Side, where most of the school’s 620 students were flagged as needing intensive help at the start of the year, Emily Gasca has 38 students on her caseload — some of them third and fourth graders reading at kindergarten level.

She enlisted fellow teachers to build interventions into daily classroom instruction, but some colleagues felt she was laying more work on already full plates.

Interventionist Teresa Przybyslawski at Chicago’s Brunson Elementary School combines technology and old-school methods such as flashcards in working with students who are behind grade level in math or reading.

Gasca tried to remind herself she was helping build from scratch a sort of academic safety net that the district has needed all along.

Even before COVID, many Chicago students made it to high school unable to read well. The pandemic just made it harder to look away.

To experts and educators such as Gasca, it’s clear that trauma and social-emotional challenges — that invisible load in students’ backpacks — complicate academic catchup. But struggling to keep up in the classroom is also a daily source of stress, eroding students’ confidence — baggage they carry back home.

Educators search for signs interventions are working

By February, John’s sessions with Przybyslawski were a well-worn routine.

“On your screen you will see a story to read,” Przybyslawski read off her screen to him one morning that month. “I would like you to read this story for me.”

“We’ll begin in three, two, one.”

John looked relaxed in a black face mask, hoodie, and Nikes as he read a passage about a family visit on a farm. At the one-minute mark, a bell dinged, and Przybyslawski smiled broadly. John’s reading had been largely free of mistakes — a huge leap from the start of the school year when he struggled to make it through a sentence or two during those fleeting 60 seconds.

“Good job overall,” she said. “I’ll get your score in a few minutes.”

“We’ve seen kids make leaps and bounds but still remain below the benchmarks. We’re catching kids up constantly.” -Principal Carol Wilson

Przybyslawski’s students were making headway. But now, her caseload looked different.

A few students “graduated.” They still need added help, but should be able to get it in the classroom. A few left the school, part of the customary churn at a high-needs neighborhood campus. And some were no longer on Przybyslawski’s caseload after being identified as needing services for students with disabilities.

Around this same time, Wilson, the principal, had gotten the school’s midyear test results.

Students in all grades were showing solid growth except eighth graders, on that all-important cusp of high school, who were flagged across the district for making little midyear progress.

Wilson was encouraged. Still, these tests predicted that fewer than 10% of Brunson students would meet state standards this spring.

“We’ve seen kids make leaps and bounds but still remain below the benchmarks,” Wilson said. “We’re catching kids up constantly.”

Districtwide in the early grades, there were double-digit increases in students scoring at grade level. Overall, Chicago Public Schools’ scores were in line or better than other urban districts. But much work remained: In the second grade, for example, more than half of students remained one grade level below in math, and a quarter were still two grade levels below in both math and reading.

Paul Zavitkovsky, an expert on testing at the University of Illinois at Chicago,

“If the kids at the lower levels of achievement are only making expected gains, that’s not moving the needle for them. Average gains are not going to be enough.” -Paul Zavitkovsky, assessment specialist at the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Education

said standardized tests are a helpful snapshot of how students are doing, but he cautioned against relying on them to drive recovery efforts. Remediating one skill at a time based on test results must happen alongside engaging, grade-level instruction — a tough balance to strike, Zavitkovsky said.

Based on an analysis of results on a standardized test named STAR 360 many Chicago elementary schools are giving three times a year, Zavitkovsky found almost all schools made four months of gains in the first four months of the year in math — an encouraging return to a pre-pandemic pace of growth.

But, he said, “Average gains are not going to be enough.”

Dan Goldhaber, who leads the University of Washington’s Center for Education Data & Research, said it’s not clear how long schools can remain in full recovery mode, which requires resources and sustained effort.

When the COVID money runs dry, Chicago’s army of interventionists hired in recent years could land on the budgetary chopping block, leaving classroom teachers to pick up the difficult work of recovery.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s education chief, says the district is encouraged by testing, grading, and other data; it will cover interventionists at each school and grow the tutor corps next year.

That’s because there’s more work to be done, Chkoumbova recently told the school board. Data show 20% of students have gotten some intervention, and of those, only about a third are on track to meet their goals — an improvement over earlier in the year.

But, as district leaders have noted, a lot of intervention work is not captured by the data. At Brunson, a girl recently asked Przybyslawski for help with multiplication and division off the screens. The interventionist set up stacks of flashcards, quizzing her the old-fashioned way.

“Confidence!” she told the girl. “Just be confident.”

Behind them, in the back of Przybyslawski’s classroom, a bulletin board was covered with certificates of achievement.

One was John’s. It showed a figure looking over a wheat field, a mountain peak rising in the background.

“Congratulations!” the certificate read. “Your reading POWERS are getting stronger, and it’s time to celebrate your hard work.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@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.

NYC’s Summer Rising program rejected 45,000 applicants, launching scramble for child care

2023-05-24T21:50:38+00:00

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Roughly 45,000 children have been shut out of New York City’s free, popular summer program, education department officials said this week.

The program, which runs between six to seven weeks for most students, provides academics during the morning and enrichment activities in the afternoon for children in grades K-8 across the five boroughs from July to August.

Like last year, a total of 110,000 seats were available this year, with a portion held open for students mandated to attend summer school. During a City Council hearing this week, the education department’s Chief Operating Officer Emma Vadehra said there are 94,000 seats available for 139,000 applicants. Officials initially reported that 30,000 families did not receive spots.

It’s possible that some of the rejected applicants will have to attend the program anyway for academic reasons and will get a seat that has been set aside. Still, many of those families, who were notified earlier this month that they didn’t get seats, are likely scrambling to find summer programs for their children before the school year ends on June 27.

“The basic challenge is that demand outstripped supply pretty dramatically,” Vadehra told City Council members. “And so there’s different ways that could have looked, but we just didn’t have enough seats in the program for the number of kids and families that really wanted this program despite the fact that it is the largest summer program we’ve had – and the largest in the country.”

Two of those unsuccessful applicants were Alejandra Perez’s 5- and 10-year-old sons, who should have been prioritized for seats because they attend an after-school program run by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, through a community-based organization that helps oversee Summer Rising.

Perez, a lifelong East Harlemite, paid $2,250 last summer for six weeks of child care, which she can barely afford again this year.

But in mid-May, about three weeks after applying, she was informed via email that her sons, who attend a charter school in East Harlem, didn’t get in. While she can probably rely on a relative to care for her older son, she is scrambling to find free or affordable care for her 5-year-old.

“I am still trying to find a program,” she said. “By the act of God, maybe I’ll get an email like, ‘Hey, we found you a spot!’”

Some children with priority did not get spots

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio established the program two years ago with federal relief dollars as the city clawed its way out of the pandemic, attempting to provide children with a bridge back to school after remote learning. It differs from summer programs in the past: It’s open to any child, including those in charters and private school, not just those who are mandated to attend summer school.

The program, though bumpy with its initial roll out, has grown in popularity. This year, city officials made a couple of key changes to the application process. While still open to the same number of children, applicants were allowed to rank choices for Summer Rising sites instead of the first come, first served process last year. Additionally, students who attend after-school programs subsidized through the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, were supposed to be prioritized for seats, like Perez’s children. That’s in addition to students living in temporary housing, children in foster care, and children with disabilities who must have services year round.

Perez had ranked three Summer Rising sites close to her home. Perez said the application did not ask if her kids were in an after-school program. According to an education department spokesperson, Perez’s children didn’t receive a spot because there was likely a lot of demand at the sites she chose.

When she asked someone from the after-school program why her sons didn’t get into Summer Rising, they didn’t have an answer — except that none of the kids in the program who applied got in, Perez said. (A representative for their SCAN-Harbor Beacon after-school program did not return a request for comment.)

During the City Council hearing this week, officials said that just over half of the seats that have been filled went to students in the priority groups. Of those, 29,000 spots went to students who were in DYCD-run after-school programs, 16,000 went to students in temporary housing, 3,000 seats to children with 12-month individualized education programs, or IEPs, and another 1,000 to students in foster care. (Last year, Summer Rising had 12,000 students in temporary housing, 2,700 students with 12-month IEPs and 1,000 students in foster care.)

New seats won’t be added, but filled seats might open up

Vadehra said they’re not planning to add seats — emphasizing that this program is being supported by federal dollars that are set to run out next year — and there is no wait list for seats. But they are expecting an unspecified number of spots to open up, either because fewer students will be mandated to attend summer school or because families may decline a seat they’ve been offered. The education department is working with DYCD to figure out how to make families aware of empty seats in June and how they can apply for those, she said.

In the meantime, parents are scrambling to find options that seem few and far between — and too pricey.

Perez’s rejection email from the education department included a link to other DYCD programs that might be available. She said she has called every local community-based organization near her home for some type of programming with no luck.

“At this point I am just emailing everyone,” she said.

Tia Jackson, who lives in Central Harlem, knew she would potentially need to scramble for summer options if her son didn’t get into Summer Rising, so she signed him up for a YMCA program near her home. Her planning came in handy: Her son did not get a Summer Rising seat.

While he doesn’t fall into any of the priority groups, her son, who is autistic, also has an individualized education program. The YMCA program has staff who can assist him if he needs extra support, Jackson said. She will be reimbursed up to $2,250 for summer care expenses through the state’s Office of People With Developmental Disabilities, but that only ensures four weeks of summer programming for her son. He’s planning to visit his aunt in Florida for one week, and she will pay out of pocket for child care for an additional week.

She feels thankful for having a “Plan A and Plan B.”

“I feel like the way they rolled out the program to start was very late, and it wasn’t the best for working parents, typically because when you think about summer camps most applications for summer camp start in February and March,” she said. “We didn’t get the Summer Rising notification until April.”

The department spokesperson did not explain the timing of the Summer Rising application, except to say there are several factors that impact the timeline.

Both of Loretta Bencivengo’s children got into Summer Rising last year, likely because she submitted her application as soon as it opened during the previous first come, first served model. This year they didn’t get spots, said Bencivengo, who lives in Windsor Terrace.

The most affordable alternate option she’s found so far is with the local YMCA for a $5,000, eight-week program for both of her children, which she equated to two months of rent. Many places don’t have space this late in the spring, she said.

“All those slots are filled up in January and February,” she said of private programs. “If that’s the case, why not put this application out in November and December so that you can open an appropriate amount of slots?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC won’t slash school budgets at first, but mid-year cuts are still possible

2023-05-22T22:33:01+00:00

New York City schools won’t have to brace for budget cuts next school year — at least at first.

All schools will receive the same amount of money or more at the start of the 2023-24 academic year as they did this year despite some of the “fiscal challenges” facing the city, Chancellor David Banks announced on Monday during a City Council hearing about the education department’s proposed budget for next fiscal year.

But school budgets may not need the extra cushion this year. Unlike the significant drops over the past few years, the education department is projecting enrollment to largely hold steady next year, dipping by less than 1%

The move represents a shift from what happened last summer, when budget cuts tied to declining enrollment, sparked severe backlash, including a lawsuit, and forced schools to shrink staff and programming.

It also comes as Mayor Eric Adams has proposed cutting the education department’s budget by 3% next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That $30.5 billion budget is expected to include less spending on fringe benefits and cut a previously announced expansion of preschool for 3-year-olds.

The decision to start the new school year with steady budgets, however, doesn’t mean schools are completely immune from cuts. Banks said the city hasn’t yet decided whether schools will see cuts during what’s known as the “mid-year adjustment”— a practice put on pause this year using $200 million in federal COVID relief dollars.

Schools get money in the summer based on the city’s enrollment projections, and when the final tallies are taken on Oct. 31, schools could lose money mid-year if they’ve enrolled fewer students than projected — or get extra money if they have more children.

“If a school has 500 students, but by the middle of the year, they’ve dropped down to 200 students, we’re not going to make the commitment today to say, ‘No matter what, there’ll be no adjustment even at that point,’” Banks said during the hearing.

That might leave some school leaders with tough decisions. While principals might get the same amount of money as last year, they may be hesitant to hire more teachers or create more programming in anticipation of losing money during the school year.

One the one hand, some city principals said they understand the city’s desire to bring funding more in line with enrollment to avoid big disparities in per-student spending between schools.

“There are schools that are serving many fewer students than they were five years ago, and the city can’t afford to just fund those schools endlessly,” said a Brooklyn principal who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

But on the other hand, the principal wishes that the education department would make it easier for schools to plan by promising budgets will not be cut more than a certain percentage in a given year rather than having to make educated guesses.

And even if a school does not have to return money later in the year, it can be difficult to use before the spending deadline, especially to hire staff. If a school has an unexpected surplus in January, “all of a sudden there’s a spending spree and it’s not effective and efficient,” the principal said. “It doesn’t help to get money in November or January if you needed to hire a teacher in September.”

Schools are expected to receive their budgets by the end of this month, said Emma Vadehra, chief operating officer for the education department. When principals receive those budgets, Vadehra said, they might notice cuts to individual funding streams, such as Fair Student Funding, which is the city’s main school funding formula. (Schools with higher needs and higher enrollment get more money under the formula.)

Such drops will be backfilled with “other funding streams” to hold budgets steady, Vadehra said. However, officials did not clarify how schools will be able to use those funds. While Fair Student Funding can be used to hire teachers, money from other pots can sometimes be restricted for other uses.

The education department plans to use funding from multiple sources to keep budgets level at the start of the school year, Vadehra said. That includes a $160 million in federal stimulus funds that had been announced previously, as well as money from the state, which has boosted dollars for districts through its own school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid.

Several council members raised concerns about education department programs that are relying on expiring federal stimulus dollars, including preschool programming and expanded summer programming. Vadehra acknowledged that the education department does not yet have a plan on how to fund these initiatives once the money runs out in 2024.

“This is a major challenge,” Banks said to council members. “I mean, there’s a lot of great programs — even as we came on board — that have been built off of access to these stimulus dollars. The stimulus dollars are going away. We’re going to have to work very closely together to try to figure this out.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit school district’s budget cuts bring back memories of past fiscal crises

2023-05-22T17:12:34+00:00

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As Reianna Willis looks ahead to starting her senior year in high school in the fall, the thought of losing her college adviser frightens her.

College advisers and guidance counselors, Reianna said, are the people who provide teenagers with the extra motivation they need to stay on track in school. But her school, East English Village Preparatory Academy at Finney, stands to lose these professionals, along with other support staff and administrators, as the Detroit school district trims its budget to align with declining revenue.

“If there were cuts at my school I feel as if our students would be lost,” she said, adding that students would miss out on critical relationships with staff members. Cutting advisers may improve the budget picture, Reainna said, “but it will worsen our students.”

Nikolai Vitti, the superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, has tried to reassure community members that the cuts he’s advocating will help ensure the district’s financial stability over the long term. “The staffing reductions are less than a financial necessity but more of a necessary strategic decision to sustain and protect our improvement,” he said.

But for some families and district employees, the latest round of cuts have provoked anxiety, rekindling memories of the deep, devastating cuts the district made during past fiscal crises and the era of state control. Those cuts, including the closure of nearly 200 schools between 2000 and 2015, only ended up compounding the district’s financial problems, leading to plummeting enrollment, an exodus of staff, and even larger deficits and debt.

The fears have surfaced in gatherings of the district’s Executive Youth Council of student leaders, and in the monthly school board meetings, where students, parents and employees of the district have come forward to warn officials against cutting professionals who are seen as critical to students’ success and the district’s goals.

What prompted DPSCD’s proposed budget cuts?

The specter of a return to spiraling cuts is especially worrisome in a district that has achieved six years of relative financial stability after it returned to local control in 2017, thanks to a state legislative initiative that granted the district a fresh start.

The state-appointed emergency managers who ran the district in the past relied on “deep spending cuts (including staffing and teacher salaries), long-term debt to cover annual budget deficits, and delaying required payments,” said a 2019 report from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan detailing the district’s roughly 20-year span of state oversight.

But they had “virtually no success tackling the underlying structural deficit,” the report said.

After 2017, until the pandemic struck, DPSCD began to see rising enrollment and balanced budgets — enough progress that the Detroit Financial Review Commission released DPSCD from state oversight in late 2020, a milestone in the district’s quest to control its budget and finances.

Then, in the midst of the pandemic, the federal government came through with $1.27 billion in aid for the district, buoying its revenue for three years. The added funds made it possible to hire more contracted staff; expand after-school, summer school, and tutoring programs; and take care of long-overdue construction and renovation projects.

But moving into the 2023-24 school year, Vitti said, the district will have to balance its budget relying on recurring revenues, and not one-time federal funding. It will also have to account for the impact of inflation, which has cooled over the past year but remains above historical levels. So instead of being able to fund all of its priorities, and then some, DPSCD will have to pick the ones that it can afford and that will make the biggest impact in the classroom.

“Managing the finances of a steep, long-running enrollment decline is hard enough,” said Bruce Baker, a professor at the University of Miami who focuses on public education financing. But the steep cut in federal funding, coupled with higher costs for maintenance and supplies, compounds that challenge.

In assessing the tradeoffs, DPSCD has chosen to prioritize raising teacher salaries in order to recruit and retain staff and avoid the huge teacher vacancies that it experienced during emergency management.

To satisfy that need, Vitti’s proposed budget would eliminate or shift roughly 300 school and central office positions, including the counselors and college advisers at Reianna’s school. It would also create a $4.2 million budget surplus to address district emergencies, enrollment shifts or other unexpected spending throughout the school year.

“I do not foresee the need to close or consolidate schools in the future for budget reasons,” Vitti said.

Vitti said he believes the district can stick to its priorities and continue to offer what it has promised families in spite of the staffing reductions, and without a hit to enrollment. School principals can choose to fund those positions using Title I money, he noted, and college transition advisers, kindergarten paraprofessionals, and school culture facilitators will have the option to stay with the district in a different role that might be understaffed, such as building substitute, security guard, cafeteria worker, or pre-K paraprofessional. An increase in state per-pupil funding could also help protect some jobs.

On the other hand, if the salary increases go ahead without the staff cuts, the district projects it would swing to an annual deficit and drain its unrestricted funds. And persistent deficits could trigger a return of financial scrutiny from the state.

“If you don’t want us to go back into emergency management or financial review every week, then let us make the necessary budget adjustments so that there’s long term durability and consistent continuity in our district,” said DPSCD board member Corletta Vaughn.

Lisa Card, a DPSCD parent and 20-year veteran educator, said the latest proposed budget cuts reflect a familiar pattern. Initially an art teacher, she went back to school for a master’s in special education when it was clear to her that the district under emergency management was going to cut student programming, including art and music programs.

“We go through these cycles often, and when something is wrong with the budget, it’s always like they go through cutting staff,” Card said. “But I don’t think that that’s the solution.”

Financial goals hang on enrollment numbers

District officials recognize that they can’t merely cut their way to financial stability. The district’s financial strength depends on its ability to rebuild enrollment, which is not even a third of what it was in 2000.

In the past, the district has employed aggressive marketing campaigns in a bid to shore up enrollment and avoid closing school buildings, laying off teachers, and cutting academic programming and support services.

Those campaigns took on increased significance in the wake of the pandemic, during which the district lost 3,000 students. Using its federal COVID relief aid, DPSCD expanded its outreach, home visits and door-to-door canvassing strategies using staff and parent volunteers.

Those tactics enabled the district to bring in 1,000 students, Vitti said.

“Clearly, we are doing something right,” he said.

But there’s still a lot of ground to make up. And now, DPSCD plans to spend less on enrollment strategies. Instead, it will use a smaller budget to market specific schools with available seats and continue to emphasize canvassing through school employees and families. The district is looking to increase enrollment over time by expanding pre-kindergarten programs across the city. As part of its $700 million facility master plan, the district will house those programs at four vacant or underutilized school buildings.

DPSCD’s K-12 enrollment is projected to remain at 48,000 students next year, with a potential bump of 335 pre-kindergarten students, according to Vitti.

Without big enrollment gains, to avoid further budget cuts, Vitti said, the district would have to see an annual increase in per-pupil funding, as well as more equitable state and local school funding. School aid budgets moving through the state Legislature would provide those increases.

“I think we will continue to improve our enrollment but not completely rebound in overall enrollment since the pandemic overnight,” Vitti said.

Vaughn, the school board member, said she thinks the district needs to be more aggressive with its marketing campaign.

“Budgetarily, we’re going in whatever direction the population is going to go,” she said. “If we don’t increase the population, we’ll be right back here next year.”

How will budget cuts affect long-term reforms?

Another key question is how the cuts will affect the district’s progress on its long-term academic goals, which were also thrown off by the pandemic and the shift to online learning. Federal COVID relief aid provided only temporary support, funding tutoring, summer school, and reduced class sizes.

One of Vitti’s long-term reform plans in his first year as superintendent was to hire master teachers to support and coach teachers in math and literacy. He also envisioned having one guidance counselor, college adviser, school culture facilitator, and attendance agent per school.

The aim was to offer broader academic programming and support services that families would otherwise have to leave the district for.

With those positions now threatened, the district says it will look to spread out college advising and school culture and climate work to other school administrators and staff. Guidance counselors for example will take on more work with FAFSA and college applications, while grant funding from the Michigan College Access Network will help ensure that five DPSCD high schools and one career and technical education center can participate in regional college access events.

But some students are skeptical the expanded roles for other educators will provide the same quality and relationship students have with their teachers.

“I truly believe that this would affect students — mostly ninth and 12th graders — because they guide you into the steps right before college,” said De’Loni Perry, a senior at Osborn High School. “It’s not only their help just guiding us but also for the fact that they actually teach us and show us the steps on how to prepare for life after high school. That’s the biggest step you take and most important.”

Asked about that risk, Vitti said: “I do value and understand the relationships that students have with the staff at their school. This is not easy. However, I am confident that the outcomes that matter most for students districtwide will continue to improve with these changes.”

Jaquitta Nelson, a parent and school volunteer at Paul Robeson/Malcolm X Academy, worries that budget cuts will place further pressure on staff members who are already overwhelmed.

Paul Robeson/Malcolm X, according to DPSCD budget documents, could go without its school culture facilitator, dean, and a paraprofessional next school year.

This year alone, Nelson said she’s seen at least four teachers and school administrators at her son’s school retire, some citing burnout. Now she’s bracing for the impact of the district’s cuts on the school.

“How can we help them going forward?” Nelson said.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

COVID learning loss driven more by school and community factors than household ones, research finds

2023-05-12T21:05:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

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.

Michigan schools would get funding boost under House and Senate budget proposals

2023-05-10T22:08:15+00:00

Michigan school districts would receive funding increases of between $366 and $550 per student, school breakfasts would be free for all, at-risk students would receive record funding, and the state would help cover some school transportation costs.

Those are some of the school funding proposals currently making their way through the Democratic-controlled Michigan Legislature.

The Michigan House on Wednesday approved a spending plan for public schools that would increase the per-pupil foundation amount to $9,516. That’s up 4% from the current amount of $9,150. The vote was 56-52, along party lines.

The Michigan Senate version of the school aid budget, likely to get a vote Thursday, would increase the per-pupil foundation amount to $9,700.

In the House, Democrats lauded its version of the budget, with some calling it “transformational.”

“This budget proposal does amazing things for every student in our state,” said Rep. Matt Koleszar, a Democrat from Plymouth who leads the House Education Committee.

Once both chambers have approved their respective budgets, a conference committee will iron out the differences, which are wide in some cases.

For example, they are far apart on how much to increase spending for students who are considered at risk. Students are identified as at risk based on a number of factors, including if they come from low-income families, are English language learners, are chronically absent, or are a victim of child abuse or neglect.

Currently, a district’s per-pupil amount is increased by 11.5% for each at-risk student.

Under the Senate plan, schools would continue to receive the additional 11.5%, but for those with the largest concentrations of children from low-income homes, the added payment would be as much as 15.3%.

The House proposal would give districts an increase of 35% for at-risk students.

Rep. Regina Weiss, a Democrat from Oak Park, said the House proposal would be the most the state has invested in the state’s neediest students.

Republican Rep. Brad Paquette, from Niles, voted no on the spending plan. He said that while there are some positive spending proposals, such as the foundation amount and increased spending on mental health, he is concerned about the increased spending on at-risk students, among other issues.

“The increase in at risk sounds like a noble increase. Ultimately these dollars become a slush fund for districts, where dollars do not track with the actual student that is in need,” Paquette said. “How can we ensure that these dollars actually follow those students who are deemed at risk?”

Paquette spoke against several other provisions of the budget, but he was cut off by the House member who was presiding over the chamber at the time while detailing his concerns over funding implicit-bias training after being told he was veering too far off the topic of the budget.

Democrats praised a proposal that would have the state spend $160 million to reimburse school districts for the cost of providing free breakfasts and lunches to all students. During the first two years of the pandemic, federal funding helped pay for free meals, but that funding ended.

“No one deserves to go hungry while they are attending school,” Koleszar said. “Students should focus on what they’re learning, not worry about where their next meal will come from.”

The Senate plan also allocates $160 million for meals.

The budget proposals also include $300 million for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s MI Kids Back on Track program, which is aimed at helping students recover academically after pandemic-era declines in achievement; $94.4 million for the Detroit Public Schools Community District for the settlement of a literacy lawsuit; and $75 million to expand the Great Start Readiness Program, Michigan’s free preschool program for 4-year-olds.

Some other features of the budget proposals:

The House proposal includes $150 million in new funding for school transportation.
The House would keep funding for Michigan’s online charter schools to current per-pupil levels, while the Senate would cut their funding to $7,760 per pupil.
The House proposal includes one-time funding of $300 million over two years to provide public schools with per-pupil grants to improve mental health. The Senate plan includes $310 million for public schools and $17.5 million for private schools.

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief of Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

At least $391 per child in pandemic food benefits is coming to each NYC public school family

2023-05-10T17:48:04+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

New York City public school families, regardless of income, will soon receive a new allotment of food benefits of at least $391 per child, according state officials.

Known as the Coronavirus Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer, or P-EBT, the federal program aims to help families whose children typically receive free meals at school — and since New York City public schools have universal meals, all families are eligible.

The latest disbursement of funds — which could total up to $1,671 per child based on COVID-related absences or remote-learning days — is based on the 2021-22 school year and the summer of 2022. The rollout began in April, with most payments posting this month, according to the state. Officials expect distribution to continue through September.

Since May 2020, the state has doled out $4.3 billion in P-EBT benefits, including over $1 billion for the 2019-20 school year, and more than $3.2 billion for the 2020-21 school year and summer 2021, according to state officials.

Advocates have praised the program for providing families with much-needed support and boosting the local economy.

“We know that food insecurity prior to the pandemic was a major problem in New York City,” said Liz Accles, executive director of Community Food Advocates. “It’s only gotten exponentially worse since the pandemic, so any ongoing support is really essential.”

Who is eligible?

All families with children who attended K-12 in New York City public schools last school year are eligible for food benefits. Those in charter, private, and other schools, or pre-K, who received free meals through the federal school lunch program are also eligible.

Children under 6 years-old as of September 2021 who received federal SNAP food assistance in the months between then and August are also eligible for food benefits.

Families are eligible regardless of their immigration status.

How are benefits calculated?

All K-12 children who receive free lunch at school will receive a $391 summer food benefit. So will children under 6 years old as of September 2021 who received SNAP money in June, July, or August 2022.

For each month of the 2021-22 school year, families (including those with pre-K children) will also receive $21 per month that their child was absent or remote from one to five days of school. That increases to $78 per month that their child missed from six to 15 days, and $128 per month that they missed 16 days or more.

Children under 6 years old as of September 2021 who received SNAP food assistance will also get up to $310 in food benefits, with $31 distributed for each month they received SNAP money between then and June.

How are benefits distributed?

Most families will not have to apply to receive their benefits, according to the state.

The state will automatically distribute the money to students who were absent or remote for five or more consecutive days of school.

If parents want to indicate that an absence not automatically covered by the state was also COVID-19 related, they will have to submit a P-EBT Food Benefit application to the state. The online application will be available from May 15 until Aug. 15.

How do you access the food benefits?

Families who previously received food benefits during the 2019-20 or 2020-21 school years will receive the latest benefits on the same P-EBT card, while newly eligible children will be mailed a card.

Those who have lost their P-EBT card can get a replacement by calling 1-888-328-6399.

Families that receive SNAP, state Temporary Assistance, or Medicaid benefits will get their disbursements directly added to those accounts.

The money can only be spent on food items.

Why do the benefits matter?

Nearly 30% of New York parents worried their household would not have enough food, according to a poll of state residents conducted last month by No Kid Hungry, a national campaign run by the nonprofit Share Our Strength. Two-thirds, meanwhile, reported experiencing stress, anxiety, and depression in the past year due to food insecurity.

“We know that families with kids in public school are having to make very hard trade-offs right now, deciding between buying food or paying rent, purchasing clothes, or just keeping the lights on,” said Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry NY. “Our recent data indicates that the hunger crisis is worsening in New York, so supporting families with P-EBT funds they can use to put food on the table will be a lifeline for many New Yorkers.”

Accles noted the benefits are particularly important now that some pandemic relief programs have expired.

“When schools are functioning in full force, a child has access to two solid meals a day,” Accles said. “For a family struggling to make ends meet, that’s a significant amount of resources that a family could save.”

She urged families to treat the benefits as they would stimulus funding, noting that spending them supports families and bolsters the local economy.

“Spend it, use it, buy food that you need,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC school enrollment projected to remain steady after steep pandemic losses

2023-05-08T21:10:10+00:00

For the first time since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, New York City’s public schools expect student enrollment to hold mostly steady across the five boroughs in the coming year, according to education department figures released Monday.

Projected enrollment is expected to drop 0.6% in K-12 across many of the city’s public schools, down from a more than 2% decline in the 2022-23 school year and just under 6% drop the year before.

The figures are estimates and will likely differ from the actual numbers, but they hold significant implications for schools since they are a major measure to determine their initial annual budgets. These figures do not include students attending homeschools, charters, or schools in a few special districts that don’t operate under the city’s funding formula.

Overall, the education department expects just under 767,500 students, down from roughly 772,500 students this year. The relatively small projected enrollment decline will likely insulate individual school budgets from big cuts next year.

More than 320 schools are expected to see at least 5% fewer students in the coming school year, down significantly from the roughly 540 who lost at least 5% of their students this year. Meanwhile, 190 schools are predicted to have increases of at least 5% next year, down slightly from nearly 210 schools that saw those gains this year.

Whether a school’s student population rises or falls has major implications for how much it receives through the city’s Fair Student Funding formula, or FSF. That formula uses enrollment and student need to determine how much money schools receive. Roughly two-thirds of school budgets flow through the FSF formula, which the city plans to adjust to greater benefit schools that serve more vulnerable students.

A DOE spokesperson declined to provide the overall funding expected to be distributed through the FSF formula in the coming school year.

But even with fewer schools seeing enrollment declines, the city continues to use federal relief funding to offset student losses. If enrollment holds mostly steady, city schools could still face budget cuts as those funds dry up. And other changes could impact schools, too, as Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has planned a roughly 3% cut in the DOE’s budget.

Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, said it was “heartening that the enrollment decline appears to be moderating.”

But, the long-term trend of declining enrollment is continuing, she said. “Schools have been largely held harmless for Fair Student Funding budget reductions due to enrollment declines during the pandemic. Despite this slowdown, schools will still need to adjust to FSF funding that aligns with actual enrollment.”

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and a longtime advocate for smaller class sizes who fought budget cuts last year, said the steadying enrollment figures meant further cuts were unnecessary.

“With this minuscule decline there is no excuse for any cuts to schools,” she said.

Since the pandemic hit, city schools have lost more than 100,000 K-12 students. Those declines came as the city and the nation faced an exodus of students from public schools.

The city bases its projections on fall enrollment, recent trends, principal feedback, and other factors. But the estimates can sometimes be off. Heading into this year, officials anticipated a 4% drop, but the actual decline was smaller at about 2%. The city has also seen its enrollment numbers bolstered in the past year as families seeking asylum have come to the city and enrolled their students in local schools.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s education budget could drop by $960M next year under mayor’s proposal

2023-04-27T00:19:25+00:00

The city’s education department budget would drop by nearly $960 million next school year under a more detailed budget proposal released by Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday, though city officials did not offer specifics about the impact on individual campuses.

Two-thirds of that cut, or $652 million, is the result of Adams’ decision to reduce the city’s contribution to the education department. Another $297 million is from a drop in federal funding, which is drying up as pandemic relief programs end.

Part of the city’s cut is tied to a mandate from the mayor earlier this month calling on city agencies to cut spending, including at the education department. That raised questions about whether schools would take a hit, but on Wednesday, Adams vowed that this specific cost-saving measure “will not take a dime from classrooms.”

Instead, that reduction — totaling $325 million — will largely come from recalculations on how much the city spends in fringe benefits, such as health insurance for teachers. (Officials emphasized this would not result in a loss of benefits or other services.)

“We had to make tough choices in this budget,” Adams said Wednesday. “We had to negotiate competing needs. We realize that not everyone will be happy but that is okay because that is how you get stuff done.”

The education department’s operating budget would total about $30.5 billion next year under the mayor’s plan, down by about 3%.

Some of the cuts were previously announced, including the elimination of a planned expansion of prekindergarten for 3-year-olds. Other impacts of the cuts may come into focus in the coming days as experts and journalists pore over reams of budget documents, which were released late Wednesday afternoon.

Adams has argued school budgets should reflect falling enrollment, but city officials declined to say what overall change they expect to individual school budgets next year. That question is likely to draw intense scrutiny after the City Council was heavily criticized last year for approving a budget that resulted in cuts to many campuses.

After the pandemic hit, Mayor Bill de Blasio used federal relief money to keep school budgets steady even as enrollment plunged. But as the spigot of federal money is drying up, Adams has started reducing budgets to line up with the number of students enrolled at each school, resulting in cuts on the majority of campuses. (Since the start of the pandemic, enrollment dropped about 11% in K-12.)

Next year, Adams plans to use $160 million of federal money to avoid deeper cuts to school budgets. Officials anticipate a much smaller enrollment decline than in recent years, which could insulate schools to some degree.

The budget is not final and must still be negotiated with the City Council. A final deal is due by July 1.

The proposed budget also includes funding for various other items, including services that advocates had been pushing for the mayor to include. Those are:

$3.3 million for keeping a chunk of the city’s new shelter-based coordinators, who are supposed to help families and children who are homeless navigate school enrollment and transportation. The funding for these coordinators was set to run out this June.
$9 million for a telehealth program for high school students who need mental health support.
$2 million for training up to 1,000 teachers in climate education.

The mayor’s budget received a mixed reception from advocates, union officials, and budget experts. Kim Sweet, executive director at the nonprofit Advocates for Children, praised the funding for shelter coordinators, but raised alarms about broader spending cuts — including to a program that provides extra mental health services to students at 50 high-need high schools, and another that provides free child care for undocumented families.

“We are concerned that the Mayor is proposing to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from our City’s schools at a time when there are so many unmet needs,” Sweet said in a statement, including high rates of chronic absenteeism and shortages in services for students with disabilities.

Still, Adams has argued that the city needs to tighten its belt due to costs associated with serving an influx of asylum seekers and potential economic headwinds.

Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the budget watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission, said her organization is worried the city isn’t properly planning now for big budget shortfalls that are expected in future years. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars of federal relief funding for the education department that will disappear in 2024 and could leave several programs and services unfunded.

“From our point of view there is still a major challenge fiscally for the city that’s not far off,” Champeny said. “We really should be taking action now.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Summer Rising applications are now open. Here’s everything you need to know.

2023-04-14T20:30:55+00:00

Applications open Monday for New York City’s free, sprawling summer program for children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The program was first launched in 2021 under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, using federal COVID relief money, as a way to help children ease into school following remote learning. The rollout of the program was bumpy, but for the first time, it provided a mix of academics and enrichment activities to many children beyond those who are mandated to attend summer school.

In its third year, the program will again have 110,000 spots and will be open to any child in New York City, including children who are home-schooled or attend charter or private schools.

But a couple things will be different from last year, including the application process. Spots won’t be assigned on a first come, first served basis this year; instead, parents will rank multiple choices. In another change, students who already attend a school associated with a Summer Rising site will be added to the list of groups receiving priority in selection for that site.

Parents who want to apply should visit this website when the application opens on Monday.

Here’s what you should know about this year’s Summer Rising program:

Where are the programs, and when will Summer Rising start?

Programs won’t be in every school. Rather, each school will be associated with one of 374 sites across the five boroughs.

The program length will depend on a few things. Programs will run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from July 5 to Aug. 18 for children in kindergarten through fifth grade and until Aug. 11 for middle schoolers.

Students with disabilities who have yearlong individualized education programs, or IEPs, will attend programs from July 5 to Aug. 14, from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Students at District 75 schools, which serve children with the most challenging disabilities, will attend programs that run from July 6 to Aug. 15, also from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Students in Nest and Horizon programs, which serve students with autism, who have 12-month IEPs, will attend a monthlong program from July 5 to Aug. 1, from 8 a.m. to noon.

What will my children do?

Generally, students will spend the morning on academics and then in the afternoons participate in enrichment activities, such as sports, arts and crafts or going on field trips. Elementary-age children will spend the last week of their program on enrichment activities and trips, according to the education department website. (Enrichment activities are run by community-based organizations.)

Students with disabilities will receive extra services that are mandated in their IEPs, including services from health and behavioral paraprofessionals, according to the department’s website. For these students, their school will create an accommodation plan for the summer that will be provided to their parents and the Summer Rising site before their program begins.

Students with disabilities are supposed to receive services “as needed” during the enrichment portion of the day, according to the department’s website. If a family doesn’t want the enrichment portion, they should contact their child’s school instead of using the online application. These children can choose on the application to participate in extended-day enrichment programming until 6 p.m.

Last year, several families reported that their children did not have special education support by the start of Summer Rising, said Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children. She said it’s “important that planning begin early” so that students aren’t left without the services they need.

Will my child get transportation to the program?

Generally, students who are already eligible for busing during the school year — typically in grades K-6 — will receive busing to their summer program but not past 3 p.m. This includes students with disabilities whose IEPs recommend busing, as well as students in temporary housing and students in foster care who are more than a half-mile away from their Summer Rising site.

For children who want to participate in programming until 6 p.m. and need transportation, families will have the option of a prepaid rideshare service. However, a caregiver must take the rideshare service to and from the summer site to pick up their child, which some advocates have said is not manageable for working parents.

Eligible students who receive MetroCards during the school year can also get MetroCards from their Summer Rising site, or if their site is more than a half-mile from their home.

Students who are not eligible for busing during the school year could receive transportation if their regular school is not open for Summer Rising and their site is more than a half-mile away.

How will the application work?

Seats rapidly filled up last year, quickly elbowing out many families who wanted to apply, according to some advocacy and community-based organizations.

This year, instead of the first come, first served model, families will be asked to rank up to 12 choices for program sites, “ensuring that more families receive placements that work for them,” according to a news release.

Like last year, priority will be offered to students in temporary housing, in foster care, who are mandated for summer school, and with disabilities who have year-round individualized education programs. But also, students who have a “local connection” to their school will also be prioritized, such as if they attend the school during the year. Last month, city officials said students who attend city subsidized after-school programs will also be prioritized.

Asked how these groups will be ranked, an education department spokesperson said they’re aiming to give every child in a priority group access to their first choice.

The application will close May 1, and families should be notified the following week of where their child will attend the program, according to the department website.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Changes in Tennessee retention law will come too late for third graders this year

2023-04-14T20:08:03+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers are moving toward a consensus on how to improve the state’s controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, but whatever they decide won’t be in time for this year’s class of third graders.

Those students, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic began, face the highest stakes when the state’s testing window opens next week for grades 3-8 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

In a Senate finance committee this week, Republicans quashed Sen. Jeff Yarbro’s proposal to delay implementation of the strict retention policy for one year.

“We are too late for this year,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg of Bristol when Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, asked if anything in the proposed changes for next year would alleviate concerns about this year’s launch.

“I have significant concerns that we are not ready,” Yarbro countered, “and that, even more importantly, our schools and our families are not ready for the disruptions that this is going to cause this year.”

But the GOP-controlled committee stuck with its plan and advanced a bill under which, beginning next year, Tennessee would widen criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers.

Unless the full legislature intervenes before adjourning in the next few weeks, this year’s decisions on who gets held back or sent to remedial programs will be based solely on TCAP reading test results. That’s the current criterion under a 2021 law that lawmakers passed in response to pandemic learning losses.

If the proposed revisions are approved as expected, the state would widen criteria beginning with the 2023-24 school year to consider results from a second state-provided benchmark test, too — but only for third graders who score as “approaching” proficiency on their TCAP.

The full Senate is scheduled to vote on the measure next Tuesday.

The 2021 law also established summer learning and tutoring programs to help struggling students catch up.

This year’s third graders who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must attend a summer learning camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program during fourth grade.

Third graders who score “below” proficiency, which is the bottom category of results, must participate in both intervention programs. (There are exemptions. To learn more about Tennessee’s current retention and remediation policy, visit the state education department’s answers to frequently asked questions.)

The existing policy is expected to affect thousands of students this year.

Last fall, when the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents examined TCAP data for the state’s 70,000 third graders in 2021-22, the group found that about 45% of them would have been affected if the new retention policy had applied to them, before any exemptions were considered.

And in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, officials estimate that more than 2,700 third-graders are at risk of being held back.

Chalkbeat spoke recently with Dale Lynch, executive director of the superintendents group, about implications of the learning and retention law, both this year and next year. Here are five questions and answers:

What should Tennesseans understand about the status of the state’s third-grade reading and learning support law?

Dale Lynch is executive director of the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what’s happening in the legislature with this law. A lot of people think that someone is going to wave a magic wand and all of this will go away. But there’s no chance the legislature will completely do away with the law they passed in their special session in 2021. And nothing’s going to happen this year to change third-grade retention policies for this year’s students. We’re talking about next year.

What about this year, though? What’s happening now with our third-grade students, their families, and their teachers?

There’s a lot of anxiety, especially as TCAPs approach. Parents are feeling a great deal of stress, and the pressure being put on third-grade teachers is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, our superintendents are trying to figure out how to staff an appropriate summer school program to provide these interventions for more students. How many kids will we have? We don’t know yet. Districts are supposed to get the raw score data from TCAPs by May 19th, and most of the camps are starting in May. So I think a lot of school districts will go ahead and encourage students to plan to come, even if they don’t know their test results yet. That’s not necessarily bad. But it would be nice if we had some time to figure this out.

It’s one thing to provide learning interventions like summer camps, but they also need to be effective. What’s the best way to do that?

First, I want to emphasize that our organization likes and supports the parts of the law that add these supports for our students. We like the summer programs and tutoring and additional learning opportunities. Our state needs to continue doing this.

The best way to make them effective is to have your most effective teachers in there. So for this summer, district leaders are trying to figure out how to get their most effective teachers to extend 200 days of instruction to 220 or 240 days. That’s a challenge.

Is there any collateral damage as we try to help students catch up from pandemic disruptions?

I worry that we’re at risk of hurting our best teachers at a time when we’re looking for ways to retain them. There’s nothing more important in education for a student than a high-quality teacher. The best teachers produce the best results. But we can’t keep pushing more and more on teachers without them reaching a breaking point.

What else should we know as district leaders try to plan for more third graders participating in summer learning programs?

For school system leaders, the amount of money they thought they’d be getting for summer school programs is lower than they were anticipating. They’re also trying to figure out the budgeting process under TISA [the state’s new student funding formula that stands for Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement], which starts with the new school year. It’s a lot of big things happening at once.

This year’s TCAP testing window runs from April 17 to May 5. You can learn more about the testing program on the state education department’s website.

You can track the bills to revise the retention law on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC is expected to spend $38K per student, budget watchdog calls for prioritizing ‘critical services’

2023-04-11T04:01:00+00:00

Buoyed in recent years by billions in federal stimulus dollars, New York City is slated to spend about $38,000 per student next school year — the most in recent history — as enrollment is again expected to drop, according to a new report published Tuesday.

The report, from Citizens Budget Commission, or CBC, a budget watchdog group, comes as the education department faces 3% in cuts for next year. Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council are in the middle of budget planning for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

Many of the CBC’s findings focus on the period from fiscal year 2016 through 2022, since the current fiscal year, 2023, isn’t over yet. Some of the report’s highlights include:

In that time period, the education department’s spending per pupil has increased by 47%, in large part due to the $7 billion in federal COVID aid the district received as enrollment has dipped. Three school years from now, in fiscal year 2026, CBC projects the city could be spending as much as $44,000 per student.
Spending grew the most in three areas: early childhood education, at 65%, covering private school tuition, such as for students with disabilities, by 79%, and for charter schools, by 84%. This was fueled by enrollment growth in these specific areas.
Spending related to schools, such as for instruction, grew by about 34%. Spending on school services, such as transportation, food, and safety, grew at a similar rate.
Spending on school support, such as special education instructional costs, grew by about 15%. And spending on central costs, including central administration, fringe benefits, pension contributions, and debt service, saw the slowest growth – by 8%.

CBC called for officials to prioritize programs and services for next year that are most effective and shed others. It also notes that the city faces financial pressures over the next several years, which the Adams administration has also emphasized as they’ve imposed stricter savings targets on city agencies. Those challenges include labor costs that will stem from new union contracts, including with the United Federation of Teachers, and a potential recession.

“We can’t do everything for everyone, so we need to start focusing on the most impactful interventions,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.

New York City spends the most per pupil among the nation’s largest school districts. That cost grew as federal dollars were poured into the school system and enrollment dropped significantly after the onset of the pandemic. Dips in enrollment are likely due to several factors, including demographic changes and the cost of living in New York, which are leading many families to find homes elsewhere.

Roughly one-third of the department’s spending growth between 2016 and 2022 was due to federal pandemic aid, which is set to run out by 2024, CBC’s report found.

Advocates and educators have decried the potential cuts to the education department — amounting up to $421 million — as students continue to struggle with a host of challenges, including mental health, chronic absenteeism, and recovering academically after remote learning. Cuts to school budgets this school year resulted in some schools losing teachers, having larger class sizes, and cutting some programming, such as art and music classes.

Research has found that more money usually leads to better schools. New York, however, is in a puzzling situation: Despite being the leading state in spending per pupil, students score in the middle of the pack on national math and reading tests.

It’s possible to make cuts through central or support costs, such as through transportation contracts, and “avoid cuts to school budgets,” the CBC report notes.

While CBC doesn’t make specific recommendations, Champeny said such cuts could mean negotiating cheaper transportation-related contracts. The department could also look for ways to reduce private school placements for children with disabilities, commonly known as “Carter Cases,” a cost that ballooned under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and continues to grow.

More immediately, however, the group called on the department to be “transparent” about the future of a slate of programs that are currently relying on federal pandemic relief, which other organizations and advocates have also pressed for. These programs include expanded summer school, new prekindergarten seats for students with disabilities, and screening for dyslexia and other literacy programs – an area that Adams is increasingly making one of his signature projects.

Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said, “This Administration has been open and honest about the long-term combined challenges of declining enrollment, programs funded by one-time federal stimulus dollars, and rising costs tied to unfunded mandates from the State.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC officials pause school device tracking project

2023-04-07T11:00:00+00:00

New York City’s education department is hitting pause on a sprawling effort to count up electronic devices in all schools and central offices, officials confirmed this week.

The yearlong project, launched last June, had reached just half of city schools before it stopped on March 20. The effort involved 26 teams of five people each who were supposed to visit all district and charter schools and central offices to count up all kinds of technology. That included tablets, laptops, desktop computers, printers, and smartboards.

The novel effort — known as the Central Inventory Project — came after the city had purchased an estimated 725,000 devices over the course of multiple years for remote learning during the pandemic, costing about $360 million.

The ultimate goal of the project was to help schools conduct annual inventories on their own, officials said. But they halted the project last month because of feedback from schools and a decision to review the information they’ve collected so far, according to a department spokesperson. The spokesperson added that the project would not be done by the end of the school year, as originally planned.

She did not immediately share what sort of feedback they received from schools. In a recent newsletter to its members, the Council for Superintendents and Administrators, or CSA, wrote that they shared school leaders’ “negative experiences” from the project with the education department, and “ensured that principals would not be disciplined or penalized for missing devices.”

“Since the project was announced, we escalated school leaders’ concerns about the potential disruptions these visits might cause and shared our opinion that the time and money involved would be better spent elsewhere,” said Craig DiFalco, a spokesperson for the union.

Officials will review the data they’ve collected so far “before determining how and when the project may proceed,” the education department spokesperson said.

Educators who previously spoke with Chalkbeat praised the effort to find schools devices — a key concern of former City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who noted in multiple reports that the department failed to have a centralized tracking system for computer hardware. Many of the 725,000 devices purchased for remote learning during the pandemic have been difficult to account for or track down, as they are supposed to follow the student from school to school, those teachers said.

However, they also shared that the project had hiccups. For example, students forgot to bring their iPads or laptops into school on the day of the scheduled inventory visit, and those devices were then marked as missing. One teacher in Brooklyn said a team that visited his school failed to count up any of the printers in his room.

Both teachers also noted that leaving the inventory process to schools can be hard on staff, especially when there is no technology coordinator on site.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Credit recovery becomes key strategy for Detroit district’s graduation rate boost

2023-03-28T14:51:38+00:00

Justice McCalebb was nervous when he walked into his guidance counselor’s office at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School last November. The Detroit school district senior had fallen behind in his classes during the pandemic and needed to make up nine credits in math, English, science, and history — roughly two years’ worth of classes.

McCalebb hoped the counselor would offer a way to stay on track for graduation. But he didn’t expect to be pulled out of his school.

That’s what ended up happening. McCalebb was told he’d be moved to West Side Academy of Information Technology and Cyber Security — an alternative school in the district — within a matter of days in order to complete his credits.

To McCalebb, being pulled out of MLK and being sent to a new school didn’t seem like a fair solution.

“I feel like I could have completed it all if I stayed there,” he said.

McCalebb is one of a growing number of Detroit Public Schools Community District students who have been funneled to credit recovery courses after falling behind and finding themselves in danger of not graduating on time. In credit recovery, students take self-guided online courses, in which they view instructional videos and take multiple-choice question tests to pass.

The number of Detroit students taking credit recovery courses jumped during the pandemic, going from 2,742 high school students during the 2019-20 school year to peaking at 7,480 students last school year, about half of the roughly 14,000 high school students the district enrolls each year.

This year, 4,901 high school students in the district are enrolled in credit recovery – still nearly double the pre-pandemic numbers.

School districts have long tried to help students quickly earn course credits by using credit recovery programs. But the numbers have increased in Detroit and around the country as schools try to recover from pandemic-related disruptions that left many students off track for graduation due to failing grades, absences, and challenges with online learning.

Detroit district officials rapidly expanded offerings of credit recovery, encouraging students short on credits to make up courses during their regular class schedule, after school, and on weekends. So far that strategy has paid off: The district’s four-year graduation rate rose for the first time in nearly a decade.

“If students do not pass certain classes, then they cannot receive a high school diploma. Period,” said DPSCD Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. “We are changing the expectations, climate, and culture in our high schools by moving students on a clear path to graduate in four years.”

But while credit recovery appears to be improving graduation rates, some argue that it comes at the expense of face-to-face classroom time for students.

Students such as McCalebb who are sent to alternative schools are pulled away from close friends and school activities, which creates more disruption for already struggling students. If they are already behind grade level in core subjects, those students miss critical learning time. Experts say credit recovery alone doesn’t address the root causes of their academic challenges.

Graduation rate improvement hinges on credit recovery

As more students have enrolled in credit recovery programs, Detroit has seen an encouraging trend in its graduation rate.

In the 2021-22 school year, DPSCD’s four-year graduation rate rose to 71.1%, up from 64.5% in the previous school year. At this point last year, in the middle of pandemic disruptions, roughly 23% of high school students were on track to graduation. This year, that has improved to 56%.

“The improvement in graduation rates is a testament to our continued commitment to improve the high school experience for our students,” said Vitti in a recent news release.

“The course recovery work, especially as a product of the pandemic, has been grueling for staff and students but everyone refused to make excuses and our students benefited by graduating in four years.”

During the pandemic, Michigan’s high school graduation rate fell by 1.6 percentage points between 2020 and 2021, the first decline in years. In Detroit, graduation rates had been declining since 2015-16.

Detroit board members have called on the district in recent years to do more to address literacy levels and declining graduation rates.

““I am really outraged at the numbers,” board member Sonya Mays said last July during a school board meeting, referring to the 2019-20 school year. “We are still having hundreds of students leave this district without something as basic as a high school diploma, and I just find that really outrageous.”

Vitti has attributed that declining graduation rate in part to some of the city’s lowest-performing schools being reincorporated into the district in 2017, and more recently, the pandemic’s impact on student attendance.

As an increasing number of students failed to log in to online classes during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, the district used some of its COVID relief funding to offer teachers extra pay to teach additional courses during the day and to provide after-school courses to help students make up missed credit.

Credit recovery alone can’t help struggling students

As credit recovery programs have risen in popularity among school districts in the past decade, teachers and experts have raised concerns about potential drawbacks.

“It feels like the district is panicking after offering students ‘grace’ during the lockdown and virtual year, only to realize that the graduation rate was going to drop because kids didn’t have enough credits to actually graduate by state standards,” said Kelsey Wiley, an English teacher at Cass Technical High School.

The increased load of credit recovery, Wiley added, has hindered students from participating in after-school activities or being able to work after school.

In most cases, online credit recovery programs can be a “good model” for students who have already demonstrated a mastery of the curriculum material they missed, said Jordan Rickles, a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research, who studied credit recovery programs.

The programs can allow students who have fallen behind the chance to test out of certain units. But those programs alone can’t make up for the circumstances that may have made a student fail a class in the first place.

“It’s not that they just need to retake an algebra I class and they’re good to go,” Rickles said. “It’s that these students have been, for a multitude of possible reasons, disconnected from school, or their attendance rates are much lower than the average student.”

Carolyn Heinrich, a professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, found in her research into credit recovery programs that students least prepared academically were more likely to be set back by or struggle with online remedial courses, particularly those far behind grade level in core subjects.

And graduation rates, Heinrich said, while an important gauge of school quality, don’t necessarily equate to readiness for life beyond high school.

“We’re not going to make online credit recovery go away because it’s inexpensive, it fills an important need, she said. “But if we can do it better, so the kids … don’t have to trade off learning for passing courses, that’s what we need to do.”

Creating credit recovery programs that are of high quality, Heinrich added, through the use of in-person instructors, small class sizes, and progress monitoring, is the challenge facing high schools.

Vitti maintained that “no student is falling through the cracks” and that a pathway to recovery is available for those who end up in a “credit hole.” During his tenure as superintendent, the district has emphasized providing wraparound services for academically struggling students.

Over the course of the pandemic, DPSCD began actively monitoring each student’s credit status once they entered high school, he said. High school principals, according to Vitti, are now equipped to spot early warning signs of struggling students following their first semester of ninth grade.

“Being behind a couple of credits or classes is recoverable and manageable if the student is willing to put in the extra work and sacrifice,” Vitti said. “Most of our high school students do this.”

But some students end up missing two or more years worth of credits by their junior or senior year and, “it becomes more difficult for the traditional high school to catch these students up.”

Students in that situation can transfer on their own or are switched by school officials to alternative schools, as McCalebb was, where they are enrolled full-time in credit recovery. West Side Academy – one of the district’s alternative high schools – saw the highest improvement in graduation rates across DPSCD in the 2021-22 school year, rising by 25 percentage points.

“The West Side graduation rate data speaks for itself as an effective strategy to catch students up with credit to ensure they graduate in four years or even graduate at all,” Vitti said.

Students make up courses at expense of classroom time, extracurriculars

At West Side Academy, where Justice McCalebb was sent in the fall of his senior year, students complete courses through Edgenuity, an online curriculum that uses pre-recorded videos to speed students through core lessons. While teachers are in the classroom for additional support, students progress through multiple-choice assessments at their own pace.

Several months after being transferred from King, McCalebb is still irked over the decision. He’s been told he won’t be able to return to that campus, because King operates on a semester schedule while West Side runs on a quarter schedule.

In his first month at the alternative school, McCalebb estimates he breezed through 10 classes – without, he says, actually learning much. Many of the assignments covered material he had already been taught at King.

McCalebb often thinks about the opportunities he’s missing out on at King — after-school programs such as Lyrical Crusaders, a club where students perform spoken word poetry and hip hop, and C² pipeline, a college and career readiness initiative offered through Wayne State University.

McCalebb, who was behind nine credits when he came to West Side, is now on track to graduate this spring. But the disappointment about the transfer looms large over his senior year.

“There’s absolutely nothing I like about West Side,” he said.

With high school almost in the rear-view mirror, McCalebb is weighing his post-graduate options. At first, he had considered a few local colleges. Now he has pivoted his attention toward enrolling in a trade school next year.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

NYC parent coordinators are essential school workers. Many feel undervalued and underpaid.

2023-03-27T10:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free New York newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

“Family engagement” and “parent empowerment” are not mere buzzwords to Ana Maria Aguilar.

They are her touchstones as parent coordinator at a Brooklyn elementary school, where she sees the faces of her own parents — immigrants from Mexico — reflected in many of the families at drop-off and pickup.

“They come in with such fear. I try to make them feel welcome,” Aguilar said. “As a brown woman, who is also an immigrant, I can relate to their stories.”

That kind of connection drew Aguilar to become parent coordinator at Sunset Park’s P.S. 24 in the fall of 2020, a decision rooted in her desire to give back to her community after losing loved ones to the pandemic. But she found a job remade in many ways by COVID, which caused some parents and students to fear being back in school and ushered in a host of new challenges for staff.

New York City schools created the parent coordinator position 20 years ago as a way to connect families to their children’s schools after then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg assumed control of the nation’s largest school system, abolishing the local school boards that had given parents some direct decision-making power.

The role, which typically varies from school to school, has become more critical — and stressful —during the pandemic. Nearly a dozen parent coordinators described how they became their school’s tech support, public health workers, and family therapists. They doled out devices and got families logged onto school accounts. They communicated with families about COVID-related protocols and quarantines, and were often the ones standing outside of schools each morning taking students’ temperatures and collecting health screeners. They fielded calls from families with concerns about returning to buildings and were the ones reaching out to parents when kids went missing from classrooms for prolonged periods of time.

And many are now charged with helping the thousands of migrant families that have entered the public school system.

Parent coordinator salaries, however, have not kept pace with the job’s demands, staffers say, or with inflation. Starting salaries for parent coordinators two decades ago were between $30,000 and $39,000 a year. That would be about $49,400 to $64,200 in today’s dollars.

New hires for parent coordinators start at $38,235, according to current job postings.

It’s not uncommon for parent coordinators to turn to public assistance or take on additional jobs, several school staffers told Chalkbeat. And unlike teachers, parent coordinators are required to work some weekends and nights, getting comp time rather than extra pay. They also must work summers and during school breaks, where they have to report in person to borough offices.

Ana Maria Aguilar (center), the parent coordinator at P.S. 24 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, helps organize events celebrating families’ culture.

“We’re helping struggling parents, but we’re also struggling parents,” said Aguilar, herself a graduate of Brooklyn public schools and a former parent/teacher association head of her childrens’ school. For the upcoming spring break, she will likely have to take personal days since she doesn’t have child care for her first and fourth graders.

The city recently reached a tentative deal with District Council 37, the union representing parent coordinators, along with other city workers, including school aides, cafeteria workers, and other staffers critical to the day-to-day functioning of schools.

Under the deal, union members will get a one-time $3,000 signing bonus and four years of 3% annual raises, with a 3.25% bump in the fifth year. The deal, which runs retroactive to May 2021, remains below the pace of inflation, which hit 6% last year. But it was higher than Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed 1.25% increase in his preliminary budget.

Members have until the end of the month to vote on the deal, which is largely expected to be ratified. Many parent coordinators, however, remain upset that the contract doesn’t address certain issues like their in-person work requirements during school holidays.

Parent coordinators are helping families process trauma

Though COVID protocols are no longer as time-consuming, parent coordinators are still helping families whose lives have been profoundly impacted by the pandemic over the past few years. They are also on the frontline working with the families of the 14,000 asylum-seeking students who have enrolled this school year, many of whom arrived with few belongings, a lot of trauma, and little English.

Parent coordinators are often part of a school’s team focused on tackling chronic absenteeism, which has become a major problem, with about 40% of children last year missing at least a month of school. And they continue to have other duties, including marketing their schools — which has become more important as enrollment has dropped. They organize school tours and help families with admissions questions, both those interested in coming to their schools as well as those who are graduating.

At the start of this year, before the city lifted vaccination requirements for parents to enter the building, de-escalating tense situations often fell to parent coordinators, said Jonathan Figueroa, who started in the role at P.S. 59 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, two days before the pandemic closed down campuses.

“I do feel like the job has taken on more. I see the burnout is real,” said Figueroa, who hopes to finish his bachelor’s degree and become a social worker. “But for me, it’s about being involved and advocating for my community.”

Aguilar began building routines during the pandemic that have continued to serve her school community this year, as it welcomed an influx of migrant students.

Her Mondays focus on community resources, providing information about food pantries or rent relief. Tuesdays touch on self-care: A recent workshop with New York University’s ParentCorps discussed the importance of helping kids hold onto their roots after coming to a new country. On Fridays, she leads “community walks” to sites such as the large manufacturing and shopping complex at Industry City or the office of their local City Council member. Weekends are for coat and food drives as well as “family fun” activities.

Like Aguilar and Figueroa, Erica Ramos became a parent coordinator during the pandemic, where her ability to listen and her bilingual skills were a great asset. She let parents “release their stress,” and tried to help them manage their fears and frustrations as the various guidance from the education department shifted. With several families still too scared to send their children back, Ramos geared up with masks and face shields to do home visits with counselors.

“I spent hours and hours on the phone listening to parents just terrified,” said Ramos, parent coordinator at Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a middle and high school in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights. “What was it going to look like? How were we going to keep students socially distanced? And there were all these Catch 22s. We had the windows open, but it was freezing. So parents were calling to complain that their kids were too cold.”

She continues to help families in whatever way they need. Amid growing concerns about an uptick in marijuana use across city schools, she recently held a family workshop on drug use organized with her school’s substance abuse prevention counselor. She’s become the point person for a school-based pantry, ordering the food and reaching out to families to let them know about it.

Erica Ramos, the parent coordinator at Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Her full-time job as parent coordinator isn’t enough for Ramos, a single mom who lives in Bushwick, to pay her bills. Her paycheck every two weeks of $1,500 covers her $1,900 a month rent in Brooklyn, but leaves little left for food and other necessities. Ramos recently reapplied for food stamps, but missed an enrollment call from the program. The process of starting over feels too daunting, she said. She also works at a restaurant on Thursdays nights and for Sunday brunch. On Friday evenings or Saturday mornings, she cleans houses.

She’s been eyeing other positions in the education department because her current one, she said, is “illogical” in terms of how much they get paid for the work and time they put in compared to other school staffers.

“Why am I working full time for the city of New York, and I can’t afford to live in the city of New York?” Ramos asked.

A wave of parent coordinator job openings on horizon

For some parent coordinators, the role is a stepping stone, while they finish degrees or get other higher-paying school secretarial jobs. For some, it’s a second career, which gives them a cushion of savings. But many have been doing the job for the long haul, and as the position reaches its second decade, schools are bracing for a wave of retirements.

As part of last June’s agreement in Albany to extend mayoral control over the city’s school system for another two years, the state tweaked the hiring process for parent coordinators, requiring that each district’s parent advisory boards, known as Community Education Councils, approve each new parent coordinator.

Rosa Diaz, president of District 4’s Community Education Council in East Harlem, said the change has been fruitful in building relationships with the new parent coordinators.

“I see it as another opportunity to work together,” Diaz said, explaining that they tell the new hires, “If you need any support, reach out to us.”

Sara Sloves was a teacher at a Harlem charter school before becoming the parent coordinator at the Upper West Side’s Computer School in 2007. The job took on a different “energy” during the pandemic, she said, as families eagerly awaited her weekly newsletters with updates on the city’s evolving COVID guidelines. She started hosting meetups at local parks to help them feel connected to the school. She still sets up time on Fridays to meet families at local coffee shops, but more recently has begun to host breakfasts again at school.

“You need to have a kind and understanding soul at the end of the day,” Sloves said. “You have to be able to connect with people and want to do that.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit school district is pressed for answers on how impending budget cuts will affect staffing

2023-03-24T21:50:05+00:00

Community members and union leaders are asking the Detroit school district for more clarity on how impending budget cuts will affect certain categories of district employees, as officials prepare for the end of federal COVID relief money.

Over 100 district positions may be cut or consolidated moving into the 2023-24 school year, including school support staff such as general ed kindergarten paraprofessionals, school culture facilitators, attendance agents, and college transition advisers. At a meeting of the school board finance committee Friday, the community groups pressed the district to prioritize student and family needs as it decides where to make cuts.

“We know that a lot of our paraprofessionals are really important for student relationships,” said Molly Sweeney, director of organizing for education advocacy group 482Forward. “So as we think about the budget process, if there are staff cuts, we want to be able to really justify that for what that impact is in our families and really stand with the community members.”

The Detroit Public Schools Community District received a total $1.3 billion in federal aid to help students recover from the pandemic. DPSCD will have spent most of the money by the end of this school year on initiatives such placing nurses in every school, increasing mental health resources and staff support, creating and expanding the DPSCD Virtual School, and after-school and summer school programming. And it has already committed $700 million to renovate and rebuild schools across the city.

The depletion of those funds will force the district to make some tough spending decisions for the coming year, because one of its main remaining sources of revenue is state aid based on enrollment. And DPSCD has seen its enrollment drop by about 2,000 students since the start of the public health crisis in 2020.

Discussions about next year’s budget are still ongoing, and the budget will not be finalized until board approval in June. But district officials are hoping to soften the impact of expected cuts on district employees and families by moving employees in positions that are expected to be phased out into roles with staffing shortages, such as pre-kindergarten paraprofessionals, substitute teachers, cafeteria aides, and academic interventionists.

“We want them to stay with us but move to another area,” said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

Principals across the district have received their proposed budgets and are working on determining their priorities.

Part of the discussion about staff reductions, Vitti added, has been to ensure equitable funding across the district, particularly for neighborhood high schools and large K-8 schools — schools that typically have higher rates of student absenteeism and lower achievement metrics. Those schools, he noted, will have “more flexibility this year with deciding what positions they want in their building.”

After spring break next week, Vitti said, the district intends to host engagement sessions for district employees and community members to go into “greater depth and talk about the recommended changes as we go into the budget adoption in June.”

One category of employees that will see adjustments from new district priorities is attendance agents, the employees assigned to help school administrators track down absent students and get them to class.

As many as 20 attendance agent positions may be cut from the district’s budget, according to Vitti, as the district retools its strategy to address chronic student absenteeism.

In the latest school year, 77% of DPSCD students were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year, or 18 days.

Attendance agents have been a key part of the district’s strategy to address the problem. The district currently employs roughly 89 attendance agents, assigned to individual schools across the city. But last fall, district officials began to reconsider their allocation of one attendance agent per school.

In the future, Vitti said, the district wants to prioritize its placement of attendance agents at schools with the highest number of chronically absent students. Another group of about 20 agents would operate districtwide to support schools with less absenteeism.

As with the other positions designated for cuts, current attendance agents will be able to transition into other high-need staff roles, Vitti said.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

What to know about the upcoming state tests for grades 3-8

2023-03-23T21:50:12+00:00

It’s testing season in New York once again.

Schools across the state will administer standardized reading and math exams for grades 3-8 in April and May, as well as science exams for eighth graders in June.

With the intense attention on the pandemic’s effect on students, some schools might be ramping up their focus on the state tests. Some districts have signed up their schools for computer-based programs for math and reading, according to Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the city education department. It’s part of a learning “acceleration” initiative launched earlier this year by the education department, Gothamist reported.

There might be more attention on this year’s state tests, following the spotlight on last year’s dip in national test scores, which also showed drops in fourth grade math scores in New York City.

But there’s a big caveat with the state tests: This year, the exams are based on new learning standards and can’t be compared to results from the last school year, when nearly half of students passed reading exams and 38% passed math.

Many educators and families argue that testing takes away classroom time and doesn’t tell the full story of how a student is doing — a viewpoint schools Chancellor David Banks has previously echoed. Others believe it is a useful tool.

State officials said the tests are just “one tool” that helps teachers understand their students’ academic needs.

Here are some things you should know about the upcoming exams:

When are the tests and how will they be administered at schools?

Schools will give the state English test over a consecutive, two-day period between April 19-21. If students are absent those days, they can make up the tests between April 24-28.

Two weeks later, students will take math tests from May 2-4 with make-up dates scheduled for May 5-11.

Eighth graders will take a science laboratory exam between May 23 and June 2 and a written exam on June 3. Make-up tests for the lab exam must happen sometime within that testing window, while make-up dates for the written exam take place between June 6-9. There will be no fourth grade science test as the state prepares to transition to a science test for fifth graders, beginning next spring.

Most New York City schools will give the exams on paper. So far, 130 schools plan to use computer-based testing, Styer said — which has sometimes come with technical issues across the state. For computer-based tests, the window for English exams will be April 19-26 and for math will be May 2-9.

While computer-based testing is currently optional, mandated computer-based state testing will begin next spring for grades 5 and 8. All schools will be required to give the exam on computers in the spring of 2026 for all grades.

How will the tests be different this year?

For the first time, this year’s state tests will be based on the “Next Generation Learning Standards,” a set of grade-level learning standards established in 2017 that were revised from the controversial Common Core standards.

The Next Gen standards, as they’re often called, were meant to clarify previously vague language from the Common Core. For example, whereas Common Core geometry standards simply stated that students must be able to “prove theorems about triangles,” Next Gen’s revisions detailed the specific theorems.

When the state’s Board of Regents adopted the new standards, some groups lauded them for not straying too far from Common Core, while other education organizations said the standards were too rigorous for early grades.

What do the new tests mean for scoring them?

New tests also mean that the state will determine new benchmarks of what makes a student proficient in reading, math, and science. This summer, teachers will participate in a process where they will decide what students need to know in order to demonstrate that they’re meeting grade-level standards – otherwise known as being proficient – on state exams. That process will impact scoring for this spring’s tests.

“It’s a matter of judgment to decide, ‘OK, we think a student who’s proficient should be able to answer this question correctly, say, two-thirds of the time,’” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, giving an example.

Can we compare scores to last year?

No. Because the tests are new, the results can’t be compared to last year’s scores. Studying scores from year to year is helpful for understanding progress students have made — especially amid the pandemic.

But because state officials have warned against comparing results to previous years whenever the test changes, it’s been impossible to consider trends over the better part of a decade.

In 2016, New York allowed students to have unlimited testing time and cut the number of questions. In 2018 the state went from three testing days to two. The exams were canceled due to the pandemic in 2020, and the following school year, a fraction of students took shortened exams with just a quarter in New York City — far less than 2019.

They advised against comparisons with last year’s scores because looking at a student’s performance in 2022 versus 2019 would “ignore the enormous and, in many cases, grievous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, families, teachers, and entire school communities,” a spokesperson for the state education department said in a statement.

That may be frustrating to some educators, families, and researchers because it makes it impossible to see long-term trends of student performance and growth. These exams, however, are just one indicator of how well students are doing in New York, said Pallas, and should be viewed along with other metrics, such as graduation rates and college acceptance rates.

“The state testing system is just one piece of evidence that has to be put into relation to all the other things that are available,” Pallas said.

How are my child’s scores used?

Schools are federally required to administer these exams, and districts are required to assess 95% of their students.

In New York City, the exams are used to see where students are meeting grade-level expectations “as well as students that need academic intervention in literacy and math,” Styer said.

State officials have said that these scores are just one measure of how a student is doing in school. However, the scores don’t come back until the fall – meaning teachers can’t see them the year that children take the exams.

In New York City, high schools and middle schools that screen students for admission can no longer take state test scores into account.

Can I opt my child out?

Yes. While federal officials require schools to administer these tests, parents can pull their children out. New York City’s education department has previously advised parents to speak with their child’s principal if they’re interested in opting out.

Last year, 10% of students opted out of exams compared with 4% in 2019.

Federal law requires states to give assessments to at least 95% of students. If fewer students participate at a school, it could contribute to the school being labeled as struggling – which state officials define as needing “targeted” or “comprehensive” support. But generally, low test participation may only affect a school’s accountability status if it’s combined with bad results on other measures, such as chronic absenteeism, according to state education officials.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s Summer Rising program gets admissions overhaul

2023-03-22T21:41:27+00:00

As summer approaches, New York City families should expect changes in the sign-up process and who will be given priority for the city’s sprawling public summer enrichment program, which will again be open to 110,000 children.

Summer Rising — launched under former Mayor Bill de Blasio in the summer of 2021 with the help of federal COVID relief dollars — offers academic and enrichment programs to elementary and middle school students, even if they’re not mandated for summer school.

Last year’s program was offered on a first come, first served basis — leading to a mad rush of applications that filled up most school sites within a week of enrollment opening. In response to concerns about enrollment, this year the city will ditch the first come, first served model, said Keith Howard, commissioner of the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, during a City Council hearing on Wednesday.

Families, who will also be able to rank their preferences for school sites, can sign up during the whole enrollment period, which will open in early April, said Howard, whose agency partners with the education department on running Summer Rising. This suggests that there will be a lottery process though city officials declined to confirm that or share more details with Chalkbeat.

“We’ll have more to share in the coming days, and we are prioritizing getting the needed information to our families and school communities,” said Mark Zustovich, a DYCD spokesperson, in a statement.

In another significant change, students who are already attending one of the city’s hundreds of DYCD-run after-school programs will also receive priority at the schools where their after-school provider runs Summer Rising. This move is meant “to accommodate families who are accustomed to year round programming,” Howard told the City Council.

Like last year, seats will be prioritized for students in temporary housing, students mandated for summer school, and those with disabilities, though officials did not immediately share how many of these seats would be set aside or if the seats for students with disabilities would be separate from those who are mandated to attend school for 12 months on their individualized education programs, or IEPs.

Neither DYCD nor education department officials immediately shared how all of these priorities would be ranked.

Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children, said her group was happy about the end of the first come, first served enrollment process. She said many families who “needed more support to apply” didn’t get spots, including the very people who were supposed to be prioritized, such as children in shelters.

“We heard from families living in shelter and immigrant families that they did not know about Summer Rising in time to get seats for their children and heard from staff at shelters that when they went to help families enroll, the seats were already gone.”

At the same time, under the enrollment system last year, there weren’t many seats left for students who attended the school if they weren’t in one of the priority groups, said Erica N. Oquendo, division director of youth and family services for Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, which expects to oversee Summer Rising programs in at least eight schools this summer and also runs eight DYCD after-school programs.

Another issue for Oquendo: Sometimes last summer, she saw children sign up for seats but never show up. To her frustration, her organization didn’t have control over unenrolling that child and offering their seat to someone else in need — an issue that must still be addressed, she said.

While the changes announced Wednesday could mean more seats for students already attending a given school, Oquendo craved more details about how the various priorities would be ranked.

“That’s the hard part — I wouldn’t necessarily say I would want to prioritize an after-school student over a child in a homeless shelter,” Oquendo said. “How do we measure the level of care that’s needed?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Tutoring isn’t reaching most students. Here’s how to vastly expand it.

2023-03-22T10:00:00+00:00

Tutoring was supposed to be schools’ secret weapon — a way to reverse pandemic learning loss before students fell even further behind.

But three years after COVID closed schools, and with the deadline to spend pandemic recovery funds fast approaching, many students still aren’t getting the help they need. By some estimates, just 1 in 10 students — or fewer — are receiving intensive tutoring.

The good news? Experts say it’s still possible to drastically expand tutoring. Millions more students can get the help they need, the experts said, if leaders are willing to do what it takes.

“There is an enormous need right now,” said Naeha Dean, chief strategy officer of Accelerate, a nonprofit that funds research on effective tutoring. “We really can’t wait.”

Chalkbeat asked a dozen experts how to ramp up effective tutoring. Here’s what they said:

Schedule tutoring during the school day

Most schools say they offer tutoring, yet few students actually receive it. Why?

One big reason is that tutoring is often held after school, which all but ensures low participation. Families must consent to after-hours tutoring and figure out transportation, and students must show up. Each step shrinks the pool of participants.

During-school tutoring side steps those challenges, allowing most students to attend. Students also tend to take tutoring more seriously during school than after, when programs often feature snacks and playtime alongside academics.

Most importantly, tutoring during school is more effective. A 2020 research review found that the academic impact of tutoring during school is roughly twice as large as tutoring after school.

“The science tells us that students are much more tuned in, plugged in, not fatigued, ready to engage, during the school day,” said Jen Mendelsohn, co-founder of Braintrust, which runs school tutoring programs.

It can be tough to squeeze tutoring into the school day, but experts say it’s possible by repurposing existing class periods or creating new ones. For example, the charter school organization Uncommon Schools shaved a few minutes off each period, freeing up 30-40 minutes each day for teachers to tutor small groups.

After-school tutoring just isn’t feasible for some families, said Juliana Worrell, Uncommon’s K-8 chief of schools. “So what we have concentrated on is incorporating tutoring into our actual school day.”

Turn school staffers into tutors

Many school leaders say they can’t find or afford enough tutors. Luckily, one solution is already in the building.

Nationwide, schools employ more than 880,000 paraprofessionals, or classroom aides, who assist teachers and support students with disabilities. That’s more than the number of principals, guidance counselors, and school librarians combined.

Often overlooked and underutilized, paraprofessionals can make great tutors, experts say. First, they are more racially diverse than teachers, which can benefit students. Second, they are already district employees, saving schools the time and cost of hiring outside tutors. Most importantly, they’re effective.

Tutoring studies have consistently found that paraprofessionals are second only to teachers in their ability to boost student learning. (The studies also count aspiring teachers as paraprofessionals.)

With “proper supports, such as good materials and coaching, they can be excellent tutors,” said Stanford professor Susanna Loeb, who founded the National Student Support Accelerator to expand access to high-quality tutoring.

If principals are eager to use classroom aides as tutors but not sure how, they can turn to companies like Once. The firm, which works with schools in about 10 states, provides training and a curriculum to help school support staff teach reading to kindergartners. The daily tutoring sessions are then recorded so Once coaches can review the footage with tutors and offer feedback.

The service is much less costly than hiring additional tutors, said Once CEO Matt Pasternack. And it has the added benefit of putting some paraprofessionals on the path to becoming teachers.

“By the end of one year with us, they’ve gotten 20 hours of coaching in the science of reading,” he said. “There’s a lot more to learn before becoming a classroom teacher, but it’s a great foundation.”

Tap other talent pools for tutors

Schools can also find an ample supply of would-be tutors outside their walls.

One natural talent pool is the country’s estimated 600,000 aspiring teachers. Before they begin student teaching, educators-in-training often spend extensive time observing K-12 classrooms. But some teacher training programs have started using that time for tutoring, which lets aspiring teachers gain experience while assisting students.

“Research is clear that practice matters for aspiring teachers,” said Patrick Steck, senior policy director at Deans for Impact, a nonprofit working to deploy more student teachers as tutors.

Local officials are finding solutions to the inevitable logistical challenges, Steck added. For example, some teaching programs have rescheduled classes to not conflict with tutoring, while some cities and school districts cover tutors’ transportation costs.

Other college students can also make great tutors, though making that happen can be a burden for schools. Several states have stepped in to help, launching programs that recruit, train, and pay college students to work as tutors. For example, California’s new College Corps fellowship is paying college students $10,000 to tutor K-12 students this school year. Interest was high, with about three undergraduates applying for every fellowship slot, according to the state.

Parents and caregivers are another source of tutoring talent. The parent-led nonprofit Oakland REACH shows how that can work. The group recruited parents during school dropoff and pickup, then paid them a stipend to attend a six-week training on how to teach reading. The parents, whom the group calls Literacy Liberators, are now district employees earning pay and benefits to tutor students during school.

“It starts with changing your mindset about how you see our communities,” said Oakland REACH CEO Lakisha Young. “We see our parents are very powerful — we see them as the change agents.”

Use virtual tutoring wisely

Virtual tutoring can be a godsend for schools. It lets harried administrators outsource the heavy lifting and, in theory at least, allows students to get help even from home.

But there’s a big problem with virtual tutoring: Many students never use it.

One of the most popular services, Paper, lets students chat with tutors by text message 24/7. But in several school districts, only a tiny fraction of the students who have access to the service use it. And struggling students who most need help are often the least likely to log on.

Programs where students and tutors meet by video after school have also struggled with attendance. For example, in Indianapolis, only about 1 in 3 students who signed up for after-school virtual tutoring attended more than one session, officials said.

But the good news is that virtual tutoring — when done right — can be highly effective, said Loeb, the education professor who has studied online tutoring.

“Some virtual programs show dramatic effects for students,” she said in an email.

The programs work best during the school day, with adults in the classroom supervising as students work with their virtual tutors, Loeb said. Students should attend several tutoring sessions each week, and tutors should receive coaching and high-quality materials.

“What makes a good virtual tutoring program,” Loeb said, “is very much the same as what makes a good in-person tutoring program.”

States and feds must step up

Creating large-scale tutoring programs is costly and complicated — and probably not the best use of superintendents’ time.

“You can’t just leave it up to 13,000 school districts to figure out,” said Morgan Polikoff, a University of Southern California education professor. “State and federal governments have to get more involved.”

There are several ways to do that, experts say.

States can vet tutoring providers, develop clear guidelines, and help with tutor recruitment. Sixteen states have gone even further and established their own tutoring programs, according to an analysis by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The Biden administration launched a public-private partnership that promotes effective tutoring practices and provides technical assistance to districts. But experts say the federal government could do more to incentivize schools to offer tutoring and remove roadblocks. For example, federal work study rules could be expanded so more college students and aspiring teachers are paid for tutoring, according to a new Deans for Impact report.

Whatever officials do, they must move quickly, tutoring proponents say.

“Students are still in school and they are not receiving the betterment they’re entitled to,” said Mendelsohn, the tutoring provider. “This is their fundamental right.”

Kalyn Belsha contributed reporting.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

With greater access to devices, NYC teachers are folding more tech into instruction

2023-03-13T18:49:10+00:00

Before the pandemic, U.S. history teacher Travis Malekpour hesitated assigning his students work in the classroom that required a computer. He knew not every student had a laptop or tablet.

Three years later, Malekpour, who teaches in Queens, doesn’t think twice about assigning and grading in-class work that requires a device.

After COVID shuttered campuses in March 2020, forcing schools to pivot to remote learning, the city spent more than $360 million to buy 725,000 iPads and Chromebooks. That seismic shift made devices more accessible to students than ever before — and has now pushed some teachers to fold technology more often into their lesson plans.

“Having students who now have tablets and laptops they bring to school definitely changes the game a little bit,” Malekpour said.

The city’s education department has embraced some virtual education models, including a hybrid high school program that mixes virtual instruction with in-person activities. They’ve also used federal relief dollars to fund virtual courses for students at small schools that can’t provide such classes. More recently, schools began using computer programs to prepare students for upcoming state English and math tests, angering some educators and families who want children to be interacting directly with instructors, Gothamist reported.

But there appears to be little official guidance from the department for schools navigating a post-remote learning world. A spokesperson said they encourage using “21st century teaching practices” and provide students with “personalized, flexible learning.”

Officials also offer professional learning for teachers on teaching in remote or hybrid environments.

Some students find reliance on technology frustrating

There is some evidence that older students prefer instruction that doesn’t lean on technology. Sixty-five percent of American teens ages 13-17 said they preferred returning to full in-person instruction after the pandemic, while 18% preferred a mix between in-person and online, according to a survey last year from Pew Research Centers.

Most of those surveyed didn’t seem to struggle profoundly when required to use technology: Of the 22% of teens who said they sometimes had to complete homework on their phones, just 1 in 5 said it made finishing assignments “a lot harder.”

But for some children, technology can make learning frustrating.

About half of Eva Lang’s classes at a Manhattan high school require using laptops daily. The 15-year-old said she finds it distracting when her classmates are playing video games instead of doing the assignment.

Submitting assignments online can be convenient, Eva said. However, when her teachers post homework to Google Classroom without first discussing it in class, she sometimes has to ask questions via email, which can go unanswered. Some teachers make online assignments due the night before the next class — meaning she can’t complete it on the way to school if she wanted to focus on more complicated homework the night before.

Other times, the due date is a Friday night.

“It’s never, like, a really long assignment, but you know Friday nights are when you’re done from school or [ready] for the weekend, and you don’t want to be worrying about homework,” Eva said.

Many parents, too, have expressed concerns about increased screen time during the pandemic. One 2021 study of more than 5,400 children, which looked at screen use during the pandemic, saw a link between more screen time and worsening mental health, including feelings of stress. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy noted in 2021 that while some studies have found that online platforms can lead to worsened mental health, there is not enough robust research to make a conclusion.

Some teachers find creative uses for technology

With more devices in students’ hands, Malekpour, the Queens teacher, feels comfortable asking them to complete online assignments for a grade while in class, such as answering a sample U.S. History Regents exam question using Google Form or typing up a short essay response to a prompt.

But if he’s teaching about political cartoons, he’d have them draw their own examples on paper.

Even before the pandemic, one Brooklyn science teacher knew of free, interactive lab activities available online that seemed useful when the school couldn’t afford materials for hands-on experiments, or for understanding more dangerous concepts, such as radioactivity.

But the teacher, who requested anonymity because she was not free to talk to the press, couldn’t always use those virtual labs because not all students had a laptop or a phone.

Now, for the first time in her two decades of teaching, she has a laptop cart in her classroom, meaning her students can do virtual labs in addition to hands-on experiments, she said. This week her students used a virtual lab to study different states of matter. With the click of a button, they could change matter from gas to liquid to solid by controlling the temperature.

“Before, you would just teach it,” she said. “This way, they find out for themselves — rather than just being told, they explore.”

Tom Liam Lynch, vice president of education at the United Way of NYC and a former education technology professor, said a “fundamental conversation” that needs to happen around the role of technology in schools must start with what high-quality instruction looks and feels like for students.

Frustrations like Eva’s, the Manhattan student, represent a situation where it might not be working well, Lynch said.

“In those moments [the teacher’s] focus is on getting an assignment up and getting into the classroom, and they’ve lost touch around the fundamental question of, ‘Why am I doing this in the first place? How is this going to make a child feel?’” he said.

For some teachers, remote learning didn’t impact how they teach now. Despite the education department’s investment in technology, there are still students who don’t have access to devices or the internet. The city is currently attempting to count up all devices that schools have in their possession.

Not every student has access to a laptop during the school day at the Bronx high school where Steve Swieciki teaches social studies. His use of computers in class has, in part, relied on whether he’s in a room with a laptop cart during that period.

When he does use computers, it’s for simpler work, such as reading a news article in class. He may toggle between having students read and discuss an excerpt from a textbook or providing that excerpt in Google Classroom and requiring students to answer questions about it as homework.

But that’s how he taught even before COVID.

He shared a recent example of how he lightly folds technology into a lesson: For an intro-to-law class, Swieciki recently had students use laptops to read two news articles about artificial intelligence. To pique their interest, he first had them read a New York Times story that detailed a conversation between a reporter and a Bing chatbot, who told the reporter it was in love with him — shocking and hooking the students to the topic.

Then, he had them pull up an Axios article about how lawmakers are seeking to regulate artificial intelligence.

Students spent the next class participating in a Socratic seminar, where they debated the role of government in regulating artificial intelligence.

The lesson went so well that Swieciki pivoted from what he had planned to teach in his following lesson.

“I’m actually putting off what I initially had planned for tomorrow and extending the discussion another day,” he said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Dropout rates have ticked up in some states. How big is the problem?

2023-03-13T11:00:00+00:00

Just a few months into his senior year of high school, Niziere Clarke realized he wasn’t going to graduate on time.

He’d been struggling academically since COVID hit in the spring of his junior year. After an unsuccessful first quarter, Clarke, who lives in Toms River, New Jersey, started to spend more time doing freelance animation and digital art work and stopped engaging in his classes.

“Most of the time, I would log in, but I barely paid attention,” he said. When he finished the year without the credits he needed, he never returned.

Clarke, who is 21 and has since obtained his GED, is one of thousands of students who saw their time in high school disrupted by the pandemic. Those experiences have fueled concerns about a generation of students missing their shot at a high school diploma, especially as enrollment falls — and recently, several states have seen their dropout rates climb.

Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, and several other states reported jumps in their dropout rates this past year. This month, North Carolina officials said that the state’s dropout numbers were 17% higher than pre-pandemic.

But the scale of the problem remains hard to define. While a diploma is a definitive sign of high completion, classifying a student as having dropped out is a more ambiguous process that can take time and effort by staff — complicated by the fact that some students will take longer than four years to complete their requirements.

“We don’t really have a handle on the post-pandemic story yet,” said Robert Balfanz, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. “A little bit of this comes down to how much administrative effort a school puts into keeping their data up to date.”

For that and other reasons, experts caution against focusing too closely on the specific dropout rates themselves, which can lag years behind more reliable measures. Instead, they said attention should be on earlier indicators of academic struggle — and helping students like Clarke get across the finish line.

Clarke, who had felt on track before the pandemic, said his motivation evaporated as his community faded and he lost touch with teachers and friends. Things about senior year that had excited him, like upcoming performances with his school’s dance team, were suddenly stripped away.

“There was so much stuff that I really wanted to do during that time, but ever since COVID, I got pulled away,” he said. “Everyone just disappeared.”

What we know about today’s high school completion rates

For years, America’s high school graduation rates have trended up. Between 2010 and 2019, the nation’s average graduation rate rose from 79% to 86%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Meanwhile, the share of young people who were not in school and didn’t have a high school credential fell.

Across states, high school graduation rates held steady when the pandemic first hit, but dipped for the class of 2021. In 2022, states generally saw only slight shifts.

Dropout rates are messier. No recent federal data shows where the country’s dropout rate sits, and state and local district data reveals a varying picture. In Kansas, state reports show the dropout rate fell slightly in 2022, even as other areas saw upticks.

The numbers also don’t invite easy comparisons, as schools, districts, and states can use different criteria. In Michigan, for example, the dropout rate increased to 8.19% while Colorado’s went up to 2.2%, and the two figures are calculated differently.

Timelines for determining when a student has dropped out vary, too.

In Oregon, for example, education officials warned that an increase in its dropout rate from 1.8% to 4% last year came in part due to the suspension of a policy that saw anyone who missed 10 or more consecutive days automatically categorized as a dropout, the Oregon Capitol Chronicle reported. (Under the policy, students are only included in the dropout rate if they do not show up elsewhere by the end of the academic year, according to a state education department spokesperson.) When the policy was reinstated in the 2021-22 school year, the dropout rate included students who would have ordinarily been counted in the year prior.

And while a few states are seeing dropout rates inch upwards, that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer students are graduating. In fact, both Colorado and Michigan saw their graduation rates increase last year even as more students dropped out.

The seeming contradiction is due in part to how the figures are calculated. In Colorado, for example, dropout rates refer to how many seventh to 12th grade students disenroll from schools in a given year.

“The dropout rate gives us that pulse across a wider spectrum of kids, whereas the graduation rate is only giving us what happened to ninth graders that enrolled four years earlier,” Balfanz said.

Russell Rumberger, a former professor at the University of California Santa Barbara who studied school dropouts for decades, said indicators of students falling off course are more helpful.

Dropout rates, he said, are “not very good about telling the story,” he said. “The story is really about enrollment over time and attending school over time.”

Why students drop out

The dropout data may be unclear, but what is obvious is that the challenges of the pandemic threw some students off course. When classes became virtual in 2020, students suddenly needed a stable internet connection, a computer, and in many cases, an adult at home who could help keep them on track during the school day.

For students facing academic, mental health, or financial challenges, the situation became extremely difficult to navigate, said Megan Facer, a clinical assistant director at Youth Villages, a nonprofit that helps young people across the country experiencing emotional, mental, and behavioral problems.

“There just becomes this hopelessness,” she said. “They’re not incentivized to keep going to school, because it’s just too hard, and in fact they may never catch up.”

Those feelings met a job market that needed more workers, and some students found themselves entering the workforce — especially those who needed to support their families through an added income. And as some young people left education behind, it became harder to return.

“When we reopened, they had to decide, ‘Do I go back to school, where I wasn’t doing that great, and I don’t know what the relevance of it is anyway? Or do I stay in this $20- to $25-an-hour job?” said Steve Dobo, founder of Zero Dropouts, an educational social enterprise that works with school districts in Colorado. “A lot of them are choosing to stay in those jobs.”

Clarke, too, chose to prioritize earnings early in the pandemic, but he always wanted to continue his studies. He obtained his GED with help from LifeSet, a community program through Youth Villages and Preferred Behavioral Health Group that helps young people aging out of foster care or other children’s services. Now, Clarke plans to attend college in the fall to study computer animation.

But still, he admits that his plans were set back by the pandemic. Without the disruptions, Clarke knows he would’ve remained “dead focused” on reaching his goals.

“If COVID never happened, I would’ve graduated,” he said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering national issues. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Student behavior remains concerning amid COVID’s impact, educators say

2023-03-07T11:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

More than a year after the nation’s return to in-person learning saw a surge of disruptive behavior in schools, educators say students are still struggling to adjust to life back in the classroom.

Disruptions after the long stretches of virtual learning ranged from smaller infractions to verbal and physical fights. Educators say those issues are still present this school year, but note many students are struggling in quieter ways, such as finding it hard to interact with their peers or engage in class.

“Last year, I was talking a lot about kids just walking out — it was a constant,” said Alex Magaña, executive director of Beacon Network Schools in Denver, Colorado. “But now, you see a higher percentage of kids that just sit there, not engaging.”

Behavioral challenges are not new to schools, but with the pandemic introducing additional trauma and stressors, educators fear they’ve become more prevalent. Even as some schools have strengthened support systems, teachers say it hasn’t always been enough to meet student needs — and experts warn the long-lasting effects on students are not yet fully understood.

In Chicago, schools saw a roughly 48% drop in serious or criminal misconduct at schools this year, but at the same time, more minor disruptive behaviors were on the rise. And while similar numbers are not available nationwide, nearly 70% of educators surveyed last fall said behavioral disruptions had increased since the 2019-20 school year, according to a report by EAB, an education consulting firm. (The survey drew from more than 1,000 educators across 42 states, but was not a nationally representative sample.)

Since 2018, the share of educators reporting frequent opposition and emotional disconnection among students saw significant jumps, according to the EAB survey. Those findings follow a May 2022 National Center for Education Statistics survey that found more than 80% of public schools had noticed slower behavioral and socio-emotional development in students amid the pandemic — and as educators on the EAB survey reported smaller but still notable increases in observed bullying and violence.

“Schooling was really inconsistent for a lot of students across the pandemic,” said Olivia Rios, an associate director at EAB. “They just haven’t had the chance, or the time, or the opportunities, to develop those skills that you need to sit in a chair and productively learn throughout the day.”

Of course, educators struggled with behavioral challenges well before the pandemic, she added. Indicators of student mental health, too, had been declining for years.

Rios said educators have told her this year has been less chaotic than the last, with students also exhibiting less severe disruptive behavior. But concerns remain over the long-term impact of the pandemic on students’ self-regulation skills, she added.

“The temperature has come down a little bit,” she said. “But even if the outbursts aren’t quite as big as they were last year, they’re still there, and we’re still having trouble resetting kids and getting them back into the mindset of being ready to learn.”

It’s an issue that some educators and students have seen locally, though experiences vary widely even within a school.

For 14-year-old Kiara Rodriguez, a ninth grader at Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, New York, this school year hasn’t felt different from the last. Many students still aren’t listening in class, and with friction between teachers and students, it can be difficult to focus, she said.

“I kind of want to go back to online school,” Rodriguez said. “It’s too much.”

Omar Ramirez, also a ninth grader at Grover Cleveland, has had a different experience. He said some students have been distracted, but the year has gone smoothly — adding he hasn’t seen any especially disruptive behavior around school.

“The students have been in control,” he said. “Nothing really crazy has been going on.”

Dan Walsh, principal of Kepner Beacon Middle School in Denver, said what teachers at his school are reporting “is more of a shift in the ratio.”

“Not that the behaviors that are happening are more intense, it’s just that the number of kids that are experiencing those challenges has increased,” he said.

Jennifer Spencer, a lead interventionist at the Distinctive Schools network in Michigan, said she’s seen widespread frustration from students as they attempt to navigate their classes after losing academic ground during the pandemic.

“They’ve lost that control and understanding that when they come to the classroom, they have to be ready to learn,” she said. “They’re just all over the place.”

And the impact hasn’t just been felt inside of the classroom. Danyelle Kimp, a teacher at Alcorn Middle School in Columbia, South Carolina, said students at his school have struggled to socialize with one another, even more than a year after returning to an in-person learning environment.

“Online communication was the norm for a year and a half,” he said. “So it just seems like some of the kids are awkward and don’t know how to interact with each other, let alone teachers or other adults.”

Alex Driver, a teacher at Pace High School in New York City, said he’s noticed an uptick in how many students struggle with social anxiety.

“There’s always been kids who are reticent to speak in front of the class,” he said. “But it’s probably five times as many these days.”

Though his students haven’t struggled with outbursts, he noted they’ve been more distracted, with cell phone use being particularly disruptive in class.

“There’s never been a period that goes by that I don’t have to say, ‘Put away your phone,’ like 15 or 16 times,” he said.

The EAB survey also highlighted a disconnect between teachers and school administrators when it came to addressing behavior issues in the classroom. It indicated that school administrators overestimated how much training staff and teachers had received — with more than 70% of administrators stating their staff had been trained in various behavioral management techniques, while 53% or fewer teachers reported that was the case.

Ben Court, a senior director at EAB, said ensuring teachers and administrators are on the same page is “the most important first piece of this puzzle.”

“One of the things that we know is incredibly important for students is consistent response from teachers between classrooms,” he said. “The more variation we have, the more chaotic it can be, the harder for them it can be to know how to respond.”

To Driver, the behavioral shifts in recent years have heightened the importance of support systems in schools.

“More kids than ever need the counselors at our school,” he said. “A lot of kids have trauma … but I have tons of kids who will ask to go see the counselor, and not because they’re in crisis. The counselor will say, ‘She just wants to talk every day.’”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering national issues. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit district budget cuts may target school deans, assistant principals, as COVID aid dries up

2023-03-06T19:55:49+00:00

Funds for school deans, assistant principals, central office staff, and summer school programs are at risk of being cut as Detroit school district officials consider how to balance their budget when federal COVID relief money dries up.

That’s the outlook for the district based on priorities that Superintendent Nikolai Vitti outlined during a school board finance committee meeting Friday morning. The priorities reflected discussions the full board held during an hours-long closed-door meeting on Feb. 18.

“Based on the board retreat, the priorities moving forward with available funds are contracted nurses, full time social workers, and academic interventionists,” Vitti said Friday.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District received a total $1.3 billion in federal aid that was designed to help students recover from the pandemic. The loss of that funding will hit the district hard, because one of its main remaining sources of revenue is state aid based on enrollment. And DPSCD has seen its enrollment drop by about 2,000 students since the start of the public health crisis.

DPSCD will have spent most of the federal money by the end of this school year on initiatives such placing nurses in every school, increasing mental health resources and staff support, creating and expanding the DPSCD Virtual School, and after-school and summer school programming. And it has already committed $700 million to renovate and rebuild schools across the city.

As many as 100 staff members have already been told their positions, paid for in part using federal COVID aid, may be cut or consolidated by the end of the school year.

After this year, the funding cuts will hit “school based administrators, deans, assistant principals and central office administrators,” Vitti said. However, he noted that individual principals could tap their discretionary budgets to cover some of these positions.

Lakia Wilson-Lumpkins, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said the effects of dwindling COVID relief dollars will come up in contract negotiations for all of the unions connected to the district.

“As we build momentum in our contract talks, we understand that there will be some shifts made due to the loss of COVID funding,” Wilson-Lumpkins said. “Our concern as the union is how to maintain all of our members, because the services are still needed.”

“We don’t want to put our members, and our students most importantly, in a situation where there have been deep cuts unnecessarily or prematurely,” she said.

Parent liaisons should be here to stay

Detroit schools will have access to federal funding through Title I, a program that provides additional money for schools with high numbers or high percentages of low-income students.

Vitti said individual schools will have to rely on Title I dollars to fund parent liaison positions next school year.

Parent liaisons, or parent outreach coordinators, have been key to the district’s efforts to connect with and engage parents and families across the city. Hired as part time staff, these parents typically work with school staff to run parent programs and workshops, promote school-sponsored events, advertise parent-teacher conferences, and coordinate home visits for administrators.

During the pandemic, the district used some of its COVID dollars to pay district staff and parents to canvas neighborhoods as it prepared to return fully to in-person learning in the 2021-22 school year.

“There’ll be some dollars” for the neighborhood canvassing, Vitti said, “but not as much when we think about one-time COVID money. But the parent liaisons will be funded in individual schools.”

Detroit’s robust summer school may see drastic cuts

The Detroit district’s ambitious summer school offerings will likely see drastic reductions going into the summer. Vitti said the district intends to limit its program to students in grades 8 through 12 who need to complete credit recovery courses for core subjects such as English, math, science and social studies.

Over the past two years, DPSCD’s Summer Learning Experiences has offered a wide range of programs, from academic enrichment classes and STEM courses to recreational activities for students, funded with COVID relief aid.

DPSCD spent $10 million to expand Summer Learning Experiences in 2021 and $11 million to expand the program this past summer, bringing summer school enrollment to roughly 8,000 students. The program was recognized last year by U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and first lady Jill Biden during a special visit at Detroit’s Schulze Academy for Technology and Arts.

This year, Vitti said, the district plans to offer summer school at five city high schools, and provide transportation. Individual high schools may offer bridge programs for eighth graders transitioning into ninth grade, but funding for those initiatives will have to come from individual school budgets.

Academic intervention reform remains a budget priority

The district has counted on academic interventionists for its larger reform efforts to provide intensive academic support for students performing below grade level in core subjects. Funding for these educators won’t go away.

Last fall, the district received a $20 million private donation from billionaire MacKenzie Scott. At the time, Vitti said the district planned to use that money to hire academic interventionists, and on Friday he said the district hopes to employ as many as 50 academic interventionists to work one-on-one or in small groups with students.

Those positions, according to Vitti, would primarily be located at specific K-8 schools that are large and “have more students … below grade level.”

Schools outside of those parameters, such as smaller K-5 and K-8 schools, will see a slight increase in their academic interventionist budget allocation. The overall number of academic interventionists at each of those schools, Vitti added, will depend on how many students are in each grade.

Teacher turnover hits new highs across the U.S.

2023-03-06T10:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

The data is in: More teachers than usual exited the classroom after last school year, confirming longstanding fears that pandemic-era stresses would prompt an outflow of educators. That’s according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from eight states — the most comprehensive accounting of recent teacher turnover to date.

In Washington state, more teachers left the classroom after last school year than at any point in the last three decades. Maryland and Louisiana saw more teachers depart than any time in the last decade. And North Carolina saw a particularly alarming trend of more teachers leaving mid-school year.

The turnover increases were not massive. But they were meaningful, and the churn could affect schools’ ability to help students make up for learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. This data also suggests that spiking stress levels, student behavior challenges, and a harsh political spotlight have all taken their toll on many American teachers.

“Education had changed so dramatically since COVID. The issues were getting bigger and bigger,” said Rebecca Rojano, who last year left a job teaching high school Spanish in Connecticut. “I just found myself struggling to keep up.”

Across eight states, more teachers left the classroom after last school year

Since the pandemic threw U.S. schools into disarray, many educators and experts warned that more teachers would flee the profession. But in 2020, turnover dipped in many places as the economy stalled, then in 2021 it ticked back up to normal or slightly above-average levels.

As this school year began, widespread reports of teacher shortages suggested that turnover had jumped more significantly.

Data was hard to come by, though. The federal government doesn’t regularly track teacher quit rates. Many states don’t either, with education officials in California, New Mexico, Ohio, and Pennsylvania saying that they don’t know how many teachers leave each year.

But Chalkbeat was able to obtain the latest teacher turnover numbers from eight states: Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Washington. These figures encompassed turnover between the 2021-22 year and this school year.

In all cases, turnover was at its highest point in at least five years — typically around 2 percentage points greater than before the pandemic. That implies that in a school with 50 teachers, one more than usual left after last school year.

“I am struck by just how consistent these patterns are looking at all of these different states,” said Melissa Diliberti, a researcher at RAND, which has monitored teacher attrition during the pandemic.

In Louisiana, for instance, nearly 7,000 teachers exited the classroom last school year, or about 1,000 more than usual. That’s a turnover rate of 14%, up from between 11% and 12% in a typical pre-pandemic year.

There was variation among the eight states. Mississippi’s teacher workforce was the most stable: Turnover was 13% this year, only slightly higher than the two years before the pandemic. North Carolina saw the largest spike: 16% of teachers left after last year, compared to less than 12% in the three years before the pandemic.

For Kimberly Biondi, who taught high school English for 21 years in a district outside Charlotte, her reasons for leaving were wrapped up in the politics of education. She advocated for remote instruction as well as in-school safety rules, such as masking, but faced personal criticism from a local group opposed to these measures, she said. Biondi was also worried that politics could eventually limit what she taught.

“I taught AP language where we were supposed to teach very controversial work. I taught Malcolm X. I taught all sorts of philosophers and speakers,” she said. “I could only imagine how I would be targeted for continuing to teach this.”

Other former teachers cited growing workloads and more difficulty managing student behavior.

Rojano said that student engagement plummeted as students returned to class in fall 2021, some for the first time in over a year. “A lot of these students are really hurting and suffering with intense emotional problems and high needs,” she said. “The needs just grew after the pandemic — I noticed a lot more emotional outbursts.”

It didn’t help, she said, that her class sizes were large, ranging from 25 to 30 students, making it hard to form close relationships with students. Plus, the school was short staffed and had many absences, forcing Rojano to constantly cover other teachers’ classes, losing her planning time.

She left in the middle of the last school year, something she never imagined doing because it was so disruptive for the school and her students. “It got so bad,” she said. “I was very overwhelmed and stressed. I was anxious and tired all the time.” Rojano ended up taking a job at an insurance company, where she is able to work remotely when she wants.

State reports hint that rising frustration has pushed more teachers out of the classroom. In Louisiana, the number of teachers who resigned due to dissatisfaction increased. In Hawaii, more teachers than usual identified their work environment as the reason for leaving. (In both states, personal reasons or retirement were still far more common explanations.)

While the eight states where Chalkbeat obtained data may not be representative of the country as a whole, there are signs that higher attrition was widespread. In a recent nationally representative survey from RAND, school district leaders reported a 4 percentage point increase in teacher turnover. Data from a handful of districts show a similar trend. For instance, turnover among licensed staff, including teachers, spiked from 9% to 12% in Clark County, Nevada, the country’s fifth-largest district. In Austin, Texas, turnover jumped from 17% to 24%.

Other school staff appear to be leaving at higher rates, too.

Hawaii experienced a jump in aides and service staff who exited public schools. North Carolina saw over 17% of principals depart last school year, compared to an average of 13% in the three years before the pandemic. The RAND survey also found a sharp increase in principals leaving.

Why rising teacher turnover is concerning

A degree of staff turnover in schools is considered healthy. Some new teachers realize the profession just isn’t for them. Others take different jobs in public education, becoming, say, an assistant principal. But in general, research has found that teacher churn harms student learning — students lose relationships with trusted educators, inexperienced teachers are brought on as replacements, and in some cases classrooms are left with only long-term substitutes.

“Teacher attrition can be destabilizing for schools,” said Kevin Bastian, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, where he calculated the state’s turnover rate.

He found that effective teachers were particularly likely to leave the state’s public schools last year. Mid-year turnover, which is especially disruptive, increased from under 4% in prior years to over 6% in the 2021-22 school year in North Carolina. The state also ended up hiring fewer teachers for this school year than it lost, suggesting that some positions were eliminated or left vacant.

Biondi is now seeing the effects on her own children, who attend school in the district where she taught. “My daughter lost her math teacher in December,” she said. “They don’t have a replacement teacher — she’s struggling very much in math.”

This year, schools may have been in a particularly fraught position. Teachers appear to be leaving at higher rates, and there’s been a longer-standing decline in people training to become teachers. At the same time, schools may have wanted to hire more teachers than usual because they remain flush with COVID relief money and want to address learning loss. That’s a recipe for a shortage.

Typically, shortages hit high-poverty schools the hardest. They also tend to be more severe in certain areas including special education, math, and science.

Benjamin Mosley, principal of Glenmount Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore, has been buffeted by these pressures. He’s had multiple teachers leave in the middle of this year, and has not been able to replace them or some others who left at the end of last year.

On a recent visit to the school, students in a math class listened to a teacher based in Florida teach a lesson virtually; the class was supervised by an intervention teacher who was originally meant to provide small group tutoring. A social studies class, whose teacher had recently resigned, was being overseen by a staff member who had been hired to serve as a student mentor.

Mosley is still actively trying to find teachers, and is now considering candidates whom he might have passed over in years past.

“We can put a man on the moon, but yet we can’t find teachers,” he said.

Matt Barnum is a Spencer fellow in education journalism at Columbia University and a national reporter at Chalkbeat covering education policy, politics, and research.

To boost enrollment, CUNY waives application fee for NYC high school seniors

2023-03-03T17:37:54+00:00

In an effort to encourage more students to apply to college, CUNY has waived the application fee for all New York City public high school seniors until April 15.

Students typically apply to college in the fall of their senior years. CUNY distributes a number of fee waiver codes to New York City public high schools, which school officials give to students, said Giulia Prestia, a spokesperson for CUNY. Just over 46,000 students used those codes between last spring and fall.

But the blanket waiver announced this week would benefit students who still haven’t decided whether to apply to college.

“We are trying to motivate seniors who may still be undecided about applying to college to take this important step toward their future at no cost,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez in a statement. “We are also removing a financial roadblock that has deterred many students from applying.”

The move could also boost enrollment at CUNY’s 23 undergraduate schools and programs as college enrollment remains below pre-pandemic levels. Enrollment at CUNY dropped by roughly 10% in the fall of 2022 compared with 2021, helping to fuel a hiring freeze. Nationally, college enrollment has dipped during the public health crisis, but has started to stabilize, with just a 0.6% drop in fall undergraduate enrollment in 2022 compared with the previous year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which collects enrollment data.

Across New York, undergraduate college enrollment — which was already dropping pre-pandemic — was down by 2% compared with 2021, according to the Clearinghouse.

The fee waiver comes as the cost of attending these schools could go up. Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed tuition hikes at both CUNY and SUNY campuses, a move that is supported by both systems’ chancellors. At CUNY, in-state undergraduate students pay $3,465 per semester at four year colleges. At community colleges, New York City residents pay $2,400 per semester. At SUNY, in-state residents were expected this school year to pay $7,070 for tuition at four-year colleges and $5,130 at community colleges.

Students can apply for state tuition assistance for up to $5,665 a year.

Some believe fee waivers can make a difference by removing one barrier to the college application process. Juanmy Moscoso, who graduated from a Brooklyn high school in 2021, said he used a school-issued CUNY application fee waiver. It saved him money, but it also saved him time in figuring out how he would pay the fee.

“I think it would have discouraged me a little, just because having to pay to get an education is something that is discouraging,” said Moscoso, who is now a sophomore at Brooklyn College.

However, the initiative is coming too late in the school year, said Carrie McCormack, a college and career counselor at East Bronx Academy for the Future. Nearly all of her school’s 76 seniors have already applied to college, using up the roughly 50 fee waiver codes the school received.

A blanket fee waiver may have been more beneficial in the fall when most students apply to school, McCormack said. Students who decide to apply this late in the process probably won’t get a spot at CUNY’s more high-profile schools, such as Hunter or City College, she said.

A more effective program might be to waive fees for students who previously applied to CUNY, but decided not to enroll, she said. For example, only 16 of her students who applied to college last year actually enrolled, McCormack said.

In general, McCormack has found a waning interest in college among her students since the pandemic. For example, she knows a handful of students who she would have expected to pursue college, but are more interested in various trade schools, she said.

“Our higher level, so to speak, students — the ones you think, ‘Oh, you’re definitely going to college,’ are not so excited about it,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Mental health safety net for youth: Adams outlines vision to catch kids in crisis

2023-03-02T22:07:21+00:00

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please dial 988 for the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

As New York City continues to grapple with youth mental health challenges, Mayor Eric Adams laid out a sweeping vision on Thursday to help schools better recognize student mental health needs and create a safety net for kids in crisis.

The needs are high: About a fifth of children ages 3 to 13 had one or more mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral problems in 2021, according to health department data provided in the mayor’s new plan, called Care, Community, Action: A Mental Health Plan for New York City.

Rates of suicidal ideation jumped to nearly 16% from about 12% over the past decade, with more than 9% of the city’s high school students reporting they attempted suicide over the course of 2021.

“We’ve all seen the isolation and trauma that children have experienced over the past several years, along with the results: disappearing into screens, behavioral issues, and even suicide,” Adams said while revealing the plan.

Addressing the mental health needs of young people and their families was one of the three major focal points of Adams’ blueprint. The plan calls for several things, including opening more school-based mental health clinics, creating suicide prevention trainings for educators, and assessing the impacts of social media as possible “toxic exposure.”

Though most of the ideas lacked details in terms of timeline and cost, the mayor did add a price tag of $12 million for a previously announced telehealth hotline for high school students, which the city says will be the largest of its kind in the nation.

City officials said they will track certain data points to determine whether the plan is working, including the number of contacts made by or on behalf of youth through NYC Well (the city’s free, confidential support, crisis intervention, and information and referral service), and the percent of young people reporting feelings of sadness and hopelessness.

Here are four highlights from the plan that relates to youth and schools:

City taps telehealth to fill treatment gaps

The mayor initially announced in January that the city would launch a telehealth program for high schoolers, though has not said when the program will launch and how students can access it.

Officials said Thursday they are still working out details.

“Telehealth can improve access to care for young people and their families who cannot easily get around or meet the strict time or expenses of traveling to in-person appointments, especially when mental health provider locations might be far away from the child’s home,” the mayor’s plan stated. “In addition, many youth feel more comfortable using technology to connect, and technology offers new ways to stay connected outside of traditional therapy sessions.”

Other cities are leaning on telehealth for young people, as well, including Los Angeles.

Experts previously shared cautious optimism with Chalkbeat about the plan when Adams first announced it, while also raising questions about how it would work, including whether school staff will be monitoring sessions and get involved if a student’s needs are more serious.

School-based mental health clinics to expand

As of the 2020-21 school year, 162 schools had on-site mental health clinics, while another 238 had health clinics that offered some mental health services, according to a 2022 report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The mayor’s plan calls on expanding mental health clinics that exist inside of school buildings through a partnership with the city’s education department, health department, the state’s Office of Mental Health and community providers.

Asked how many more clinics the city wants to open and an estimated cost, a health department spokesperson said these “are active and ongoing discussions.”

Creating school-based mental health clinics, however, can be complicated, said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling in Schools, which partners with schools to offer counseling services. It involves getting approvals from the state, finding space inside of schools that would be eligible for such clinics, and setting up a financial structure to get reimbursed by Medicaid for the services, he said.

An easier lift, he suggested, might be to get more community organizations like his to offer services in schools. Those groups often operate with grants, thus cutting out complicated funding issues.

A push to train school staffers on suicide prevention

Adams wants schools staff to be trained on suicide prevention so that they can “respond appropriately to the needs of students,” the plan said.

Dahill-Fuchel praised such training, noting they could potentially help more students realize they need help.

“I think one of the things that is really gonna be useful is this idea of a public health approach to suicide prevention, which at its core really means demystifying it,” Dahill-Fuchel said. “It tends to be a word that, around children, people don’t like to use and that becomes part of the problem.”

City officials also plan to launch a program, called “Caring Transitions,” that would focus on preventing youth ages 5-17 in the Queens and Bronx who have been to the hospital for a suicide attempt from re-entering. Teams would be responsible for connecting these young people to follow-up services in their neighborhoods as well as “additional supports” for up to three months after they leave the hospital.

The plan also says it will launch a suicide prevention pilot program for young people of color ages 5 to 24. The goal is to bolster interventions that more effectively meet the needs of Black, Asian American, and Latino youth who face suicide-related risk “that includes or is intensified by racial inequities,” the plan said. The plan did not specify what those interventions might look like.

An attempt to address cyberbullying

Concerned with social media’s impact on youth mental health, the Adams administration plans to create a task force to study the issue and develop a public health approach to reduce exposure to harmful online content.

The plan noted that “there are few rules or regulations” on how social media companies interact with young people.

“We’re also going to examine the potential risks of social media to our children’s mental health and work to make sure tech companies are required to keep online spaces safe for our kids,” Adams said during his speech.

The group would include youth and families, according to the plan. It didn’t specify when the group would launch.

Federal officials have called for more rigorous research on how social media impacts youth mental health. In a 2021 advisory released by the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, officials note that while several studies have linked worsening mental health to online platforms, other researchers have argued that there is no clear relation between the two.

Seattle Public Schools recently filed a lawsuit against leading social media companies, alleging that students and schools were harmed by worsened mental health that stemmed from social media.

The surgeon general’s advisory also called for technology companies to make sure they were fostering “safe digital environments” for their youngest users.

Some of the pressure seems to be working: Tik Tok announced earlier this week it will set the default screen time limit to 60 minutes for users under 18, though kids can continue using the app with a passcode.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NY’s budget has $100M for academic and mental health programs. Schools still don’t have the money.

2023-02-24T23:07:54+00:00

With growing concerns over youth mental health and academic recovery, New York’s state lawmakers included $100 million in the state budget last year for schools to spend on mental health resources or after-school programs.

But, with the majority of the school year now over, school districts haven’t been able to apply for the money.

“It is very disappointing that the money that was allocated for desperately needed services by children and adolescents is not getting to them,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children. “There is a lot of trauma, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideations that we continue to hear about from family after family.”

The idea was to let school districts apply for a chunk of the money, which would match whatever other dollars they planned to spend on such programs. Half of the money was to be used during this school year and the other half for the 2023-24 school year. Lawmakers envisioned the funds going toward hiring mental health professionals, expanding school-based mental health services, and creating summer, after-school and extended day and year programs.

State education officials, who are charged with planning the grant program, have blamed the delay on a lengthy process that involves getting approvals from the state’s budget division — which has not yet given its final sign off.

Justin Mason, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, said the process has been complex because it involves both mental health and education components. They now expect the money to be available for next school year, but declined to answer whether schools will get to use the money for any additional school years.

Asked whether Hochul finds the delay acceptable, Mason said it’s the result of a longstanding process that exists to “ensure state funding is allocated in a fair and transparent manner.”

Hochul proposes grant funds to bolster pandemic recovery

As calls grew nationally to address a youth mental health crisis fueled by widespread loss and grief from the pandemic, Hochul proposed last January to add $100 million to the state budget for this fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2022 to this upcoming March 31, and touted the money in a press release when it made it into the final budget.

At the time of Hochul’s proposal, students had returned to campuses full time for the first time since the pandemic. Many educators had reported students struggling with behavioral, social, and mental health issues. Social workers and counselors reported being inundated with student referrals.

In New York City, one in every 200 children has lost a caregiver to COVID. More than 40% of students nationally reported feeling persistent sadness in 2021, compared to about 25% ten years before that, according to a recently released survey.

Bob Lowry, deputy director for advocacy and communication at the state’s Council of School Superintendents, said his organization has seen a need for more dedicated mental health resources in New York’s schools since at least 2017, based on an annual survey of superintendents across New York.

They were thrilled when Hochul highlighted it as a priority. He said that they are “surprised” and “disappointed” that this $100 million has still failed to reach schools.

It’s possible many districts are still busy spending billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief aid, potentially making this grant less of a need at the moment, advocates said.

Still, districts likely would have jumped at the money had it been available, Lowry said. Those matching funds could have helped districts launch or expand initiatives that they’d already been working on, such as New York City’s pilot effort to pour more mental health resources into 50 high-need schools in order to minimize the use of police intervention, Yuster said.

Getting grant money to school districts can take almost a year

Education officials said it usually takes nine to 10 months to issue a request for proposals, or RFP, which lays out the parameters of the funds and is what districts must respond to when applying for grant money.

For grant programs, education officials are typically tasked with creating the RFP, which other agencies, such as the state’s budget division, must then approve. That can lead to monthslong delays from when the money is available to when schools can use it, advocates said.

“I think mental health was something that was underinvested in prior to the pandemic [and] the pandemic exposed this is actually a high-need area,” said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group that has pushed for more school funding. “We needed to double down, and the delay in that process just kinda signals how we don’t take our children’s mental health needs as a priority.”

A timeline provided by the education department shows how the process played out with this $100 million pot of funds: Education officials first sent a summary of a possible RFP last June to the budget office. They spent July reworking their proposal in response to feedback from the budget and governor’s offices, but by August budget officials asked the education department to create an RFP based on what they had originally proposed.

In November, two months after the school year had started in New York City, education officials sent over a completed draft of the RFP. They received more feedback right before winter break, which required “substantial” changes, according to education officials, who sent another revised version back to budget officials earlier this month.

As of Friday, the education department was awaiting final approval to release the RFP to school districts.

“The field is looking at us and saying, ‘We desperately need this,’” State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said during a legislative budget hearing earlier this month, where she was asked about the delay in distributing the funding.

“We have to streamline it,” Rosa said of the RFP approval process. “We have to get to a point that… we do it and make sure that if they have 27-30 questions, let’s sit at the table, let’s get the questions done, let’s get this money into the hands of our school districts and our schools and our agencies, where it’s needed,” Rosa said.

Hochul is still interested in these issues: Her budget proposal this year calls for making mental health services more accessible for students and directing a chunk of Foundation Aid, the state’s main formula for school funding, toward high-dosage tutoring.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee 3rd-grade retention law will intensify Memphis students’ pandemic woes, local critics say

2023-02-23T23:50:43+00:00

Many Memphis youths are already struggling to overcome emotional and psychological trauma inflicted or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the specter of being held back in third grade if they can’t pass the state’s reading test will pile onto that trauma, Memphis and Shelby County child and education advocates said during a town hall Wednesday.

“I don’t want my babies that I’m responsible for caught up in this,” said Ian Randolph, board treasurer for Circles of Success Learning Academy charter school.

“They’re trying their best to meet our expectations as educators, and you put this kind of crap on top of them, after going through a pandemic … now you want to put more pressure on them to meet a state expectation?”

Randolph was among the roughly 50 people who gathered at First Congregational Church to discuss — and to lambaste — Tennessee’s strict third grade retention law, which kicks in this year. The law requires that third-grade students who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency on the TCAP assessment for English language arts participate in tutoring or summer learning programs, or risk being held back from the fourth grade. (Some students are automatically exempt.)

The law, passed in 2021 during a special legislative session that Gov. Bill Lee called to address pandemic learning loss, also included funding for tutoring and summer learning camps to help struggling third graders catch up.

But those aspects of the law became unworkable for many families, some attendees said, because of issues ranging from a shortage of tutors to confusion about how progress is measured on the tests the students take after the recovery camps.

Barring changes in the law, thousands of Memphis students face the prospect of having to repeat third grade. According to data presented by Venita Doggett, director of advocacy for the Memphis Education Fund, 78% of third-graders in Memphis-Shelby County Schools could be held back this year, while 65% of third-graders could be retained statewide.

The figure would be closer to 80% for Black, Hispanic and Native American third-graders in MSCS, and 83% for low-income students.

The implications of those figures resonated with Natalie McKinney, executive director and co-founder of Whole Child Strategies Inc., a nonprofit that supports families and children in the Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods in Memphis.

The retention law, she said, would have a disparate impact on children in those neighborhoods, where 1 in 3 residents are poor, and 70% of the schoolchildren are from low-income families.

“They’ve all been impacted emotionally by the pandemic,” said McKinney, who moderated the town hall. The retention policy “doesn’t make any sense.”

Lee and other defenders of the law say that it’s needed to avoid pushing unprepared students ahead, and that holding students back who aren’t proficient in reading is part of the state’s post-pandemic recovery efforts.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” the governor once told Chalkbeat.

But even some of his political allies have expressed concerns about enforcing the law based on the result of a single test.

Already, Doggett said, 19 proposals have been filed to amend the law — bills that range from nixing the retention requirement altogether to extending funding for summer camps and other aid beyond this year.

Pending the outcome of those efforts, organizers of the town hall urged attendees to sign a letter they had drafted asking Lee to issue an executive order to waive the retention policy for third graders testing below proficiency this year.

“The current 3rd grade class of 2022 and 2023 were the students who were affected by the pandemic,” the letter reads. “Studies show that a tremendous amount of learning loss occurred due to these students being virtual in the previous grades. In addition, these studies showed (that) to recoup the loss during the pandemic would take years.

“The third grade retention law seems to hold these students and educators accountable for something that was new to this generation for which they had no control,” the letter said.

The letter also urges lawmakers to use more criteria than a single test to determine whether a student should be retained, and to focus on broader solutions, such as partnering with community agencies, to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.

Besides sending a letter to Lee, opponents of the retention policy said they planned to pressure their local public officials to push back on the law, as many school boards have. Some called for the MSCS school board, the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission to issue a joint resolution supporting the waiver.

The two MSCS board members who attended the meeting in person, Amber Huett-Garcia and Michelle McKissack, said they intend to push for revisions to the law.

“Let me be clear: This is not a good law. I do not support it,” said Huett-Garcia, who said she plans a trip to Nashville in early March to talk directly with lawmakers.

“The mood that I have gotten from legislators is that they know that they have not gotten this right,” she said, “but this is not the time to let up pressure.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Warren Township district seeks tax increase to cover initiatives once federal COVID aid expires

2023-02-23T19:29:28+00:00

Tabitha Jackson couldn’t have arrived at Eastridge Elementary at a more crucial time.

The pandemic wreaked havoc on learning, and the return to in-person classes proved tough. Her position as a family engagement liaison, funded through federal coronavirus relief dollars, had one major goal: Get families back to school.

Since 2021, Jackson has helped parents find rental assistance, directed families to childcare providers, and visited the homes of students who are chronically absent. Today, Principal Tomeka Johnson doesn’t know how she ever ran the school without her. Attendance has ticked up from last year, she said, and the school has earned back trust from parents.

“She’s able to provide those resources and take some of that load off of parents,” Johnson said. “It really helps parents get kids to school.”

But the roughly $45 million that the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township received in federal coronavirus relief funds — money that supports jobs like Jackson’s — will run out relatively soon.

Now, the Warren Township district is asking voters for an $88 million property tax increase over eight years, in part to maintain the support it received from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding that the state says must be spent by the end of 2024.

The district is far from alone: From Michigan to New York City and beyond, the upcoming expiration of federal COVID aid is a challenge facing many school leaders. After districts accelerated their spending of that money last year, they must figure out whether — and how — to preserve jobs like Jackson’s after the money runs out.

The ballot question the Warren Township district will place before voters in May would replace the current 2018 referendum rate for operating expenses, increasing it from 21 cents per $100 of assessed property value to 30 cents.

Officials estimate the new tax rate would generate roughly $11 million annually over eight years. It would fund a few of the programs launched during the pandemic.

But the ballot question also seeks to continue funding positions currently covered by the 2018 tax increase (which is set to expire in 2026), including $1.6 million for a district police department and $2.1 million for 24 school counselors.

Even with property values on the rise, district leaders also say additional funding is needed to keep up with increasing costs of everything from diesel fuel to property insurance.

“It’s just simply more expensive to run a school district in 2023 than it was in 2018,” said Matthew Parkinson, the district’s chief financial officer.

Superintendent Tim Hanson stressed his district isn’t looking to pay for new programs, but simply maintain all of the district’s current efforts.

“And in order to do that, we need this referendum passed,” he said.

Referendum would continue ESSER-funded efforts

Warren Township’s pitch to voters covers a wide variety of efforts supported by federal pandemic dollars, from helping students get to school to competitive support staff pay.

In an attempt to battle a bus driver shortage that’s plagued many districts during COVID, for example, the district increased the starting salary for its bus drivers this fall by $4 an hour to roughly $22.50.

Keeping bus driver pay competitive is part of an estimated total $3 million in annual transportation costs to be covered by the referendum. Warren Township’s pay hike hasn’t entirely solved the problem: As of early February, Warren still had 20 vacancies out of 115 full-time positions.

Professional development, support staff compensation, and family engagement liaisons make up another annual $2.8 million that officials hope to keep in their annual budget.

The district used federal dollars to provide stipends for teachers to participate in training programs, including one on the science of reading.

And after completing a market analysis of hourly support staff pay, the district also used about $3.5 million in ESSER funds to increase compensation for its roughly 750 full-time support staff.

The analysis found that $15 per hour was the threshold for remaining competitive in hiring employees such as custodians, secretaries, and instructional assistants, Hanson said.

“We have provided an additional hourly stipend to meet or exceed that $15 threshold,” he said. “It’s our hope with the passing of the referendum that we would be able to maintain a competitive level.”

Another annual $1.5 million will cover the cost of technology such as iPads and Chromebooks.

While the district adopted 1-to-1 devices for every student before the pandemic, it also used ESSER relief funds to purchase devices, since some were lost by students when they were sent home over the pandemic, officials said.

The new referendum funding will cover the annual cost of recycling or replacing those devices, according to the district.

At Eastridge Elementary, where roughly 76% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the pandemic has led some parents to declare bankruptcy. Others have lost jobs or been pushed to the brink of eviction.

Through it all, Jackson has tried to connect them to resources.

“This year, now that I’ve built those relationships, I’m really able to have those in-depth conversations about attendance and really hone in on: ‘Why are you not able to get your kid here? How can I help?’” she said. “That trust has been built.”

Pre-pandemic support for counselors pays dividends

The referendum will also continue services adopted before the pandemic that have since become even more vital.

Kristen Linenberg joined Warren Central High School as a counselor in 2018 with a caseload of 500 students — twice the size recommended by the American School Counselor Association.

That meant 500 seniors with a medley of academic and personal challenges that Linenberg tried to address as she worked to get them to graduate.

“We were very reactive, because that’s truly what we had time to do,’ she said. “And it was just, whatever happened that day, that’s kind of what you dealt with.”

Warren Central High School has a large population of over 3,400 students. The operating referendum on the May ballot will help continue funding for counselors at the school that began before the pandemic.

The initial funding from the 2018 referendum provided 12 counselors in middle schools and eight at the high school. The starting salary for those with a master’s degree is $48,000.

But after the pandemic, the district added four more counselors at the high school to relieve Linenberg and others. That move was made possible by increased property values that generated more referendum revenue than projected in 2018.

Now, Linenberg’s caseload has dropped to roughly 300 students, allowing her to spend more one-on-one time with students. That’s especially helpful as the need for counseling services has increased in COVID’s wake.

“Not every student needs crazy intensive therapy and counseling. Sometimes they just need a safe place to vent about a bad day,” she said. “And so us having more counselors and a smaller caseload allows us to have the time to do that.”

District officials are cautiously optimistic that voters will support the tax increase. In 2018, 65% of voters backed the new tax rate.

Johnson, Eastridge Elementary’s principal, didn’t realize how many needs her students had until she actually got the funding for staff such as liaisons and counselors. The upcoming referendum is not about money, she argued, but about need.

“This is our community and we have to invest in it because if we don’t, then who will?” she said. “Our role is to raise and grow children, and they need us.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Governors call for higher teacher salaries amid continued hiring struggles in schools

2023-02-23T18:50:30+00:00

Governors across the nation are calling for higher teaching salaries, seeking to bolster school staffs as many struggle to hire and hold onto educators.

The specifics of those proposals vary. But they have come from both Republican and Democratic governors in roughly a dozen states. Many governors discussed the issue during their State of the State addresses this year, according to the Education Commission of the States, which tracks education policy across the nation.

“What better way to strengthen our schools than to invest in the people on the frontlines of education – our teachers,” said Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, during his address. “Great teachers can motivate and change the trajectory of a student’s life. That is why my plan boosts starting teacher pay yet again.”

Delaware Gov. John Carney, a Democrat, said, “Right now, the competition for the best teachers in this region is more intense than ever.”

“We need to pay our teachers more to win the competition with surrounding states,” he added.

The calls come as states have experienced unexpectedly strong economies, and as schools have increasingly become a polarizing site for debates over how teachers approach certain subjects in the classroom. Their urgency is underscored as teachers have long been underpaid relative to others with similar educational backgrounds, and as high stress and other difficulties endured during the pandemic caused many educators to leave the field.

“When the revenues are there, and people are concerned about the pandemic learning loss issue, this isn’t the time for most politicians to run on a ‘I’m going to watch our pennies’ platform when it comes to schools,” said Jeffrey Henig, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

And for Republican governors in particular, the proposed salary jumps represent a defense against some political backlash.

“They are also trying to inoculate themselves against the charge that they’re anti-public schools because they’re simultaneously pushing school choice, vouchers, or tax-credit scholarship programs,” Henig added. “That provides an incentive for them to try to expand the pie rather than simply redistribute it.”

Governors have different abilities to change teacher pay. In most states, districts set teacher salaries, giving state legislators little direct influence, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit research and policy group. In others, states set both minimum salaries and minimum salary schedules, which rise based on years of experience and other factors. (Districts can still choose to offer higher pay than the state-mandated minimums.)

Governors have called for different methods of increasing salaries. In Tennessee, for example, Republican Gov. Bill Lee has proposed legislation that would see minimum salaries for teachers jump from $41,000 to $50,000 over four years. In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Parson has advocated for a program to temporarily boost teacher salaries, while in Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s proposal would see $50 million put toward merit raises rather than an increase to all public school teacher salaries.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced last week that he would introduce federal legislation to set a nationwide salary floor of $60,000 for educators, funded through changes to the estate tax. He called low teacher pay a “major crisis.”

For Republicans, pay raise proposals follow repeated criticisms of how teachers broach subjects of race, gender, and sexuality in classrooms. Those criticisms have garnered political upsides, drawing coverage and mobilizing their supporters — but they’ve simultaneously left state leaders open to rebukes for targeting institutions that remain especially popular at the local level.

State leaders tend to employ distinct messaging about education locally and nationally — with criticisms about schools and teachers unions centering on the nation’s education system, while discussions of local schools take a more pragmatic approach, Henig said.

“There’s this cleavage between what people say and think when they talk about schools in other places — there, they’re worried about teachers as ‘groomers’ and ‘What are they saying to my kid about gender?’” he said. “But when they think about their own teachers, their own schools, their own community, they’re much more likely to fall back on this traditional vision of the teacher as an ally of the parent.”

Though some education issues can be contentious, increasing teacher salaries tends to have widespread bipartisan support among voters, experts said.

More than 60% of parents, as well as 46% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats, felt public school teachers in their states should be paid higher than the current average, according to a national Education Next survey last year.

Competition between states spurs salary jumps

This year’s push is a continuation of trends that began in 2022, when many governors advocated for higher teacher pay, The 74 reported. Some states, like Alabama and New Mexico, enacted salary increases for educators, according to ECS’s state education policy tracker.

Competition between states can lead to a “bandwagon effect,” where one state raising teacher salaries can spur others to follow suit, said Sandra Vergari, a professor of education policy at the University at Albany.

“Moreover, states compete, and they’re ranked according to teacher salaries,” she said. “It doesn’t look good to be ranked low.”

Salary bumps have become more attainable as states experience continued economic growth, with some impacts of the pandemic receding. School funding is also reinforced by an influx of COVID-19 relief funds, which will sunset late next year.

Henig said most states have been “reasonably sensible” in treating the federal relief funds as a finite resource, and not allocating them toward expenses that will continue past their expiration.

But some are still worried. Michael Hansen, a senior fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, said colleagues are “genuinely concerned” about the impact of the looming fiscal cliff amid an uncertain economic future.

They’re concerned “that right now we’re talking about teacher shortages,” he said. “But in two years, we may be talking about teacher layoffs.”

Hansen said modest or temporary raises could be a more cautious approach. He said he supported all teachers receiving higher pay, adding that targeted raises focused on the highest need positions and settings could be especially effective at relieving hiring shortages.

“Of course, that’s not a popular position,” Hansen said. “Unions have consistently resisted this … unless it comes with other negotiated positions.”

And the stakes extend beyond just schools, Vergari said. Attracting more teachers can naturally bolster a local economy, with companies choosing to invest in more educated areas and higher pay encouraging more people to move to or continue to reside in the area.

“This isn’t just about educating kids, this is about the overall wellbeing of your state economy and your overall society,” Vergari said. “If you can’t recruit and retain teachers, that is a serious, serious problem.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering national issues. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Federal COVID relief aid to schools will dry up soon. Are districts ready?

2023-02-17T18:00:00+00:00

For the past couple of years, the Detroit Public Schools Community District has been able to tap its share of federal COVID relief aid to fund after-school enrichment programs that help students recover from learning lost during the pandemic.

But those funds will soon run out, and Detroit and other districts face some tough decisions about which programs and employees they can afford to keep once federal support is gone.

Detroit parent Aliya Moore said she is concerned that her daughter’s newly funded after-school debate team will be “snatched,” along with funding for new positions such as parent outreach coordinators.

“That’s my biggest fear,” said Moore, who is a frequent critic of the district. “Just going into (next) school year, and a lot of these people are not there.”

For districts, there’s an added challenge: Looming deadlines attached to the federal aid put them under time pressure to map out their spending and use up the remaining funds quickly and effectively, while also figuring out how they’ll manage without it.

What they’re eager to prevent is a so-called fiscal cliff, where a steep drop in funding forces sudden and severe budget cuts that could ripple throughout the school system.

Superintendents in Michigan are generally optimistic that their districts can avoid that scenario, especially given the prospect of increased state funding. But experts say it will take work.

“Districts need to plan now, so students don’t face chaos at the start of the 2024 school year with classrooms and teachers shuffled, programs abruptly dropped, demoralized staff, and leaders focusing on nothing but budget woes,” wrote Marguerite Roza, a professor at Georgetown University who studies school finance, in a recent article.

What is federal COVID aid?

Michigan hasn’t seen anything like this: more than $6 billion in federal funds aimed at helping students recover from the pandemic, by far the largest one-time federal investment in schools in state history. Most of it was distributed based on poverty levels in each district’s community. The Detroit district alone received $1.27 billion.

About this project

$6 billion.

That’s how much Michigan schools are receiving from the federal government to help students and staff recover from the pandemic.

But it isn’t entirely clear how this unprecedented amount of federal cash is being spent and whether it is having an impact.

Chalkbeat Detroit, the Detroit Free Press, and Bridge Michigan have teamed up to find out where the money is going, who is benefiting, and whether the money is helping students get back on track academically, emotionally, and socially.

Please share your thoughts — and tips — with reporters Koby Levin at klevin@chalkbeat.org, Lily Altavena at laltavena@freepress.org, and Isabel Lohman at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Check out a few of the most recent stories from our series below:

Federal COVID relief aid to schools will dry up soon. Are districts ready?

Michigan school districts are flush with cash, but wary

COVID aid helps Michigan school districts plug deficits

How private schools are spending COVID relief cash

New MI ESSER tutoring programs have room to grow

Congress gave districts plenty of leeway on how they could spend the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief money, or ESSER funds. So far, they have used it for a wide array of projects, including summer school expansions, staff bonuses, air filtration improvements, building renovations, tutoring, and mental health programs.

But they’re on a tight schedule to spend it. The federal government wants the funds deployed quickly to accelerate the recovery from the pandemic. So districts have only until 2024 to get state approval for all their spending plans. Much of the spending itself must be complete by 2025, though districts may apply for extensions through 2026.

Districts aim to reduce spending without affecting the classroom

Having such a massive spending initiative roll out — and wrap up — so quickly was never going to be easy for Michigan districts. The state’s highest-poverty districts, which received by far the most funding per student, are taking the longest to spend the funds amid supply chain disruptions and a tight labor market.

Even districts that budgeted carefully and avoided long-term spending commitments that couldn’t be sustained without federal support will see disruptions from the loss of short-term programming that has been critical to the COVID recovery effort.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District, for instance, has notified as many as 100 staff members, including central office staff, master teachers, deans of culture, and attendance agents, that their positions paid for in part using federal COVID aid may be cut or consolidated by the end of the school year.

Neighboring Ecorse Public Schools will end a tutoring program designed to help students manage the effects of the pandemic.

DPSCD Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said the district isn’t planning to make budget recommendations that would hurt student achievement. “However, at a high level, if hard decisions are not made, then we will not be able to fund some of the COVID initiatives that we believe are most important to students,” he said.

Detroit has moved relatively quickly to plan out and spend its COVID aid. Of the $1.27 billion DPSCD received, $700 million is already earmarked for an infrastructure program that will renovate and rebuild schools across the city. The rest has gone toward expanding programming and providing additional staff at individual schools, among other things.

Vitti said that although no decision has been made yet, “it will be difficult to fund nurses and expand after-school programming and summer school next year.”

The DPSCD school board will convene on Saturday for a retreat and its first in-depth conversation about the expiring funds. Board members have insisted that district leaders find a way to maintain expanded mental health programming, even if it was funded by COVID aid.

Moore, whose daughter is a seventh-grader at Paul Robeson Malcolm X Academy, plans to attend Saturday’s meeting to hear what COVID-funded initiatives board members intend to keep or cut. With pandemic recovery far from complete, she’s hoping the board will prioritize after-school programming and academic recovery programs moving into the 2023-24 school year.

“I don’t feel like at this time any school should be denied after-school opportunities,” she said.

Some districts have huge sums left to spend

For other districts, it’s the federal deadlines that are proving to be the bigger challenge.

The issue came into sharp relief last year when hundreds of superintendents nationwide asked the U.S. Department of Education to extend the deadlines, saying that supply chain and staffing problems were slowing spending. The department said no, barring a change to federal law. (In Virginia, lawmakers are seeking to ratchet up the pressure with a bill that would require districts to return unspent funding to the state this summer.)

In Michigan, some observers have argued that state lawmakers should withhold new investments from districts that still have enormous amounts of federal funding to spend.

As of January, Michigan districts had spent 30% of the third and largest round of federal funding. They still have $2.1 billion to spend — which is equivalent to 10% of all state education spending this year.

Detroit has spent 38% of its federal funds, but other districts that received very high levels of federal aid — roughly defined as more than $10,000 per pupil — have much more ground to make up.

Flint Community Schools has spent 12% of the third wave of COVID funds. Hamtramck Public Schools spent 14%, Eastpointe Community Schools spent 5%, and Pontiac City School District spent 7%.

Benton Harbor Area Schools hasn’t spent any of its funds.

A recent report from the Citizens Research Council, a Michigan think tank, linked the vast majority of the unspent funds to a handful of high-poverty communities.

The report warns that rapid spending won’t be easy given the staff shortages and supply chain problems that have plagued the pandemic-era economy.

It notes, too, that spending the money effectively will be even tougher on a tight timeline.

Flint Superintendent Kevelin Jones said his district will be able to spend the money on time, and that it has emphasized one-time investments to make it easier to manage the end of COVID funding. In 2021, the district used federal funds to pay teachers one-time bonuses of $22,500.

“From the beginning, the district understood that ESSER funds served as a one-time” funding source, he said in a statement, noting that the goal of its spending was still to create a lasting impact.

Strong state budget provides a backstop

The closest parallel to the challenges facing Michigan schools may be the 2011 expiration of federal funds linked to the Great Recession.

Many districts used those dollars to build new programs, hoping that the state would step in to continue them when federal dollars dried up. Instead, amid a disastrous economy, state leaders opted for a steep cut to school funding, leading to a brutal round of cutbacks in school programming.

Things look different this time around. The state budget is far stronger, bolstered by historically high sales tax revenues. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s recent budget proposal taps an estimated $4 billion school aid surplus to call for a second straight major increase in school funding. Democrats, fully empowered in Lansing for the first time in decades, say they are eager to support increased school spending.

While the federal COVID aid program is much larger than the Great Recession package was, experts say the boost in state funding this time will do much to smooth the transition away from pandemic-related funding and ease the risk of a fiscal cliff.

Westwood Community School District, set in a high-poverty suburb west of Detroit, avoided using COVID aid to pay salaries or hire staff. Superintendent Stiles Simmons said the district used the money instead to pay $1,000 bonuses to classroom aides and improve facilities. When it needed new staff to help students cope with the pandemic, it relied on new state funding to cover salaries.

When the funds expire, aides might miss their bonuses, Simmons said, and the district won’t be able to continue paying educators $60 an hour to teach summer school. But he said he’s more worried about the possibility of a recession or a change in political support for schools than the expiration of COVID funds.

“If things continue as they are at this point, it’s difficult to see the cliff, but just knowing how things ebb and flow … especially with the economy, we have to always be on the lookout,” he said.

Even with rising state funding, DPSCD school board member Sherry Gay-Dagnogo said the coming budget adjustments for school districts warrant a reconsideration of the way Michigan funds schools, calling the current formula inequitable. Since the passage of Proposal A in 1994, Michigan school funding has been based on the number of students attending the district. In Detroit, a series of economic downturns and a decline in the city’s population eroded student enrollment.

“Now’s the time, because we have a Democratic majority, to revisit Proposal A,” Gay-Dagnogo said. “We’re not talking about taking away funds from other districts. We’re talking about equalizing the dollars.”

She added: “You can’t plug in short term money for long term positions in perpetuity, but we have to have a solution for how to make sure that we are not displacing (staff) that really care and want to serve our children properly.”

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

NYC bought 725K devices for remote learning. Now they’re trying to count them — and all school tech.

2023-02-16T21:30:24+00:00

When the COVID pandemic started about three years ago, New York City scrambled to get hundreds of thousands of students connected to the internet, buying iPads and Chromebook laptops, so students could learn from home.

The education department struggled for months to get enough devices for students and continued to purchase more. City officials ultimately bought 550,000 internet-enabled iPads, as well as 175,000 Chromebook laptops, costing roughly $360 million, according to the education department.

Now the education department has set out to find and track all of its technology, including the devices purchased during the pandemic. Although schools keep a record of devices, city watchdogs have criticized the education department for having no centralized system. The “Central Inventory Project” will log all technology at schools and central offices, including other kinds of tablets and laptops, desktop computers, printers and smartboards, according to a department spokesperson.

The department’s inventory project — which began last June and is expected to be completed this summer — is large. Twenty-six teams of five people each plan to visit all district and charter schools, as well as all central offices. So far, they’ve covered 660 schools and offices in 519 buildings.

A spokesperson declined to share takeaways from their inquiry so far, saying that they’re still collecting data from the inventory sweeps.

City officials are hoping to tally up how many devices are located in schools and central offices, as well as how many of those they’ve assigned to students for use at both school and home, according to a spokesperson.

Officials said they’re attempting to follow city, state, and federal guidelines for tracking devices. But they also appear to be addressing an issue raised years ago by former Comptroller Scott Stringer, who noted in multiple reports that there was no centralized system for tracking computer hardware.

A 2017 audit, for example, found that the department was missing more than 1,800 computers, laptops, and tablets. (At the time, the education department disputed the comptroller’s methodology and rejected most of Stringer’s recommendations, including his call for a systemwide inventory count.)

And a 2021 audit found that the education department had logged iPads for 5,000 students who were not also marked as having received those devices.

Some educators, who praised the scope of the project, said it is highlighting how difficult it can be to account for school devices, including computers purchased during the pandemic.

Eighth grade social studies teacher Nate Stripp, who is also the technology coordinator at Brooklyn’s M.S. 50, said their inventory process was straightforward and happened over a two-day period last month, when 10 technicians came in to count devices. In preparation for the visit, education department officials asked the school to remind students to bring in any school-issued devices they had at home. Officials also provided an estimate of how many devices they believe the school should have in hand.

There were some hiccups. In a majority of cases where iPads were missing during the inventory process, students had forgotten to bring them to school, Stripp said. There were several cases where students didn’t know where their devices were.

Stripp has come across students who were supposed to bring their remote-learning iPad to M.S. 50 from their old elementary school but claimed that they no longer have it in their possession — leading to a complicated scramble to figure out where the device is.

“I have enough technological competence to be able to run my own internal spreadsheets,” Stripp said. “But to really keep track of devices, we need a person who, at least part of their job, is paid to keep track of and maintain the technology inventory in the building.”

Officials hope to use this project to improve the process for when schools do a required annual device inventory, which is supposed to happen each spring, a spokesperson said.

Stripp said the centralized process last month was the first time he had seen such an effort in his five years at M.S. 50.

Some schools may do a better job than others of tracking their inventory, said a teacher at a Brooklyn high school, who went through the inventory process in December. For example, his school had a technology coordinator who kept a detailed spreadsheet of all their computers – but since she left, no one has taken over her responsibilities.

“It’s something that’s needed,” said the teacher, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press. “There are definitely ways that things can go missing without accountability.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Five Illinois early-career teachers speak about entering education during the COVID-19 pandemic

2023-02-14T15:06:53+00:00

Kayla Metcalf started teaching middle school science in the fall of 2020 just as the COVID pandemic upended education. Nathaniel Joseph had made a career switch from line cook to special education teacher when he was thrust into the world of remote learning. Jhaianne Cooper, now in her first year of teaching dance, is still figuring out what support her students need to succeed after a couple of school years not performing on stage.

They are just three of the hundreds of Illinois teachers who began teaching during the pandemic. These educators not only had to learn the basics of lesson plans, classroom management, and the needs of students and families, they also had to navigate a constantly changing education landscape.

Over the past three years, teachers of all experience levels had to switch between different modes of instruction — from virtual to hybrid with some students in class and others at home and then to in-person learning when classrooms finally reopened. They have also had to help students adapt to a return to the classroom, learn again how to socialize with their peers, deal with mental health, and handle concerns around COVID-19.

It hasn’t been easy. Some teachers are struggling to overcome burnout, with others resigning or changing careers. Illinois has a teacher shortage and school districts around the state are struggling to attract and retain teachers.

But some novice educators are excited to head into classrooms despite the challenges. Chalkbeat Chicago spoke with five early-career teachers about going from student to professional, teaching during the coronavirus pandemic, their challenges and successes, and why they love being teachers.

Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Nathaniel Joseph, 38, Chicago Public Schools

Nathaniel Joseph, a special education teacher at Al Raby High School, started his teaching career in the fall of 2021.

Start: Fall 2021.

High school special education teacher at Al Raby High School.

Joseph was a line cook at different restaurants around Chicago before becoming a teacher. He said that his experience was similar to Hulu’s original show “The Bear” — a comedy-drama about a chef coming back to Chicago to work in a family-owned restaurant after working in fine dining restaurants.

What was it like to go back to in-person learning and teaching in your own classroom? What were you feeling?

I think mostly excited because it’s a huge step in a new direction for me, coming from a totally different field. There’s always going to be nerves working with young people. You just don’t know what to expect. But I felt really supported by other teachers. There’s a mix of young teachers who have a lot of experience and older teachers who’ve been at the school for a while. I felt like I was entering a situation where people had a lot of experience and support. It felt like being welcomed into a family. So a lot of those nerves subsided. Within the first couple weeks, and obviously with how present the pandemic was last school year, there was a lot of emphasis on taking things slow and not feeling like we’re going to catch up on everything we missed on day one. My principal kept saying give each other grace and don’t feel like you have to solve it today. This is a long process. So I felt really good.

What were some challenges that your students faced when coming back to school?

Last year there were so many different protocols in place for health and safety because of COVID-19. Certain things just kind of shut down. For instance, there was a school store where students could buy snacks and get stuff after school and even during lunch. That hasn’t been opened since I’ve worked here. The kids will wax poetic about it like, “The school’s store was almost like a candy shop.” It was a part of the school’s fabric. I feel like a lot of those unique things that schools have, at least at my school, haven’t started back up.

Kayla Metcalf, 26, Horizon Science Academy McKinley Park

Kayla Metcalf, a science teacher at Horizon Science Academy McKinley Park in Chicago, started teaching in Fall 2020.

Start: Fall 2020.

Seventh and eighth grade science teacher at Horizon Science Academy McKinley Park in Chicago.

Metcalf comes from a family of teachers. Her grandmother and dad were educators. At first she pursued a degree in microbiology to go into medicine. During the pandemic, she decided to switch to teaching. After two years in the field, she says she loves being a teacher. “I think the best part honestly is seeing how much of a difference I can make in a student’s life even if it’s just for a moment.”

How did your students respond to the COVID-19 vaccine as they were rolling out?

Teaching in a science class, a lot of students were very curious about how the vaccine worked. We all took this as a teaching moment to encourage students to go get vaccinated. The thing that caught me by surprise was that a lot of students wanted to go get vaccinated, which really surprised me. To see their own activism around vaccines really surprised me in a positive way.

What advice would you give to other early-career educators?

Take time to understand your students and their needs. If you see that a student learns one way, you should try to tailor the lesson to how they learn. I find that it helps a lot because students pay attention to teachers who put in the effort. I became a teacher to make a difference and when students see that they think “Oh, this teacher is actually trying to help me learn.” It motivates them to do better. That’s, at least, what I’m seeing.

Ashley Tyler, 38, Decatur Public Schools District 61

Ashley Tyler, an elementary school special education teacher at Dennis Lab School in Decatur Public Schools District 61, started working in a classroom in fall 2021.

Start: Fall 2021.

Second and third grade special education teacher at Dennis Lab School.

After getting married and becoming a mother, Tyler decided to switch careers and become a teacher. She started working as a paraprofessional at her local school district and then decided to join the Golden Apple Accelerators Program to become a teacher.

What was it like to transition from student teacher to full-time educator during remote learning?

So I feel comfortable in the classroom, in this district and I love these kids and their families. I will say that teaching during a pandemic was difficult for a lot of reasons. You don’t get to build those one-on-one relationships like you do in a classroom, especially teaching special ed. Everything was over a computer. So, sometimes it was hard to read body language, expressions, and tones. So, there were a lot of challenges and a lot of growing that had to be done. But, there were also some really amazing things that happened. Teachers were in all of our students’ homes. Where parents were getting to hear us teach and getting to hear their children learn. We were building relationships with families, not just students.I think that kind of carried into my teaching in person, where I realized the importance of that relationship to teachers and families.

Once your students came back into the classroom, did you notice any skills they were missing?

My kids in second and third grade, the only time that they were in school was maybe preschool or kindergarten. They didn’t have time in those really formative education years where we’re learning the alphabet, sounds, letters, numbers. So we’re seeing a lot of students that are not even near grade level because of things they have missed.

Jhaianne Cooper, 25, Chicago Public Schools

Jhaianne Cooper, a dance teacher at Hamilton Fine Arts and Performance School in Chicago Public Schools, started her career in summer 2022.

Start: Summer 2022.

Dance teacher at Hamilton Fine Arts and Performance School.

Cooper has been dancing since she was 3 years old and started teaching at dance studios during her time in high school. However, she didn’t think she would become a dance teacher. In fact, she majored in rehabilitation services and minored in dance in hopes of becoming a chiropractor.

But when the pandemic hit, she started teaching dance classes virtually and fell in love with teaching. She decided to get her master’s in education in 2021 and joined Chicago Public Schools’ Teacher Residency Program.

What has it been like to become a teacher during the coronavirus pandemic?

It has been a challenge, but beneficial at the same time. Using technology when we were virtual was beneficial in my dance classes. Right now, I’m teaching a dance media class, where we’re integrating technology in class. We’re learning how to create videos as well as doing photo shoots. Now technology is still inside of my classroom every single day.

What have been some of your challenges and successes during your first year of teaching?

It has been a challenge to create my own scope and sequence that I have for the dance program at my school. Taking the time to create and build that while being a first year teacher, it can be a lot. But you know, you just take the time to figure it out. I would say a huge success is seeing every student perform. We have 444 students and when we have a showcase to see everybody come together and perform and no one is shy, it’s always a huge success for me because they got out on stage and went for it.

Brandon Pease, 24, Elk Grove Township Community Consolidated School District 59

Brandon Pease, a middle school math teacher at Elk Grove Junior High in Elk Grove Township Community Consolidated School District 59, started teaching in spring 2021.

Start: Spring 2021.

Middle school math teacher at Elk Grove Junior High.

Pease always wanted to be a school teacher. He would make his friends play school in the afternoon during his childhood years, even though they were exhausted by the school day.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit, many educators have been concerned about learning loss. Have you noticed that your students have gaps in their learning?

What I’ve noticed is that in math students have been at least three or four grade levels behind. Some students have even been five grade levels behind. Students in eighth grade are at a second grade level. Although I have to teach my seventh grade math standards, I’ve been working a lot more with building confidence in math and making sure that students are able to be comfortable with being wrong. Disrupting those thoughts that they have to get the right answer to make someone happy or “I’m supposed to do this and I’m not doing it so I’m gonna shut down and not talk to anyone.” I know that getting students confident in school again will help improve their math skills.

What advice would you give to other early-career educators?

As an early-career educator, the only advice I can really give is to get through that first year or that second year. That’s when you’re really going to learn who you are as a teacher.

NJ home schooling grew amid pandemic

2023-02-09T21:52:52+00:00

The coronavirus shocked New Jersey’s school system, with mandated school shutdowns halting traditional education models. As parents dealt with a global health emergency along with school closures, some turned to home schooling to take control of their children’s education.

The percentage of home-schooled students in New Jersey quadrupled during the 2020-21 school year, according to data released by the state Department of Education. But the number of home-schoolers in the state is only a quarter of a percent of all school students, or about 5,326 students from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Many home schooling advocates applauded this news, pointing to that large increase. But public school union leaders were cautious, warning that the overall number of home-schooled students is so slight that it can’t be used to draw a significant meaning about the state of public education.

“You simply cannot use data from 2020-21 to draw any conclusions about ‘increased interest in home schooling in New Jersey post-pandemic’ because the state was not post-pandemic. We were smack-dab in the raging middle of a pandemic,” said Steven Baker, communications director for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

But home schooling organizations note that the increases in enrollment seen during the pandemic have not dissipated since public schools reopened. In November 2020, the Princeton Learning Cooperative’s enrollment numbers began increasing dramatically, according to Joel Hammon, co-founder of the “learning community,” which blends in-person classes with the flexibility of home schooling. Hammon said that although some families did return to traditional schooling methods after restrictions were lifted, many stayed.

Shift in perception

Further, advocates note a shift in the perception of alternative schooling methods. Many families were exposed to home schooling for the first time and found it to be beneficial.

Researchers at the University of Boston and the University of Michigan examined that perception shift in a 2021 study that analyzed the pandemic’s effect on public and private schools as well as home schooling. They found that the pandemic “altered families’ attachment to public schooling.”

The increase in home schooling was not in New Jersey alone. In New York City, K-5 students switching to home schooling increased 119% since the 2019-20 school year, based on a Chalkbeat analysis.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s experimental Household Pulse Survey, the number of people nationally that were home schooling at the start of the 2020-2021 school year doubled in comparison to the previous school year.

Home schooling regulations

Despite an increase in interest, home schooling has historically accounted for a small percentage of students, and still does. But for those who engage in the alternative schooling method, what does the process look like?

Home-school laws differ from state to state. In New Jersey, much of the structuring is left up to parents.

All that is required to begin home schooling in New Jersey is to formally withdraw a student from their current school. Notification is not required, and the state has no teacher, assessment or immunization requirements.

In comparison, states such as Pennsylvania — where home schooling is highly regulated — require home-school teachers to have a high school diploma; a notarized affidavit must be filed with the local school superintendent by a certain date, and instructional hours are regulated.

New Jersey requires the home-schooled child to receive “equivalent” teaching instruction. Although “equivalent” does not mean “identical,” parents must follow that ruling. Failure to do so has landed some in legal trouble, according to Scott A. Woodruff, director of legal and legislative advocacy at the Home School Legal Defense Association. Still, parents are free to hand-select materials and education programs.

That hands-off approach, though, does not mean legislators are keeping their hands off the issue. Currently in committee, a bill (A-1041) would mandate inclusivity in extracurricular activities for home-schooled students and include various activities not limited to clubs, sports programs and theatrical productions. As it stands, local boards of education may allow home-schooled students to participate in extracurriculars such as sports but are not required by law to do so.

Astrea Slezak is a digital production assistant at NJ Spotlight News, where this story was first published. NJ Spotlight News is a content partner of Chalkbeat Newark.

COVID exodus: Where did 1 million public school students go? New data sheds some light.

2023-02-09T05:01:00+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

Until now, it was one of the pandemic’s great mysteries: Where did the missing students go?

When classes resumed in fall 2020, several months after COVID struck, enrollment in the nation’s public schools had plummeted by more than a million students. It was the largest single-year decline since World War II. And defying hopes of a rapid rebound, enrollment barely budged the following year.

There have been clues about where students went, such as the steep rise in homeschooling, but a full explanation of the public school exodus has been elusive. Now, a new analysis offers a more comprehensive accounting — though one of its most striking findings is that tens of thousands of students remain absent from the available data.

“It’s really been enigmatic,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford professor who conducted the analysis in collaboration with the Associated Press and data journalists at Stanford’s Big Local News project. “Where have these children gone?”

The data the team compiled point to two main drivers of the public school enrollment plunge: family choices and population changes. After public schools went remote, a portion of families switched their children to private schools or homeschool. At the same time, immigration slowed and many families fled big cities, causing the school-age population in some places to shrink.

The schooling changes and population shifts explain most of the enrollment drop — but not all of it, according to the analysis. Dee offers some possible causes of the unexplained decline: unregistered homeschooling, families opting out of kindergarten, and students who simply stopped attending school.

For students’ whose formal education ceased or failed to start during the pandemic, the learning loss continues.

“These data are telling us that there are learning disruptions that go beyond who is simply sitting in public schools,” Dee said.

Yet the number of unaccounted-for students and their current status is unclear. Most states don’t track all the students who leave public schools, and oversight of non-public education is minimal.

The new analysis “is beginning to shed light on a very important topic,” said Richard Welsh, a public policy and education professor at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study. Still, “we don’t have the data to get the complete picture.”

Here’s the latest on what we know — and still don’t know — about where students went during the pandemic.

Public schools lost a lot of students.

Public school enrollment fell by 3% during the first year of the pandemic, according to federal data. The largest decline since 1943, it wiped out a decade of enrollment growth.

The decrease left public schools with 49.4 million students in fall 2020 — about 1.4 million fewer than the previous fall.

The steepest declines were among the youngest students. From 2019 to 2020, prekindergarten enrollment plummeted by more than 20% and kindergarten enrollment fell by 9%, according to a federal analysis of preliminary data, which found much smaller declines in the later grades.

The decision to keep school buildings closed drove some families away, according to a separate study by Dee. School districts that remained fully virtual in fall 2020 faced bigger enrollment losses, he found.

In fall 2021, public school enrollment was flat. Students had stopped fleeing — but they weren’t returning.

“There was no bounce back,” Dee said.

It’s too early to know whether the tide is turning. Federal data for this school year is not yet available, and the most populous states — including California and Texas — have not reported their most recent enrollment counts.

However, about two dozen states have, according to the data tracking firm Burbio. Thirteen of those states saw enrollment increases in fall 2022, while 11 saw declines.

Homeschooling surged, and private schools grew modestly.

During the pandemic, public schools’ loss was other schools’ gain.

The share of families choosing to homeschool their children doubled in 2020, according to a Census survey. By that fall, about 11% of households with school-age children were homeschooling, up from 5.4% that spring and about 3% in prior years. The shift was especially dramatic among Black families, whose share of homeschooling families grew fivefold in 2020.

In the 21 states and the District of Columbia that track homeschooling, enrollment soared by 30% from fall 2019 to fall 2021, according to the Stanford and AP analysis.

“It was a destination of choice,” said Welsh, the Vanderbilt professor, adding that the expansion of remote work enabled some parents to try homeschooling.

Private schools saw a smaller bump. Their enrollment climbed just over 4% during that period, according to the analysis, which included data from 33 states and D.C. (Non-public school data can be spotty even in states that track it. For example, Colorado, which is included in the analysis, does not require private schools to provide student counts, and nearly 30% of the 700 private schools in a state directory didn’t report any enrollment data.)

Notably, private schools’ first grade classes ballooned in fall 2021, the analysis found, suggesting that some families who opted out of public kindergarten in 2020 decided to keep their children in private schools.

How the local public schools responded to the pandemic appeared to influence families’ school decisions. In a study of Michigan’s enrollment patterns, researchers found that more families opted to homeschool in districts that resumed in-person learning in fall 2020; in districts that stayed remote, more families moved to private schools.

“No matter what choice the public system made,” said Andrew Bacher-Hicks, a Boston University professor who co-authored the study, “they were going to lose some set of families.”

In Michigan, about half the students who exited the public schools in fall 2020 returned the following year, Bacher-Hicks said.

Nationwide, whether families will stick with their pandemic school choices remains to be seen. The most recent national data on non-public school enrollment is from 2019, and the Stanford-AP analysis ends in fall 2021.

In a recent survey of about 300 private schools, 55% reported enrollment gains this school year and 20% reported losses. A few states that released fall 2022 homeschool data saw enrollment increases, while others saw declines.

Welsh said it’s likely that some families who decided to homeschool at the height of the pandemic will reconsider.

“I do think there could be some buyer’s remorse,” he said.

The school-age population shrank, and families moved.

While families ditching public schools drew headlines, a less visible change also drove the enrollment drop: In many places, there were simply fewer children around to enroll.

The school-age population shifted in two big ways during the pandemic. First, it shrank nationwide by some 250,000 children, according to the Stanford-AP analysis, which relied on Census estimates in April 2020 and July 2021. Birth rates that have fallen for over a decade and a sharp drop in international immigration during the pandemic drove the decline.

Second, many families with children relocated during COVID. They were most likely to leave cities, often due to housing costs or health concerns. They also moved between states: California and New York lost the most children, while Texas and Florida gained the most.

The school district in Brockton, Massachusetts, a midsize city south of Boston, was hit by both trends: a falling birth rate and out-migration.

“Many families lost their jobs and struggled to pay rent and now are facing eviction,” said district spokesperson Jess Silva-Hodges, adding that many moved in search of cheaper housing. “The affordability of everything has been a challenge for our families.”

Across the 21 states with full datasets in the Stanford-AP analysis, population shifts explain 26%-36% of public schools’ pandemic enrollment decline. (The size of the effect depends on the length of the population estimate.) The effect was bigger in states such as New York, which lost some 60,000 school-age children. Population loss drove at least 40% of that state’s enrollment decline.

“On some level, the reduction in public school enrollment wasn’t just a flight from public schools,” Dee said, “it was a flight from communities.”

Researchers expect the population downturn to continue, leading the National Center for Education Statistics to project a 4% decline in school enrollment by 2030. Such projections have “sobering implications” for school finances and operations, Dee noted, including possible staff layoffs and school closures.

Federal COVID relief money has buffered most districts from the financial fallout of the recent enrollment declines — but those funds expire next year.

“There’s going to be lean years ahead,” said Silva-Hodges, adding that all districts must soon start “taking a hard look at their budgets.”

Many students are still missing.

In the new analysis, one of the most startling findings is that the numbers don’t add up.

In the 21 states and D.C. that had data on each trend, up to a third of the public school exodus — some 230,000 students — can’t be explained by population changes or increased private school or homeschool enrollment. At least on paper, those students are still missing.

The report suggests a few possible explanations. Some of the unaccounted-for students could be in unreported homeschool. More troublingly, some students might have left school during the pandemic due to family hardships or dissatisfaction with remote learning and never returned. But the report makes clear that data on the number of such students “are not widely available.”

However, the report does provide indirect evidence of a third possibility: that some families kept their children out of kindergarten during the first two years of the pandemic. Among the 21 states in the analysis and D.C., the share of unaccounted for students was significantly higher in places where kindergarten is not mandatory.

In other words, many of the missing students might have skipped kindergarten. While national data for this school year is not yet available, some states that have reported their fall enrollment figures saw increases in first grade, according to Burbio — a possible sign that students who sat out kindergarten have returned.

A final possibility is that some of the unexplained enrollment decline reflects incomplete data or measurement errors.

While the analysis is limited to states that track non-public school enrollment, it’s possible that some of the homeschool and private school figures are undercounts. And a few demographers Chalkbeat contacted raised concerns about aspects of the analysis, including its comparison of Census estimates to actual enrollment figures.

Dee called the concerns reasonable, but said the size of the missing student group — including nearly 152,000 unaccounted for students in California alone — suggests more is at play than measurement error. He also analyzed earlier data in New York and California and did not find such large unexplained enrollment changes before the pandemic.

While better data is needed to fully understand how many students have fallen through the cracks, Dee added, the fact that any students are unaccounted for is concerning.

“We’re so focused on how districts are engaging the kids in front of them,” he said. “But we’re missing the fact that some kids aren’t sitting there.”

Due to an update to one state’s enrollment figures, this story has been corrected to change the estimated number of students who aren’t accounted for in the data from 240,000 to 230,000.

Erica Meltzer and Amy Zimmer contributed reporting.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools want to boost enrollment. It might prove a major challenge.

2023-02-09T05:01:00+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks wants to win students back.

The nation’s largest school district has hemorrhaged students since the start of the pandemic, with enrollment down about 11% to 813,000 students in grades K-12 since then.

Earlier this week, Banks even tweeted: “Increasing enrollment and boosting opportunity for all of our students is our North Star.”

But such an effort might not be so simple, according to a new analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project, and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee.

Across 21 states, about 230,000 of the students who left the public school rolls from 2019 to 2021 cannot be explained by rising private school or homeschool enrollment or population changes, according to the analysis. A quarter of those children — roughly 60,000 — were in New York.

These students could have fallen off school rosters for various reasons, Dee noted, such as being homeschooled without registering with the state or skipping kindergarten. Other students might have disengaged during remote learning or amid mental health struggles.

But there could be other factors that complicate the chancellor’s goals of rebuilding enrollment. Besides a declining birth rate, immigration to New York City has slowed, and families are leaving New York for places like New Jersey and Florida — often in search of cheaper housing. Together, demographic change could account for at least 40% of New York state’s public school enrollment decline, according to the analysis.

“There’s growing evidence for how much domestic migration happened during the pandemic,” Dee said. That likely reflects “underlying structural factors,” he said, “such as the enduring nature of work-from-home arrangements that have allowed people to relocate, as well as the push-pressure from things like rising housing costs.”

He added, “On some level, that reduction in public school enrollment wasn’t just a flight for public schools. It was a flight from these communities.”

Enrollment losses mount in NYC

New York City school enrollment has been declining every year since 2016, due in part to declining birth rates.

Between the 2018-19 and the 2019-20 school years, for example, the city saw enrollment fall by 5,000 students. But the decline has accelerated. Three years later, there are 99,000 fewer kids in the city’s district schools, even as additional classrooms for 3-year-olds have been added to the system, according to preliminary education department enrollment data from October.

Where did they go? The picture is not entirely clear. During this time, the number of homeschooled students in New York state has gone up, though it still represents comparatively few children. The number of private school students statewide, however, dropped.

At the same time, the school-age population statewide fell by more than 60,000 children, according to census estimates.

After accounting for the non-public school increase and the population loss, that leaves just over 59,000 students whose exit from the state’s public schools isn’t explained. At least in theory, those students are missing.

But the census estimates used for the analysis have shortcomings, especially when it comes to counting children. The New York state census estimates, in particular, have been known to be off-base compared to the official 10-year estimates. Dee’s analysis notes that the enrollment data and census data are collected over different time periods, which could understate the role of population change.

Demographic experts warned against using a specific number for the state’s students missing from school rosters.

“The population estimates may not be the best basis for comparison in this case,” said Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research. “You may be able to generally determine the direction of the gap,” he added, but cautioned against “calculating seemingly precise population counts representing the ‘gap.’”

Because of these limitations, Dee ran a similar analysis for pre-pandemic years in New York, which found a much smaller number of unaccounted-for students, pointing to something “out of the ordinary” during the pandemic, he said.

“Over the pandemic, we’ve seen this historically unprecedented exodus from public schools,” Dee said.

City officials said they have accounted for students who left the system, sharing a breakdown earlier this school year detailing the numbers of children who went to different parts of the state, the country, or left the U.S., as well as those who dropped out or transferred to charter or private schools.

“Like districts and schools across the county, our enrollment has been impacted by fluctuations resulting from the pandemic as well as long-term trends in birth rates,” Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg previously said in a statement.

The enrollment drop has real world consequences for schools. As students leave the system, the city is bracing for a dramatically smaller budget once COVID relief dollars dry up since schools funds are based on enrollment.

Grappling with students who left, and who are frequently absent

Banks, in prepared remarks for Wednesday’s Albany budget hearing, acknowledged that families left New York City public schools for various reasons, and he showed optimism for winning some back.

“The answer to declining enrollment is clear: we have to give our students and families the opportunities and experiences they want in the classroom,” he said, “and we must do a better job of showing them how our schools are giving students the skills and knowledge that will drive success in their lives after school.”

He added: “My administration is focused on rebuilding trust with our families and bringing families back to our schools.”

To that end, the city continues to open new schools. Two that include remote learning opened this year, along with a school focused on robotics. A school focused on design and social justice is expected to open next year. But it also remains to be seen whether the city will soon propose a rash of school closures or mergers. There are a couple of proposed mergers on upcoming agendas for the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, cautioned about using the big-picture “rough” data to make “finely tuned” policy decisions that affect individual students.

“It doesn’t get to the granular level of individual kids’ needs,” he said. “We know they’re not missing in a real sense. They’re just not on anyone’s radar. It’s the radar screens’ fault, not the kids’ fault.”

He compared the issue to the debate around learning loss, saying it’s “valid and important” to research the phenomenon, but that there are also so many variables and unknowns that are difficult to parse out.

“I think it’s much less important for the macro than the micro: For a given kid who’s not in school, it’s much more important,” he said.

Bloomfield remained more concerned about the larger number of New York City students who are chronically absent and might be enrolled but “alienated” from their schools. More than 30% of students this year are on track to have missed more than 18 days, or about a month, of school, city officials have said.

“The other piece is the in-school situation,” Bloomfield said, “The kids who can be found but are not being served.”

Correction: Due to an update to one state’s enrollment figures, this story has been corrected to change the estimated number of missing students in all states from 240,000 to 230,000.

This article is based on data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Big Local News project. Data was compiled by Sharon Lurye of the AP, Thomas Dee of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and Justin Mayo of Big Local News.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

COVID vaccine mandate dropped for city employees, visitors to NYC public schools

2023-02-06T19:29:10+00:00

Chalkbeat New York is a nonprofit newsroom covering New York City’s public schools. Subscribe to our free newsletter to follow our reporting: ckbe.at/subscribe-ny

Visitors to New York City’s public schools will no longer have to be vaccinated, ending a year-and-a-half-old rule that had kept some parents out of school functions, Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday.

Adams also announced that COVID vaccines will no longer be required of city workers. That means that more than 1,700 employees who were fired for not complying with vaccine mandates can apply for open positions. As of last March, about 900 education department employees had been fired; a spokesperson did not provide a more recent figure.

That rule had invited various legal challenges and pressure from unions, including the United Federation of Teachers. Judges in several of these cases have sided with those who argued that the city’s rule was unlawful.

Vaccine requirements will also be lifted for private schools, early childhood programs, and daycare staff.

The changes will go into effect Feb. 10, after a vote from the city’s Board of Health, which is expected to approve the changes.

“With more than 96 percent of city workers and more than 80 percent of New Yorkers having received their primary COVID-19 series and more tools readily available to keep us healthy, this is the right moment for this decision,” Adams said in a statement. “I continue to urge every New Yorker to get vaccinated, get boosted, and take the necessary steps to protect themselves and those around them from COVID-19.”

Monday’s announcement represents the Adams administration’s gradual unpeeling of COVID-related rules established under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. And for schools, it marks the end of any major remaining COVID mitigations. Prior to this, Adams had ended masking rules, vaccine mandates for student athletes and prom attendees, daily health screenings and in-school COVID testing for students and staff, and had disbanded the city’s so-called Situation Room, which informed school communities of positive COVID cases.

Many parents have petitioned the city to end its vaccine requirement for school visitors. One parent previously told Chalkbeat that the inability to attend her child’s school was one of several factors that drove her family out of New York City.

NeQuan McLean, president of Brooklyn’s District 16 parent council, said he supports COVID shots, noting that he and his family members are fully vaccinated. But he felt the mandate made it hard for schools to “really engage with families like they needed to,” for parents and guardians who chose not to get their vaccines.

“This is really a move back to real, authentic parent engagement because you can’t really engage over a computer,” McLean said.

Earlier this school year, officials said parent-teacher conferences would happen virtually, but parents could request in-person meetings (though those had to happen during teachers’ contractual work days). Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department, said conferences will continue to be virtual by default “for the time being.”

Last month, Chancellor David Banks signaled that based on the advice of health officials, he could support lifting the requirement for school building visitors, such as parents, to be vaccinated.

Some are already criticizing the move. Dr. Jay Varma, an advisor for de Blasio during the pandemic, wrote that he was “shocked” at the news. He argued that as new people enter the workforce and unvaccinated teenagers get older, this change will mean more “illness, deaths, and costs,” since vaccination helps stem severe and fatal illness, as well as hospitalization.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Lawsuit on behalf of NYC students with disabilities who lost services during the pandemic goes ahead

2023-02-03T22:03:17+00:00

A class action lawsuit seeking to force New York City to expedite makeup services to students with disabilities has been revived by an appeals court, according to a ruling released Friday.

The ruling reverses a lower court’s decision last year to dismiss the case.

The lawsuit, filed in November 2020 by Advocates for Children, claims thousands of city students missed out on crucial services as the city struggled to distribute remote learning devices and provide adequate instruction after officials shut down school buildings during the pandemic. Other services, such as physical therapy, were extremely difficult to deliver remotely.

Students with disabilities are entitled to compensatory services if their school doesn’t provide the therapies or specialized instruction listed on their individualized education program, or IEP. If schools don’t agree to provide extra services, families can file what’s known as a due process complaint and go through an administrative legal process.

But in New York City, that system has experienced an explosion of due process complaints and faces a backlog of thousands of cases. In previous years, cases have dragged on for hundreds of days, beyond the 75-day legal limit. (City and state officials did not offer updated figures on how long cases are taking to resolve, though they recently sought a contract to hire outside lawyers to respond to cases.)

Advocates for Children’s lawsuit argues that the city must create a streamlined process for adjudicating families’ requests for makeup services, as the current process has broken down and would be too burdensome and time consuming for families to navigate.

A federal district judge rejected that argument last March, noting that none of the families who brought the lawsuit had attempted to use the existing process. The judge, Andrew L. Carter Jr., ruled that families needed to exhaust the existing process before bringing a federal lawsuit. But on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned that decision, sending the case back to the lower court.

“We’re very pleased with the ruling and think it is the right decision,” said Rebecca Shore, the litigation director for Advocates for Children. “We hope that the DOE will create a system without engaging in prolonged litigation because students with disabilities in New York City have been without these compensatory services since 2020.”

The city’s education department has made some significant efforts to provide students with disabilities additional services to make up for pandemic disruptions outside of the impartial hearing process. The department offered after-school and Saturday sessions to any family who wanted them. However, the rollout was bumpy — yellow bus transportation was not provided, and most families did not participate.

This school year, officials scaled back those programs and directed school staff to make individual decisions in consultation with families about whether students need extra services during their annual IEP meetings. City officials have argued that students should be automatically considered for extra services at those meetings, circumventing the need for a separate process for awarding compensatory services.

Shore countered that the process has not worked to effectively deliver services and that schools often don’t raise the possibility of extra support during IEP meetings.

The appeals court did not directly weigh in on whether the city’s current system of discussing compensatory services at IEP meetings was sufficient or implemented as city officials described, noting that both sides of the case could present evidence to the lower court.

Still, despite the immediate victory for families of students with disabilities who want additional services for their children, it’s unclear how quickly the case will be resolved — a point one of the appeals court judges dwelled on during oral argument in November.

“This is one of the most frustrating areas to be a judge in,” he said, “these are services that these kids need now, not two years from now. It would be a pyrrhic victory for the appellants to win five years from now because many of their clients would be 23.”

A spokesperson for the city’s education department said officials are reviewing the decision. The state education department, which is also a defendant in the lawsuit, did not return a request for comment.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Community colleges see stabilizing enrollment after steep pandemic losses

2023-02-03T20:12:49+00:00

Community colleges saw enrollment begin to stabilize last fall after steep pandemic declines, fueled in part by more new students and a surge of dually enrolled high-schoolers, according to new data released Thursday.

The figures from the National Student Clearinghouse shed further light on COVID-19’s sweeping impact on higher education, as institutions around the country now seek to climb out of deep enrollment troughs, and as data reveals diverging trends across different demographics.

Bucking a multi-year trend, overall enrollment at community colleges crept up by just under half a percent in the fall — essentially flattening after years of falling numbers that predated even the pandemic. That change came in part thanks to a more than 6% jump in new freshmen enrolling at community colleges nationwide, but still leaves the schools well below pre-pandemic norms. It’s the first time either trend has increased in at least five years, according to the data.

Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said the figures offered encouraging signs of recovery.

“Although freshmen classes are still well below pre-pandemic levels, especially at community colleges, the fact that they are swinging upward in all sectors is a positive indicator for the future,” he said.

Still, pandemic losses were steep, and depressed enrollment numbers continue to plague colleges across the nation — especially at community colleges. Undergraduate freshman enrollment fell by about 10% in 2020, but that number leapt to 17% when isolated to just community colleges.

“It’s encouraging that there’s some rebound on new enrollment,” said John Fink, a community college researcher at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “But that’s in the context of community colleges being in a deep hole.”

He added losses have been particularly severe among older adults and recent high school graduates, with more and more individuals choosing either not to attend college or to go into four-year institutions.

“If you think about who community colleges serve, they’re open access institutions that serve local communities; they enroll higher shares of first-generation students and low-income students,” Fink said. “So community college students are very sensitive to external pressures, through work obligations, family obligations, and financial obligations.”

During the pandemic, “there were a lot of factors pulling students away from community colleges,” he said.

Even before COVID-19, though, community colleges were seeing declines in enrollment for older adults and recent high school graduates. At the same time, community colleges have experienced explosive growth in high school students enrolling in their courses.

And dual enrollments fueled the stabilizing fall numbers, too, seeing a 12% spike. Without those students, overall enrollment at community colleges fell nationwide by between 1.5% and 2%, according to Shapiro.

“Certainly that makes a difference from a degree-seeking perspective,” he said. “[But] in the context of the health of the institution, those dual-enrollments do make a difference.”

To Fink, the dually enrolled students represent one path forward for community colleges, serving as a potential on ramp for their schools and others.

“In many states, high school students make up a quarter or a third or more of community college enrollment,” he said. “What we’re hearing from colleges is that over the years as these programs have grown, sometimes there hasn’t been a lot of intentionality around connecting the college’s mission of access and equity with the dual enrollment work.”

Research has found that such programs have been less accessible to students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, despite showing positive outcomes for those who are able to participate, Fink added. Colleges have begun to strengthen their relationships with Title I schools and take other measures to bolster accessibility.

That work can be especially important as data shows diverging enrollment trends for students of color.

While Latino and Asian American students saw enrollment numbers beginning to rebound in the fall, Black and Native American student enrollment numbers declined further. Those trends held steady across undergraduate enrollment as a whole, and at community colleges in particular.

Enrollment trends outside of community colleges also began to stabilize, according to the data. Overall, the nation’s undergraduate enrollment shrunk by just 0.6% in the fall, despite falling by more than 3% in each of the prior pandemic years. Nonprofit four-year colleges also shifted by a fraction of a percent, while public four-year colleges saw a decline of roughly 1.4%.

“There’s still a long way to go,” Shapiro said. “But I think this is clearly an encouraging sign.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering national issues. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Concern over Tennessee’s third grade reading and retention law prompts flurry of bills

2023-02-03T19:23:09+00:00

Lawmakers have filed at least 18 proposals to try to address concerns about a new Tennessee reading law that could force tens of thousands of third-graders to attend summer school this year to avoid being held back.

Several bills would gut the retention provision altogether, while others would keep the law mostly intact but extend related state-funded summer and after-school programs beyond this year.

Some measures would give authority back to local school districts instead of the state to determine which students should be retained. Others would add measures beyond Tennessee’s annual test for making such a decision. And one proposal would establish a new reading and retention checkpoint even earlier than third grade — making students who are finishing kindergarten take a reading test to determine whether they are ready for the first grade.

All are in response to a controversial law that passed in 2021 during a weeklong special legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address learning disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up from the pandemic, but the law’s retention provision — which kicks in with this year’s class of third-graders — has sparked pushback and even outrage.

“It’s upsetting, because it feels like they’re punishing our children,” said Leslie Wallace, whose 8-year-old son is in third grade in Knox County Schools. “At this age, a child is going to be extremely discouraged if they’re held back, especially if they started kindergarten during the pandemic.”

The Republican governor pushed for and has stuck by the law, including the aggressive retention policy, which could hold back third graders who aren’t deemed proficient readers based on state TCAP tests administered each spring.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” Lee told Chalkbeat last fall before easily winning a second term in office.

But now many lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature want to take a closer look at the law’s far-reaching implications for third graders, their families, and schools.

“I’m not saying you should never retain a child,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat and retired teacher who voted against the law. “But the decision should be made student by student, by their teachers and parents — not because of sweeping legislation that’s based on a single test score.”

Legislators drew a line in the sand

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. But reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders meeting the law’s high threshold for proficiency based on state tests.

In 2011, lawmakers passed a retention law to try to address the problem, but the statute was largely unenforced, with few third graders being held back by local school leaders. That set the stage for the 2021 retention provision that, starting this school year, requires third graders to get extra help if they don’t show proficiency on their TCAP test for English language arts.

Backers of the new policy say the law might not be perfect, but they also worry that many Tennesseans don’t fully understand it.

“This was never about ‘fail one test and you’re automatically retained,’” said Rep. Kirk Haston, a Republican who is a teacher, coach, and health education administrator in Perry County. “It’s more about reading identification and providing a lot of supports for students who need help.”

The law says students whose scores on state tests show they are “approaching” proficiency must attend a summer camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program in the fourth grade. Students who score “below” proficiency must participate in both intervention programs.

Third graders are exempt from retention if they were retained in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.

Numerous school boards across Tennessee have passed resolutions calling for revisions, though. Among other things, they’ve urged the legislature to let local educators make retention decisions, without giving final authority to the state. And they’ve noted that TCAP is not a reading diagnostic test and, therefore, isn’t the best measure of a student’s reading ability.

But should the line be drawn earlier?

It’s little wonder that the retention rule is controversial — because research is mixed, and holding students back is a controversial policy decision in education.

Supporters say having students repeat a grade can spur additional supports that struggling readers desperately need, and that those academic interventions matter, especially in the early grades.

Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who have disabilities, are economically disadvantaged, or are of color.

Most research suggests that retention has, on average, null or negative effects on students, and that it’s also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.

The best time to intervene in a student’s progression in school is also under discussion in Tennessee. Increasingly, lawmakers and education advocates are recognizing the importance of also providing interventions for struggling students in kindergarten, first, and second grades — instead of zeroing in on third grade.

That’s where discussion veered this week in a House education subcommittee chaired by Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County, during an exchange with Reginald Nash, a former Memphis kindergarten teacher who now works for The Education Trust in Tennessee to advocate for education equity.

“The General Assembly should consider revising the law to permit students at risk of retention who opt into reading and tutoring at the beginning of third grade, as opposed to after it, and as early as kindergarten, to be promoted,” Nash told lawmakers. “This approach could possibly be easier to implement, requires less bureaucracy to track, and proactively gets more students into reading tutoring before and during third grade.”

Cepicky, who is co-sponsoring a bill that could delay kindergarten entry for many children and add another retention gate before kindergarten, clearly liked the idea of programs and policies directed toward students before they fall too far behind.

“We have to do something in early education to change the dynamic that we have right now,” he said. “We can’t keep going with the status quo.”

Legislators must sort through revision bills

Before the 113th General Assembly convened last month, revisiting third-grade retention topped most lawmakers’ list of education priorities this year based on feedback from constituents.

The large number of proposals filed by this week’s bill-filing deadlines bore that out as Republican leaders shared their plans for sorting through the barrage of legislation.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg said Thursday he’ll let the House take the lead in vetting the proposals, with hopes of eventually bringing a consolidated bill before his panel.

In the House, the first focused look is set for Feb. 14, when all of the bills are laid out before an education subcommittee chaired by Haston.

“We’re just trying to get organized,” said Haston, who added that he doesn’t expect votes for several weeks. “We want to get everything on one calendar to see the lay of the land.”

As part of the process, Rep. Mark White, who chairs the full House Education Administration Committee, has scheduled a Feb. 22 hearing to discuss early childhood literacy. Nine legislators are new to his 19-member committee, and White said he wants them to understand the big picture before voting on any potential revisions to the 2021 Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act.

Among those testifying at the hearing, he said, will be a range of literacy experts, from third-grade teachers and school superintendents to Tennessee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, and education officials in Mississippi, where students improved the most on national reading tests in 2019.

In the meantime, Tennessee schools have been sending out information and hosting meetings with parents of third grade students to inform them about what the law means for their child.

But many parents like Wallace, in Knoxville, are afraid.

“I appreciate the interventions being put in place, but I don’t appreciate the threat that my child could get held back if he doesn’t score high enough on a test,” she said. “I don’t feel like it’s a conducive environment for learning.”

The Education Trust has compiled a list that summarizes and analyzes each retention-related bill.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Brooklyn principal leaves middle school after teacher complaints mount

2023-01-26T21:36:40+00:00

An embattled Brooklyn middle school principal is leaving his post following months of tensions with teachers.

M.S. 51’s Neal Singh will be replaced on Feb. 1 by Pui-Lam (Jack) Chan, who will serve as acting interim principal as the school embarks on the formal hiring process, according to a letter District 15 Superintendent Rafael Alvarez sent on Thursday to parents. Singh will be joining the superintendent’s team.

Singh took over Park Slope’s M.S. 51 in August 2020, after the previous principal of 14 years abruptly retired before an especially challenging new school year. His first task: To figure out all of the complicated COVID-related city guidance around reopening the campus, while also managing remote students and staff. At the same time, the school was learning to adapt to teaching a student body with a wider range of academic needs following a major admissions change across District 15 in 2019.

M.S. 51, like other schools across the city, also has been grappling with higher needs in general, both academically and socially, because of the pandemic-related isolation and school disruptions.

Singh’s leadership style clashed with many of the teachers, as Chalkbeat previously reported.

By March 2021, a group of frustrated educators had compiled their complaints in a three-page document, charging Singh with “gross mismanagement of our school” and describing extensive concerns about safety, lack of communication, “capricious and arbitrary decision-making,” and interference with union activities, according to a copy of the document obtained by Chalkbeat. Two-thirds cast their ballots in favor of the no-confidence vote in the principal.

A few months later, the United Federation of Teachers filed a grievance on behalf of 41 staffers alleging a pattern of harassment and intimidation of union members. It was the largest so-called union animus grievance in UFT history, union officials said. Many teachers have since left their positions at the school, several educators told Chalkbeat.

Singh did not respond to requests for comment.

“We thank Mr. Singh for his unwavering dedication and service to the school and community, and we wish him the best in his new position supporting schools across the entire district,” Alvarez wrote in his letter to parents.

According to City Council member Shahana Shanif, Singh (who is Indo-Caribbean) stepped down after a “coordinated campaign of racist harassment,” a statement she posted on Twitter said.

“As one of the few principals of color in District 15, Principal Singh broke so many barriers in our community and was a proud leader in the fight to desegregate our racially divided school system,” she wrote.

Principal Singh served our school community with distinction and dedication. I am deeply saddened to see him leave MS 51 and even more disturbed by the racist smear campaign run against him. Our community deserves better. My full statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/kHf1YEU924
— Council Member Shahana Hanif (@CMShahanaHanif) January 25, 2023

Singh had been an assistant principal at Brooklyn High School of the Arts, and before that an environmental science teacher at LaGuardia High School, where in 2012 he won a prestigious Sloan Award for excellence in teaching.

District 15’s middle school diversity plan, heralded as a model by many integration advocates, has changed the demographics at many schools, including M.S. 51, a sought-after choice known as one of the district’s “big three” middle schools with a competitive application process before the district moved to an all-lottery system. Last year, more than half of M.S. 51’s students came from low-income families, up from nearly a third the year before the admissions change, according to public data.

Chan has more than 20 years of experience at New Utrecht High School, in Brooklyn’s District 21, where he has been an assistant principal since 2009, according to the letter from Alvarez. While there, Chan oversaw social-emotional learning and adult education programs, and as president of the Social Studies Supervisors Association has extensive connections with New York City’s community organizations.

“Mr. Chan is also a trained coach,” Alvarez wrote, “and he has leveraged his skills as an empathic listener to intentionally build trusting and supportive relationships in the school environment.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Neal Singh was once an environmental science teacher.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Tensions high at a Brooklyn middle school as teachers spar with their principal

2023-01-24T00:37:00+00:00

Teachers and staff at M.S. 51, a large middle school in Park Slope, filed into the gym during their lunch hour last March to drop their paper ballots into a box to declare “yes” or “no” in a vote of no confidence in their principal.

A group of frustrated educators had compiled their complaints in a three-page, single-spaced document, charging Neal Singh with “gross mismanagement of our school” and describing extensive concerns about safety, lack of communication, “capricious and arbitrary decision-making,” and interference with union activities, according to a copy of the document obtained by Chalkbeat.

When the votes were counted, two-thirds had voted in favor. The months that followed were acrimonious, culminating in June when the United Federation of Teachers filed a grievance that alleges a pattern of harassment and intimidation of union members. Forty-one staff members signed on, making it the largest so-called union animus grievance in UFT history, union officials confirmed.

The discord at M.S. 51 is a departure for a school that was known as one of the district’s “big three” middle schools, a sought-after choice with a competitive application process and reputation for challenging academics and an extensive arts program. It was also widely considered by teachers to be a plum assignment.

Singh took over the 1,100-seat school in August of 2020 at a difficult juncture: The administration was tasked with reopening the campus during the pandemic while also adapting to educating a student body with a wider range of academic needs following a major admissions change across the district in 2019. Tensions between administration and teachers have remained high ever since.

According to several signatories, the grievance is expected to go to arbitration. Some teachers decided not to wait for resolution. About a dozen have left since June, several teachers told Chalkbeat, including two assistant principals and half the arts specialists, a turnover rate that’s highly unusual for the school.

When reached by phone on Sunday, Singh declined to be interviewed and referred questions to the department of education. Department spokesperson Chyann Tull wrote in an email, “At New York City Public Schools, our first priority is to make sure that all students receive the high-quality care and education that they deserve. The district superintendent is actively supporting the school community at M.S. 51 to ensure that the environment remains successful for all.”

Some parents staunchly defended Singh, characterizing the complaints against him as a vendetta, inspired in part by racism on the part of disgruntled staff (Singh was born in Trinidad), and describing him as a beloved figure who has weathered a challenging stretch at the school.

‘An impossible time’ for a new principal to start

Singh was appointed acting principal at M.S. 51 after the long-serving head of the school, Lenore DiLeo-Berner, abruptly retired after 14 years, a month before the new school year began. (Singh was given the permanent post in February 2021). He had been an assistant principal at Brooklyn High School of the Arts, and before that an environmental science teacher at LaGuardia High School, where he won the prestigious Sloan Award for excellence in teaching in science and mathematics in 2012.

“It was an impossible time to start,” a veteran teacher acknowledged. (All seven M.S. 51 teachers we spoke with — former and present — asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals or to avoid jeopardizing grievances against the principal.)

Students and teachers were adjusting to hybrid learning — back part of the time in the classrooms and art studios but not really back to normal. And the school was also still adjusting to a demographic shift in students. Last year, more than half of the school’s students came from low-income families, up from nearly a third the year before the admissions change, according to public data.

Teachers told Chalkbeat that they were eager to establish a good rapport with the new principal. A former English teacher said she hoped that Singh, a person of color, would be the right leader to “help support a new learning community that included people of different backgrounds.” The veteran teacher said, “A lot of staff did try to give him the benefit of doubt as long as they possibly could, because people understood it was an unprecedented time.”

But the goodwill did not last.

Early on Singh made a series of decisions that seemed ill-considered to some parents and staff, often undertaken without consulting either, parents and teachers told Chalkbeat. He removed the lockers so students had to carry their belongings around all day. He canceled first period homeroom, which many parents and teachers felt had helped create a sense of community in a large school.

In the union document prepared for the no-confidence vote, teachers charged that Singh did not establish clear boundaries for the school’s out-to-lunch policy, a cherished ritual in which students are allowed to spend their lunch period in the surrounding neighborhood. Too few staff members monitored students leaving the building, they said, and students were able to range farther from the school building. Some students either returned late or not at all, leading to confusion and anxious efforts to locate them.

These changes occurred amid heightening behavioral issues for students. Some had suffered “social and emotional damage” from the stress of the pandemic, one teacher noted, and there was bound to be some fallout, even if most were excited to be back at school. “Kids had all kinds of scars from what had happened, but we were not given support to deal with that,” she said.

Teachers and parents reported that fights were erupting outside the building and in the hallways. Children were also cutting class, vaping and smoking pot in the bathrooms, pulling fire alarms, and bullying other students, the teachers and parents said. The school issued 33 suspensions last year, according to public data. That was up from 19 in 2018-2019, the last full school year before the pandemic.

Incidents were a “daily occurrence,” according to Mia Overall, whose son was persistently bullied, along with two of his female friends, by the same group of kids in his sixth grade year.

Singh met with the parents of the children who were bullied, but Overall felt that the principal was “dismissive” of their concerns. She said the parents of the bullies did not attend the meeting, and there were no consequences for the kids who were tormenting her son. This past fall the bullying continued, and her son transferred to a different middle school.

Student surveys showed mixed feelings about school safety. Roughly 72% of students last year said they felt safe in the hallways and cafeteria. That was down 19 percentage points from the 2019 survey. But 90% reported feeling safe in their classrooms, a decline of 5 points from 2019.

Staffers railed against the principal for a host of other issues as well. According to the no-confidence documents, Singh established new grading policies without consulting faculty; made significant changes in the arts curriculum just days before the new school year; and frequently did not respond to teachers’ emails.

“The reputation of the school has been damaged,” a veteran teacher said. “And it’s not because of the students, it’s not because of the teachers. It’s because of the leadership.”

Singh’s removal of the school’s long-serving photography teacher in June 2021 was also a significant point of contention. While the teacher was eventually reassigned to a different arts department job, the award-winning photography program has been scaled back.

Sonia Alio, a parent of an M.S. 51 graduate, said after the staffing change, students no longer learned to use film cameras — instead they snap photos with their phones — and so they don’t use the darkroom either.

Some parents called him the ‘biggest supporter and advocate of the students’

Singh has some vocal supporters among parents at the school. In December, Tomasita Sherer, the mother of twin eighth-grade boys, wrote to the district’s superintendent, Rafael Alvarez, to convey her “unequivocal support and admiration” for Singh. “Most of the children, teachers and parents love Mr. Singh and would give him an A+ for his kind and stalwart leadership through the COVID crisis and beyond.” She said she believes that complaints about Singh are “meritless.”

Another group of parents wrote to Alvarez last month as well, saying that the principal had done a “remarkable” job as he took over during a very challenging year. Singh “has been the biggest supporter and advocate of the students,” these parents wrote, “insisting on respect and dignity for those children who face challenges largely unseen at the ‘pre-diversity-plan’ MS 51.”

The letter, whose writers declined to be interviewed by Chalkbeat, lauded Singh for promoting “excellence and equity” following the admissions changes. “After at least 15 years of MS 51 being a ‘gifted and talented’ school that cherry-picked only the most well-behaved and academically successful students for admission, our school now held a diverse representation of all of our children,” the parents wrote.

Additionally, last year’s parent surveys showed improvements in their relationship with the principal, with 88% saying they felt the principal worked hard to build trust with parents. That was up 6 percentage points from 2019, under the previous leadership.

The union animus grievance may not be resolved for months; several other grievances are also pending. Some teachers aren’t waiting for the situation to improve.

One teacher said that she had grown up at M.S. 51: her mother taught there for 35 years, and her mother’s colleagues had become her “extended family” when she was a child, and is also a graduate. When she became a teacher herself, she was thrilled to land a position at her alma mater. “To say it is an institution embedded in my soul is putting it lightly,” she wrote.

This year, after 17 years of teaching at M.S. 51, she took a job at another school.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Neal Singh was once an environmental science teacher.

Tracy Tullis is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn.

After COVID paused Regents exams, graduation rates for NYC’s English language learners surged

2023-01-19T19:31:54+00:00

Arnulfo Toribio was ready to drop out of high school.

It was 2020, and Toribio felt exhausted from learning years’ worth of material while balancing school with a full-time restaurant job. Before immigrating to New York City a few years earlier, he had spent much of his childhood working on a Mexican farm to support his family after his father died, missing at least six years of formal schooling.

A guidance counselor persuaded him to stay on track for a diploma, and Toribio got an additional boost just months before graduation: In response to the pandemic, the state canceled New York’s Regents exams, five of which students are required to pass in order to graduate. Students would still need to pass their courses. Toribio, who hadn’t passed his English or Algebra Regents after a couple attempts, graduated later that year.

“I benefited from that policy,” Toribio explained in Spanish through a translator. “It honestly helped me graduate.”

Bucking national trends, graduation rates rose across the state in the 2020-21 school year. Even more surprising, the rate catapulted for the city’s English language learners — rising by 14 percentage points to 60%, the largest increase on record for those students and a greater rise than other student groups.

The graduation rate spike seemed counterintuitive given that low-income immigrant communities had been severely affected by the pandemic, and many English learners found it more difficult to learn remotely. (Educators also found it difficult to teach remotely.)

Data obtained by Chalkbeat suggests that the temporary policy change — first canceling the English Regents and then not requiring a passing score on it to graduate in 2020-21 — removed a hurdle for English language learners trying to earn their diplomas. More English learners graduated during that time period, far fewer of whom passed the English Regents exam.

State officials acknowledged the spike could have been connected to the temporary cancellation of the Regents exams, and specifically the English exam, but they couldn’t say to what extent.

The effects of that policy could become clearer soon, as the state prepares to release graduation rates from the 2021-22 school year, when Regents exams resumed. The data could help inform a commission tasked with recommending changes to the state’s graduation requirements in 2024, including whether the Regents exams should still be required for students to graduate.

More English language learners take advantage of the Regents cancellation

Students typically take the English Regents exam at some point between freshman and senior year — with some taking it multiple times in hopes of eventually passing so they can get their diplomas. (Some students can appeal their scores and still graduate.)

In the 2018-19 school year, nearly 3,000 English language learners graduated from city public schools within four years, and roughly 67% of them had passed their English Regents at some point. In comparison, nearly all students who graduated and were not learning English as a new language had passed their English exams.

By 2020-21, when the English Regents was optional, the number of English language learners who earned diplomas rose to nearly 4,900, while just 8% passed their exams. (Pass rates also fell for other students who graduated, as more of them earned diplomas. Still, more than three-quarters of non-English learners had passed the test.)

The data doesn’t prove that English Regents exams are the source of low graduation rates among English learners because other factors could have influenced the recent rise, multiple policy experts who reviewed the data said.

Still, there’s “pretty good evidence” that canceling the exams was “one of the things that caused kids to be able to graduate,” said Julie Sugarman, senior policy analyst for K-12 education who focuses on English learners at the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigration Integration Policy.

Sugarman also noted that counselors could have encouraged more students to graduate, or looser grading policies could have helped students. (In Toribio’s case, he said his teachers were also flexible with his assignment deadlines as he searched for a new job during the start of the pandemic.)

Still, the data shows strong signs that “students who disproportionately struggle with high stakes standardized tests are disproportionately impacted” when those exams are no longer required to graduate, Sarah Part, a senior policy analyst with Advocates For Children, which has been advocating to remove Regents as a graduation requirement, said in an email.

English language learners typically don’t graduate on time

Graduation rates for English learners have been historically low — 46% graduated on time in 2020 in New York City, compared with 79% of all students citywide. Advocates and policy experts have cited many reasons, including that newer immigrant students might juggle work with school and lack of enough support in classrooms as they’re still learning the language.

Those rates have steadily grown since 2016 by an average of roughly 4 percentage points annually. But the 14-point jump in the 2020-21 school year was an anomaly. It was so high, that for the first time in eight years, English learners no longer had the lowest four-year graduation rate among the city’s major student groups, surpassing children with disabilities.

Research has found little evidence that requiring high-stakes graduation exams improves student achievement, and doing so may actually increase dropout rates for struggling students. The English exams can be particularly hard on English learners, advocates and researchers said. Sugarman said she often hears from educators about students who have passed all of their classes, but can’t pass the English Regents exam.

Just 3% of the city’s English learners who graduated last year did so without using any exemptions from Regents exams, compared to 28% of non-English learners, according to an analysis from The Education Trust-New York.

That organization described their findings as a “signal that students may be underprepared for postsecondary opportunities.”

At the same time, the data is likely fodder for advocates who have called for the state to stop requiring the Regents exams to graduate.

“What are more meaningful measures that can still capture the student’s learning and still give them different possibilities in different ways, so that their ability to graduate doesn’t depend on one test they take on one day for a few hours out of the four years plus of their high school career?” said Juliet Eisenstein, senior staff attorney with Advocates For Children who sits on the state’s commission that is reviewing graduation requirements.

Juanmy Moscoso, an English learner who graduated in 2021, took the English Regents exam five times before passing it, finally succeeding his junior year of high school, three years after he first moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic. He was part of the minority of English learners who passed the exam prior to graduating in 2021.

He felt that his teachers had done all they could to prepare him, but it was tough to pass the exam while also juggling a challenging course load, including several Advanced Placement classes.

“The problem is me not knowing the language as I wanted,” Moscoso said.

Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, an associate professor of international education at NYU, who has studied English language learners, has raised the larger question of why officials expect newcomer English learners to graduate on time to begin with — an argument other policy researchers have also made.

Those students are acclimating to a new country, as well as a new language, and could benefit from extra support and more time instead of “getting them out as quickly as possible,” he said. He said that many newer immigrants don’t pursue college and wondered if that would be different if they received more support in school.

There are signs that English learners who get more time to learn the language perform well academically. The graduation rates for students who are former English learners typically outpace their peers.

Toribio, the student who graduated in 2020, went on to attend community college. But he stopped attending because he was struggling to pay for school, according to an advocate who has helped him in the past. He hopes to go back soon.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC is using one-time COVID money for a lot of education programs. What happens when it dries up?

2023-01-19T10:00:00+00:00

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, New York City’s education department received a massive windfall: more than $7 billion in federal relief funding to help reopen school buildings and address lost instruction.

But city officials have used a significant chunk of that one-time relief on initiatives that have recurring costs. What happens to those efforts when the spigot of federal dollars dries up in 2024? That’s the question posed by a report released Thursday by Advocates for Children, which highlights hundreds of millions worth of programs that are currently being supported by federal funds.

The report is a “call to action” to draw attention to initiatives that could face cuts if the city doesn’t find a way to replace federal dollars, said Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children. “We want to make sure policymakers are aware of the wide range of important education initiatives that are currently being funded by expiring federal COVID-19 relief funding.”

A range of programs are receiving one-time federal money, including expanded summer school ($236 million), hundreds of new prekindergarten seats for students with disabilities ($88 million), screening for students with dyslexia and other literacy programs ($7.4 million), and a raft of hiring including new social workers and nurses (roughly $135 million).

City officials declined to say whether they plan to slash any of those programs or, if not, where the funding will come from.

“We are working closely with City Hall and our agency partners to find ways to sustain and build on the work we have done to lift up our students and schools,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in an email.

The programs are not necessarily at immediate risk, since the federal funding runs until the 2024-25 school year, though advocates argue the city should make plans to address the looming fiscal cliff now. Once the federal funding runs out, the city will have to either cut or find other money to replace about $881 million in annual spending on recurring programs that are currently receiving federal dollars, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.

“I don’t think the intent [of the federal funding] was to support ongoing costs — these funds were clearly one-time,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. “The city, the City Council, and the advocacy community is going to have to address [that] and make hard choices.”

The report does not document every example of the education department’s use of one-time relief money on recurring programs. But it highlights several high-profile examples. Here are five of them:

Preschool for 3-year-olds: $100 million

Mayor Eric Adams made waves when his administration rolled back plans to make 3-K universal, a major goal of his predecessor who intended to use more than half a billion dollars of federal money for that purpose. Officials redirected much of that funding to “central costs.” But even without the planned expansion, city officials will still need to find about $100 million each year to keep the program going at its current size, according to the Advocates for Children report.

Expanding 3-K was “built on recovery dollars that are running out,” schools Chancellor David Banks said at an event hosted by Educators for Excellence Wednesday evening. “We’ve got major issues that we’re going to have to deal with financially in terms of paying for that as well as other programs.”

More social workers, nurses, and staff to help homeless students: about $135 million

The education department hired a slew of people for non-teaching positions, including enough nurses to ensure every school had access to one, 500 social workers, and psychologists to speed up evaluations and the creation of individualized education programs for students with disabilities. The city also used the funding for 75 coordinators to help homeless families navigate the education system, though the hiring process has been slow.

Preschool for students with disabilities: $88 million

Many students with disabilities who are legally entitled to preschool seats have instead been forced to stay home because the city doesn’t have enough seats to meet demand. The problem was long considered a stain on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s promise of universal pre-K and the current administration has vowed to create enough seats for every child with a disability who is entitled to one. But that promise is being delivered with one-time relief money, raising questions about how the city will follow through on that goal after this school year.

Community schools: $60 million

Under de Blasio, there was steady growth in the number of schools that embedded wraparound services into school buildings through partnerships with nonprofit providers — including dental clinics, mental health services, and food pantries. The city has dedicated about $70 million over the last two years to increase the number of those schools from 266 to over 400 and reverse cuts that had been planned to those schools, according to the report.

Keeping school budgets steady: $160 million

City officials have kept school budgets higher than they would have been based on enrollment declines, a policy meant to stave off dramatic budget cuts while schools are trying to catch students up from pandemic disruptions.

Although Adams began the process of cutting school budgets this school year, a move that drew intense criticism, he reversed plans to make another round of cuts next school year – using relief funding to plug the gap. That move means that schools may face even more dramatic cuts down the line, as officials contend that school budgets will eventually need to be brought back in line with enrollment, though city officials have not released detailed plans.

“That’s a looming problem and it will be a bigger problem than it was last year,” Champeny said. “When those funds run out, how are we going to fund the schools and at what level?”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

New York’s PE teacher of the year has a big YouTube following for kid fitness videos

2023-01-17T15:01:00+00:00

The short YouTube videos of kid-focused exercise routines and games that Thomas Gelardi would film in his basement after his family went to sleep took off after COVID hit. Within a year, his channel, PhysEdZone, had more than 10,000 subscribers.

Today, Gelardi, who teaches physical education at P.S. 173 in Fresh Meadows, Queens, has more than 20,000 subscribers, and his videos have been viewed more than 4.5 million times.

The inspiration for PhysEdZone came one pre-pandemic day when a school bake sale being held in the gym forced Gelardi to teach in a classroom. The room had a smartboard, so Gelardi searched the internet for follow-along dance videos. Watching the glee on his students’ faces pushed Gelardi to film his own easy-to-follow dance or fitness videos using his iPad and tripod.

“I thought, how fun would it be to dance along with your PE teacher? Just like that the PhysEdZone YouTube channel was created,” said Gelardi, a 16-year veteran teacher who recently won the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 2022 PE teacher of the year award. “As I played the videos, students got a kick out of seeing me on the screen, they were laughing, smiling, and exercising at the same time. It was incredible and motivating.”

He already had about 25 videos on his channel when the pandemic closed schools. He had planned to assign them to students as homework and share them with his colleagues looking for brain breaks for their students. Then COVID hit, and he saw the videos as a way to help his students — and others — find fun ways to stay physically active while learning from home full time.

He knew that many kids wouldn’t have a lot of space or equipment, so he designed challenges to be easily accessible. His goal was to keep kids moving at a time when so many children were more sedentary.

The percentage of obese Americans between the ages of 2 and 19 jumped during the pandemic to 22%, up from 19% before the pandemic, according to a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looking at data from 2018 through 2020.

“I am genuinely concerned about the amount of exercise and movement children are getting in general,” Gelardi said. “Only a very small number of children get the recommended 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous aerobic activity daily.”

But, he added, “When students see that you love teaching, it’s contagious, and their love for learning grows. Something as simple as exercising with my students, excites them to exercise more.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I was studying exercise science at Manhattan College, playing soccer for their team, while working at a children’s gymnastics studio on the side, running classes and hosting parties. During my time at the gymnastics studio, parents complimented me on how much fun their child had in my class, how their child looks forward to coming and seeing me every week, and how much their child was learning.

As much as it honored me to hear this, I knew this had a lot to do with the fact that I am a big kid at heart. Children feed off my playful energy. I have been told on several occasions that children gravitate toward me when I am around.

So upon graduation, being the typical confused college graduate, I spoke to my Manhattan College career counselor Dr. Shawn Ladda. We discussed my job at the time, and that is when the lightbulb went off, and Dr. Ladda said elementary physical education! You can combine your passion and your talent for your career!

Tell me more about the inspiration for your YouTube channel and how it became so popular.

I decided to share these videos with other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to offer new activities to fellow teachers who were in the same boat, trying to navigate this new norm of [remote] teaching.

Since we needed to bring PE to our students’ homes, I knew they may not have the equipment and space that we have in our schools. Some may have a basketball and not a soccer ball or some may have a big living room while others may have a small one. So with this in mind, I brainstormed and created standards based on at-home “PE minute-to-win-it” challenges using homemade equipment and using my basement space to show how these activities can be performed in small spaces. In doing so, this made the activities accessible to all.

Each challenge combines cardiovascular fitness exercises with gross motor skill development. As I began to share these videos on my channel, PE teachers from across the country were using them for their students. I went from just teaching my students at PS 173 to teaching children around the world.

What’s your most popular video and why do you think it resonated with so many people?

My most popular video is a Fitness/Dance workout to the Kidz Pop song called “Dance Monkey” with over 286,000 views. My students love the song. We worked together to create the dance steps and exercise movements.

When I shared the video with my students, they kept asking to replay it again over and over. Having them collaborate with me on it, I think, gives them a special connection to the song and video. Being that they loved it so much, I knew it was going to be a hit when I shared it with the world. The key is to keep the movements simple and dance with a ton of energy and enthusiasm.

I also saw that you’re on TikTok. What’s your experience on that platform been like?

After seeing how I was able to assist fellow PE teachers during COVID on YouTube, I found that I can use TikTok to inspire future PE professionals as well as first-year PE teachers.

Due to the pandemic, many young professionals didn’t receive in-person student teaching [and] mentoring experiences because everything was virtual. There is a big void that I felt I could help fill. On TikTok, I share an abundance of information — from PE games, PE hacks, to advice on time and behavior management.

The most important part of each video is my delivery of the content. I explain and demonstrate each activity as if I were teaching it to my students. In doing so, teachers can understand how to explain and demo it to their own classes.

Are you concerned about the amount of exercise and movement your students get?

I know for myself and fellow PE teachers, when we ask students what they are doing after school, the most common answers are: going on the computer, doing homework, watching TV, and playing video games. Sports and exercise come last on their priority list, which makes teaching them the importance of physical activity a challenge. It is a challenge that I am up for.

I love exposing my students to as many different physical activities as I can in a school year. The more exposure, the more chance there is that a student can find passion in something. That passion can drive my students into a lifetime of healthy habits like eating right and exercise.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

COVID is still affecting my community and school. Many students are either out on quarantine or still participating in PE class with a mask on. Creating my YouTube channel with at-home challenges and dance/fitness workouts has been very helpful in getting my students to exercise at home and mask-free!

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

It was the teachers that treated me with kindness, compassion, and respect that I remembered. The ones who made learning enjoyable and fun.

When students see that you love teaching, love their company, and are having fun, it’s contagious, and their love for learning grows. Teachers are role models. My students want to be like me, and I take pride in that. I often ride my bike to school wearing my safety helmet to motivate students to do the same. It is a great position to be in.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.